Editing Genius The Transgression/Chapter Two: Character Creation (section)

===Utility Belt (● to ●●●●●):===
A Utility belt is a handheld device (Size 2) that grants a genius a +1 bonus when working on wonders. All utility belts grant a +1 to Science. Each rank in this Merit grants the genius another +1 bonus with one other Skill: Academics, Computer, Crafts, Medicine, or Occult. This bonus is typically used to build and repair wonders, but it can be used for mundane applications of the Skill too. A Utility Belt also removes the rank/Resources penalty due to kitbashing. (See Kitbashed Wonders, Page 138.)

Utility belts are portable while laboratories are not, but utility belts (which are not always belts; some Inspired prefer tool cases or rucksacks) cannot be combined with a lab's Equipment bonus. They are most popular with geniuses on the move. A genius cannot use another genius' utility belt.


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"It's the alarming rate of suicide among beholden that troubles me," Professor Bonnerman said. He was lying: nothing really 'troubled' him anymore, except that he might find one graph less 
satisfying than another. He lit a cigarette. He did it real slowly, so the woman in front of us wouldn't put a bullet in his brain.

"This isn't what it was supposed to be like," the woman said. Her hands weren't too steady. She was maybe 25, overweight, looking like the girl who gets ignored at the dance club. I hadn't noticed her before around the lab. Her dress had the most fascinating fractal pattern on the...come on, Jake, focus. Act human and normal. You're probably going to die here.

"It's hard to shoot," Bonnerman said, taking a long slow drag. "Not because you're a good person, Marlene, because you're not: you're as immoral as you are ignorant. But it's because you know that killing me kills you. There's nothing in you, no spark, no vision. You're a tool, an extension. That's all you'll ever be."

"That's not true!" The gun was practically vibrating now. "I want my life back!" If I could just reach the bone spur in my pocket...

"That's the bitterest truth, Marlene: you never had a life. Or an idea of your own, ever. Jake here has potential. He wasn't always like he was now. But you can't be like him, or like me. There's no going back. And there's no going forward, not for you. You know that. Which is why you're going to put that gun down, and then Jake is going to cut your throat."

She shot him in the face, which surprised me. The gun swung toward my head, a long, lazy arc. I knocked it from her hand and drew the bone spur across her throat. She screamed, because I had missed the trachea while still getting all the important arteries, and she fell back, still screaming, making a bloody mess of the lab floor. When she stopped, I could hear Bonnerman, and he was laughing: a ragged, hearty, human laugh, as he clutched his bloodied cheek.

"I did not see that coming," he said, between guffaws. "Come on, let's get this cleaned up."
He looked at me, as if daring me to do it. I put the length of bone away and got the mop while the doctor dragged the body to the furnace.
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