First Problem: Weapons.

Deliberately making something less than his best was an interesting experience.

Perry considered making just a gun to help clear the outskirts of the city of megafauna, but the simple fact was a human body couldn’t handle the kind of recoil it would require to reliably put the monsters down.

Prawn guns were at the edge of what the human body could tolerate, and their track record was spotty at best.

And that meant Perry had to break out the Mk.3 blueprints and use his second casting of Gretchen’s Idyllic Manifestation to creating a factory capable of making them.

It was capable of making the guns, the power sources and motors for the traincars, as well as re-activating concrete.

Why settle for one thing?

“Alright Ronnie, strip down to your underwear, stand on the footprints, put your back against the wall, hold your arms out straight and close your eyes.”

Ronnie hesitated, but the beanpole did as he was told, and a moment later a blinding light washed over him, measuring his dimensions down to the nanometer.

“You should have a well-fitting suit of armor in about a minute,” Perry said.

“A minute?”

A shower of sparks began to fill the far side of the factory as a robotic arm began cutting out the shapes for the armor out of a rolling sheet of metal.

“Yep.” Perry said, motioning to another one of his captains: The guys who’d tried to kill him first. This particular one’s name was Mark Dober, a tall young guy with a mop of dark, curly hair.

“Alright Mark, don’t shut off this machine,” Perry said, motioning to the control console for the suit creation section of the factory. “Or I’ll have to be the one to turn it back on again. It’s…weird that way. Once you guys have armor, Take the rest of your crew and grab local junkers and push them into that.” He pointed towards the recycling section of the factory, where a massive steel cow-grinder was spinning, its metal teeth constantly shredding and drawing things into the center.

It was twenty feet across and thirty feet long, ready to chew on old-timey metal frame cars and separate them into useable components.

“Be extra careful with that one.” Perry said. “If you fall in, you’re not gonna have time to pray.”

“Over here,” Perry motioned his captains to follow him, pointing at the massive grinding vat for concrete, massive fans above already sucking up the air and pulling it out of the factory, filling the air with a constant hum of activity.

“Concrete re-activation. We’ll use this more later. Don’t fall in or you’ll wind up as architecture. Oh, and don’t smoke in here, or you’ll end up a smudge on the wall.”

“I don’t-“

“Moving on,” Perry said, bringing them to the guns.

“These are your new guns,” Perry said, pulling the first one off the conveyor belt. “They’re handheld rail guns. They’re self charging. The battery can handle about fifty shots before you have to let it recharge overnight. They use a magazine of six of these slugs,” Perry said, pulling out one of the slugs, a piece of rebar that’d been cut down to about the length of his hand. Almost a full pound of iron.

“You can change settings on the control panel here, but I suggest leaving it on ‘standard’ until you know what you’re doing.”

“Don’t fire these without your armor on either, or you’ll break something,” Perry aimed out the window at a nearby street lamp and pulled the trigger.

CRACK!

The sound was a bit different, missing the explosion of gunpowder. It was replaced with an electrical pop as the capacitors discharged along the barrel, and the sound of a heavy chunk of iron breaking the sound barrier.

The steel street lamp in the distance crumpled around the blow like it’d been kicked in the balls.

SCREEECH!

The sound of tortured metal reverberated along the street as the steel pole flopped over and smashed its light against the asphalt.

“Now some ground rules.” Perry said, turning to face his stunned audience. “You are allowed to use these tools to do three things: What I tell you to do, clear out the megafauna on the outskirts of Chicago, or protect a civilian. If I hear you’re using one of these guns or suits against other people for personal gain, I will break you.”

Perry snapped the rail gun in half between his hands, the capacitors discharging at the sudden short circuit and sending lightning crackling along his arms.

HP: 13

Worth it, Perry thought as the crowd paled.

“What if we lose it?” one of them asked.

