"I show Edie and she shows the other person. That won't work because you can't let her see what you're thinking and wouldn't even if you could."

"Well, I might if she could just nip in and take the design schematic such as it currently is with nothing else, but I don't deny it would be freaky and I can't turn off my thinker power."

"I'm curious about all these classifications you keep alluding to."

"So I'd be...master, thinker or stranger, I guess."

"Definitely shaker."

"I mean, some of that winds up depending on your actual in-practice tactics as understood to whoever's doing the rating. General-purpose telepathy could be any or all of those, depending on whether you use it to control people, collect intel, or make them think you're not there while you stroll into a high-security facility. Could also be trump if you turn off other people's powers with it somehow. Metal control could be shaker if you warp buildings to inconvenience people, but you could use it as a blaster or brute power if you flung coins at people's heads or made yourself armor. Plus you can fly, that's a mover rating."

"Well, not all trades, nobody could call you a changer, but yeah, it's not one category and that's it. I'm a thinker - my rating is literally zero, but that's because the numbers are based on how threatening you are to a squad of trained unpowered people, not how dangerous you are to someone who relies totally on a power I'm immune to, and my thinker power is passive defense - and also a tinker. And depending on what I build I get sub-ratings. My current kit comes with mover and master and brute ratings because I can jump off buildings and I bring little robots everywhere I go and I'm stronger and tougher armored up."

"Makes sense."

"Whether I count as a master when facing trained unpowered people depends entirely on how much harm they intend to do to me or anyone else I'd rather not see harmed."

"Then whether you get a Master rating would depend on whether the PRT ever hears of you facing off against someone who wished to do relevant levels of harm. These aren't the final word in what your power Truly Is, this is what a squad leader yells at the people with the containment foam and tranquilizers so they know whether to take cover or get distance or make sure they keep visual contact or run the fuck away."

"Aha."

"What's containment foam?" Marie asks.

"What it sounds like. Acceptably breathable, rapid-stiffening foam stuff that can be sprayed at parahumans. Won't do much useful to people who control stuff through purely mental actions and don't need line of sight. A lot of capes it works just fine, though, spray it at 'em and take them to jail."

"Is that a tinker thing, or just normal engineering?" Marie wonders.

"I'm not actually sure. It's in sufficiently ubiquitous use that if it ever was Tinker-made somebody has certainly figured out how to mass-produce it."

"Huh. Hey, Bar, are instructions on how to make this stuff saleable?"

The recipe is too classified. The substance itself I can sell.

"If the recipe is classified but the stuff isn't it's probably not trivial to just bring some of it home and get it reverse-engineered."

"I know that tinkers do make the things that deploy it," says Lorica. "I think this is just to make it harder to steal them and turn them back on the PRT, but it might actually be hard to spray around otherwise, I don't know. I also don't remember off the top of my head how they get people out of it."

"So not something I can bring home for the benefit of law enforcement everywhere," she concludes.

"Unless it'll behave itself in a Super Soaker, perhaps not. It's worth a try, though, I think it's pretty cheap."

I must advise against. It needs to be stored under high pressure to remain liquid.