Pagemaster

by dgj212

And you thought tinkers were bullshit! Well let me put it to you like this: what is one to do when their magic is running out? The answer is simple. Make your own magic!

hi guys this was inspired by the Pagemaster, i know not the best movie but it's what i had and i saw multiples times, lots of times... Anyway, I read the fanfic where Taylor is a libromancer its was cool but not exactly what I was looking for. The powers here a bit tweeked, I honestly wanted to get this out sooner but I had a hard, very hard time trying to nerf Taylor's powers, ack buddy, tell me you have a harder time nerfing people. I posted this idea on reddit and AkazilliaDeNaro said he would give it his best shot to draw the cover art for this fic if I gave it my best shot to write it, lets hope he does his best. Also shout out to Izmaster and I_am_salad for their contribution on Reddit in regards to clockblocker. Whelp Read, ENJOY, REVIEW!

P.S. feel free take any ideas you want, it's free.

[edited]

I don't own Worm, Pagemaster, or any references found in this fic. It's all a work of fiction.

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I know, I know, logic dictates that one should wait until it was night to go out in costume for the first time, but hear me out, I was in a really-really-really bad mood and I knew where the Merchants were having a rave, or at least setting one up for tonight, curtesy of the schoolboys selling pot behind the outdoor bleachers. The reason capes go out at night is, if you have school it won't interfere with it, muggings and shady deals take place at night, and it's easier to hide your identity. But, if you take those facts and twist it, then that means it was safer to go out during the day and you get the element of surprise because no one is expecting it…right?

"FUCK," a man yelled.

They turned the corner on a building, I chased them, sort of speed walking. The area was pretty much a bunch of warehouses near the boat graveyard. I turned the corner, it was a gravel road, warehouse on my left, the sea to my right, shallow I noticed. In my left hand was a little notepad, you know, to jot down memos, only this one only had the cover and a page remaining, I pointed it one man.

"[Firebolt!]" A ball of fire, about the size of basketball shot forward with a small roar.

"OH C'MON!"

The person screaming from the top of his lungs is a black cape named Skidmark. He wore jeans well beyond its expiration date and seemed like it was in desperate need of a wash if it was meant to be salvaged at all, had on a messed-up shirt with a blue cape that did little to hide how skinny and boney he looked, and a wore a mask that seemed to hide just the top portion of his head, sort of like a blue druggie Zoro.

"AHHHHHHH!" He ran for his life as a ball of fire chased him. Just as it was about to hit, the fireball disintegrated into ash along with the notepad, leaving behind the metal spine that held the pages together. Despite that he still ducked to the ground in expectation of it to hit. He quickly turned around, his back on the ground as he pushed himself up. I kept walking in a brisk pace, with power, with purpose at the trio.

There were two guys with him, a fat black guy who had already pissed his pants and a skinny white guy who had lots of questionable tattoos, really who gets spongebob on their face? Either way they were both unpowered and armed with handguns.

"Da FUQ YOU BLOKE'S WAITIN' FOR! SHOOT!" He yelled as he scrambled to his feet, already in front of me was two bands of his power in place. Skidmark has the power to creates bands or strips of violet-pale blue gradient colored floors that represented his force fields, above the marked floor is dancing air, similar to the air you see above a candle or grill or even on the road on a hot sunny day. The strips were seven feet in length and half that I think in width, think of a very skinny pool table or a plastic white commercial table that folds up, you know, the things you see setup at events. From what I read and experienced, the purple side of the gradient was stronger than the blue, and if you got stuck on the purple side, you would be forced to the blue, if you got stock on the blue it would feel like you are trying to push against a strong breeze on oily floor. And not only that he can layer it, when he does, the colors get darker and the force becomes a lot more violent. That was the current situation. My guess? He was hoping to give his two remaining henchmen's firepower a boost and use it to break my shield. Not a chance in hell.

I quickly pressed my hands against my ears, one hand had a black and white marble composition notebook that was pressing flat on my ear, my grimoire. The shots were loud. Note to self, edit shield to be capable of blocking out harmful sounds along with any foul smells, maybe even harmful gas.

I saw the bullets hit my golden bubble shield before they deformed and fell to the ground. The shield was dome shaped with hexagons (I couldn't think of a way to make pentagons connect together in the universally recognized pentagon shape) that gave good enough elbow room, it was gold colored but see through, it didn't hinder my movements, allowed air to pass through, didn't muffle sounds, and I could shoot my magic out or throw stones. The shield used me as the center, if I moved it moved, if a rock was in my path, the rock would get pushed aside, if it was a bolder or something that was part of the environment and not harmful to me, then the shield would adjust…well it's not like they had anything I wanted. The dome adjusted to the shape of the terrain, if I was flying, for example, it would be a sphere.

I could have made the shield reflect the bullets or something, but I didn't want to run the risk of people dying or innocent people getting hit by the ricochet. Just as they were reloading I pulled out another notepad. Single handedly, I flipped the pages and stopped when I found the last one, I stretched out my hand while holding it.

"[Pull!]" I shouted as the pages began to burn as I focused on the guns. Then the hand guns flew out of their hands flew over to me and hit the shields…well something to work on I guess. The guns stayed at my shield, trying to force its way to my hand for a few seconds, before it fell on the ground. The selected pages on my notepad already turned to ashes.

"GOOD BLOODY GOD!" Skidmark remarked, "WHAT KIND BULLSHIT IS THIS!"

Then suddenly there was a loud sound effect that made all three fully grown men turn pale, it was the fairy dust sound effect movies achieved using a bunch of wind chimes.

My grimoire naturally opened on its own in the palm of my right hand as I put the tiny pad away. Skidmark's mouth fell open, displaying his orange, uneven and actually cracked teeth.

"Wait-wait," he put his hands in front of him as both him and his two flunkies already backing away, "can't-can't we talk about this? I'm willing talk! What do you want? Money? Drugs? Cocks? Or maybe you like puddy? I got Whirlygig, she's a real freak in the-"

I shook my head.

"I want you gone," I said, cutting him off from whatever he was offering.

"Territory! I can work with that! We can sod off some area!"
"Ah uh," I said shaking my head, "All of it."

"All of it? ALL OF IT? You want all my territory!"

"I want Brockton Bay safe," I said. "That means, you, Empire 88, Azn Bad Boys, Coil, Faultline, all of you have to go."

"…Bollocks, you got to be bloody mental," he said with a bit of disbelief. I shrugged.

"Your words," I said, "[Water-]" before I could shoot off another spell I heard a loud noise, like a truck engine or something. I turned my head to the wall to my left.

The wall shattered, that was all I could grasp before I was sent flying to the sea. My shield could stop bullets, baseball bats, stabs, and wacks, but it couldn't stop strong force with larger surface area, like a van. I mean I was fine-ish, the shield was forced in but the car didn't touch me directly, but sadly the momentum that got through, combined with the shield snapping back to place, sent me flying into the sea instead of being run over, and the car didn't seem like following. While I ended up relatively dry as I hit the sea floor, see, my shield forced the water away and because the dome adjusted to the ground to protect me from it, I ended up hitting the mucky ground, imagine that! Thankfully I didn't hit a shell or nail or something, just wet sand, dirt, and whatever else was on the floor. Still hurt though, and now I was covered in muck and sand.

I groaned in pain as I struggle to push myself up. As I did, I adjusted my glasses and noticed it was an armored van that hit me and it had a machine gun mounted on the hood. Great. I looked to my right and found my pointy hat, the point now a bit bent, I picked it up and slammed it on my head as I glared at the vehicle.

"TAKE THIS YOU BITCH," the female driver, Squealer, yelled…Skidmark, Whirlygig, Squealer, who the fuck comes up with all these names? Anyway, Squealer was a vehicle tinker. See, when I walked in on the rave-set-up, she was in the middle of making something. Not I know what it was supposed to be, thankfully it wasn't finished, from what I could tell, she wanted to stack another van on top of it for some odd reason. The machine gun roared to life and fired bullets. I put my hands up to my ears again, realizing I didn't have my book. My eyes went wide.

"Oh C'mon," I said as I looked around, and I found it, half of it sunk in the water, all of it drenched, no doubt ruined…fuck! THAT WAS GOOD FOR TWO WEEKS! The Machine gun stopped, seemingly out of ammo and I heard doors slam shut.

"FUCKING MOVE IT!" I heard Skidmark yell as the car backed up, doing a turn to leave, he wiggled his body out the window and yelled at me as they were moving, "I'LL FUCK YOU UP NEXT TIME YOU FUCKING CUNT!"

"Wha?" I let out. Did he seriously…?

It was childish but there was no way in hell I was going to take that! I pulled out my notepad and concentrated on him as I outstretched my hand.

"[PULL!]"

"Huh? NONONONONOOOOOOO!" he yelled as his body was pulled out the window "AAAAAH! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUUUUCK," He yelled as he was dragged by my spell across the gravel. The van stopped and backed up. My spell died just as he reached the edge of the grovel. The doors opened with the guys picking up their leader and dragging him back into the car, revealing his back; while his clothes were (surprisingly) intact, the wet spots suggested that he did get skinned a bit. "YOU-MFMGMNDMFM!" he yelled as the men muffled him, probably smart enough to realize not to risk me pulling the van out of anger. It quickly sped off into the distance and made a turn.