“Then you’re out.” Perry said. “And if I find out you sold it…” Perry simply shook his head, but they got the message. “The rules are a bit vague and open to interpretation, but do not push it.”

“Each captain, pick a color and a stencil,” Perry said, bringing the tour over to a shelf stocked full of spray paints and stencils, just as the first suit came off the assembly line, its rough look belying its advanced nature.

Perry wanted to be able to hold them accountable when they did stupid shit.

Ronnie shrugged and picked up a skull stencil and a red spraypaint, marking the chest of his armor with a dripping crimson skull.

Mark followed shortly behind, making a green Shamrock.

Eventually they started getting creative. Perry even saw one of them grab a bunch of colors and make a rainbow unicorn.

Perry showed each of the captains how to wear the armor, then had them relay that to their own grunts, who marked themselves with identical stencils to match their captain. It was pretty funny watching the young guys wince as they had to follow in their chosen captain’s footsteps and make rainbow unicorns on their chest.

Once that was done, Perry locked away the stencils and paint to make counterfeiting more tricky. The paints had some proprietary additives that no one but Perry needed to know about.

Once everyone was suited up, Perry assembled the captains in his throne room and started delegating.

“Alright, purple octopus. I want your team to set up camp at the end of the line, here,” Perry said, pointing out the southwest train line that stopped at the edge of the city. Heather’s typewriter jotted down everything he said as he continued.

Legitimacy meant a paper trail.

“Red skulls, you’re going to sweep around that general area and bag any megafauna you find, and bring it back to the line. Start south and do a half circle around the location before heading back.”

Perry marked a half circle around the end of the train line on the map.

“Blue lightning, you’re hunting around this line, rainbow unicorn, you’re securing the camp at the endpoint.”

Perry went on to assign each group a task. About half the captains were actively hunting or supporting the hunters scouring the west side of Chicago, while the other half were doing manual labor, like delivering cars to the grinder, cleaning the railroad tracks, or clearing the banks of Lake Michigan for Perry’s next Public Works: Big Fishing.

***Tom Hammond****

“So this punk thinks he can get away with claiming the whole city without anything to back it up?” Tom didn’t believe the panicked ramblings of the people on the street. They’d probably been exposed to some kind of inhalant and a light show. Occam’s Razor. Smoke and mirrors was a lot more likely than singlehandedly destroying a building and summoning a new, more imposing one from thin air.

Tom shook his head. Flying like a stage magician. Sheesh.

A tiny, nagging voice in the back of his head mentioned that all the other gangs of Chicago had abandoned ship without a fight. That maybe they had a reason for doing so.

Irrelevant. He’s a living breathing man, so he’s got weaknesses.

One of them took the form of a pregnant young woman, who seemed fond of wandering off on her own without a man’s protection. The tiny one was never far from her massive robot, but the redhead…well, she was just asking for it, at this point.

I’d wager the kid’s his. I didn’t see anyone else in their entourage.

Tom wasn’t planning on holding them hostage. He was planning on making them disappear, fed piece by piece to one of the monsters of Lake Michigan.

Holding them hostage was a great way to draw attention to yourself. Tom just wanted his opponent broken.

Even if it didn’t break him, it’d at least put him off balance. Distract him from securing his territory. Make him slip up.

Now that the other gangs had fled, Tom could practically taste it: King of Chicago. There was just one kid and an outrageously situationally unaware pregnant woman to dispose of.

Should be easy.

Which was how Tom came to be waiting around the corner as the redhead waddled from building to building, chatting with some of the locals about re-opening the restaurant scene as soon as enough food to feed everyone started rolling in.

They were discussing the fuel situation when they came into earshot.

Tom was watching through a small mirror he’d placed in advance.

“You’re right, that is gonna be a problem,” the redhead said, frowning thoughtfully. “Getting natural gas is...”

“What if we scavenge a electric heating element and I could get Paradox to make a battery for it? Oh, god, I sound just like him,” The redhead held a hand to her temple and shuddered dramatically, her dress swishing around her ankles as she walked.

