Adrian turned his gaze away from the footage and settled his hand on the sketchbook beside him. He opened the cover and used his thumb to flip through the pages until he found his most recent batch of drawings, those he’d doodled hastily as soon as he got home, while the idea was still fresh.
Crunching his way through a mouthful of cereal, he lifted the sketchbook to eye level, inspecting the drawings.
Concepts for a new tattoo.
He hadn’t planned on giving himself any more, but then, he’d thought every tattoo would be the final one, and less than two months into this experiment he already had three inked into his skin.
But he’d learned a lot about his abilities up on those rooftops, facing off against Nightmare. Or, he’d learned a lot about the Sentinel’s abilities.
There was potential there. Great potential—he knew it. The armor had worked precisely how he’d hoped it would, offering both flexibility and protection, even if Nightmare had managed to find a vulnerability in the suit.
And the springs on his feet had worked like a charm. The first time he’d launched himself from street level up to a ledge three stories high, he’d felt almost as if he’d taken flight.
But the fire … the fire was problematic.
It had seemed like a great idea when he’d done it. Had, in fact, been the first tattoo he’d given himself, before he’d even known for sure that it would work. Before he could be certain that the gift of his drawings could transfer into a permanent tattoo and imbue his body with a brand-new, entirely real superpower.
Everyone wanted fire manipulation. It was a classic, and it came with so many applications, from lighting birthday candles to torching an entire warehouse stocked with illegal narcotics.
Not that he’d ever stumbled across such a warehouse, but if he did, he liked knowing he could do something about it.
But fire was also unpredictable. It was a force of nature—wild and erratic.
What Adrian needed was something clean and orderly. Something that could be systematically aimed and fired, even by him, who was admittedly not the best shot in the Renegades. He needed something that would be a lot less likely to strike one of his own teammates.
His first thought had been some sort of gun appendage built into the armor, but then he’d remembered a girl who had come to be trained at headquarters a few years back—a prodigy who could shoot narrow beams of energy out of a node in the center of her forehead, hitting any target with percussive force. People had mostly referred to them as lasers, but that’s not what they were. Adrian wasn’t actually sure what they were, but he did know that they hit with enough force to stun an opponent and sometimes even knock them unconscious, without leaving any of the evidence a bullet might have left. No shell, no casing, no open wound.
It was perfect.
The trick was for him to figure out how to incorporate such an ability into the Sentinel’s armor … and what sort of tattoo would convey such a power. He often found it ironic that he could make absolutely anything come to life when he drew it, if only he could first convince himself that it would make sense in reality. He had to be strategic. Practical.
Springs on the soles of his feet. A swirl of flame on his forearm. A zipper on his sternum that could be opened to release the armored suit.
And now, a laser diode, of sorts. A long, narrow cylinder, this time on his right forearm, that would emerge on the Sentinel’s gauntlet, already charged and ready to fire …
He set down the sketchbook and crunched through another spoonful of cereal.
“… and yes, the Puppeteer was caught in the end, but I just don’t think it’s acceptable that so many bystanders were harmed before he was stopped.”
Adrian’s eyes skipped back to the television, where two men and two women, all finely coiffed, were sitting around a table inside the news studio.
“Exactly!” said one of the men, leaning over the table and pointing an accusatory finger toward the woman who had spoken, even though he seemed to be in agreement with her. “It’s not acceptable. This was a heavily attended public event. Where was the security? And why did it take the Council so long to respond to this threat? It’s their job to protect us, but today they seemed more concerned with bad publicity than they did with stopping this madman.”
“Now, in the Council’s defense,” said the second man, raising both hands in a calming gesture, “we do have witness reports telling us that within the first few minutes of the attack, Captain Chromium managed to rescue seven young children from the Puppeteer’s control, while the rest of the Council and a number of off-duty Renegades ushered literally hundreds of civilians to safety inside nearby buildings and parking garages.” He lifted a silencing hand as the other man tried to interrupt. “And this aligns with what the Council has been telling us from the day the Renegades became an official entity—that they will always focus on protecting innocent lives first, and engaging in an attack second. They followed their protocols today, and I have to admire them for it. It couldn’t have been easy, especially when the Puppeteer was making himself such an obvious target.”