Objects in motion a prog.., p.1
Objects in Motion: A Progression Fantasy Adventure, page 1
OBJECTS IN MOTION
©2026 INADVISABLY COMPELLED
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ALSO IN SERIES
Objects in Motion
Objects in Motion
Objects in Motion 2
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
1. Interrupted Plans
2. False Identities
3. Super-fight
4. Costuming
5. Following the Plan
6. Identity Issues
7. Opposition Research
8. News
9. Public Relations
10. Convention Fallout
11. Discovered
12. Hounded
13. Mixed Results
14. Bad Actors
15. Assumptions
16. Star Central
17. Gloryfall
18. No Time Off
19. A Plan
20. Assault
21. Showdown
22. Cleanup
Thank you for reading Objects in Motion
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not have been made without the tireless work of my editor, Kaorin, and the support of my many patrons and readers. Thanks to everyone who has supported me!
Visit me on the web at http://www.inadvisablycompelled.com
ONE
INTERRUPTED PLANS
“Quake in fear under the might of Dimetria!”
A girl in a bubblegum-pink powersuit landed on the hood of the armored van, denting it heavily and sending the engine into a grinding, sputtering halt. Dimetria laughed aloud as the return fire hit the armor and simply stopped, spending itself on the pink material and dropping onto the car’s hood. With another bound she jumped to the rear of the van, bringing a wrecking bar down on the locked door. The length of steel gouged out the lock and latch mechanism both, forcing the door open.
Inside the van was rack after rack of softchips in padded cases and another guard whose bullets were no more effective than any of the others, who gave up after two rounds did nothing. Dimetria left the wrecking bar embedded in the door and grabbed two of the cases before turning and making a mighty leap into the air. She vanished into the tangle of buildings, railways, and roads, even as she heard the guards call in backup from actual supers. None of the guards were powered themselves, not for such a common, low-value shipment.
Dimetria landed in an alley, attracting some attention from ordinary folks on the ground, and took another great leap, bouncing off the side of a nearby building and then ducking into the stairwell of a parking garage. Off came the painted, printed foam of the armor, as well as the radioactive blonde wig, which were stuffed into the bottom of an active burn barrel. The first appearance of Dimetria would also be the last.
Isaac Hartson had no desire to actually be a supervillain. The ones that had any success were powerful, ruthless, and terrifying, all things that Isaac was not. All the rest were either independents who were quickly squashed by either heroes or other villains or simply employed by the bigger names.
Superheroes were cut from the same cloth, even if they were nominally playing police rather than predator. Violent and dangerous to everyone around and impressed with their own power. He might have needed the money, but after growing up in the foster care system, he’d seen that the people in charge were mostly out for themselves. Even the foster housing had turned out to be a coldly calculated public relations campaign.
A waiting shopping cart had a bottle of water and some wet wipes, which were used to shed heavy makeup, leaving a young man in rumpled, mismatched clothing instead of a supervillainess. Isaac opened the cases, dumping the contents into a garbage bag, which went into the shopping cart, and then tossed the cases into the culvert outside the stairwell. Once that operation was finished, he discarded Dimetria’s gloves, and when he emerged from the stairwell himself, he looked like any other homeless man in Star City.
He pushed his shopping cart through the parking garage, which was old enough to lack the ever-present surveillance in the nicer parts of the city, and when he was satisfied that he was alone, he opened the trunk on an old beater car and shoved the garbage bag in. Closing the car again, he continued pushing the shopping cart. His route took him out of the garage and around to the intersection, where he took out a cardboard Anything Helps sign.
When he was younger, and the foster home had mandated extracurriculars, he’d tried out theater on a whim—something that had turned out to pay dividends in all kinds of ways. Acting was useful, as was being able to spot people who were, themselves, acting. Isaac wouldn’t consider himself any great master at it, but a surprising number of people just never bothered looking past the obvious. Which was why he was making himself obviously harmless.
The disguise wasn’t entirely safe—not because he thought he’d get caught, but because homeless beggars were organized. Isaac didn’t know which supervillain it was, but it was obvious the moment anyone took a closer look at their too-uniform signs and mysterious ability to get to high traffic areas at peak times. His chosen corner, on the other hand, was out of the way and only needed to serve for long enough to duck suspicion. A few hours at most.
A pair of heroes flashed past as he was still trying to get comfortable—or as comfortable as he could be in thirdhand clothes on a street corner. One of them flew, the other ran, both of them moving as fast as a speeding car. They completely ignored him, no doubt searching for the brand-new villainess that had been in no database. There were certainly supers who could have tracked him, but he hadn’t even robbed the whole van. Most of the top-level heroes had better things to do than account for some idiot grabbing a few hundred thousand credits’ worth of softchips.