After it was gone, I looked around, no one in sight. I sighed, I moved to land, making sure I pushed the book the right direction. Pulled myself, while pushing the book up along with me until we were both on the dirt road. The book was still outside my shield. I looked around, no one to be seen. I sighed in relief. I pocketed my what remained of my notepad and pulled way my robe to reveal my left leg with another black and white marbled notebook, I've come to call a grimoire, strapped to it. What? It was cheaper to buy this brand in bulk, paper and ink still cost money you know!

I unstrapped the book that was attached to my leg as if it was armor, and opened it when I found the pages within the book burning and reforming itself. All I had to do was tap the book and do a small quick chant to dispel the "spell" but I wanted to make sure it was fine. Satisfied I chanted it:

"[Shield off]." Honestly, I could stop it with a single thought if I was touching the grimoire, but that would destroy the grimoire, not what I want. I didn't want to rewrite it even though I probably have to no matter what happened to it.

The shield disappeared without a trace, as if it was never there. I crouched down and picked up my wet grimoire with a frown, there were two bullets holes. I opened it, biting my bottom lip when I noticed how the ink was basically at the point where you couldn't read it and the bullet holes went through it, still, I tried and cast a "spell."

"[Water dragon]" I calmly chanted as I focused on the hole in the warehouse where the van came out of. In front of me, a narrow dragon made of a pressurized torrent of running water appeared, it was about the size of the garden snake. My shoulders sagged as it charged at the hole. It stuck around for a minute or two before it disappeared into ash. I opened the grimoire and noticed the pages were not rebuilding themselves…figures. Great, a wasted grimoire.

Normally a giant version of that water dragon would come out, hell it's how I took care of half the guys in the warehouse in an instant and threw everyone into chaos, and since all they had on hand were a couple of handguns, maybe bolt-action rifle or two, my shield destroyed all of their hopes. Sadly, it is a grimoire, it does have other spells, strong spells…and it would have lasted 2 weeks…fuck what a waste.

I sigh, I was hoping I could squeeze some magic out of it before the two weeks were up…but my grimoire was never going to make it.

"Fuck," I let out, my right arm and my side still throbbing, my costume covered in sand and muck, and the guys I attacked got away and are now wary of me and now I lost a grimoire that was now destroying itself. Well no point in delaying the inevitable.

I pulled out a tiny book, the ones I used for emergency survival, I bought it in case this would happen. I concentrated on my lost grimoire, "[Ignite]," I dropped the grimoire and tiny book as they both became engulfed in flames.

I achieved my goal of venting out some anger and frustration, but I on a crime-fighting level I'm pretty sure I didn't accomplish anything outside of ruining the set up for a party and I lost a grimoire in the process. On the whole…I think I did alright, all things considering….

Well…at least I finally used my "spells" on someone. God knows I was close to just using the "tiny books," really, they were just white pieces of paper I cut up, folded and stapled together rather than an actual book, I carry some of them around with me just in case.

"Whelp," I said to no in particular, "I'm here, I might as well loot something, [Bubble Shield]," I chanted, the page in my intact grimoire let out a bright shine and then the shield was up again. I walked through the hole the care made noticing she left behind a few metal frames, the other van and a bunch of normal looking tools, nothing I could use. I kept walking until I made it back to where they were setting up. It was just a warehouse with lights set up overhead, now on the floor courtesy of my water dragon, some destroyed floorboard on stage, the smell of burnt hair and slightly singed guys.

I could hear people groaning, some guys were still down from my initial attack, other passed out…I'm pretty sure, like I said, some had their hairs burnt, others had burns, nothing too serious.

"-Yes she came out of nowhere and used shit made out of water! She shot us with dragons, fireballs and all other crazy shit! A lot of us are down, just please send an ambulance man!" I saw a man near the entrance holding chest while someone else, his body I think, had their arm around his shoulder. He was beat up.

"HEY!" I shouted, both men froze and looked at me, "Is that 911?" they didn't respond, so I pulled out a notepad.

"FUCK-wait! ITS 911-FUCKING 911-PLEASE DON'T HURT US," he yelled.

"Ey-Ey we're cool, we're cool," the other guy said, raising his arm, as they both backed out of sight.

As soon as they were gone I walked on to the stage, wow, I was in costume, everyone knocked out or too pained to get up, and I still felt the jitters of nervousness. I shook the feeling off and moved to the back. My reasoning?

I saw Skidmark appear from there, he had to have an office or something back here, or at least a place set up to store the cash they collect. I kept walking backstage, regretting the decision with each step I took. I mean there were bugs just lying on the floor! Jeez, how they put up with this? At one point I crossed a tub was filled with brown liquid and had tons of slugs around it. I just shook my head as I pushed forward. I found a room, the only room that wasn't trashed or had mattresses with strung people on it, high out of their heads that roaches just casually move about their bodies without any problems. I felt shiver crawl through my spine as I resisted the urge to vomit.

I opened the room, it was also a shithole, but they had some stuff stored. You know, glow sticks, bags of white powder and dried herbal substances, paper with roaches on it, and tons of lube…yeah that lube…why the fuck does a rave need tons of lube?

I just shook my head. It was a bust.

Anything worth picking probably left with Squealer…and all I got for my trouble was a bruised shoulder, a destroyed grimoire, and a dirty costume.

…at least I vented…wait maybe…

I briskly walked out the infested backstage and onto the stage and looked at my handy work, I let out a slightly tight smile and nodded. At least people will take me seriously now instead of just dragging me forward for a rape show or something.

I walked forward and jumped off the stage. As I moved to the entrance I briefly wondered if I should take off my shield and pick up a bolt-action rifle I spotted near the door. It was wooden and looked like it belongs in the last world war…okay, I wanted it. I tapped my intact grimoire and walked over to it.

"[Shield off]" I said as I got closer and picked it up, noticing how heavy it was, admiring the detail. The wood finish looked smooth and well maintained, no scratches or carving, it even came with a strap, no scope though. I'll take it.

"[Bubble Shield]," I cast the spell again and walked outside to see the two guys lying next to the door, their backs to the wall while they tried to whether the pain with a bottle of painkillers in one of their hands. Well, painkillers as far as I can tell.

"Hey," the both flinched and hissed in pain. "Relax I'm done, even though you guys deserve it for the rape thing earlier," I said as I put the gun strap over my shoulder. "Do you know if Skidmark has a safe with cash around here or something?"

"…You do realize the rave is…was tonight, right," one of the guy's asked.

"It's why I came when you were setting up."

"Right," the other guy said wearily, "well…ofm…um, if the rave doesn't happen, then there's no money…right?" ...Oh wow, how the hell did I skip that logic?

"Crap," I muttered, dropping my shoulders a bit. "Well…have fun I guess," I shrugged.

Both men said nothing, they just gave me an incredulous stare with their mouth slightly ajar, no the bottle of painkillers wasn't even opened yet. I just turned and walked away, beginning my search for a secluded spot.

"Fuckin' capes," I heard one of the guys mutter.

They were already in pain so I let it go, besides, I used to know the feeling. Don't get me wrong, I love capes, I wanted to be Alexandria when I was a little girl. Still though…. My dad has to deal with capes just about every other week and it made his life…difficult. He come's home late, a little bit messier than usual and acts like nothing was wrong, but once in a while he would let it slip that he had a run-in with capes. He'd act like it was nothing but…I'd just think the same.

Fucking capes.

I kept walking until I made it back onto the main road. I turned the corner and kept walking until I found a secluded alleyway. I outstretch my right hand, showing my palm to the sky, and then I chanted, "[key]," a key effortlessly floated out of my palm, it was a weird feeling, almost ticklish. The key was a gold colored lever lock, four and quarter inch long, about an inch thick, the round part was actually full with a rounded ruby rather than a donut shape ring, it had a crown with three tips for teeth. It stood on my hand for a second before it fell forward. I grasped it.

"[Shield off]" I dispelled my shield, I can't exactly use the key on the wall with the shield in the way. Another thing to work on. And just as I was about to touch the wall with the key I felt something hit my right leg, right below my the back of my knee. I looked down to see a suction cup with a string attached to it, but the weird thing about it is that the string led in front of me. I looked up.

"FUCK!" I yelled jumping back! In front of me was a cape casually leaning against the wall with his arms crossed!

"Eheheheheh," he chuckled, "never gets old," he laughed as he pulled the string and brought it to him, he wrapped up and stored it into his utility belt.

He was tall, about my height, so definitely older than me, he wore a black full-body costume with bright green lights outlining his armor every once in a while, complete with a helmet that had black glass (the visor) replacing the face and giving him perfect view of his surroundings, also it reflected green light every once in a while. I think it was going for "The Matrix" code-color scheme. His left arm has a wrist-mounted firing mechanism of sort, his right arm was free. He had a utility belt with various canisters and grenades and pockets, maybe some of those were clips for his wrist launcher (I think), I think some of them were silly spray, Leets formula, and I've seen videos of him pull paper out of his armor somehow.

