Chapter 22: Secret Tunnel

-Within the Tunnels of Alexander (wait that sounds lewd)-

Within the tunnels forged with a singular will and vision there was darkness. This area of the tunnels was hundreds of miles away from the miniature star that Alexander had wrought with magic beyond mortal means. There was only the occasional click and chirp of insectoid drones languidly roaming the depths, ordered to repair any damages that may occur by their absentee creator.

Had there been a light source, and had there been any people, the crowded and claustrophobic nature of the surroundings would be readily apparent. Buildings were stacked atop each other and wires criss-crossed the top levels like an enormous spiders web.

The structures rose and fell, ever changing in quality and materials as one explored the tunnels. It was, to all appearances, an abandoned wreck. Yet despite this not a single layer of dust could form upon the buildings surface.

It was a paradoxical sight. An entire shanty town made of advanced technology standing in pure darkness.

Then there was light.

It was a strange light, it seemed to writhe and boil the air around it and sent refractions dancing upon the buildings. The light seemed to shiver, and then expand before fading back into nothing. Now there stood three individuals dressed in advanced war gear.

There was an aggrieved sigh.

“Pyrotechnical, can we get some lights here?”

-Big Rig-

To say Toybox was interested in the current goings on in the world would be an understatement. A team of Tinkers going around building giant cities made of advanced but still comprehensible technology, of course any Tinker worth their salt would be interested!

The PRT had actually reached out to them in the wake of New Fukuoka’s discovery. After all Toybox was one of the few independent organisations that could conceivably pull something like this off. Of course their own records, combined with Thinker analysis, had proven them innocent of reshaping the geography of Japan and the PRT had swiftly moved on.

But that had lit a fire in Toybox.

How was it that a group of Tinkers with such a diverse set of specialisations was able to go completely under the radar until now?

More to the point how did they build such a massive city?

The current consensus that most around the world had come to seemed to be the employment of drones to build large structures.

Yeah, just one problem with that.

That was his speciality, and he certainly didn’t remember helping make New Fukuoka so it couldn’t have been that.

Frankly he couldn’t have done it.

Yes, his specialty was the use of drones for large constructions, but there were limits!

Regardless of how many resources or time he had he would inevitably top out at a city blocks worth of buildings. Impressive to be sure, especially given how much parahuman powers seemed to favour destruction over creation.

But it wasn’t as impressive as building such a massive city!

Was he repeating himself? Maybe, but it warranted repeating!

So now he stared across the dilapidated and abandoned structures, streaked in red and orange from Pyrotechnical’s lights he could only wonder at the sheer difference between New Fukuoka and this Frankenstein abomination.

The clean and orderly lines that had been present in Japan were gone, instead there was a mismatch of hard angles and structures bowing under there own weight from faulty design. It was almost as if the Tinker responsible had suddenly regressed in competence by a dozen or so years while making this slop.

‘Perhaps this is the work of a Tinker with restrictions on how long they can Tinker?’

That he was comparing the architect of New Fukuoka, or even their entire organisation, to a Tinker as infamous as String Theory  made him briefly shudder before changing tracks.

‘Actually doesn’t this remind me of a few of my mistakes back in the early days?’

It had been a long time ago, before Toybox had even been an idea. Back then he had to scavenge for most of his supplies, as was normal for Tinkers, and therefore had to do with subpar materials. Naturally this meant his drones were not exactly reliable.

Sometimes they would run out of battery faster than they should, other times they would build things in the wrong areas and sometimes the things they built would come out wrong.

The twisted mass of buildings some of those drones created still gave him headaches whenever he thought about them. Buildings fused into each other and twisted until no sane human being would ever enter them and strangely the buildings in front of him were reminiscent of those old failures of his.

‘Did the drone’s programming break down after they left? Or is it simply a restriction of the power itself. A Focal Tinker based on a swarm of drones that need heavy maintenance? Or perhaps a parahuman who can enhance Tinkertech, but only for a few hours?’

There were too many potential reasons and not enough concrete information.

No wonder the PRT was desperate to find any information on the ones who did this.

“What kind of fucking material is this?”

The high pitched, extremely frustrated, scream knocked him out of his musing.

“Something wrong?,” He called out and began making his way over to where Pyrotechnical and Glace were huddling together.

The glint of gold in Glace’s hand and the offended glares both were shooting at the material let him know what was happening before they even opened their mouths.

“This. Fucking. Thing-” Glace waved it in front of his face, still glaring at it like it owed her money “-is bullshit! How the fuck is it not reacting to any extreme in temperature?”

He raised an eyebrow at that. Neither Glace nor Pyrotechnical could damage the material?

“Isn’t that a good thing for the two of you? I can think of a lot of your projects that something like that might be useful for.”

Glace begrudgingly nodded at that.

“Yes, but I don’t understand how it’s able to withstand such temperatures, while also being unable to resist being cut off by something as basic as a sharp blade!”

Big Rig could only shrug at that. Tinkertech was weird, he had once met a materials Tinker that could create a perfectly shock absorbent armour able to theoretically withstand the blows of Endbringers, but could be easily turned to slag if the slightest amount of electricity was introduced to it.

This tech may not be tinkertech, but it was still sufficiently weird.

Pyrotechnical, for his part, hadn’t taken his eyes off the piece of metal. He was mumbling under his breath something about higher tolerances, and Big Rig could already tell he was about five seconds from entering a fugue state.

With a sigh Big Rig snapped his fingers repeatedly in front of pyrotechnical, making the man blink repeatedly and finally take his eyes off of the sample.

“Ah, I did it again didn’t I?”

“Almost,” Big Rig replied, helping the man stand from his crouching position.

