Chapter 133: Perry’s Perilous Party Prep

Chapter 133: Perry’s Perilous Party Prep

Click click click.

The soft clicks of a digital keyboard emanated from Dave and Donna’s cell phones as they ran a quick search.

Perry slouched in his seat, glaring at Chemestro.

Chemestro ignored Perry’s death glare and went over to his seat to eat his custom order protein-plate.

Dave Smith raised the phone up, glancing between Perry and the screen, obviously comparing his face to a picture he’d scrounged up on the internet.

“Paradox?” Dave asked.

“That’s my legal name, but-“

“The super?”

“Well, I mean-“

Dave flipped the phone over to display a crisp photo some paparazzi had taken of him in his domino mask.

“That’s...”

“Dave, look at this,” Donna said, motioning to her screen.

Paradox Zauberer Declares War on Franklin city

Underneath the sensationalist tabloid headline was a picture of Perry’s speech at his debut ball.

They both glanced up at him.

Perry groaned and looked over at Chemestro. The sweeper was spreading out the guacamole, cutting his bunless burgers into bite-sized pieces and eating them one at a time like a freakin’ psycho.

Sin-Eater was hovering in front of the muscle-bound Catalyst protectively, snarling at Perry. Oh come on, He doesn’t need your protection.

“You’re Chemestro’s nemesis!” Dave said, eyes wide, pointing a finger rudely close to Perry’s face.

“For legal reasons, I cannot comment on that,” Perry muttered, leaning on his dad’s lessons in being deliberately obtuse.

“He’s that super in the cardboard helmet who came by our place that one time!” Dave continued, before turning his finger towards Nat. “You’re on his team! That means that redhead, Wraith, is...you’re dating...”

Dave stroked his chin for a moment before shrugging. “I always taught you to aim high Nat, but god-DAMN, Wraith is a babe.”

“Dad!” Natalie said, blushing.

“Dave! Are you supporting this?” Donna demanded.

Dave shrugged. “it’s her life.”

“It’s deviant, is what it is, not to mention he’s a cowl, and practically the head of a crime family, and-“ Donna choked on her words for a moment, glancing down at her phone, where Perry could barely make out his family’s estimated net worth.

There were a lot of zeroes. It was kind of a lowball though, because it didn’t account for The Mechanaut’s personal wealth, as well as Paradox’s businesses.

“And I mean...” Donna’s voice wavered. Perry could see the dollar signs at war with her determination to hate him for his birth parents.

“I mean...he...seems...pretty serious about her.” Donna said, her mind violently shifting priorities. If Perry could see what was happening in her head, he imagined it would be something like a car trying to turn so suddenly that it began tumbling down the road, leaving behind a flaming wreck.

Dave raised a brow, glanced between Perry and his wife as she struggled for words. Dave shrugged.

“So what’s Titan like in real life?” Dave asked eagerly.

“He’s a pretty chill guy.” Perry said, “Good leader, good with people and money.”

“That’s what Nat told me,” Dave said with a grin. “Are you actually a tinker? There’s a theory going around online that you’re actually a mage and someone is making your suits for you.” He glanced at Nat.

“For legal reasons, I can’t comment.” Perry.

“I see, operational security...I gotcha.” Dave said, tapping his nose.

Dave continued chatting with Perry and Nat while his wife rebooted. It seemed like every time she wanted to say something, she glanced back down at Perry’s grandmother’s net worth, and lost her words.

It was actually a fairly pleasant talk until Donna regained the ability to speak.

“So how long have you two been dating?” Donna asked with the same sickly-sweet tone one might use to address a favorite pet.

Perry mentally counted back to Movie Night, which was about two months ago, tacked on a couple weeks for propriety, and reported that.

“That’s wonderful, Nat’s never had a real boyfriend before. She was so shy and reserved in highschool. I’ve always been so worried about her, and I’m so glad she’s caught the interest of a nice young man who treats her like a princess.”

Perry frowned, glancing at Natalie.

Are you hearing this? The tonal shift rated nine point four on the Bullshit scale.

Natalie, for her part, was burying her face in her hands. Whether it was out of anger or embarrassment, Perry couldn’t quite determine. Both, maybe?

Perry also noticed the ‘treats her like a princess’ phrase. Nowhere in their entire conversation had Perry’s actual treatment of Natalie been mentioned, so the only reason Donna would’ve said it was to try and weasel the idea of Nat and Perry getting married and making her a princess into Perry’s head.

Not to mention, Nat’s mom had completely glossed over the subject of Nat dating a girl AND a guy at the same time, in order to focus entirely on the relationship between Perry and Nat.

Perry leaned over and whispered in Nat’s ear. “Your mom’s kind of a manipulative bitch.”

“Ung,” Natalie groaned into her palms.

***One Awkward Parental Meeting Later***

Perry waved at Nat’s parents as they drove off, a big shit-eating grin on his face.

As soon as they were out of eyeshot, he rounded on Chemestro, who was watching with his arms crossed.

“What the hell, dude?” Perry demanded with a scowl.

“You killed my father,” Chemestro shrugged. “I’m allowed to be petty.”

“You can’t hold that against me forever! You hated him too! He was literally trying to kill both of us!” Perry cried.

