Pixie dust

When they told him he was going to be saving the world with a screwdriver, he'd expected it to arrive in a highball. Sure, an actual screwdriver was the more practical choice, and he had set a precedent for their use as a deadly weapon, but regardless, he'd take the cocktail any day.

The Parahuman Regulation Bureau had contacted Harry because he owed them a favour. He'd built a sort of golem thing last year, and it had kind of broken loose and started roaming the sewers. The fact was that they knew a lot less about goblin tech than their P.R department would have you believe. That meant that he was essentially their freelance goblin specialist. It had been that or getting chipped, and Harry got up to a lot of things he'd rather the P.R.B didn't know about. Most goblins were the same. The ability to turn invisible tends to inspire a laissez-faire attitude toward personal space, property, and hygiene.

The glamour that goblins cast wasn't constrained to their own bodies. They could render any object they chose undetectable to the human senses. A non-human citizen had reported that a strange bomb-looking device had been planted and apparently armed in a local beach bar, but when Harry entered it was still busy. It was hard to take the threat of an invisible bomb seriously. The bureau had sent him in to investigate without risking any further bad press by evacuating the area. If it blew, the presence of a shifty looking tooled-up goblin on the scene gave them plausible deniability.

Harry could see the bomb. It sat on a table in the middle of the room, completely unhidden and beeping. The display said he had three minutes. Harry ordered a margarita. By the time it arrived he had fifty seconds.

Slurping at his drink, he twirled his screwdriver and approached the device. He inspected the access panel. He needed a goddamn allen key. Saving the world with an allen key didn't have quite the same ring to it. Saving a scuzzy beach bar with an allen key didn't sound that heroic either. Slamming down the screwdriver, he fished one out of his pocket and set to work.

He removed the access panel and rooted around the bomb's innards. It wasn't rigged to explode, it was loaded with pixie dust. This wasn't a bomb, it was a practical joke. That's goblins for you, he thought, pocketing the vial of pixie dust. There was enough in there to keep him blazed for three weeks straight.