“I’m not fuckin’ changing the way I do Pizza for anyone, not even a pretty face.” The burly chef walking next to her said. “Electric? Get the fuck outta here.”

“What about the place next to you? We could steal their wood-fired stove.” She made a ‘relocating’ gesture. “Wood’s not too hard to get.”

“Hah. Hahahahah!” The burly man broke into a chortle. “Oh man, Lou would kill my whole family if he saw me using his stove. Too bad he’s dead. I love it, let’s make it happen.”

“Awesome!” the redhead rubbed her hands together with glee. “They’re gonna be so happy! Romantic date night with Nat and Perry is full steam ahead!”

Here they come, Tom thought to himself, readying himself to grab the girl and haul her into the van, where his soldiers were waiting to pull her in, secure her and drive away.

A glimmer of movement caught his attention behind him as something cold wrapped around his arm.

A slightly transparent woman’s hand was clamped down around his wrist, sending a thrill of terror straight to his heart.

A ghost was holding his wrist.

“Ah don’t like yer look,” She said, her speech nearly unintelligible.

Adrenaline sang through his veins, but as hard as he tried to struggle, the grip might as well have been a vice.

“Oh,” The redhead said, looking at Tom caught in an extremely suspicious position right around the corner as she passed.

The ghost said something in a burst of incomprehensible gibberish.

“Nah, I don’t think that’s what they were trying to do,” The redhead said, smiling sweetly as she raised a hand.

Tom froze as her forefinger elongated into a blade, gently pressing against his throat.

“Because if that’s what they were trying to do, they wouldn’t survive the next fifteen seconds,” She said.

Scraaaaaaaape.

The blade began to drag along his neck, causing his stubble to go flying.

“He just looks a little suspicious because he needs to clean up a little.” She said, shaving Tom as he tried not to hyperventilate.

“You weren’t planning on doing what my friend thinks you were… were you?” She asked.

“N-no ma’am,” Tom said, his voice breaking for the first time in twenty years.

“Follow-up question,” She said, eyes narrowing. “You didn’t hear me expressing anticipation at including Perry as part of date night, did you? Planning on telling anyone?”

Tom read the room.

“No, ma’am. To both.”

“Excellent,” The redhead said, taking the blade off his cheek and walking past him and the rest of his gobsmacked crew as they leaned out of the van. “You’re welcome.”

“F-For what?”

“Saving your life!” She called over her shoulder as the chef trotted after her, casting the heavily armed men nervous glances. “You were in some serious trouble there for a moment!”

Fuck this. I’m leaving Chicago. There’s some weird shit going down and I don’t wanna be a part of it. Smoke and mirrors my ass.

***

“So here’s my idea for harvesting those pike.” Perry said, rolling out his proposed blueprint while Natalie looked on with excitement. She was a bit better at the nitty-gritty of architectural design, while Perry was more of an Idea Guy, and he wanted a second pair of eyes, because there was a good chance she might catch something he didn’t.

Like the water pressure thing she already pointed out.

“The primary issue seems to be moving parts and the sheer amount of force involved with reeling them like a normal fish, which causes accidents and destruction, so what we could do instead-“

“I’m home!” Heather announced her presence as she walked in, spinning around in a circle as she elegantly demonstrated the height of seventies fashion for pregnant women.

At this point ‘shopping’ and ‘looting’ were kind of the same thing. At least she only robbed large department stores, whose owners didn’t really exist anymore, so the point was kind of moot.

“How was your walk?” Natalie asked, brightening as Heather dominated the space, her brilliant red-gold hair drawing their attention away from work.

“All proceeding according to my master plan…” Heather said with an evil grin as she steepled her fingers.

“Why’d you say it like that?” Perry asked, frowning.

“Say it like what?” Heather said, adopting an innocent look in the blink of an eye.

Perry’s eyes narrowed.