Junior Hero

Part 1

Disclaimers:

1) This story is set in the Wormverse, which is owned by Wildbow. Thanks for letting me use it.

2) I will follow canon as closely as I can. If I find something that canon does not cover, then I will make stuff up. If canon then refutes me, then I will revise. Do not bother me with fanon; corrections require citations.

3) I welcome criticism of my works, but if you tell me that something is wrong, I also expect an explanation of what is wrong, and a suggestion of how to fix it. Note that I do not promise to follow any given suggestion. Posting a negative review from an anonymous account is a good way to have said review deleted.

I never expected to join the Wards. Heck, I never expected to get powers.

But we don't always get what we expect.

Growing up, I suppose I should've been just a little curious; after all, Mom's a plump brunette and Dad's a skinny redhead. How the two of them could produce a tall, muscular blond-haired son like me ... well, genetics isn't my strong suit. What is my strong suit ... yeah, well, it's not hard to figure out where I get my gifts from, not if I do the math and just a little research.

Which I did do, well after the fact. Yay me.

I suppose I should backtrack a little. Go back in time, so to speak. Start at the beginning.

Actually, what the hell. Let's go back to the real beginning. That sets the clock back to February of 1994, when my Mom was a junior college reporter, engaged to marry a certain red-haired straight-A's physics major (aka, "Dad"). That was the year the Protectorate dropped in to Brockton Bay College, to wow the locals and to spread the good word about parahumans and the great life they could have in the Protectorate, under the watchful eye of the PRT. Not that they pushed that last bit too hard; I think they might just have been fishing for any rogues hiding in the student body.

They didn't find any, but then, some people weren't looking too hard. There were other things that they had in mind.

Let's do a head count here. This was the 'real' Protectorate, the four heroes that had opted to move their team under the government umbrella, in return for funding, bases, funding, troops to guard said bases, funding, good publicity ... oh yeah, and funding. This was Alexandria, Legend, Eidolon, and the forgotten fourth, Hero.

Oh, people remember Hero. They just tend to forget that the Triumvirate used to be the Protectorate, way back when, even before the government swallowed it up and made it into just another department with a budget and oversight, and that Hero was a founding member. When the Siberian ripped Hero apart, the 'core' Protectorate became the Triumvirate almost indecently fast, as if distancing themselves from the fact that there ever had been a fourth member.

Anyway, back to the reception that the College put on for the Protectorate. Drink was flowing in plenty, and there was lots of good company. In particular, lots of college girls and guys. And if there's one thing that popular culture gets right about college girls and guys, it's that a lot of sex goes on at college. And some of these aforementioned girls and guys were turning their gaze toward the visiting celebrities. I mean, come on. Seriously. The bragging rights for banging Alexandria would have been epic.

Unfortunately for the overly ambitious, Alexandria was just as much the ice queen then as she is now. Gorgeous? Sure. Sexy? Not a doubt. Approachable? Like hell. Guys were trying to talk to her (according to my Dad, who swears up and down he had too much respect for my Mom to even make the attempt, but I have my doubts ...), but were being shot down in droves.

Eidolon was a similar case. Intense wasn't in it. He just wasn't interested. He spent half the evening levitating six feet above the table, apparently oblivious to everyone around him.

Legend was a nice guy, and chatted to everyone. But he hadn't come out yet, and so the gay guys didn't even know they had a chance. Not that any of them would have dared make a pass, then. Ironically, it was Legend who made things that much more acceptable, in college and out of it. But the girls were almost literally throwing themselves at him, and he was basically being polite about it, but simply not noticing what they were trying to do.

Which left Hero.

Mom's big score then, the thing that made her college days, was the interview that she did with Hero. She didn't have a chance to get close to Legend, but the famous Tinker was overshadowed by his more handsome and charismatic teammate. So Mom apparently managed to spend some time in his company. The interview made the student paper the next day, and was even reprinted in the Brockton Bay Times.

The rest, I've had to piece together on my own. I'm fairly certain that Mom and Dad were on the outs right then, from a story Dad told me a couple of years ago. He was apparently a wild one in college, and one or two of his escapades may have not been in the best of taste. Mom heard about one of them, and they had a tearing argument, about three days before the Protectorate showed up. They didn't go to the reception as a couple, and they didn't leave together.

