He made sure Manticore was added to ERA's local villain bounty list, and got stuck into crystalline silicate structures, silicon seeds, and growth mediums. He read thousands of papers and theses, produced dozens of data samples, extrapolated photovoltaic capacities, and introduced theoretical nano-tube clusters for light capture.

Successful Skill Use +12 xp to Chemistry - Novice Level 1 [96%].

+6 xp to skill group Science - Novice Level 3 [09%]Successful Skill Use +14 xp to Mathematics - Novice Level 1 [97%].

+7 xp to skill group Science - Novice Level 3 [10%]Successful Skill Use +10 xp to Physics - Novice Level 2 [06%].

+5 xp to skill group Science - Novice Level 3 [11%]Successful Skill Use +16 xp to Materials - Novice Level 2 [14%].

+8 xp to skill group Science - Novice Level 3 [13%]Successful Skill Use +12 xp to Design - Novice Level 2 [22%].

+6 xp to skill group Engineering - Novice Level 2 [45%]

He was a little shocked to come back to himself, rising from a fugue of scientific creation. He'd worked on a number of projects before now, and while he'd been shocked at how easily ideas had come to him, it had never felt like he'd lost himself in a world of math, structures, and possibilities quite like this.

Justin had always been an artistic person, enjoying graphic rendering, crafts, and puzzles, and this had been a lot like that, the exclusionary focus, the thrill of creation. But it had also been more. Was the system getting better at interacting with him, or was he getting better at working with the system? It could be something else entirely.

He wondered if this is what it was like for people with permanent neural enhancements in real life, the cerebral buoyancy, the access to a seemingly endless pool of data and speculation, the gestalt between science and art.

He mentally stretched, spreading his consciousness throughout the workshop, and blinked as he realised it was well into morning already, which meant he'd been focusing on his solar project for more than twelve hours game time, or a couple of days Kip time.

He really needed better ways to process and refer to living within two different time-streams. Perhaps he could develop his own timezone where a Kip-day was equal to roughly four earth days? His brain started to shift into ways to map and record the degree of dilation, before pulling himself back to the 'real' world.

He first checked in with ERA, who had completed her review of the local villain population, cross-checked it with outstanding bounties, and created a scaling rank system for determining risk reward. He complimented her initiative, and asked her to create a new list with a future threat measure. While in theory the scale of a villain's power and bounty should be indicative of their threat to the people and city, it was never as simple as that.

Justin already knew the importance of resources and support, it was why his own potential was growing, and it was why he was so concerned about Manticore signing on with the Bricktown Jackals, a large, well funded inner-city gang, currently desperate and beleaguered. Technology, money and manpower were all force multipliers, and given that the gang was currently under siege by heroes, villains and rivals, the chances of them applying any sort of brake to Manticore's madness was slim to none.

Shaking off the dark ruminations, Justin continued with his review of his minions evening activities. ERA had remembered to deliver a replacement battery for the laptop at the Underground, noting that Justin preferred to do so while it was dark. Justin wasn't desperate to keep it powered, but he just knew that at some point he'd be speaking to the team and find himself going into hibernation. Maybe he should look at adapting one of his high capacity power cells?

Anyway, ERA was proving herself to be a much more capable and considerate assistant than her brother.

Justin wasn't sure if it was because she'd been designed to work with the outer machine systems of the probe, calling for a greater degree of adaptability and priority assessment, or if they'd just made a mistake when they put IRA back together. Whatever the reason, ERA was becoming much more capable at abstract thinking and was handling the processing of Justin's more complicated requests much better than IRA, who was happy as long as the order came with definitive instructions that didn't require initiative. Move this here, repair that.

Despite his simpler nature, IRA had done a good job of cleaning up the workshop. Equipment had been sorted, wires had been collected into proper ducting, he'd even repaired the floor elevator to the basement which Justin was particularly happy with. It was one of the reasons he'd chosen this building, not just for a basement with large freight access, but because Seraph had left a lot of their crap down there when they abandoned the building.

Justin had sent an aerial drone down the stairway for a quick look, and had been able to make out industrial-size robotic arms, scrap steel stock, engine parts galore, barrels of who knew what! It was all very exciting, like those holocasts where they go into old people's attics, or open up old storage containers. And with the elevator working he'd be able to send Trundle down there with a couple of graspers to investigate fully.

But that was for later, the team had plans to meet at noon today at the training grounds, and Justin hoped to have new communicators up and running before then. He wasn't sure if they would all take one home with them though, even with the advantage it would give to arranging backup and meetings, there was no guarantee that they totally trusted each other, or him, enough yet.

Maybe it would help if Justin let them know he'd been spying on them for days, and already knew pretty much everything about their character's lives and identities? No, Justin was an idiot when it came to dealing with people, but even he knew that was a bad idea.

It took him a couple of hours to get the new comm system put together. The new earbuds wouldn't withstand radio pulses any better than the store-bought ones, that was something he'd have to work on later, especially since he also wanted to make sure his drone systems were hardened against outside signal interference.

For now he'd focused on the range, stealth and security of the signal. He'd managed to piggyback a network onto the local cellular grids, using their masts to forward his signal around the city for him. He'd hidden the data within the administrative framework of the grid itself, rather than trying to mimic or repurpose call data that would create a trail, and had worked with ERA on an encryption algorithm that should keep the network secure, even if it was discovered.

Given its nature, the comm network wouldn't be up for heavy data or image transmission, but it was more than fine for voice and text. If Justin could manage to improve on the compression, he might even be able to sync drone control and data into it, which would let him drop a lot of drone weight and make it much more difficult for someone to triangulate a control source.

Before setting off to the meeting with his battle drones, he quickly put together some dummy grenades. Division had warned him that everyone would be involved in today's exercises, and Justin expected to be tasked with target practice at some point.

I just hadn't expected to be target practice, he thought, dodging a hurled spear of ice. North Wind was pulling her punches since the lances where basically ice slushies contained in a crisp shell, but Justin wasn't sure just how water-proof his drones were. He was mentally chuntering to himself, remembering Division's cavalier attitude, 'Inspiration to dodge', let's see him dodge a tazer to the ass, when he suddenly noticed the spears had stopped coming.

Looking around, he felt his metaphorical stomach drop. The Furies had just landed nearby, and Red Fury was approaching with an expression somewhere between a sneer and a glare.