The mark six was a walking contradiction.

Every material it was composed of was so resistant to tarnish that it could reattach itself at the molecular level. It absorbed carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to fill the oxygen tanks while repairing any dings, cuts and scratches with complex carbon chains.

The wiring for the circuits was so inefficient as to be completely useless for any other Tinker. Each wire was a single hydrocarbon molecule, grown so large and complex, folded over on itself so many times, that it actively resisted electric charges…being technically a plastic. It was only with Perry’s ability running interference that it was able to begrudgingly transmit a charge. Perry used them as wires because complex single molecules were much more resistant to Chemestro’s ability, and this particular one could repair itself like his armor. He could not tolerate his suit’s guts being susceptible to Chemestro’s abilities any longer.

Not on a mission like this.

He added two of Natalie’s sacrificial anodes the size of a fingernail attached to each of his spell discs. The spell discs were the weakest part of his suit, and Perry could see getting knocked around at supersonic speeds causing the brain cells inside to perish. Or an attack from Chemestro.

Nat had made thousands of the tiny anodes as an experiment on industrializing the process, and Perry was able to bum a few off of her. The amount of damage they were able to absorb was limited to their size, which made tiny ones mostly useful as insurance on small, highly delicate electronics systems.

Good enough for me.

Knowing what they might be facing, Perry loaded his armor for Replicators, and got rid of all the nonlethals.

Tomward’s Floating Dazzler? Gone.

Civilian-strength Stun gun embedded in the hand? gone.

Gor’s Disintegration? Everything he had left. One big chunk of crystal that carried a gross of beach-ball sized shots.

Demon summoning spells that he’d gotten in deep shit for earlier? Why not? Perry made another three cannisters to summon greater corruption demons, adding some extra security protocols to both the shell and the launcher.

He added an alternate fire mode for the launcher that shot blood contract darts designed to make the target rip out their own eyes before leaving this plane of existence. Made more sense to keep those as a pair.

….I really shouldn’t use this on a person.

Perry added Daxer’s Faux Teleportation because none of the people going with him had ever seen him use it, and Perry needed some surprises against the people he was going with.

Plus the light-clone spell was cheap to use, as far as spells went.

Static Shock was added, having been rebuilt at maximum Attunement. It was a nice fallback spell since it didn’t consume its ingredients, and because it was over fourteen times stronger than it should’ve been, which meant it was no longer a less-than-lethal spell.

Perry included Dregor’s Flacidity on the right upper forearm. Despite being a nonlethal, the utility of being able to melt and unmelt things on command was incredibly useful.

Honestly might add that one to my soul, given how clutch it’s been.

Perry overlaid a Wayward’s Defensive Disguise on himself that looked exactly the same, to give himself the ability to play dead should he need to take it.

Perry wanted to update the home base magitech computer and have it track their progress and keep them in contact with both his lair and Nexus in general, but he just didn’t have the Areonite to pull it off anymore.

Which is what we’re trying to fix.

Perry made an underarmor hyperweave for each of them, which included Paradox’s Fabulous Earth Armor.

Might as well look good while we’re out of our armor.

Additionally, Perry made seven helmets which included his armor plating tech that repaired itself while creating oxygen.

The helmets were air-tight, and could be used as both gas masks and temporary life-support, as the need arose.

As a rule, Supers liked running around with their helmets off, especially if they were nigh indestructible like Heather or Titan. It was a great way to get some free publicity and have people recognize and remember your deeds, whether they were good or bad.

Replicators on the other hand, saw uncovered faces and immediately thought;

‘Odorless Nerve Gas’

‘Sniper rifle’

‘Contact poison’

‘Laser beam’

There were very few supers who could rawdog replicators and get away with it. Perry was willing to bet his cousins would assume their magical protection was enough to keep them safe and walk around with their heads exposed.

So he made some high-tech rebreather helmets…just in case.

Of course, Perry used his piece of Saint Natanya’s scalp to grow as many hairs for Astra’s Mending as physically possible. He actually ran out of the other ingredients before the hairs, giving him one hundred and seventy-four cannisters of Astra’s Mending, each about the size of a road flare.

I can’t fit that many in my suit….That would be a good spell to imprint on my soul, actually. Pin in that for later.

Perry decided to drop a bit of sandwich space to store six Astra’s Mending on his person, and another thirty in Hardcase’s storage. He’d pass out a few copies to each person on the team when they started. Getting everyone back alive was more important than maintaining his copyright on the technique.

Besides, if people tried to open up the spell-frame, the spell-disc would self-immolate.

Anyway, If we get mortally wounded a combined thirty-six times without calling the trip off, we deserve to die.

Perry took a step back and assessed the Mk. 6. It was an ominous, sleek matte black that looked like the void of space. A hole in reality standing directly in front of him.

Hmm…Makes me wonder why I go for that aesthetic. Logically it was because his suit was made of crumpled carbon nanofiliments, which absorbed light like a crazy mofo, but Perry wondered if anything had tipped his preferences in that direction.

It wasn’t anything he could follow up on right now, so Perry set it aside.

Perry turn and inspected Nat’s mech. Over the last two months, she’d built a new one from the ground up, approximately twelve feet tall. An actual mech, not a mech-suit. Perry had supplied the armor plating, life support, and load-bearing parts.

Natalie had done everything else, sourcing components off the Tinker Marketplace that they could’ve only imagined a year ago, creating a massive egg-like cockpit surrounded by floating arms locked to the cockpit with magnetic joints. Eight of them.