Mom's a bit close-mouthed about who she did leave with, but then again, so is Dad.

But when I look at the dates, things start to match up. I was born in November of 1994. I mean, I guess I could have been conceived when they made up their differences in bed, but really? Their one child is tall and blond?

Which of the Protectorate was tall and blond?

Hero.

And what was his power?

He was the first known Tinker.

Three weeks ago, I triggered.

I'm a Tinker.

And I think I'm Hero's illegitimate son.

I suck at physics.

Which is kind of a disappointment to Dad, who teaches it. He's always had the idea in the back of his mind that his son will go to BB College and retrace his steps in the Walk of Fame.

Yeah, well.

See, it's not that I can't grasp the concepts. They're there. I can see them. I can do the equations and get the right answers. It's just that it takes me the same time, or maybe a little longer, than most other people my age. In a nutshell, I never inherited my Dad's instinctive understanding of the subject. Or his skinny frame. Or his red hair.

Really, it should have been clear to me from an earlier age that I hadn't inherited anything from him except the surname. But kids growing up don't look at things that way. There are always more important things. Mind you, I always loved him and Mom, and I still do. I don't care that he's probably not my biological Dad. He raised me. He instilled his values. And I think I'm a better person for it.

But from time to time he tries again to get me interested in physics, to see if 'this time' will be the charm. And because he's my Dad, and because I really hate to disappoint him (what son does, really?) I have another whack at it.

And so, late on that fateful Monday night, when I really should have been in bed, wondering if I'd be seeing Kate in Biology class again, and if she'd give me that same cute little smile, I was working on some of Dad's physics 'homework'.

It was rough stuff, college level at least. I was slogging my way through it, head beginning to spin with the concepts I was having to deal with, having to refer to one book or another just to figure out what the heck I was trying to do. And I hit this one problem that simply would not work out, to do with quantum wormhole tunnelling. It stumped me. I tried for an hour to make that thing come out, but it refused. Finally, I gave up and went to bed. I was angry and frustrated, and tossed and turned for far too long before I drifted off.

I dreamed of strange mechanisms.

In the morning, I woke up and looked over the 'homework' again, before getting ready for school. I still couldn't figure how to reach a solution for the problem, but as I looked at it, I began to envisage a way to solve it in the real world. Jotting down a few notes and ideas, I got dressed, had breakfast, and caught the bus to school.

Clarendon may not be the best school in Brockton Bay - I mean, I'd love to go to Arcadia - but at least it's not Winslow. Yech. I heard some girl got shut in her locker for the whole damn day, before anyone bothered letting her out. Seriously, is the entire faculty blind and deaf there?

Anyway.

I spent the day dividing my attention between what the teachers were saying, and jotting down more ideas in my notebook. I spent time with my friends during the lunch hour, discussing the latest Earth Aleph movies, before going back to class. More ideas, more diagrams. It didn't feel as though I was figuring them out, but more like they were appearing fully formed in my head.

I got home before Dad, and went straight to the garage. Dad had gotten in a lot of stuff over the years, trying to work out how to demonstrate physics to the students in his class in such a way that even the slowest kids got it. His success rate was not great, but there was a lot of stuff there that I could use.

Referring sometimes to the notebook, and sometimes to the new diagrams that were forming in my head, I assembled my first device. It was about five inches across and heavier than it looked. Using the tiny keypad (off a broken phone) I typed in coordinates, and then hit the enter key.

Nothing happened for a long moment, and then everything flashed. When my eyes cleared, I was ten feet from my previous location. Right where my coordinates had said I was going to be.

There was no doubt about it; I was a Tinker. No-one apart from that could throw together the contents of a typical garage and build a hand-held teleporter.

There was only one question left to ask.

Two questions.

Three.

One: What else could I build? Ideas were starting to pile up in my head. I could see what I'd done, and now variations were starting to suggest themselves.

Two: What was I going to do with my talent? Show it off? Sell my gadgets to the highest bidder? Fly under the radar? Or join the Protectorate as a Ward?

Three: What the hell was I going to tell Mom and Dad? And what did it really mean, to myself, to my parents, to the world, if I actually turned out to be Hero's illegitimate child?

I could tell I was going to have to think about this.

End of Part 1