“Yes, YES!” Perry checked the output of his infinite power cell.

It was basically a homemade solar panel with a homemade LED sandwiched together and surrounded by highly reflective materials to trap the light inside.

It kinda looked like a roof tile.

The LED was insanely brighter than it should’ve been, practically blinding.

Perry’s Tinker Twitch had kicked in when he was designing the solar panel, and he’d wound up with a pitch black cell with efficiency above eighty percent, which was mathematically impossible.

The LED was two times brighter than it should’ve been. A quick check revealed that LED’s were about 80% efficient, losing 20% as heat and other byproducts.

Since this was 2 times brighter, that was….160% output on the energy put in.

160% times 83% = 132.8%

Take out 100% of the end result to feet back into the loop, and you get 32% profit.

His voltmeter agreed with his math.

That is awesome. I’ve basically converted raw superpowers into electricity.

“I have created infinite electricity!” Perry shouted, beating his chest.

“Cool!” Hardcase said, peeking around his waist. “How much does it make?”

“About the same as a nine-volt battery,” Perry said, deflating a bit.

“It’s a bit bigger than a nine-volt.” Hardcase said. it was about the size of his head.

“Yes, but this is infinite.”

“Is it?”

Perry opened his mouth and froze.

“I’m not sure. The longevity of the setup hasn’t been tested. The infinite energy exploit might cause increased wear on the materials.” Perry whipped up a quick monitoring setup and hooked it into his computer.

“We’ll keep an eye on the output levels. If they start dropping precipitously we’ll have to assume there’s another factor at play.”

“How’s it going on your end?” Perry asked, glancing over his shoulder at Hardcase’s setup.

On her monitor he could make out an exploded version of her mechsuit

“So, using your batteries and motors, I was able to drop five hundred pounds!” She said, tugging him over to the chair and sitting him down right in front of the computer.

“What’s your ideal fighting weight?”

“I don’t want to drop below fifteen hundred pounds, because then I wouldn’t have the inertia to punch cars and buildings. But I don’t think I’m gonna have that problem, because even after shaving five hundred pounds, I’m still sitting at three thousand.”

500/3500=14% reduction in weight.

“Is this solid steel?” Perry asked, pointing at the steel beams that made up large parts of the legs.

“Yeah, I tried making my legs lighter using some of your aluminum foam but it put my center of gravity up here,” Hardcase sat on his lap and executed a few commands on her homemade CAD program, making her mech-suit’s center of gravity appear as a bright green dot.

“See?” she said, as the bright green dot indicating center of gravity slid upward to hover near the middle of the cockpit as she selected the leg parts and lowered their weight scale.

“Ever since we lightened the batteries and motors, I’ve had the lowest center of gravity I’ve ever felt, and let me tell you, it’s nice.”

“So what if we replaced your upper armor with some of my aluminum sheeting?” Perry asked, reaching around the tiny Tinker and selecting the armor and lowering its hypothetical weight by a couple hundred pounds.

The green dot sank lower.

“Rather than achieve the same amount of defense for lower weight, I think I would rather have the defensive properties of the cockpit skyrocket for the same weight.”

“That makes sense. Don’t wanna get got by a prawn again. I don’t have any half-inch steel plate on me, though.” Perry said.

“That’s fine, all we have to do is use the plating that’s already there.”

“Ah. Is it unmodified?”

“Yeah, I haven’t done anything special with it, so it should take your powers well.” Hardcase said, nodding, her hair tickling his chin.

All I should have to do is polish it or shave a bit off the inside, and it’ll count as being ‘modified’ by me, and enjoy all the benefits therof. Yeah, that’s a simple solution.

“You guys look like you’re having fun being dorks.” Heather said as she walked by in her gym clothes.

“There’s nothing dorky about optimizing a mechsuit’s center of gravity, plebe.” Perry said.

“I honestly can’t think of anything dorkier off the top of my head.”

Beep, beep!

Perry’s timer went off, indicating it was time to GET SWOLE, as if Heather showing up wasn’t evidence enough.

He glanced at his current projects longingly, but he knew it would be for the best if Chemestro couldn’t treat him like a ragdoll in CQC.

“Workout time,” Perry said, lifting Hardcase off his lap and setting her aside before he could stand.

“Can I- Can I work out with you guys?” Hardcase asked, tapping her fingers together nervously.

Heather and Perry glanced at each other.

“I mean, there’s no reason you can’t.” Perry said with a shrug.

******

Hardcase’s face went red as she tried to push the empty bar back up for the tenth time.

“Don’t hold your breath, you’ll pop something.” Perry admonished her, acting as her spotter between his own burnouts. He could barely feel his arms, but it was still enough to keep her safe.

I mean, it’s an empty bar!

Which implied Hardcase struggled to lift forty-five pounds.

Then again, she does weigh, what…ninety pounds? And not a much of that is muscle. Relative to her weight, it was a lot, he supposed.

I need to make a lighter bar if she ever wants to do burnouts.

Something told him Hardcase wasn’t going to get addicted to working out, though. Perry certainly wasn’t. He just had a strong need for muscle mass in his superheroing career.

He almost felt like working out was betraying his intentions of becoming a wizard, but reality didn’t care about his intentions, especially after it stripped you out of your fancy armor and knocked you around a bit.

After Hardcase did her reps, she moved to a leg machine, and Perry started working on his neck muscles. Stronger neck muscles meant his brain would get jostled around less when he inevitably got punched in the face.

And that meant less concussions.

Once Perry’s entire body felt like a limp noodle, and he’d snagged a sweet 25XP for pushing all five limbs to their limits, he dropped the bomb.

“You guys look pretty sweaty,” Perry said ambling over to where Heather was practicing on a steel tube, her hands turning into spikes and penetrating into the metal.

