"It's the same wavelength."
"Bullshit," Hypno says automatically, eyes wide. "Really?"
"Really." Tango pushes up his glasses and stares down at his tektech, who blinks big lamplike eyes back at him. "Go on, generate something."
Hypno shrugs and holds up his hand, summoning up the purple energy that forms his projections into the reliable bone gauntlet.
To his horror, and Tango's delight, the tektech turns towards the energy source, makes its 'homing in on papa' noise, and hops off its little stool to make its way over to the pale-faced villain.
On the sidelines of the makeshift gym, enjoying his sports drink and surrounded by pieces of tektechs, Wels laughs. "It thinks you're its mama!"
"THIS is why it followed me back?!" Hypno asks, aghast, as the tektech in front of him waits patiently for instruction. "It thought I was you?!"
"Seems like it!" Tango can't keep from chuckling as he jogs over. "The tektechs have a sensificating system based on the frequency of my metasignal. Yours must be similar enough that it feels like me!"
"But this has NEVER happened before! Ever!"
"I mean how often have we brawled?" Tango points out, scooping up his little creation. "I battle your boyfriend more often."
"And even then," Wels says, "I'm only ever making swords. I don't have the same range as you."
"What does range have to do with it?" Hypno demands.
"Signal strength, maybe?" Tango says. "The more you can do with your energy, the broader your field, so to speak. Didn't they teach you any of this?"
Hypno shrugs and lets his gauntlet dissolve to nothing. "Enough to get me into trouble. Sometimes even enough to get me out!"
"Hypno is a jump first ask questions later kinda guy," Wels says.
Tango snorts. "So you're Scar and Grian on the other side."
"Hey," Wels says, affronted, and Hypno laughs. "I don't shoot people in the back."
"That was one time," Tango says as he puts his tektech down with the other three that survived the battle with Wels and begins gathering up the scrap.
Wels stoops to help him and Hypno comes over as well, manifesting a purple broom and dustpan to sweep up the smallest bits as he says, "He's a vicious little birdy."
"He can be. I'd argue Scar can be, too."
"What about Singularity?" Hypno asks suddenly. "He always seems cool as a cucumber."
"Impulse?" Tango looks thoughtful. "..Impulse can be anxious. A bit controlling. I mean, look at what he can do. Sometimes we'll be in the middle of something and he looks at me and I know I screwed up somewhere and we're doing this over again, and I don't know how many times I've screwed it up before. That can be exhausting."
"I just bet," Wels says. "All we have to worry about is whether Doc decides to be petty about something that causes trouble for all of us, although that's tapered off in the past few years."
"Thank whatever for that," Tango mutters. "Hang on I got a sharps bag for these bigger bits." He produces the bag and they begin loading the parts.
"Does this bother you?" Wels asks. "I mean, putting all the bits in a bag like this. They're- well not alive, but."
"They aren't really alive," Tango says, "but they're close enough. I try to think of this as, like, them upgrading, or I'd lose my mind." He smiles and it's not a happy one. "I've been spoken to about humanizing my machines too much."
Hypno snorts. "I just had one assume I was you. Maybe they aren't sentient the way people are, but they sure seem alive."
"Yeah, but they also have to be expendable," Tango says. "If it's a choice between making a Tektech disarm a bomb and get explodificated or sending in a real person, I'm sending the tektech."
"Fine line to walk," Wels acknowledges as he gets the last of the bigger pieces into the sharps bag. Tango nods, looking drooped- even his little metal shards are slumped. "Its how the Teknician does his job," he says, "but I don't like it."
"It's never going to be the same, is it?" Wels asks suddenly, and the other two look at him. "I mean, look at this." He gestures at the gym. "We just spent two hours training together. We're talking shop. This.."
He looks down at his hands and then back up at Hypno and Tango. "Regardless of how this plays out," he says, "we've just made everything so complicated."
"Yeah," Tango agrees, "but it was always complicated. We just ignored it."
"Stupid decision, really." Hypno says.
"Well, yes," Tango agrees, "but that saying about trees, you know. Best time to plant?"
"Twenty years ago, or now." Wels says. "You're right." He rolls his neck. "Okay. I'm gonna go get us some water. Hypno, you should ask Tango about adoption papers, since you're the new mom."
"Absolutely I'll have junior registered for kindergarten by tomorrow afternoon."
"I'll be sure to give him a little purple chassis," Tango says, and the three men laugh. It's a warm, somewhat diquieting sound, but it echoes up the hallways of the warren of tunnels beneath the Angel Heart.
In a certain corridor making sure things are in order, Gordon House hears that laughter, and as he walks fearlessly through the dark he cannot help but smile.