"Lemme guess," he said as he pushed himself off the wall, I walked backward as the after-images following him appeared, looking like copies of him but with rainbow white noise, black and green being the dominant color. I think he was going for a glitch effect where you see multiples copies or after images. Think Agent Smith dodging bullets in "The Matrix," if that makes sense. A hologram would follow him, move ahead of him, and when he stops, it sorts of moves in place like a flickering flame, if that made any sense as well. All of his motions are copied and expanded upon, which was confusing as hell and hard to tell apart even with the white noise. He snapped a finger as he pointed at me, "The Wicked Witch of the West," he asked with a bit of mirth.

"I'm not a witch, and we're on the east," I replied.

"Funny, I could have sworn this continent was west of the eastern countries, but hey, show's what I know about geography. Also, you look like your melting," he said as he pointed to the muck, that was still moist and oddly green, falling off me.

"Squealer ran me over," I said.

"And you still don't think you're a witch?"

"The force sent me into the water," I argued.

"Yeah, I saw it," he admitted, "but the water was pushed away and everyone knows witches hate water."

"I'm a sorcerer."

"Where's your wand and owl?"

"No-stop-I'm not doing this," I said.

"Buzzkill," he said, "so your new right," I just nodded. "Well," he said as he stepped closer, his after images making my heart beat faster and forcing me to take another involuntary step back, "I'd shake your hand but, I'm pretty sure you don't want to risk it. Especially from the guy who's been following you and already got you lagged."

"About that, mind turning the hologram or whatever it is off, it's messing with me." He shook his head.

"One, it's part of the costume, two, its cool and I like it, three, it's supposed to do that," he answered. "So, got a name Miz soysoress," he said with a mixture of a horrible British accent and loony toons baby talk. I frowned.

"Hex," I replied.

"Sure thing," he began with an amused tone, "we can swing by my place, plenty of condoms and lube, some scented candles and lots of privacy," he continued with a straight tone.

"W-wha-" I stuttered in surprise, my eyes going wide. "NO! That-that's not what I said!" I yelled with my cheeks slightly flushing, inwardly cursing the fact that my mask only covered my eyes.

He laughed at my expense, "sorry I couldn't resist. It was too easy, Hexgirl," he chuckled.

"Just Hex," I said.

"No, no it's not," he said shaking his head, sounding like he wanted to laugh.

"Oh yeah, well-how would you like it if I called you…Clockblocker!" Note to self, get better with verbal abuse.

"…I'd love it!" He said with enthusiasm, "stop right there or I'll clean your clock! Sup bro, want some tail? Not on my watch! CLOCKBLOCKER!" He said striking poses while his holograms mimicked him and went back and forth, I just shook my head, at both the stupidity (both mine and his) and the holograms, it was really messing with me. "Well, enough of that," he said as he stood straight, "I'm Lag," he introduced himself.

"Right," I said, "Über and Leet's flunky," I've seen the videos, he sometimes played the bad guy for them when they do their video game stuff, but mostly he was like the muscle Über and Leet were missing. Ever since he got on the team, they've been able to tackle stronger foes. Originally it was just the duo going around doing video game villain shenanigans and streaming it online, their charm was about how bad the duo fucked up and that alone earned them a lot of cash, but when Lag joined, they've became a bit more aggressive and Leet's tech started having better results and their viewership grew. Lag had the power to freeze things in place, putting it in a temporary stasis, basically, freezing them in time. Any item he freezes is frozen in time, never to be moved until the effect wears off. For example, put a cardboard poster in the middle of the road, freeze it, and run a car through it, the car would be split in half… Über proved it was possible.

It lasted somewhere between thirty seconds to ten minutes, I heard it was random at first but I think Leet built something to remedy that. Also, instead of tech with long shelf life, Leet started making "consumable" items that had better results.

"Meh, it has benefits," he said, "tinker armor for example," he motioned his armor, his after images moving erratically. "Though it's not as showy as your golden bubble thing."

"Doesn't his stuff break down?" Leet was a tinker, someone who could build stuff way ahead of its time, though his tech could only be built once and when he tried to "invent" it again, it would either come out a very bad copy that was nowhere near as good as the original or it would blow up in his face, also the original didn't last too long so….

"Eh…" Lag rocked his head side to side, "it's been better recently, especially now that he's making stuff that's supposed to break down."

"I see…what do you want with me?"

"Well, see, I was staking that warehouse," he pointed in the direction I came from before he moved his finger to me, "then you showed up. Trashed the place," he motioned his finger around, "and ruined all the plans we had for it. Still, my bosses told me to give you the recruitment pitch. You know, the witch thing, they really dig it, plus you were bad ass."

"Sorcerer," I said, "and I'm not joining," I said. He shrugged.

"'Kay," he shrugged, "missing out on some great peeeerks," he tried to sound appealing.

"I'll live."

"If you say so," Lag said, "but there's another reason. Do you know about the cape rules yet?"

"Cape rules?"

"Unwritten rules, it's a mouthful, honestly. Basically, the doos and don'ts of not getting everyone on your ass, and you know, avoid a kill order."

"What? I never read about this online," I said in confusion.

"Well if I had to guess, I'd say that's why it's called the 'unwritten rules' Hexgirl," he pointed, "I thought sorcerers were about logic." I didn't bother replying. Once that was obvious he continued, "There's a form of truce or…I guess code of conduct rogues, villains, and heroes maintain, and you can imagine that the heroes would try to distance themselves from it in the public eye," he scoffed, "like their better than us. Usually there's a special rule in every major cape city, Brockton Bay has one besides the 'don't ramp up the sleeping dragon,' and it's no fighting in Somer's Rock. Its a pub where people can go drink and relax without fear of dying. The main general one every city follows is no unmasking of capes, second is the endbringer truce, and the third is to try to avoid doing lethal damage."

"BULLSHIT! You guys blow something up every week!"

"And we look good doing it," he admitted. "Jokes aside, the point is, if you can help it, try going easy on the normies, alright," he asked. "They're not the best humanity has to offer but they're not the worst, either. Medical bills aren't cheap and, regardless of the job, if they can't work…." I got the picture. No work=no money. No money=desperation. Desperation=crime.

"…Sorry, its-"

"Look don't worry about it, Hexgirl, just be careful next time. At least till a little while longer."

"It's just Hex…Wait why?"

"Über think's they're pretty close to getting a healer soon." Über, he was the guy who, given time, can have any skill he wants. He must use deduction skills or something like that when he's not performing.

"You mean someone with powers like that actually wants to join the Merchants," I asked with a confused expression. Who the hell would want to join a bunch of drug addicts? Especially when they can make a killing as a doctor or a healer on Protectorate pay, and they do pay a lot for healers.

"People have their reasons," he shrugged, "they may be an easy score but they do get good shit," he said with a small nod of approval. "Though, if Über isn't bullshitting me, Squealer could be a healer if she wasn't so focused on her next fix."

"Really? Isn't her thing big monster trucks or something?"

"Vehicle tinker," he confirmed, "Über said it's possible for her to create a really advanced ambulance or a medevac-copter equipped with tinker gizmos so save life if she tried."

"Huh," was all I said in surprise, Über acting like a thinker was a bit surprising, but the fact that Squealer had that potential was even more surprising and bit depressing when you consider what she was doing. "I honestly wouldn't have guessed," I said.

"I feel ya. Next, are you a hero?"

"Trying to be," I answered.

"Cool. Word of advice, join the Wards," he said.

"…What?" My mind went numb for a bit there. "Aren't you a villain?"

"Yeah, and?"

"Well…don't you think you should be scared that I might fight you right now and, I don't know, in future with a team? Also, weren't you trying to recruit me?"

"You gonna join us?"

"NO! I wanna be a hero!"

"Then go to the wards," he said with a shrug, "most solo rogues don't last that long, especially in the Bay. And from what I can't tell, you're not exactly good at it," he said, "I mean you're wearing a black robe that I'm fairly sure doesn't protect you and the only thing you have for a mask are thick glasses with some cloth. The hoodie would be better than a witch hat to help hide your identity. Seriously, you look more like Harry porter cosplayer than a cape. I mean, is that what you were going for?"

"Um…" I did say I was a sorcerer to him, didn't I?

"Don't care. Either way, I'd get on a team if I were you. Grab-Bag capes are rarities that get recruited, failing that, put down," I didn't like the way he said that and grab bag? What the hell is grab bag cape?

"Well, alright then," I said, getting angry at his attitude, "why didn't you join the wards?"

"I told you already, benefits, ones' the PRT and New Wave can't offer."

"Is tinker armor really worth being a flunky," I asked with an incredulous tone.

"Maybe," he shrugged, "We've got the Dragon Slayers running around, right? But at the time, I was more concerned with my Dad's health."

"Wait…his health? Couldn't Panacea-" I cut myself off as he shook his head.

