this is crazy

[from_scratch]

Cam is watching a new recording of Atriama, tail swishing in the gap in his couch, and doesn't stop to pause the show when he feels a summons go by.

Comments

[wormcan]

Exile to Mars: at least not a total loss.

[from_scratch]

Cam spends the rest of the flight designing the summoner's arcology to spec and working out what sort of food supply he'd find most agreeable and so on. Cam lands. He makes the arcology, hands the summoner a copy of the blueprint he used for a map, and then says the internet connection will be online when Cam gets back to Earth to set up the far end.

Cam doesn't go straight back to Earth.

When he's about halfway there he pauses to make Endbringer bits in a sort of exploded diagram.

He wants to know what they're made of.

[whole_new_can]

Endbringers are, apparently, made of Endbringer. Every piece, whether it be the outer skin of the Simurgh or the thick non-blood of Leviathan, has a crystalline structure like sharp-edged snowflakes. No cells at all. (It has exactly the same structure regardless of how closely he looks, and Cam has very good microscopes.)

The monsters have no internal organs. What they do have is layers. The flesh gets progressively tougher from the skin down to a core, and even the outer layers are relatively indestructible compared to what they have any right to be. Between the lack of vital organs and the Endbringers' known regenerative abilities, the entire visible body is probably just some combination of armor and decoration.

[from_scratch]

He goes through his chemistry notes to see if anything would like to energetically dissolve this stuff.

[wormcan]

No silver bullet reacts unusually with pieces of Endbringer. It's pretty inert. The stuff can be destroyed by anything that would usually be destructive, but it gets exponentially harder to damage closer to the cores.

[from_scratch]

Well, he's in interplanetary space. How does a bit of core react to a pinhole singularity, surrounded by enough magnets of the sort that handles his home garbage disposal to prevent it from running off and eating asteroids?

[wormcan]

Nothing much happens. The bit of core falls inward, appears to stop just before reaching the event horizon as per normal, and doesn't even spaghettify.

[from_scratch]

What the hell is this stuff?

Cam tries more things - intense heat, more fun with chemistry. At one point he puts a bit of core in his mouth and bites it hard enough to chip a tooth if it won't go.

[wormcan]

It doesn't go, but that's no surprise. He can only provide so much force, and this material already shrugged off worse. Nothing has any perceptible effect on the pieces of Endbringer core. At least the tooth doesn't chip unless he wants it to. Two can play at the indestructibility game.

[from_scratch]

Great.

Cam flies back to Japan. He writes up all his findings on the way, notifies the Prime Minister that he thinks he's contained the problem, puts up his experimental results on the Internet, and gets back to what he was doing.

[wormcan]

Where the cores are is one thing everyone's glad to know. Especially in the case of the Simurgh; apparently her humanoid body is nothing more than a decoy. The level of indestructibility they're up against, less so. Publicizing that might very well decrease defensive turnout. (No one tries to de-publicize it. Can't stop the signal.)

[from_scratch]

Cam makes sure there's an email address available for anyone who's thoroughly investigating the research to let people suggest things.

[wormcan]

Not a lot of suggestions, but some people would like pieces of Endbringer for testing against promising powers. Quite a few groups would like that, in fact.

[from_scratch]

Cam can provide! He puts up an order form.

[wormcan]

Lots of people want this. It ranges from parahuman teams with members who might be able to damage it down through industrial applications of indestructibility and people who just want a piece because it's cool. This last group is universally frowned upon as having offensively poor taste.

The Protectorate asks for the most samples, of course; the enormous North American hero team has the most comprehensive access to allied capes. They strongly recommend that Cam either be selective about sending it only to heroes or be very clear that use of this material falls under the Endbringer truce. There could be any number of powers capable of using this resource as a stoppable force multiplier. But the truce is regarded as inviolable; if Cam declares that this is only to be used against Endbringers and the Protectorate publicly agrees then other groups will follow.

[from_scratch]

People who just want a piece can have it for obscene amounts of money! And, yes, Endbringer truce. The website is now emblazoned with this assertion.

[wormcan]

The thing about obscene amounts of money is that materials costs tend to go down when there are powers that can duplicate things.

...most things. The results of the testing are disappointing. Aside from being physically indestructible against as much pressure as anyone can bring to bear, the cores are also immune to direct use of most powers. Bad news for the people who want Cam to not be the only source of this stuff, and really bad news for those who want the Endbringers destroyed. A few capes with relevant abilities still manage to get rich selling non-core layers.

It's especially in demand among tinkers, some of whom have started moving to Japan. On purpose.

[from_scratch]

Why, hello, Tinkers. If Cam likes your projects you get all the parts you want, doesn't that sound nice?

[wormcan]

Well, the word got around, they said this deal is insane, man. Suddenly there are more tinkers relocating, though it's limited to those willing to conform to Cam's stated opinions about the projects he likes. Tokyo doesn't quite become a cape city again overnight—there's only one of Cam and he can only supply esoteric materials so fast—but there's a lot of competition for his attention. Non-tinker parahumans have less of an immediate motive to move, but capes tend to congregate wherever capes already are. They'll follow.

The Japanese citizenry is not happy about this. Their disapproval translates to much stricter control of capes than there is in Europe or America, where fighting in the streets is normal, or Russia where a parahuman organization effectively runs the place. But it turns out it's hard to keep capes in line, so Tokyo winds up with the same kind of villain problem that other cape cities have, if on a smaller scale.

[from_scratch]

Oh dear. That won't do at all.

Does anyone of importance have a problem with Cam unmasking villains with his scary powers, finding them at home, drugging them, and handing them over to the authorities?

[wormcan]

Nope, not at all. It'll go a long way toward improving toleration of parahumans.
(It does stem the flow of new capes. Cam is relatively predictable as to whom he'll unmask, but few are willing to take the risk that they'll get on his bad side somehow. Fewer new capes is hardly a problem, as most relevant people see it.)

[from_scratch]

Well, if Cam really likes your project, he can be convinced to ship overseas.

[wormcan]

On which subject, Cam receives an email from one of his government contacts. Some shipping company wants in on the distribution—well, a lot of them do, but this one seems unusually prosocial and good to contract with—and a representative would like to meet with Cam to streamline the sending things overseas as much as possible.

[from_scratch]

Well, wanting Cam's individual time is not a super good sign, but he can schedule them half an hour.

[wormcan]

"It's for a good reason," he explains on arrival. "Gabriel Vega, I'm with Oceanic Trans-Pacific. Our scheme involves you a bit more directly than most.

You've demonstrated range, while raising Kyushu if nothing else; is there a reason you're exporting things at all instead of creating them already arrived?"