“We’ll need a few more samples of that material Glace. Pyrotechnical you scavenge around, try to find anything interesting but don’t leave the immediate area,” Big Rig ordered.

With a grumble Glace pulled her knife back out and began slowly hacking at another thin bar of metal.

A glint of bronze caught his eye and he had to narrow them to fully catch what he had seen.

Across the damaged and broken area of a clearly unfinished wall there was thread as fine as spipder silk running from the damaged walls interior. He approached cautiously, and when nothing jumped out at him he reached to grab the thread and pulled.

Nothing, he couldn’t budge it an inch. He opened his hand and closed it again, trying to find better leverage.

A few more fruitless minutes later and he finally resorted to using his drones to tear the building down to get to the substance within.

Whatever it was it covered the entirety of the walls interior and ran throughout the house. Looking through the eyes of his drones he could make out small etchings within.

His eyes greedily drank in the sight of the bundle. It was clearly wiring of some sort, ultra-thin and likely highly efficient wiring. Gingerly he placed the material in his sample bag and ordered a few more drones to collect more of the substance.

Toybox was the first to properly begin plundering the tunnels.

They would not be the last.

-Yao Ling POV-

Serving in the Imperial army had thus far been a rollercoaster ride.

Yao Ling had only recently volunteered and had graduated boot camp just in time to become a part of the operation to subjugate the Japanese. His grandmother had told him stories of those monsters, and so he was eager to deliver divine retribution.

Then the operation was cancelled as word of Beijing being devastated swept across the ranks.

It had seemed like a bad joke at the time. Beijing was the heart of the empire, where the Emperor himself ruled from his throne. It was the most heavily fortified area of China, and now he was being told it was under attack by a single person.

Admittedly he wasn’t quite sure of that last part, it stunk of over exaggeration born of fear.

Then the heavens opened up and spoke to them.

The words burned themselves into his psyche, they pressed up against his brain like a branding iron. He could still remember the words, he couldn’t forget. They sat hot and heavy in his thoughts, immovable in a way he didn’t believe was possible.

Some had deserted at that.

The political officers and capes hadn’t let them get far.

So now they were marching, towards Jinzhou for some reason, more afraid than ever before. More full of doubts.

He dared not voice those doubts, as the empty eyed enforcers kept a close eye on all of them, ever watchful for the slightest sign of disobedience.

The march towards the ports from Beijing had been a colourful spectacle, people had cheered and women had offered kisses to the soldiers. Their trip back was not so cheerful. The few farmers they did see on their way were fearful, their gaze fixed towards Beijing and full of dread.

Apparently they had heard the sounds of battle even from here.

When they reached Jinzhou they weren’t met with the wide open plains, desolate ruins and forested areas that he remembered from his short trip there. Instead they were met with a gargantuan bastion of abyssal steel wrought into a clear mockery of the Great Wall of China. He felt a flush of rage beat in his breast at the sight, but it was a small thing next to the overpowering feeling of smallness.

As the officers looked at the faces of their troops he could already tell without looking that his hesitation was written on the face of the rest of his comrades as well.

Perhaps sensing the lowering morale the leading officer ordered for an artillery strike against the wall, wanting to rile his men up before the siege even began.

The thundering roars of artillery were admittedly glorious.

The silence as they hung in the air mere metres away from hitting their targets far less so.

Despite the alien hold over their shells gravity still clearly affected them as they fell to the ground with a thundering boom.

The mummering of the soldiers echoed like the bleating of sheep before a wolf.

The leading officer stepped up, clearly ready to give a speech, to lay out his next plan.

He wouldn’t get the chance.

Yao Ling didn’t notice at first, he only saw his leading officer’s face whiten and then slacken before falling over. Then there was a wave of heat and the smell of burnt pork.

He blinked, confused, before realising his commander had a hole burned through him, the skin blackened and flaking around the circular wound.

There was dead silence, everyone staring slack jawed at the sudden death for but a moment.

Then someone else fell down.

And another.

And another.

The field erupted into chaos. Capes frantically scanned the area. Screams and shouts drowned out commands. He was jostled as a man knocked into him. The once orderly regiments were whipped up into a chaotic frenzy.

“There!,” he heard a cape yell, a gout of white light shooting forth from nis hands.

The beam screeched through the air, clipping several unfortunate soldiers who screamed as the bodies exploded into a squall of gore, before finally colliding with the air.

‘No, not the air, something invisible!’

Yao Ling’s feet were leaden. He hadn’t moved from his spot, still frozen in fear.

The air shimmered then. The grass and trees of the background giving way to an ocean blue as their enemy revealed itself.

At first Yao Ling thought it was a structure of some sort, so large and wide was the revealed body.

Then it twisted, undulated, and revealed scales that reflected light in rainbow hues, and he realised it was the tail end of some enormous beast.

‘Where is the rest of it!’

The hysterical thought finally compelled Yao Ling to move. His head weaving back and forth trying to spot where the head was.

Then there was a wet slick sound and a sudden weightlessness as he was abruptly pushed forwards, the ground rushing up to meet him.

He tried to raise his hands but his body felt unresponsive.

It was only as he rolled around on the dirt that he could look back and see a body missing it’s head.

His head.

His eyes glanced up, darkness beginning to eat away at his vision. The visage of an azure dragon leering down at the few capes left was the last sight Yao Ling ever saw.

AN: A few of you mentioned people potentially finding those tunnels but I’m sure none of you were thinking Toybox would be the first to begin scavenging them. So now a rogue organisation that’s morally grey has access to Alexander’s tech. I’m sure that would go well.

Also more misunderstandings occur as Alexanders laziness confounds Big Rig.

And, of course, another of Alexander’s creations gets introduced. Of course one of them was going to be a dragon, it had to be done!

Thanks for reading!