"The one thing she couldn't touch," he replied before I could finish. Panacea is a healer from New Wave, a hero group in the bay that don't have secret identities. Panacea is known as, hands down, the best healer in the world. But even she has limits, his dad must have had one of them. "It was either Über and Leet or the Nazis, thankfully they came through." I took me a while to process what he said.

"So, you would have joined the Empire if there was nothing Leet could do?"

"In a heartbeat," he replied, "if Über and Leet couldn't do it, I'd go to Othalla, who can grant regeneration, and Viktor, who you can bet stole the skills from some black or Asian doctor. Thankfully it didn't come to that and now I'm happily a badass villain. Besides the armor, it does come's with perks you know," I scoffed.

"Like what?"

"I'm not tied down. I mean Wards, yay, lots of heroes, crap pay, lots of rules and regulation, appealing to public properly, lots of patrol for the sake of appearances. Not to mention walking around with handicaps. So great," he said sarcastically, "I mean it's not like I want to pick my hours, laze around, maybe act how I want in public, and you know, live."

"And yet you're pushing me to join," I said dryly.

"You'll last longer," those words stung me but for a different reason, "but hey what do I know about capes, I'm just a flunky," he said, after images becoming more active with the motions he makes. "Besides I get to do things heroes can't."

"…like?" I regretted asking. As soon as I did I felt my nipples get pinched through my clothes, sending a surprised shiver down my spine, eliciting a soft moan from lips. "ah~"

"TITTY TWISTER!" he yelled.

"EEEEEEEEEK!" I shrieked when I realized what he did. I honestly thought that was his hologram! FUCK THOSE AFTER IMAGES! FUCK THE MATRIX!

"PERVERT!" I yelled as I swiped…at nothing. Lag was gone. I looked around. I was alone…he must have frozen me in time when he yelled. Great, twice now he froze me in time and used it to mess with me!

"FUCKER!" I yelled, angry I wouldn't be able to exact my revenge right away. Then I felt something on my neck, I grabbed it with my hand and found it was a shiny black 3D business card with green letters that changes the images as you tilt it from side to side. One side had the web address to Über and Leet's streaming site, video library, and forum, ÜberandL33tdottv. The other side had different writing on it, it reads as:

/Don't Blame the Lag, GET GOOD NOOB!/

-Follow me on twitter at TheLagMan #Lagfails #Lagcam

I crushed it, dropped it on the ground and stepped on it!

I think I had enough surprise encounters with capes for one day. I took my key, pushed it into the wall in front of me, it sunk in without any resistance, I turned the key and outlines in the shape of a door appeared. I pushed the door in, walked inside while taking out the key and slammed the door shut behind me.

I blew away my troubles of day with one good hefty sigh. Then I smiled as I looked around, this was my room. No not the room I grew up with, but this was like small one-room college apartment I created.

It's just a white one room apartment with a platform that had my shower and bed accessible through a staircase on the side of the wall, it was sleeping space with a very comfortable king-sized bed with amazing comforters, there was a shower room with a bathtub that was practically a very expensive hot tub. Water was not real so I probably shouldn't drink it, while it would stay in my body, I don't want to imagine what would happen to my body when the water was to turn to ash, so I don't. No Kitchen, no heater but it's not like I needed it, I had fans everywhere that would turn on with adjustable speeds. It has Internet and desktop, but the keyboard and large flat screen Monitor can float around the apartment, and best of all, I could fall or jump off the platform and I would never hit the floor, my body or any object would simply come to a float a few inches above the ground or object.

Beneath the platform was my personal library, four tall white book shelves, shoulder to shoulder on the wall and next to them were two long tables, with books, notebooks, a box I labelled "Ammo" where I stored my idea, and various types of ink wells as well as writing utensils. I also had various books I borrowed from the library, some them physics, some fantasy and syfy, and some geographic, and even my mom's old CD player with a few albums. At the center was a pedestal that held a pink marble notebook titled "The Hex Room," where several of its pages burned and then reformed as different sets of pages that were burned again, a never-ending cycle, for a while anyway.

That thought made me depressed.

There was couches on the side and a mini fridge.

And right where I am at were two doors. One door was the entrance to this room that can be accessed from anywhere as long as I have the key. The other door was just purple-see through portal to my room, where I grew up.

I sighed.

I really wish I had known sooner.

I went upstairs and took a shower.

---

"Taylor listen I know…I kno-"

"Dad! I don't care!" I lied. "Go! I, honestly, don't care," I repeated as I sat on the couch while crossing my arms. I was angry at him. On one hand, I can't blame him…on the other hand, I really wanted to murder him!

"Taylor…I loved your mother, I still do," he said as he put his hand on my shoulder, I pushed it off, and felt him twitch when I did. He sighed, "no one can replace her. For either of us."

"Yet you're seeing someone else," I said bitterly.

"It…it just sort of happened," he said, "She saved my life and I treated her to coffee to repay her and…it just sort of happened," he explained. "I honestly never imagined it would get this far."

"I'm sure mom is very happy for you," I said as I turned the TV on. I shouldn't have done that, but I was angry. Not even a year and he moved to another girl already! I eyed his reflection on the TV, the news making difficult to focus on him, but I could more or less see his outline. He looked like he wanted to say something and when he was about to say something, maybe something that would repair our relationship (doubt it), there was a knock on the door…of course, it was her.

He let a breath of air out his nose as he went to door.

"Hi…is this a bad time?" I heard a woman asked.

"Ah-no, sorry I was just," he turned to look at me as I changed the channels, "it's nothing."

"I see, I hope you don't mind helmet hair?"

"Your hair looks fine," he assured her with soft chuckle. "Um, Taylor will you be-"

"Dad, just go," I said. I heard him sigh again.

"The number of the restaurant is next to the phone, call if anything happens," he said.

"You still have my phone number, right," the woman asked. I didn't answer. "Taylor?"

"Yes, Hannah, I have your phone number," I said turning to look at her, she had dark hair and olive skinned, a little shorter than my dad, pretty sure I would outgrow her, she had perfectly shaped white teeth and was at least a decade younger than my dad. Her was long hair reached an inch or so above the middle of her shoulder blades, she mostly just kept it in a short pony tail.

"Okay," she said in a low voice.

"Don't stay up too late," Dad said.

"It's Friday," I said as I went back to watching TV.

"Right," he said. "either way, it's a bad habit to get into." I didn't reply. He closed the door and left. In a minute or too, I heard the car start and leave the driveway.

I was left alone to my own devices. I was simply content on wasting my time watching T.V.

---

"Once again, Vallation saves the day," a news caster happily said as he showed a clip containing the cape in question. Valllation just stopped a few moving pickup trucks with 88 labeled on it and covered it in containment foam.

"Vallation's power is touch-based telekinesis correct," asked a guest, some woman from the Youth Guard I think.

"Right you are," said answered news caster, "this Ward can control objects after she touches them," the video showed a young girl dressed in a white and green dress-like armor that was covered in green shields, she wore a green helmet with a green tinted visor, riding a giant shield while two giant shields followed her, all of her giant heavy shields served to soak up attacks and dispense containment foam.

Not exactly the flying artillery like E88's Purity, the flying Nazi glowstick, but no one wants to face a flying bulwark who can move giant (suspected to be tinker) shields and can dispense the miraculous containment foam while soaking up their attacks. Vallation's shields has functions that allow her to close off a road, dispense containment foam, and even hold medical supplies, and move large amounts of wounded. Among the current Ward roster, she has been on it the longest and is rumored to be the youngest, and everyone has great expectations as to what kind of hero she will be when she graduates and joins the Protectorate. "I think she said her limit was around two tons per item, but she is still a force to be reckoned w-"

I turned off the TV. I stood up, turning off the lights with the plan to go upstairs and enter my "apartment," and try to get some work done.

My shield would last me two weeks, it was already on a time limit so I might as well do some edits while I can and maybe remake my Water Grimoir-no, that'd waste time, I'm already on a clock! Finishing my other attack Grimoires would be easier, it'll be rushed so the quality won't be that good…maybe I can add diagrams or some drawings, it still counts. I should only waste three days on this, any more than that then I'll just have to cut my losses. Two weeks…I already lost one, I refuse to lose another!

The phone rang. I quickly went to it and picked it up, "Herbert residence, Taylor speaking," I answered.

"Hi, I heard that a slu," I hung up. I recognized the voice. Jesus, I was gone from that school and they still insist on harassing me? My god why the hell do they have it in for me? Well, thankfully this is the only part of my dad's girlfriend that I like. I pressed a button on a black box next to the house phone and it started blinking red. From what Hannah explained, the box would record the call, keep track of the number, even if it says no caller ID and it would be sent to her desk in the PRT building. This is why I disliked it and it was a bit unfair, not even a week of seeing me and she realized I was being bullied while my dad never noticed in the past few months.

The phone began to ring again.

I know I should have said something to my dad but, what was I supposed to say? 'hey dad my best friend who was practically a sister to me betrayed me and started using every secret I ever told her to make my life a living hell and bullies me for the fun of it?'

"Hebert residence, Taylor speaking."

