Buddy Pine trudged down the street, rubbing his sore posterior. Why couldn't Mr. Incredible make him the number one fan? He wanted to be awesome like him, he wanted to fight crime and kick butt. He knew everything a child could learn about the man. He tried his hardest to prove his worth, but every time he got rejected, and today's ejector seat incident was the worst by far, but he'd try again to prove himself later today. His rocket boots were nearly finished, and tonight he would help his mentor as Incrediboy, hero of justice. As he raised his clenched fist to his chest at the thought, a skittering noise grabbed his attention. It didn't sound like a pebble, no, it sounded more metallic. Looking down he saw just in front of his feet a small black flash drive, with a metal protector around the main casing. Glancing around the side street he was walking on, he couldn't see anyone close enough to have dropped it, so he would have to search it to determine the owner. Finally, he could be a real hero! Elated at his new detective mission, an act of heroism to return someone's potentially valuable lost property, Buddy picked up speed, sprinting for home.

Buddy sat down in front of his workbench placing the thumb drive gently on the desk in front of him. Next to him sat his personal laptop, kludged together from a variety of computers and scrap electronics, he had built it himself. Despite being a bit bulkier than the average laptop, weighing in at about six pounds, it had several times the processing power and a custom wireless router built in, giving Buddy internet access almost anywhere in the city. Despite being designed for portable use, Buddy never took the thing outside, after his previous model was "accidentally" destroyed by some classmates of his. Booting the machine up, Buddy took a few moments to set up some security precautions, just in case the drive was trapped with a virus. Satisfied that his precious machine, filled with designs that would help him finally be appointed Mr. Incredible's sidekick, would be safe from anything on the drive, he plugged it in and ran a scan.


Well that was disappointing.

Instead of top secret data, extensive sets of photographs, or anything a child's imagination could have come up with, there were a few documents. Again, disappointing. Buddy scrolled over the first document, right clicking to bring up the details, while running a few background checks to see if anything was unusual. With a ping, the computer announced its results, a standard word document, written in twelve point font, with 1,600,000 words, nothing unusual there… 'Wait, what was that word count again?', snapping back to attention Buddy double checked the readout and confirmed that yes, this document had more pages than most novels put together, and was stored entirely on the flash drive. His curiosity piqued, Buddy decided to open the document.

Worm, a Web Serial, by Wildbow

'An interesting title' Buddy thought as he began to read the document, a background search scouring the internet for any references to the author.

Two hours later, Buddy's program had not turned up anything, but he could care less, because he was too engrossed in the novel. The words struck a chord with him. Hearing his mother knocking on the door, Buddy shut his laptop and climbed to bed, the words of the few chapters he had finished echoing in his head.


Over the next two weeks, Buddy continued his search for the strange author of Worm, while reading a few chapters every day after school. By the end of the first week, he finally called the search off, having posted a few things on prominent message boards to no response and not found anything in his searches. Granted, this incident with Mr. Incredible and a jumper was taking up a good chunk of the front page, but he should have heard something. As far as he could tell, the author simply didn't exist. Despite his failure in his search for the author, he found success in his endeavors to read the novel. And as he closed the document after reading the last line, he moved on to the other documents, which turned out to be extra knowledge, packets of background information that would not have slotted into the story, but provided even more data for his hungry mind. The next day, having read everything the hard drive had to offer, he leaned back in his chair.

Where once he had been an aspiring fan hoping to be like the heroes of his world, now he understood new things that had never been considered before. In Metro City and many others like it, heroic capes, he elected to use the new term, generally fell into the physical classifications of powers, such as brutes, blasters, movers, and breakers. There were a smaller population of changers, strikers, and shakers, but on the mental or meta levels there was nothing. There were none of the perception and mind-altering powers of strangers and masters, none of the incredible skills and precognition of thinkers, and certainly none of the sheer power versatility and cape-countering strength of trumps. Hell, even the capes that had powers reminiscent of strangers, such as invisibility, tended to be better classified as breakers as they altered light around them, not perception. But one classification intrigued him, that of the tinker. Tinkers were not acknowledged as a cape classification in his world, and for some reason a majority of villains fit the classification, but no heroes did. A recent example was the French expy of Bakuda, Bomb Voyage, whom Mr. Incredible had tangled with the night he found the flash drive. He gazed over at his prototype rocket boots, seeing them in a new light. He had learned from the novel, and he would take those teachings to heart, becoming his world's first heroic tinker.

The capes taught him of the unwritten rules, they taught him of strength and adaptability.

From the iron will of the PRT and Coil's men he learned that even an unpowered could fight a cape and win.

From the informant Tattletale he learned the value of information and its applications.

From the kind A.I. Dragon he learned how to make the best of a horrible situation you are forced into.

From the Triumvirate he learned that the greatest paragons to the public are not necessarily quite so pure behind the scenes.

From Glenn Chambers he learned the value of good PR and how it shaped your cape career.

From the Undersiders he learned the value of having a team and companionship, no matter how dysfunctional.

From Jessica Yamada he learned the value and power of an expert Psychologist.

From the S9 he learned what true monsters were.

And from Skitter, he learned the four most important lessons: first, no matter how weak a power may seem, you can still win with enough creativity, second, sometimes one must do the wrong thing for the right reasons, third, always fight to survive and your costume should reflect that to some degree, and fourth, no matter how high you go or powerful you are, you're so very small, in the end.

He stood from his chair and walked to his desk, the rocket boots having gathered a thin film of dust over them. He set them to the side and began to draw a new set of blueprints.

He would no longer seek to become Incrediboy, no, he would take up a mantle made in another world, not that of Hero, the first tinker, but rather the one his apprentice assumed to fight again after losing the one he first chose in greed and shame.

Buddy would become Defiant, the first tinker of his world, the one who stood up and said that a hero could be an inventor, and he would show them what a hero forged from the fragments of a hellish world was made of.


Author's Note: This is only my second fic, and more of a post to see how the idea is received. Right now, I have a different fic I need to work on, so this probably won't update for a while.

Please read, rate, and review, I want to know what you all think.