I wonder if I could make a self-healing metal punching bag. How do self-healing materials work anyway?

Hardcase was sitting against the wall, drinking a glass of water with lemon that Sophie had given her.

“Which is why I keep telling you to make a shower room.” Heather huffed as she launched a kick at the metal punching bag, skewering it a couple inches in.

“LCC, drop the curtain.”

The Lair Control Center peeled away the wallpaper in the underground exercise room to reveal a tiled entryway split down the center. One side had a silhouette of a caped man above it, while the other side had a silhouette of a caped woman.

“I had Hardcase advise on the design of the ladies side.”

“That’s true.” Hardcase said from where she sat.

“It’s about time,” Heather said, catching the perforated metal tube. “I’m gonna go try it out.”

She started heading that way then paused, glancing at Perry.

“How girly did you make it?” She asked, eyes narrowed.

Perry grinned. “I gotta admit I was tempted to make it over the top, but I decided It would be wiser to let you dial it in to your preferred level of girly.”

“Oh?”

“There’s a panel inside with several sliders that can change the coloration of the walls and lighting, and some settings that can put up various art on the walls and floor. You can even import images with a thumb drive if you want, or hook the panel up to your phone and play some tunes.

Heather pursed her lips.

“Does the guy’s side have that?” she asked.

“Heck no, I’m just gonna use it to take showers,” Perry shrugged.

“I’m debating whether to be offended by the obviously sexist special considerations or satisfied to finally be treated in the superior manner that I so rightly deserve.”

Perry waited as Heather tapped her chin.

“Yeah, I’m cool with it.”

“I knew you couldn’t resist a good bribe,” Perry said, checking the time.

Workout has been over for about half an hour, now it’s time to take a shower and get back to the mad science.

Perry wanted to start experimenting with the patch of skin he’d been growing in his lab. He had some really fun ideas for that.

“There’s some extra shirts and pants in the locker portion,” Perry said to Hardcase. “I know you weren’t expecting to work out today.”

“Will they fit?” she asked.

“Absolutely not. You’ll look like you’re wearing a circus tent.” Perry said, waving to them as he went into the men’s side before stripping down, laying a change of clothes on the bench and hopping into the shower.

It was a simple rectangular space, about ten by sixteen, with waterproof tiled flooring, and four showerheads spread around the area, copying the shower area of a public pool he’d visited when he was younger.

Perry didn’t expect there would ever be more than four people of each gender who needed a shower at any given time. His lair was not going to have people going through it as quick as a public pool.

Perry hit the dispenser, got some generic shampoo and flipped the showers over to hot.

He nodded in satisfaction as he got hot water in about five seconds.

That was respectably fast.

The drain led back to a processing center before flushing it into the motel’s plumbing, which lead straight to the sewers.

Perry went the extra mile to make sure nobody’s genetic information got out of the shower room.

There were probably much easier ways for a cowl to do it than going through raw sewage under the motel, but stranger things had happened.

It was hard to shut off Tinker brain and just let himself enjoy the shower, but after a couple minutes of zoning out under the hot water, Perry’s body felt like it was starting to recover.

At least enough to wash up whilst plotting his next move.

Chemestro took one of my marks for Floating Armaments off during that fight on the wall. I didn’t notice it was gone until after, but nobody else could’ve done it.

What I need is a Floating Armament mark that he can’t see.

So if Perry were able to put a connecting mark on the sheet of skin, then he could theoretically have all the floating armaments bundled together under control of one easily hidden mark.

Perhaps under his armpit or inner thigh.

Maybe tattooed on the inside of my mouth, or sternum?

Perry shuddered as he washed his hair, white soap sloughing off of him.

The sternum and the shoulder blade are probably some of the best places to put the connecting mark. It’s just…I’m not really super into the body modification shenanigans.

Plus I’d need to to find a way to make it permanent.

Perry frowned as he pictured it.

Permanent…would be neat.

If he could have a permanent anchor and put all his temporary spells on the skin sample he was growing, that would be a great way to put his spells outside the range of Chemestro messing them up.

Could be an excellent backup above and beyond simply adding shielding to the suits. Catch people off guard when I’m not in the armor.

The video his drone had taken of Chemestro dissolving his armor had showed that nonmagnetic, conductive materials were the slowest to dissolve under Chemestro’s power. A tiny fraction of a second slower.

So…graphene shielding?

He’d already used it to great effect in the camouflage hyperweave, which was still slowly being printed out for Heather’s suit.

If Perry produced more of it with the intent for it to resist Chemestro’s power more efficiently, would that be enough?

It’s an interesting question. I’ll have to ramp up production of graphene, order some more volcanic glass, and so on.

Could add an obsidian blade to Hardcase’s setup.

Wait a minute… Hardcase was sitting on my lap?

Neither of them had really thought about it because they were both in the semi-fugue state of the Tinker Twitch.

Before Perry could really think about it more, a section of the tiled wall of the shower crumbled away, revealing pitch black emptiness.

Perry continued rinsing his hair for a moment as he studied the hole, wondering if he was having another psychotic episode where he felt surrounded by nothingness beyond his line of sight.

Maybe I should’ve answered that question honestly. Perry thought to himself as he soaped up. After all, the lights that had sprung to life inside the darkness kinda looked like the emptiness of space he’d seen when he’d opened the locker.

It certainly seemed like he was having a psychotic episode.

INTRUDER! INTRUDER!

The tiny lights came closer, entering the beam of illumination from Perry’s shower-room.

They resolved into your garden variety killbots with scorpion shapes, gatling guns on their tails and buzz-saw forelimbs.

Perry heaved a sigh of relief.

Oh, thank god. I’m not going crazy.