"You're a miserable coward Hebert, you know that," another voice I recognized.

"Are you seriously still trying to harass me, Sophia" I asked. Normally I would never spoke with a higher tone on Sophia, but after transferring schools, and beating up a few Merchants, I had a good chunk of confidence back plus the recorder too. "It's pathetic."

"Look at you, growing a spine," someone said with an amused tone.

"Pretty easy when I don't have someone pouring shit over my head and tripping me in the halls," Sophia was the main aggressor.

"It's were you belong," she said.

"Uh huh, how's Madison doing," I asked.

"…why do you care," she asked, genuinely sounding surprised. It was logic really.

"Well. With me gone, you guys have no one to bother. Otherwise you wouldn't call me. Madison follows you around a lot, not really an instigator, so if I had to gueeeess, the next person you would be after is…."

"Madison…." Sophia finished. "…Huh, Emma did say you were smart."

"Well I'm hanging up," I said.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," she said.

"Why not?"

"Well it would be shame if I didn't get to talk to you, I'd have to go to St. Elmos and visit you there," she didn't sound mean but I knew it was a threat.

"Are you stalking me?"

"No no, just making sure trash like you know where they belong," she said.

"Well, on that subject, I should probably tell you that right now my telephone is connected to a black box that is recording and-"

"WHAT?"

"-sending everything we say to the office-" the line went dead. "of a PRT employee." I finished. Jeez. I would have figured that she would have thought I was bluffing. Oh well. I was about to go upstairs when the phone rang again…what does Hannah do anyway? She has training but she didn't strike me as the typical PRT trooper…well it's not like I cared.

Once more I answered it.

"Hebert residence, Taylor Speaking."

"Holy shit Tee, you weren't joking about the landline thing. I don't remember ever answering like that before."

"Hey Peyton," I said, "when you hate cell phones, well, you stick to landlines," I answered. Peyton was someone I think I was becoming friends with…what is it with me and redheads?

"So you said, geez, you have to tell me the story behind that," she said, sounding enthusiastic. I think Emma would have gotten along with her, at least before both of us drove her crazy…back when we were friends anyway.

"Maybe, so, did you forget your homework," I quickly changed the topic.

"NO! You have internet, right?"

"Um dialup, yeah, why?" I could hear her hiss, yeah, I-my internet sucks and my "apartment" just has an extension of the house Wi-Fi.

"Well, it should be fine, you know Über and Leet's streaming show, right?"

"…yeah," I was not liking where this was going, "why do you ask?"

"Well check it out! There's a new cape in the bay and it's a grab-bag too!"

"What? What's a grab-bag?" The hell? Did they record me?

"Oh, Grab-capes are capes with multiple powers. Not like Eidolon, but have minor powers in addition to their main power. I thought you were cape geek."

"Casual geek," I answered.

"Pff, normies," she said, huh, Lag said that too, is it a gaming thing? "Anyway, lots of people are saying it's a tinker! You have to check it out!"
"Okay I will, calm down," I said, that was my plan, what the hell did they record me doing?

"You better, see you Monday!"
"I will, good night."

"Night!"

With that, I hung up and ran upstairs.

I didn't bother turning on the lights, I already knew where to go. I ran to my turtle, it wasn't an actual living turtle, it was just an iron turtle 4 inches long, it's legs and head were almost inside it's shell, the shell itself held a natural pattern, except for the fact that it had a gold key with a ruby embedded in its shell, a key similar to the one I used earlier in the day. I had the turtle on my desk, only those with the key (me) will acknowledge its presence. I touched the ruby and I felt my hand get dragged inside the ruby, along with my arm, then the rest of my body. Pretty soon I was in the apartment.

I based it on the turtle on a news I read a while back about an Italian gang abusing a Case 20, basically animal capes that are rarer than healers. The turtle they used had the uncanny ability to swallow every in front of it from crickets to limos, the downside was that no one knew how to make the turtle cough everything back out with accuracy, it's how they got caught.

I ran up the stairs, grabbed the keyboard and monitor and then jumped down to the first floor. My momentum died abruptly and shook me to my stomach, almost at the point where killing my momentum was pointless, then my feet touch the floor. I may have designed it to gently stop me but it didn't actually do it gently. The quality of the work simply wasn't good enough, one downside to my power.

I quickly moved to the couch and search for Über and Leet's website. I got on a minute later, after getting a quick rant a pop screen developed by one of the two that detected that my internet was slow and blamed me for it.

It recommended I download the file as a zip then un-zip it or something and use a program of their provided list of sponsored video players to watch its contents. Seeing as it was Über and Leet's website, no way in hell. I rather stream it, better but only slightly.

Dialup…well its dialup. It will get you what you need and maybe shine mercy on you…tonight was not such a night.

Three minutes later… only two seconds had buffered.

"…this is such a bad habit," I muttered as I stood up from the couch and walked to the tables. I knew it was bad but it made me smile, I picked up a blank sheet of paper and yellow number two pencil.

After tapping my chin with the pencil for a bit, I decided to hit my head with it when I realized I had a method for times like these. I just wrote, it didn't matter what!

Not the best method, especially if a paper was due in an hour or so, but it got my thoughts going. Slapstick, that'll work in pinch! Sadly, I'm not all that great at jokes and I'm no good at writing awkward situations, but thankfully I don't need pure jokes and it doesn't need to be longer than a physical page, three physical pages at most!

After a few minute's I got a quick story out, I ripped the pages and walked back to my computer.

The story was quick and simple, I called "Magic." A little boy was trying to stream a video on his desktop, about two hours long, but his internet speed was slow, it was Dialup. So he tried to find ways to make the internet speed go faster, three tries total. When he failed the third time his sister came in and used a spell to speed up the internet and load the two-hour movie in just a few seconds. She inquired why he tried to do silly thing and simply not ask her, even though she would have said no, and he said that he was trying to invent magic, so then she wouldn't have to use magic, that drains her life. After that they sat together, as siblings that found a form of truce, and watched a movie. Yes, it was as rushed as the summery was.

"Okay, [Dial-up Speed-up!]" I chanted as the pages on my hand started to burn, a stream of light appeared from the pages and went to the computer, the video, about twenty minutes or so began to load at much faster pace, not instant mind you, but by the time the pages in my hand had turned to ash, the video was a bit more than halfway done loading.

Now to wait for the rest.

This was my power. Not magic but a construct of my design projected into reality.

I can bring whatever I write into reality and it has to be by me. It suited a daughter of a rhetoric professor like me, but as cool as it sounded it was really a pain to deal with. One limit is that the quality of writing directly affects the quality of the thing I bring to life.

Here's an example, if I tried to create a superman or something of that nature, the quality of the work, not the idea or potential the work has, affects how that being would come out; if the quality of the work is bad then instead of a cute, smart, and powerful man, I'd get a halfwit, hopefully average looking man with maybe, MAYBE, decent powers. Not that I would ever bring an intelligent creature to life only to see it die in ashes, that's just cruel.

Another limit is that my powers require the pages of the story to burn as fuel for the construct's reality, I think it's fuel anyway. A few rules in that regard that I found is that making my letters bigger or simply leaving dead space in order to use up more pages does not buy me time and actually works to lower the quality of the work. If anything, it'll burn faster instead of giving me a few more seconds. The inverse of using dead space, writing too much or going on and on doesn't make my work delectable, while I might get a few extra seconds, or even less, the quality of the work goes down. I don't have a reliable measure of time, a page can burn in six seconds, or it can burn in one. It's not like everything I write is good or a masterpiece, at most my work is alright.

From what I know, I can bring anything into reality. A magical sword, a magical creature, some sort of high-tech gizmo, or even entire locations themselves! The pages of the story that holds those constructs burn to fuel their reality and the quality decides how powerful or how close to what I wrote will appear.

I know, I know, with powers like these I could probably build a brief time machine and go back in time and save my mom or send a message…I can't.

I already tried time travel, raising the dead, even calling on the soul of my mother…don't judge me I just…I tried and it didn't work, alright, quality had nothing to do with it. It's probably an aspect of my power that I have noticed or understood yet, I've only had for two months after all.

Another thing I noticed is that I can't copy other's work, so I can't copy the Harry Potter series by hand and use my power on it. Fanfiction…pushes it. I could go the "50 shades of gray" route, make fanfiction then change names and what not and it becomes original…my power labels it as very low quality.

I say that's bullshit, power!

It wasn't just that, I have a burning desire for originality, I don't… I don't know if I originally had that or if my power made me that way. Also, ambiguity is my enemy. The more description and explanation I can give about the construct I want to create, in a delectable way of course, the better it comes out. Odds are that if I make it ambiguous it'll end up working against me, see the thing I struggle the most with my powers is the letter vs the spirit of the text. Sort of like law really, the letter of the law vs the spirit of the law; my mom's vocab list had a word for this, scriptum/voluntas I think.

The video finished loading.

The first was nothing but Über and Leet, dressed in another video game theme costume I didn't recognize, discussing some potential future projects. Nothing good there. The next was a breakdown of their scuffle with Empire 88, specifically with Rive.