Isaac stayed on the street corner for a good three hours and accumulated exactly zero donations, despite his hangdog look and rough clothing. The closest he came was a trio of gangers shoving him over and overturning his shopping cart before going on their way. Acting like a harmless, homeless bum turned out to be harder than acting like an idiot teenage villainess. He could have easily thrashed the gangers, but that would have just made his life harder. Maybe even gotten a low-level meta called in, either hero or villain.
Once the shadows stretched all the way across the street, he returned the shopping cart to his beater car, popping it apart by taking off a few screws. Even if he had just robbed an armored truck, he wasn’t about to litter the streets by leaving a cart out where someone could drive into it. Isaac wasn’t a villain, after all.
The car clattered and grumbled on the way home, the old ’832 Odelle rattling with the same not-quite-disrepair as it had for the past decade. Twice on the drive he saw supers, once on the streets and once in the skies, going about whatever it was that had caught Star Central’s attention. Distant sirens blared, then fell silent, but the car’s radio had long been broken so he could merely wonder.
He pulled into the cramped parking lot of his apartment complex, taking a moment to shove the garbage bag into the gym bag he used three days a week, and then hiked up the stairs to the third floor. Letting himself in, he took a moment to breathe and ensure he was carrying himself normally before crossing into the common room where his roommate was tapping away at a computer. Isaac probably didn’t need to, given how deeply Cayleb was involved with his work, but even after all this time he didn’t quite understand what the strange genius of Cayleb’s talent might notice.
“Hey, m an,” Isaac called, finally relaxing. It actually took some effort to not seem too giddy, as he’d finally taken the first steps he needed. Planning, thinking, and hoping were one thing, but actually crossing the line into action was another. Though admittedly, it was only a small bit of action—the robbery wasn’t even for himself, but rather for his brother in all but name.
Cayleb swiveled his entire body around on his padded chair, since he couldn’t turn his neck. A brace supported a double-sized head, acquired along with his tinker talent, and he gave Isaac a matching double-sized grin. Clearly in a good mood even for him.
“Yo, man!” Cayleb said, lifting a hand. “You just missed a super fight.”
“What, someone fighting here?” Isaac said, a sudden flush of alarm running up his spine. One of the reasons he’d chosen the apartment block—aside from price—was that it was near supervillain territory. Near, but he had thought it was far enough away to avoid the low-level villain-backed gang wars that were a constant feature of the rougher parts of Star City.
“Nah, over by your hospital,” Cayleb said, swiveling back to poke at a nest of wires and blocky cathode monitors, his tinker-rigged computer setup humming softly. A video came up of several flying supers circling cautiously around floating mechanical spheres in the sky, energy beams drawing blue and white lines as they attacked from range. It didn’t last long, but a blur at the bottom of the screen showed one of the spheres leaving the hospital at high speed. Whoever had sent them clearly got what they came for.
“Professor Mechaniacal’s work, but not his modus operandi,” Cayleb enthused, waving a finger at the monitor. “It’s too loud and too small-scale. Someone must have found one of his stashes. Bet they’re going to get in so much trouble when Mechaniacal finds them.”
“Don’t scare me like that, man,” Isaac asked, slapping Cayleb on the shoulder. “I know we’re both metas, but we know what a real superfight looks like, and it would crush us.” Cayleb swiveled slightly to look at him and made a slight movement of his head, the good humor in his eyes dimming for a second. He clearly would have loved to be out there himself, but their entire history was the result of such a superfight.
Both of them were among the hundreds of children who had ended up orphaned by one of the only sovereign-versus-sovereign fights in history, almost twenty years ago. The school panic rooms had remained intact, but not much else had in a twenty-block radius. It was one of the biggest death tolls Star City had ever seen, but the villain in question had never been caught. Instead, Blacktime and his people still flouted Star Central’s rule and, pragmatically, controlled most of the crime in the Five City Alliance.
Unlike Isaac, Cayleb didn’t let the thought get him down for long. He just shrugged and continued onward, which made Isaac glad he hadn’t bogged down Cayleb with weighty problems like the heist. Frankly, the guy was a born hero, easygoing and positive, and not at all cut out for the sort of skullduggery involved with supervillains. Unlike Isaac, Cayleb didn’t believe—or possibly hadn’t even heard—the rumors that Blacktime was actually the lover of the other member of that superfight. Glorybeam certainly seemed to hang around the area Blacktime operated more than she should, at least.