It was a walking tank that could fly at mach speeds. It included two large scale sacrificial anodes, making it far tougher than it had any right to be, and the legs could combine to create large-scale weapons systems. It could play chess on a normal human-sized board with one arm, and enter complex code on a keyboard with another.

Which left the other arms open to play ping-pong and walk yo-yos

“How?” Perry asked, marvelling at the mech’s ability to multi-task.

“After some research, I found someone called Elijah Methas, an accomplished golem-maker from Old Manita.” Nat said, wiping grease off on her jumpsuit.

“Ah, yeah, I threatened that guy.” Perry murmured, nodding.

“Get this: I wanted to recreate a human’s two lobes, so I bought an advanced AI from the Tinker marketplace, used it as one lobe, then worked together with Elijah to make a golem core as the other lobe. The two vote on what to do, and a third component I made with Soul-forging mediates between the two and acts as a tie-breaker.

“It’s got a soul?” Perry asked, jaw slack.

“Just a modest blend of yours, mine, and Heather’s applied to a hardwired algorithm. And only a little dollop. Enough to give it a nudge and help it decide on a course of action, above and beyond its programming.” Nat said. “Check this out.”

Natalie lifted one of Perry’s prototype disintegrators and pointed it at her mech.

It lifted the computer desk it was working on, interposing it between itself and the disintegrator’s line of fire.

It peeked out from behind the desk, and saw Nat down the disintegrator. The mech seemed to relax, before a single machine arm lifted off the ground, center claw extended upward.

“Did it just flip me off?” Perry asked.

“Yeah…that’s a bit of Heather.” Nat said, rubbing the back of her neck.

“Hah, nice,” Heather said, walking by, having come back from the locker rooms. She reached her hand up high and the mech gave her a crisp high-five.

Heather then brought her hand down and smacked Nat’s bottom on the way past, eliciting a squeak of surprise from the mousy Tinker.

The twelve-foot tall mech went to copy the maneuver.

“NOT you!” Nat shouted, pointing at the mech before it spanked her, face beet red. The mech seemed confused, slowly lowering its arm to the ground.

Poor fella.

“HEATHER!” Nat shouted, chasing after the fleeing red-head. “You can’t teach it stuff like that!”

Perry glanced down the hall where the shouting was coming from, then back to the massive mech.

“So if you got Natalie’s cuteness, and Heather’s sass, what did you get from me?” Perry asked.

The mech typed something into the computer then turned the monitor towards him.

Fuck around and find out.

“My kinda guy,” Perry said with a grin. Normally a mech giving anyone that kind of shit would be a huge red flag, but when he understood that every decision was being passed through a circuit designed with soul-infused bits, he understood that it wasn’t a threat, it was friendly ribbing. Natalie had used soul-smudges to design a mechanical friend. Something that simply wasn’t possible with pure technology.

It actually liked them.

Goddamn am I impressed. Does it mean it got ‘fuck around and find out’ from me, or if I pry too deeply into what it got from me, there’ll be consequences? Both? Either way, that was an excellent double entendre/threat.

Perry knew he had a mean streak buried deep under the surface, and it was a relief to know this machine shared it. It wouldn’t hesitate to kick some serious ass on Natalie’s behalf.

The mech deleted the comment moments before Natalie arrived, panting from her futile chase after Heather.

“I named it Boomer, after my first dog.”

“It’s pretty damn cool.” Perry said.

“Heck yeah it is. Boomer generates enough power to fight at one hundred percent capacity indefinitely, and the sacrificial anodes in the chassis and legs mean it wouldn’t suffer any wear and tear the entire time. Even If I pass out or die at the controls, it can keep fighting as long as it has to to get me back to civilization. It could fight through the fall of the roman civilization to modern day if it had to.”

Shoulda named it Legacy, ‘cuz it’s gonna be hanging around after our kids are grandparents.

“Anything else?” Perry asked.

“I got a…few more things up my sleeve, but I want them to be a surprise,” Nat said, ducking her head and tucking her hair back before glancing up at him.

“Is it anything that not knowing will endanger us?” Perry asked.

Nat shook her head.

“Then it’s fine. I look forward to the surprise.”

“Excellent,” Natalie said, rubbing her hands together ominously before going back to testing/teaching Boomer.

Perry stepped away from the noise of the workshop and dialed up his cousins. It was about time to get them on board.

It was a bit awkward at first, given that he’d never willingly initiated a conversation with them, but Perry was relieved when his second uncle took the bait, sending his two eldest to join him on his trip to Chicago with very little prompting. It seemed like Perry had been right about them wanting to keep a close eye on him after his Debut ball. Now all he had to do was intimidate them by demonstrating a vastly improved magical skillset since then.

The pretense his uncle used to justify this surveillance was that there existed more relics at the Field Museum than just the ancient Nocul armor made of Areonite, and they wanted a cut. Which, while true, Perry doubted it was their primary concern.

Perry agreed, offering them a significant portion of any magical Manitian relics they could get their hands on while they were there. Two first picks, and one third of everything afterward.

Then he turned around and offered Mass-Driver first dibs on any baseball paraphernalia that Chicago possessed. Perry knew the mercenary was born in America in the nineteen twenties, so he casually let slip the possibility of signed Babe Ruth uniforms, cards, bats, baseballs…

It was laughably easy to get him on board.

Two weeks later, Perry had everyone on his wish-list assembled.