This I paid attention to.

"Rive is the Empire's fairly new Wunderwaffe," Leet began, "I'll admit, she is not fun to deal with."

"I concur," Über agreed, "she can turn a building into a pretzel without actually having to touch it in a matter of seconds, she could even do more if it was devoid of life. Her special distortion is very hard to deal with but-"

They showed a video of a girl with blonde hair wearing a mask that matches her black and red robes that held a stylized 88 stitched to a red ban on her left arm. She was twisting and bending space in the middle of streets.

"We know, living creatures interfere with her abilities. From what we can tell, she can map out locations and even use the interference to map out where people are. Think of an invisible man outside in the rain." An image of such thing appeared next to Rive.

"We came to conclude this bit from when our Snitch caught her directing the empire's troops," there was a video of her directing guys with the Star Wars Stormtrooper helmets that were obviously photoshopped in, "toward the direction of the enemy."

"Hey boss, what about that crazy bit she does," Lag asked from offscreen.

"YES!" Leet said enthusiastically, "I'm sure everyone is wondering how she is doing this! Oh man this gave me a few inspiration."

"So I've noticed, so I've noticed," Über nodded, "here is a video of the dreaded Lag facing off against Rive," a video of said events.

"As you can see, even Rive can't stop the Lag from happening," it shows a video freezing the area's Rive is bending in time.

"Right," Über said using his finger to point at the affected area. "It seems that even Lagged out space is something that interferes with her power. A mild nuisance as quickly shown," Rive controlling the space not afflicted. "But our man Lag is still able to make his way thanks to his glitches," holograms of lags going to different directions, some even just appearing there like teleportation. Obviously, it confused Rive.

"Oh! This is the weird bit, I'm sure everyone is talking about this." Lag is getting close to Rive, then suddenly there's ten! "THERE IT IS! THERE IT IS! THERE IT IIIIIIS!" Leet yelled enthusiastically as he pointed at the copies of Rive surrounding Lag, all pointing handguns at him.

"Do we have another person in the bay besides Oni Lee who can make shadow clones?" Über asked in sportsmen like manner, "well, yes and no," he answered. "I'll explain later, for now, please watch what happens." All the Rives shot at Lag but he seemed to shrug it off thanks to his armor, tinker bullshit, he ran up to the closest Rive and grabbed her, no doubt surprised that he shook off the bullets and even more so that he touched her face. After he did all the Rives were frozen.

"Look at this shit! This is like Lag at a disgusting level!" Leet commented, his mask showing weird electronic 8-BIT faces.

"THANKYOU!" Lag yelled off-screen.

"Lag, had no idea what to do next, so he just runs along to do his business," Über said showing Lag running to the original Rive. He opened her robe and displayed her thongs that were paired with a garter belt connected to fishnet stockings, then the words and voice came on the screen in a deep voice:

"PANTY SHOT!"

"You know, I'll be honest," Leet said with a finger to his mask's chin, "I always fantasized her wearing a thong under those robes."

"It's a girl who can make space her b-BLOOP, there's no way she wouldn't," Über said with a lot of mirth in his tone.

"I was hoping she'd be commando!" Lag yelled off-screen, the comment causing both men to chuckle. I was a bit horrified, what if he did the same thing to me!

"AHHHH! Such a waste," Über agreed.

"No-no, it's the clothes guys, it's the clothes that get the thoughts going," Leet argued, "it's what whets the appetite."

"CHEERY-NOOB," Lag yelled, to which he got a middle finger blacked out in response.

"EY! No! I'm a man," Leet argued, "I'm not a cherry guy!"

"Still, I know everyone is wondering why would Lagging a clone cause them all to Lag? Well…" Über questioned as the video continued with Lag, revealing all of Rive's clones' underwear while the 88 thugs seem to be at a loss whether or not to shoot him. "We believe she's doing something around the lines of Schrodinger's superposition thought experiment." The video changed, "for those of you who don't know, this is known as Schrodinger's Cat." There was a video of cartoon cat being put in a box, "it goes like this. Put a cat in a box with something dangerous, a bomb, poison, or a radioactive isotope," said items were added in. "These items have a fifty percent chance of either killing the cat for sure or never killing the cat. But just before you open the box to find out the answer, you force both realities to be true. The cat is both dead and alive."

"The funny thing about this is that," Leet began, "Schrodinger was trying to disprove quantum mechanics but actually received an award for this thought experiment and proved quantum mechanics to be true. Otherwise, if quantum objects couldn't be in two states at once, the very computer you are watching this stream from wouldn't exist." Objects existing in two states…adding that to the ammo box…

"INCEPTION," Lag yelled.

"We won't bore you with the science too much, just quickie, alright," Über promised. "While we can't see a cat in two states because it is simply too big, we can see chemical bonds between two atoms. See, two atoms can share electrons. Take a molecule, a water molecule, One Hydrogen and two Oxygen, the molecule doesn't have an electron on just on the hydrogen atom or oxygen atoms," a video showing three atoms with electrons "it has electrons on both atoms, they share their electrons. It is in a superposition state. We believe that Rive is somehow bending space to achieve this, which is odd considering the Manton Effect she is under. While I'm sure she can handle a cut or bullet in that state, after all she is and isn't there, and since it is superposition, Lag here-"

"Sup."

"- can freeze Rive in that state."

"Well enough about the chick with a magic theme," Leet cut in, "Leet's hear about the chick with the magic theme. CUE SONG!"

"Introducing Brockton Bay's newest magical-themed Cape" Über introduced me, oh fuck! "HEXGIRL!" the title appeared over an image of me holding my open grimoire with one hand while holding a stern expression. WHAT THE HELL IS SO HARD ABOUT JUST DOING HEX?

It showed me in my costume, I couldn't find a witch costume that wasn't slutty or a harry potter cosplay, so I just went with a black robe with pockets inside over a dark pair of jeans and black shirt that was free of any design, then I just used custom glasses with cloth beneath it that looked a black veil or something that belonged lingerie, and to top it all off was a witch hat.

At the bottom right corner of the screen was the name of the song, Abracadabra by Steve Miller.

"I gotta say I love how she can pull off that stern expression," Leet said. "No dress but she rocks the cloak."

"I know~" Über agreed, "She like, pulls off the stern semi-tsundere-witch look you see in Manga these days, damn does this song do her justice."

"I wanted the scoodieboo song," Lag said offscreen.

"That song sucks," Leet hollered.

"This little witch-" fucking sorcerer! "-girl got a good bag of tricks," Über explained. the video changed to me, approaching the warehouse from a distance. "Look at this, Skidmark thinks he got an easy mark." Skidmark used his power to create a force field to push me in the middle of the construction crew who were hollering and saying stuff like "flash your vadge" and what not.

"But it was at this moment," Leet continued, "that Skidmark knew, he fucked up." In the video, I took out my Water Grimoire and cast my water dragon spell, there was two ways to cast the spell, concentrate on an area and the dragon will charge at the area and explode, or simply used you're dominant hand to control it. My right hand wielding a closed grimoire and encase in a small bubble of water that didn't damage my Grimoire while my left hand made its way to my other grimoire and activated the bubble shield.

"Dragons and shields, and the best combo," Leet yelled while clapping as I maneuvered the dragon around the warehouse while the thugs started shooting at me.

"Pretty damn good shields," Lag commented.

"Check this out," Über said as my dragon exploited on whatever Squealer was working on. "look at what she brings out next." From my grimoire, I pulled out a green water gun with gold decorations with glass see-through tank of glowing green liquid, [Nemo's Hand Cannon]. The water gun fires liquefied magic that shoots out as steam, the spray can reach up to five meters, sadly the quality reduced it to three. It wasn't knockout gas, still working on that, it was "knockback" steam, I was a little ambiguous with the force touched would be knocked back as if they got hit by a water cannon used in riot control, the quality made the force drop a bit but the result was still good.

"That thing is like a water cannon," Leet yelled, "it's getting my tinker senses tingling!"

"And you can expect some news toys, folks, lots and lots of new toys," Über said.

"YES!" Lag yelled. "Dibs on the first toy!"

"Pleb please," Über scoffed, "I get first picked. Oh, check this out, this is what got my attention," my field spell. [Ocean Sand Sanctuary]. MY field spell can manifest in a few weird ways, one way is that I can create space within a space. Like an island with a mountain that creates and alter space in order to fit inside a small room or a world inside a wardrobe. Ocean Sand Sanctuary was actually the former, I figured the Merchants had the home advantage, so I took it from them.

Ocean Sand Sanctuary manifests itself as a plot of white sand in the middle of the ocean protected by a force field that acted a bit like oobleck, the more pressure on the wall from either inside or outside the stronger it gets, and there's only one exit. It's through a rope with tons of knots and footholds that leads up to the top of the barrier (aren't I evil?). The area had plants that created oxygen while others consumed it and produced carbon dioxide, they create a breathable environment and if the balance is disturbed the plants will work harder to maintain it. There were stone pillars about that touched the barrier, mostly it filtered the salt water and created fresh water that pulled at the pillars' feet.