“Anyway,” Isaac said, brushing aside his own comment. “Who’s this Mechaniacal? Never heard of him.” That was actually true, despite Isaac knowing a lot about supers—admittedly, not as a fan in the way Cayleb often was.
“Mechaniacal is an old-school villain—his tinker stuff doesn’t even use electricity! Complete mystery origin. People think he might even be extradimensional.” Cayleb laughed, rubbing his oversized head, bald before its time. “Man, his stuff is slick. I’d love to pick his brain.”
“I can just bet.” Isaac laughed. “Hey man, lemme grab a shower, then you can run the footage for me,” he said, hefting the gym bag as an excuse. Cayleb waved a dismissal, turning back to his monitors, and Isaac ducked into his own room, shoving the pilfered softchips under his bed.
Much of the room was taken up by scraps of material and a few full costumes—a couple reproductions of fictional metas, and one game character. Some people liked to cosplay as actual supers, but Isaac had always thought that was just asking for legal entanglements or personal grudges. Star Central was understandingly protective of its superhero images—and aping supervillains was just not a good idea regardless.
He grabbed his towel and trod the well-worn path around his costuming work to pull out some ordinary clothes before heading to the shower. It wasn’t just a cover story, since he’d been out there for hours in stuffy armor and grungy thirdhand clothing, and besides, the shower would help him think over his next move. Isaac wasn’t so dumb as to think he had a chance of actually taking out a supervillain or, for that matter, a superhero since ultimately he wasn’t that powerful a meta. In fact, Isaac didn’t want to try any real vigilantism but rather just get some intelligence from the local gang leader, who, not coincidentally, was one of Blacktime’s lieutenants.
Crash Hardiron—a name that said everything anyone needed to know about the guy—was, so far as Isaac could tell from his research, an old friend of Blacktime’s. Someone who would have dirt, connections, and other things that Isaac could use. Maybe not personally, but he could sell to media, to rival gangs, or whatever was necessary to take them down a peg or three.
But to even think about touching someone like Crash, Isaac needed support. He wasn’t going to pull Cayleb into his actual activities, but tinker work was necessary for someone with a low-level talent like Isaac. The costumes he’d made were a start, and Dimetria had been a good proof of concept, but he knew he needed more. Armor and weapons, of course, but also items for transportation, communication, and fabrication. All things that he knew Cayleb could do if he only had a little bit more available to him.
When he opened the door again, dressed in fresh clothes, he heard voices out in the living room, ones he didn’t recognize. Despite the fact that it was probably nothing, given that there was no yelling, and Isaac was pretty sure Cayleb’s chair had weapons, it was still unexpected enough to make him tense, ice flooding his veins. He kept the towel around his neck, charging inertia into it just in case it was needed, and walked out the short hallway into the room, then froze.
There were two supers in full uniform. He recognized them in a vague way, as he knew the faces of most supers operating in Star City, but what was more important was that both of them sported the golden-rayed insignia of Star Central. Official heroes on official business. One was clearly a tech type, an albino man with a cybernetic slimsuit and what seemed to be mechanical eyes, while the other was probably a bruiser, given her oversized gauntlets.
“Isaac Hartson, nominal-class strength-type power,” the cyborg muttered dismissively, returning his regard to Cayleb. The bruiser eyed him a moment longer but also didn’t seem much interested. He was used to that; nominal-class strength-type metas were really at the lowest end of the power spectrum, and most other metas found it vaguely pitiable at best.
“Hey, Isaac!” Cayleb said, completely oblivious to the supers’ attitudes. “Cyberlocution there snagged my drone from the hospital fight and thinks I’ve got what it takes to work for Central!” He was excited but clearly uncertain about the whole thing.
“Oh, wow, bro!” Isaac forced himself to speak as normally as he could, now that it seemed that they weren’t there about his earlier theft. The mask he used at work slipped into place, something less confrontational and slightly duller than he was at home. A slight slump of the shoulders, a bit of droop to the eyes, and a certain slackness to his jaw made people see him as quite a bit dimmer than he actually was. It was especially hard since he had to force down his frustration at the timing; he never would have risked the robbery if he’d known Cayleb was going to get that kind of offer. “That’s a hell of an offer. You’ll be able to do all kinds of fun stuff. Congrats, man!” He stepped forward and slapped Cayleb on the shoulder.
“Heck yeah!” Cayleb said cheerfully, his worry clearing up. “I can just imagine all the toys I’ll get to work with!”