“I’ve asked my psychiatrist, and apparently that is the sort of thing someone can hold onto forever, regardless of their disposition towards the deceased. It’s not supposed to be logical.”

“Bah,” Perry grunted, waving him off. “Freakin’ sociopath.”

“Coddled prince.” Chemestro said without missing a beat.

“Lab rat.” Perry shot back.

“Science Experiment.” Chemestro said.

“We get it, boys, you don’t like each other, can we move this along?” Sin-Eater said, making a circular motion with her finger. “Besides, Chemestro’s better,” she mumbled quietly, earning an affronted glare from Natalie.

Chemestro glanced over at the green-highlighted, raven-haired goth beauty, then back to Perry.

“So I hear you’re going on a field trip sometime this summer. Out to Chicago. I want in.”

It took most of the first month before John White was able to get Perry the permits to begin replacing roads, pipes and electrical with infrastructure of his own personal design.

A few weeks after Perry had automated the process, he got the sweet, sweet, XP for it.

All that was left was getting permission from Nexus to improve the wall...except that was even harder than improving basic infrastructure. There were already plenty of Tinkers whose entire job was to think of ways to improve the wall, and a few of them were Industrial Tinkers, who could work together to produce some truly sturdy stuff.

Since Perry was not an industrial Tinker, he was in direct competition with all the non Industrial Tinkers.

Perry’s advantage was that other Tinkers specialized in things like AI, Laser guns, Shrink rays, Etc. All things that had a tendency to go haywire. Whereas Perry could produce simple concrete that could stand up to prawns, no problem.

After some haggling with Nexus, and a ton of logistics, Perry submitted his Concrete Flux blueprint to The Wall’s Industrial Tinker, who took over production and recycling of concrete on a city-wide scale, with the intention of applying the resultant super-concrete to the wall, one patch at a time.

This cut into Perry’s profits, but it got the ball rolling on getting the XP he needed.

XP > Money

Replacing segments of The Wall was an interesting process. Since Nexus absolutely could not allow an open section of The Wall to stay open for any length of time, the local supers would make a new segment in a separate location, then cut the old piece out and swap the new one in within a couple hours.

It was quite a sight watching a fifteen story chunk of concrete floating through the air above the city, under Tinker-made maglevs.

Perry even spotted Warcry cutting out the old section of wall with her brilliant purple planes of energy, probably pissed to be working construction after all that effort to secure her ‘cushy’ gig in Nexus.

Side-Quest Complete!

Reinforce The Wall!

Reward: 1000XP, increased influence with Nexus, general reputation up.

A few days later, Perry broke through to level nine in the middle of his workout.

Quest Complete

Finish an extra set!

Reward 4XP

Congratulations! You are now a level 9 Garage Tinker!

Paradox Zauberer (Perry Z.)

Class: Garage Tinker

Level 9

HP: 10

Body: 9

Stability: 28

Nerve: 14

Attunement: 44

Free Points: 16

XP to next level: 7450

Spells: Light (5/5), Dragor’s Kinesis (3/3), Gretchen’s Idyllic Manifestation (1/1)

The bar got just a little bit lighter, allowing Perry to hang it up without crushing himself. Panting, Perry wiped the sweat off his forehead while he considered what to do with his stats.

Next level is another shot at a Perk. If I assign seven points to Attunement and nine to Stability, that gives me twenty-five points to spend at level ten, and closes the gap between Attunement and Stability by one.

Assign seven to Attunement and nine to Stability, Perry thought, reviewing his new stats.

Paradox Zauberer (Perry Z.)

Class: Garage Tinker

Level 9

HP: 10

Body: 9

Stability: 37

Nerve: 14

Attunement: 51

Free Points: 0

XP to next level: 7450

Spells: Light (5/5), Dragor’s Kinesis (3/3), Gretchen’s Idyllic Manifestation (1/1)

After level ten, I’m going to need to make a concerted effort to boost Stability above Attunement, both because the difference between a single stat point grows with their total, and because Solaris will kill me if I don’t.

How many points will I have at level eleven?

Perry was planning on taking a Tinker Specialization in exchange for twenty points and five Attunement, meaning he would be at...

48 Attunement going into level 11, giving him 21 points to spend.

The level itself would raise Attunement to 50, and Stability would be 39.

Pop sixteen points into Stability, five into Attunement, and they’re even...do I even want them to be even?

Might be a good idea to boost it even higher, to account for mental attacks and overflow.

Might be about time to start leveling other things to keep myself balanced after that. Perry was already under Solaris’s microscope so a sprint to godhood was kind of out of the question at this point.

But Perry was eventually going to pop off whether he wanted to or not.

Wait a moment. if I got to the point where I could take two tinker specializations every five levels, I could tread water with my Attunement, funneling that out-of-control growth into expanding utility, long enough for leveling to slow down to a crawl.

Right around Attunement of 62, which was rapidly approaching.

Well, that’s cool! A way to prevent living forever and/or breaking reality without becoming a hermit and quitting the superhero gig.

Quality of life achieved.

Now that Perry had a more first-hand experience with what Attunement actually was...he was a little less eager to pump it to astronomical levels, even with the Stability to back it up.

Now all we gotta do is get ready for the trip to Chicago.