They were all trapped inside with me.

My Water Grimoire, before it was destroyed, had three types of spells, actual magic spells, item spells, and field spells, three each. Since I wrote stories I could fit three well-described constructs per category and have the story fall back on it a lot. All I have to do is pick one construct from the rest.

For my magic spells: I wrote a story about a mage who was shunned for being unable to manipulate fire in her village and flees to the sea and learns to manipulate water from a hermit she finds fishing. She learns to make water whips from the moisture in the air, make a dense mist that obstructs everyone's view, and create a dragon made of water.

For my item spell: It was about an adventurer named Nemo, he would travel the seas hunting the oceans for lost treasures and items now forbidden to make. He would restore the items he found. His first tool was a radar the size of a pocket watch that would map out the surrounding areas, a sonic baton powered by liquid magic, and finally, what he just finished restoring, his hand cannon.

The fields spells: it was just a book with three very detailed locations, I acted as if I was the main protagonist exploring the locations. The first location was Ocean Sand Sanctuary, the second was Liz's beach, just that a tiny beach with strong tides that traps people on the island. And lastly the Sea Prison, a prison in the sea that was more or less a labyrinth only I knew how to navigate.

"Here she is firing off fireballs, from what I can tell there's a time limit for everything she summons and it has a cooldown period. It seems she uses the fireballs to keep the pressure up while her spells cool down," Über analyzed. "Hmm, her magic system sounds a bit weird but it's cool." Oh, I guess they use stuff like that too.

"It's all bullshit," Lag called out.

"Yeah, same," Leet said, "I mean can't tell if it's a tinker playing magician or if its master playing tinker," master? What?

"Could be a shaker," Über pitched in, "or a really weak stranger…it's all bullshit."

"Well for now, she seems to be playing for the other team," Leet said with a small chuckle.

"But don't worry folks, we'll be sure, to ah, bring her over to our side," Über kept it up. My mouth fell open a bit, did they just imply that I'm gay? Not that I have anything against it, it's just that I'm not homosexual.

"I'll be sure to help," Lag pitched in.

"No no no," Leet said, "you gave it your shot, next time I'll do it. Let the ah...master, show you how its done," he said with a small laugh. Target confirmed.

"Well night, folks, we'd love to talk more but I'm pretty sure we can all agree that we're women magnets and we got to build our defenses if you know what I mean," Über said. I exited out of the video.

Three dead idiots confirmed I thought to myself. I got up with the keyboard and dragged the screen back to the tables where I'm working on my other grimoires.

When I first discovered I could bring my constructs from my books to life, the first thing I thought about was how to reduce my work load. If I have to burn up pages then that means I have to constantly create stories I've already written and no matter what a person says, even if they like the story, even if it's a good chance to improve it, it will only get more and more tedious as time goes on and eventually I'll lose interest, the quality might even go down.

Quality…it's suggestive, depends in large part to the reader. So far, I'm the only reader and honestly, half the time I don't like my work, and when I plan a story out, it goes off in a different direction. Maybe the quality might improve if I have others read the story, it'll probably drop when they read it, but then again, I don't know if their opinion effects the quality of the work from my power's point of view.

I wasn't really sure what would work, that is until in class we had a visitor who tried to show us the wonders of programing using DrRacket. It was thing that he showed that got me interested. It was recursion, when a function calls itself.

See in programming you can make a function that calls other functions. Example:

;; [;;] means "the following is not part of the code," it's used for comments.

(define y 5) ;; y is now defined as 5

;; add-y is function that will add y, defined as five, to a natural number.

(define (add-y nat) ;; add-y is the name of the function and nat is natural number

(+ nat y)) ;; separating a code in two lines it is easier instead of keeping the code in the same line, this is nat + y.

.

now when you can call the function, (add-y 7), for example, you should get 12 as answer because it is simply adding 5 to 7. A recursion is when a function calls on itself, usually you see conditionals in this process. Example:

;; countdown function should take the natural number and countdown to zero using conditionals.

(define (countdown nat)

(cond ;; cond is conditional

[(= nat 0) 0] ;; reads as: "is nat equal to zero? If so, answer is zero"

[else (countdown (- nat 1))] ;; this is a recursion, only every time countdown calls itself, 1 is subtracted from number nat. reads as: "if not zero, then answer is countdown (natural-number minus 1)"

))

.

With this function, the answer will always be zero, no matter the number in nat since nat will always be reduced to zero.

This struck me as odd, wouldn't it be easier not to make it a conditional and just have the function call in on itself? I asked the guest this, I made to sure ask why was the nat=zero part important.

The answer I was given was that zero is where it stops, where the function is supposed to stop, otherwise, it would never stop and crash. He gave me a hypothetical. In this same function, if the recursion wasn't (- nat 1) and instead was (+ nat 1), the function will keep calling on itself, will keep adding one to nat, forever.

This was because 0 was the stop point, not 10 or 100. It would simply keep calling on itself forever, the program can't handle that, so it will crash, needing the program to restart.

I got a huge burst of inspiration that I didn't even bother waiting until I got home, I just started drafting then there. For a week I kept drafting and revising the story, experimenting with different ways it could work in my head, looking at coding a bit more to see if I can organize things the same way coding does. After it was all said and done, I finally had my grimoire.

Despite the marble color I tried to make the grimoire look a tad bit authentic, hoping maybe that will increase the quality. I removed the papers from the notebook binding, dipped each sheet in coffee and then dried the pages, using magic of course, and it left it looking a bit old, the original blue lines in smudge but still pretty good. I wrote everything in with neat cursive handwriting that looked pretty and legible with my mom's old dip pen and ink well. The result?

A book that's only purpose was to be magical, store stories I choose to put in there, and last forever. Seriously, all my problems were solved!

The grimoire wasn't like my previous works, small stories pretty much that went up in flames. My grimoire is a collection of theories, principal, rules, each one with a small parable to help explain it and offer different interpretations, hell I even had to add more pages from different notebooks just to keep it working. Each theory, principal, rule I came up with called on each other in order to work or make sense, this was a work that would build on itself the further one read! It was for this reason that I was able to bring the whole collection into reality instead of one construct! All of the principles, theories, and rules that governed that book was treated a single unified construct and became real!

The grimoire will memorize itself and then recreate itself, causing the pages to slightly glow. It takes the ashes that were used to fuel its existence and recreates the pages. The phenomenon that burns the pages, burns everything, but oddly it didn't affect how I used the grimoire. After it burned its pages, it would go back and started all over again. Constantly burning and recreating itself. It had three slots, I gave it three, it worked perfectly, so either quality was irrelevant or high. I could freely put in any story I want in the slots and remove it at will. I can edit any story in the slots without ruining how it came out, it was like a magic editor!

After that I just sort of…let myself go. I came up with tons of idea and put them all into an ammo box I kept under my bed and I just kept coming up with ideas. I mean I created this grimoire and it worked like charm! I took a dingy on a weekend, and created an area using my grimoire to practice! It was mostly just water spells, they were still on the weak side, still trying to boost the quality but it was awesome! The first week of using the grimoire it was just flexing, seeing what I can do! So far I still needed to use my powers to on the stored stories but I was working on a way to fix that. I didn't make the stories infinite, I just had them remade and ready to be used again. Sadly it took a while to remake the books from ash, so I had the book sound out the fairy dust/glitter sound effects whenever a spell was ready.

The next week I started making a new one, I even made a few "apartments" to try out for the hell of it. That's when it happened.

I was in the process of finishing up my second grimoire, a little tedious but it would be worth it. To carry a few grimoires with me. Just before I put the finishing touches on my grimoire, my original grimoire suddenly burst into flames and burnt into ash in a literal flash, including the stories it had stored in at the time. Apparently, infinity was two weeks or it took two weeks to get to infinity. Two weeks. My grimoire only lasts two weeks.

That…really wasn't that big of a deal, it's only two weeks so what?

But it got me thinking…if infinity for a grimoire was only two weeks, if the effects of my power only last two weeks…how long would my powers last?

No one know where parahuman powers come from let alone what fuels them. It took a different type of grimoire, a different set of theories, ideas, and principle with parables working in tandem. Again, it took a week. It would analyze the phenomenon that is my power when I bring a construct to reality (another grimoire), analysis what it is, trace it back to its origin, and gauge how much energy it has, and then translates it into how much time I have if I consume the same amount of energy only 70 per week, ten spells a day.

I saw it written in ash.

My blood ran cold, I didn't breathe, I couldn't suck in air, I couldn't feel my limbs, the world around was starting to move on its own. I-I think I was shaking at the time.

[304D, 1HR, 4Mins, 32S]

three hundred and four days, one hour, four minutes and thirty-two seconds. For all my suffering, I only had my powers for less than a year. That was two weeks ago.

The fight with the merchants…that was 22 spells total, plus the spell I used to make the internet go faster…23 spells.

…I don't even want to imagine how much time I shaved off.

If I assume my powers are like a battery, then there's still a self-discharge where the battery loses power even when not in use.

