(SHATTERPOINT) ESCALATION

People talked.

It was one of the few certainties in Brockton Bay. Streets whispered secrets faster than any signal, and Anakin Skywalker was far too visible now. A name as ridiculous as that carried weight, even if most dismissed it as an obscure reference to some nerd shit or an ironic call sign. After all, who really called themselves Skywalker?

A joke, maybe. Or a dare.

But after what happened to the Merchants, no one was laughing.

Anakin Skywalker hadn’t made much noise when he arrived, that was true. He kept his head down, found work at a local auto shop that doubled as a chop shop, and did his best to fade into the background. But the quiet ones always drew attention. In this city, anyone who wasn’t running a hustle usually had something to hide, and secrets painted a target as clearly as money did.

So it hadn’t taken long.

Someone had followed him back from the auto shop that evening: a twitchy teen in a patched-up hoodie and a desire to impress someone higher up on the Merchant food chain for extra dope. He saw which door Anakin used, and before night fell, the information had changed hands at least twice.

Three of them, bundled in stolen jackets and ski masks, armed with kitchen knives, crowbars, and stolen pistols that hadn’t been cleaned in years. Too cowardly to act alone, too untrained to organize properly, yet desperate enough, reckless enough, and hungry enough to act with haste. Probably Merchants, or affiliated enough to pretend. 

They waited until after midnight and broke in with crowbars and snickers under their breath, already fantasizing about what they’d find. Everyone had heard what had happened: the new guy took out Mush and Trainwreck alone, and sent Skidmark running with his tail between his legs. And yet, he’d appeared in the chop shop the next day despite the heat.

He had to be sitting on something huge.

The apartment was above a run-down laundromat that hadn’t seen working dryers in years. Its security was a joke: the back stairwell didn’t even have a lock, just a broken latch. They didn’t even need to break the door, just jimmy it once and it gave, groaning open like it was tired of standing guard.

Inside, they found nothing.

Not completely nothing. A mattress, low to the floor. A plastic chair and a folding table. A single pot in the sink and a fridge that held a carton of eggs, a jug of water, and little else. The walls were bare. There were no photos or other personal clutter. The only decoration was a grease-stained coat hanging by the door and a battered pair of boots nearby.

No cash. No weapons. No sign of tinker junk or crates of stolen gear. Not even a burner phone worth pawning.

One of them—a woman with a twitch in her left eye—started ransacking everything anyway, just in case. Like something might materialize if she looked hard enough.

"Check under the bed," another hissed.

“He has to have kept it here,” the third whispered.

But there was nothing to find, which meant he hadn’t brought the stash back. And he hadn't sold it either, at least not to the usual fences, and not through any Merchant-run pawn circles. 

That was the real story. Because if he wasn’t hiding his spoils here—if this place was a front—then where was he keeping it?

And that question filtered its way back into the underground rumor mill.

Skidmark got wind of it first. Of course he did. He’d been furious after the warehouse hit. Humiliated. Two of his heavy hitters were dead, majority of his stash gone, and Squealer was still MIA. Rumors said she was lying low, others said she was dead. Skidmark wasn’t sure which pissed him off more, Anakin or his shitty ex.

He focused on the former. 

“Man’s not stupid, Stubs,” he snarled to one of his boys, his fingers tapping erratically against his thigh. “He knew we’d come, so he set it up like that on purpose, and disappeared. Like a goddamn ghost.”

Stubs flinched as Skidmark paced across the cracked linoleum floor of an abandoned storefront now doubling as his temporary HQ, his words slurring slightly from the drugs in his system.

“But that stash? That’s war loot, valuable as fuck, and he isn't stupid enough not to know that. It’s somewhere out there. Has to be. Just somewhere no one’s thought to check yet.”

Stubs swallowed, trembling slightly. “What do you want to do?”

Skidmark grinned. It wasn't a pleasant expression. “We put out word that I want every rat, every coke fiend, and every runner watching. He goes somewhere, I want to know. I don’t care if he’s buying smokes or taking a shit behind a dumpster. If he breathes, I want it tracked.”

“And when we find it?”

“We make the fucker pay.” He bared yellowed teeth. “Skywalker thinks he’s untouchable, but this ain’t no goddamn movie. Nobody in Brockton Bay gets to be untouchable.”

Stubs nodded and bolted.

. . . . .

Anakin knelt amid a scattered array of parts: salvaged relays, burned-out circuit boards stripped for usable components, the remains of a broken blender, and the half-gutted internal shell of what might have once been a remote-controlled toy. Most wouldn't be able to tell how they fit together, but in his hands, wires danced and connections snapped into place.

Eventually, he set the surveillance droid down atop an overturned crate to cool.

The finished product was roughly the size of a basketball, modeled loosely after the Sith probe droids, and though it was cobbled together from salvaged tech, it would be enough for what he had in mind. 

It could float under its own power, its stabilizer rings patched together from a combination of jury-rigged gyroscopes and stripped-down hover fan arrays. Its shell was reinforced with repurposed armor plating, and carefully welded to avoid weight imbalance.

Motion sensors ringed its undercarriage, giving it a full 360-degree field of detection. A primitive audio relay sat beneath the central lens, recording everything in its radius and transmitting the feed back to a handheld receiver (patched together from an old burner phone and part of a salvaged tablet screen). Its camera—ripped from a helmet rig—was low-light capable and surprisingly high-resolution. Not quite galactic standard, but better than anything civilians could buy retail. Definitely tinker-made then. 

And it wasn’t defenseless.

Built into a retractable under-slot just beneath the floating core was a small ballistic weapon, cobbled from a pistol frame, linked to the targeting matrix he’d spent all of last night calibrating, and capable of holding five 9mm rounds. The gun was timed to fire only when commanded directly, a last-resort measure in case Anakin wasn’t around to respond.

All in all, it certainly wasn't pretty, but it was functional. And that was all that mattered. 

The droid chirped as it powered on, its single, central eye pulsing red, then purple, and then finally cooling to a soft blue glow. Anakin watched it stabilize in the air, running a quick diagnostic. Hover was stable. Sensors were online. No overheating. It would do for now.

He set it to patrol the perimeter of the boxcar, and it bobbed slightly as if in assent, then took off silently out the open door of the boxcar. It sailed across the trainyard in a smooth arc, flying low and quiet over cracked rails and rusting containers. 

Anakin tracked its progress through the receiver, standing in the doorway, and allowed his thoughts to settle.

This was the beginning. 

With this droid, he could see. He could know. And knowledge, here in this city, was survival.

He would build more when time allowed. Maybe a heavier model later, something with armor or more firepower. Maybe a second surveillance unit. A burgeoning network. But for now, this one would scout. Warn. And if it needed to?

Kill.

He turned away and shut the boxcar behind him, the metal door grinding into place. He knew the Merchants were looking for him. Skidmark wouldn’t stop until he’d bled something out of this loss.

But let them come.

He had eyes now. And soon, he would have teeth.