All the while I have no idea how to recharge the battery in a manner that wouldn't make me public enemy number one. I mean…there is a possibility that I could steal the energy or whatever that powers other parahuman powers…but I doubt I'd get away with it.

I may not know about the unwritten rules, but endbringer truce is one of the things I knew about. It's when both heroes and villains put aside their differences in order to face a threat much larger than the two sides…the endbringers. And if the PRT has me, everyone will point to me as a reason for not joining the fight, not to mention I'd actually reduce the numbers of people we need in that fight…jeez, how many spells would I waste to stay alive?

Also, without the ability to recharge myself what do I tell the PRT? "Hi I'm a cape but if I use my power about 70 times a week I'll lose my powers around ten months," yeah, great pitch.

And if I go out on my own and steal parahuman powers? Well, pretty sure that's a one-way ticket to the Birdcage.

We have the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center, better known by its nickname, the Birdcage.

Basically, it's a place where dangerous parahumans go, extremely dangerous parahumans, no parole, no escape, no chance of retrial or release, one way in, no way out. No visitors either. Hell, there's conspiracy theory online that speculates that the parahumans are actually killed instead of being caged. And the person they put in there, the super trump who steals powers…Glaistig Uaine, a woman who takes the powers of dead parahumans and kills current ones if she wants their power…apparently, she always does.

There was no way I was going to go there. Pretty sure I could break out if my power's true nature is never discovered, but would I even be given time, in a prison, filled with the world's most dangerous parahumans ever to live?

…best not to find out.

I was down to two options:

1) Be conservative. Try to stretch out my powers as long as I can, pick which fights I want to get into, even if it means not participating would results in death or even further problems.

2) Go out like the brightest candle, use everything I have and don't hold back and hope it means something in the end.

Neither was particularly appealing.

But I was not in despair.

While I would never waste my magic on making clothes, I did, however, end up making one article that I desperately needed, glasses. The inspiration came from a TV show.

I was watching TV one night, you know, pretty broken up about losing my powers that won't even last a year if I use it more than 70 times a week, and I ended up watching cartoons...only…it was weird. The animation was more appealing but it has swear words, blood, even death…I liked it. I think it's a Japanese cartoon from earth Aleph.

Either way, this cartoon had a magic system involving drawings that were never clearly explained. All it had was circles and maybe squiggles, all based on the old concept of alchemy, you know, the hunt to turn objects into gold. But it had a grounding principle… "equivalent exchange." Turns out it was a series and tonight had a bunch of episodes playing, so I got to understand it a bit more.

From what I could gather, you need complete understanding of an object from how it's made to its chemical components, a grid that channels energy into the object at the center, it deconstructs the object and reconstructs it into a desired form. The circles, as to what part did what or how a fan can make their own transmutation circle for a purpose was never explained. But the show did take actually science to hear, the law of conservation: "Energy and matter cannot be destroyed nor created, only reshaped." This gave me the inspiration I needed, the hope I needed.

I could bring any construct into reality…including ideas and principles, no matter how BS or bizarre they are. Using another grimoire like book, where I just made a bunch made up theories and principles work together and build on each other. I had everything prepared beforehand, all the necessary materials, and used my own, fanfic-form of alchemy and created three pairs of glasses, the same ones I used in my costume. Obviously, it wasn't a normal set of glasses, no I don't mean the extra cloth, I added that later.

The idea here is that even if my experiment failed, I'd have free glasses in my prescription. But the experiment worked. The glasses were thick, almost needlessly thick, inside the thick frames were a form of technology that honestly went beyond the realm of logical science altogether, it wasn't something that could be reproduced, I'm sure, by any tinker, not the same way I did. The principles that governed the glasses and gave them their special properties no longer exist, I needed the grimoire to burn to ashes for the experiment. But the glasses didn't need power from them. The glasses drew power from around them any form they could by the most abundant resource, solar, kinetic, thermal, hell it would even siphon energy from me. It's function? To hide the identity of the wearer.

How the hell did I test it? I had dad wear it, I told him it was in the mail and that it must be his. Obviously, my dad and I have different prescriptions so he couldn't see that well out of it. But while he was wearing it, I didn't recognize him. I literally could not recognize my dad. The glasses, familiar as hell, but the face of the man who raised me and even made me hate him for distancing himself after mom's death, could not put a name to it.

I even took a picture, used my power to create a construct that will match an image to another reasonable one, and it worked. I did this time to see if it could find the picture I took of dad with the glasses (used a spell for it) and find a reasonable match with that picture to any picture in our family's photo album and there was a ton…the spell did not find a single match!

The glasses uses, for lack of better words, magic to draw attention to itself so that people and even technology avoid every other facial features, at least when trying to identify the wearer. like I said it wasn't a simple pair of glasses, even the frames weren't, they worked on a principle of attraction and were actually multicolored rather than black, it's just our brains interpretation of it that turns it black, also it wasn't the colors weren't still either, the colors were moving in specific pattern, think of it as a magical brain game (look it up). Also, the patterns of the color have a unique effect on technology especially when used for facial recognition, the colors create a sort of code that forces the program to conclude that there is no possible match and make the color of the glasses seem black.

The batteries the glasses use for the moving colors don't exist in away logical science dictates and are not even supposed to work since the grimoire used to create it is nothing but ash, but the power in the batteries from when the principles still existed is still there and through its use it keeps the principles alive despite the fact that the principles and theories no longer exist. Heh heh, the glasses' very act of existing and functioning was the only reason it was existing and functioning, it was the very definition of bullshit! It was as like it was using the "I think therefore I am" type of reasoning! IT WAS COMPLETE BULLSHIT!

I think the spirit of the word finally got a solid win that time!

And that's what I was working on. If my powers are going to disappear with or without use, if I use I was still going to lose, then I'll make the most of it. So far my glasses are holding on so I know it's possible. I'm going to do what I originally set out do before I found out my powers had a time limit, I'm going to magic. It'll probably end up as some obscure form of technology that will even get tinkers to say "it's bullshit," but it's doable...I think I'll call it hextech.

This is why I had research on magical systems, people's analysis on magical systems, pages about fandom explanation on the magical systems of shows like Naruto, bleach, hunterxhunter and what not. I tried one piece and I didn't like it, Peyton, big fan of these cartoons, says I probably saw the 4kids dub and to give the original a shot…yeah, I like reading but….

Anyway, this was my project.

304D, 1HR, 4Mins, 32S

That's 70 spells a week, about 10 spells a day, take the time above and multiply by 10 and that's roughly 3,040, give or take, spells I have left before I'm out. Take what I've used so far and I'm at 2,993 spells, official count, deduct one a month for the self-discharge and hope I'm wrong the happy way, and I'm left with 2,992 spells.

Day, march 8, 2011, I have 2,992 spells…alright, let's make some magic...

---

author's note

magic is something I always have a hard time dealing with. It is never fully described, left way too open for interpretation, and doesn't have a clear limit. Whelp I tried my best!

Yeah, I don't really see clockblocker as a villain in fanfic and i wanted to give it a shot. Originally I wanted to make him E88 but Izmaster and I_am_salad had a way better idea that fit him well. In this fic, the video game duo are now more aggressive thanks to Lag being apart of the team. So now Uber is putting his deductive reasoning skills to good use and Leet is taking more risk.

Rune and Vista had a power swap, just for giggles. Originally i wanted Rune to be wunderwaffe or something and dressed up as a sexy nazi officer with e88 logos instead of an inverse swastika, but I realized she could have done that even with her old power. She just wanted the mystical aspect. For this reason i kept her look the same and simply gave her a new trick, kept the same attitude, and went with Rive.

Vista is a word people don't really use, like rive, so I went with Vallation. Unlike Rune who has to rip chunks off of buildings or the street, Vallation is part of the PRT and has access to tinker resources, even if she isn't a tinker. I think giant tinker shields are not out of the question, and with armsmaster, the guy who cram so much in tiny spaces, you'd have to be an idiot not to take advantage!

Also if some of you guys are wondering how a grimoire works, I have an example right here. One of the things i had to do was figure out how to do exponents in racker without using the built in multiplication, addition, or subtraction functions. Just the built in Add1 Sub1 functions that only add one or subtract one, that's it. It took me a while to figure out i had to create my own addition function using recursion, then make my own multiplication function using the addition function i made, then use that function to make a function for exponents. This is how it ended up:

;; (addy nat nat)

;; simulates built in addition functions using only add1 and sub1

(define (addy a b)

(cond

[(= 0 b) a]

[else (add1 (addy a (sub1 b)))]

))

;; (multy nat nat)

;; simulates built in multiplication function using addy and sub1

(define (multy a b)

(cond

[(= 0 b) 0]

[else (addy a (multy a (sub1 b)))]

))

;;(exponent-without-mult nat nat)

;; simulatants exponant function using multy and sub1

(define (exponent-without-mult x n)

(cond

[(= 0 n) 1]

[else (multy x (exponent-without-mult x (sub1 n)))]

))

Be honest, it's bullshit isn't it? Whelp here's to bullshit! Hope you enjoyed it, read enjoy REVIEW! No really REVIEW!