Technomancer
To make it clear: All rights to characters, setting, story and central concepts in this story remain the property of Wildbow, Worm's author. This is just me playing in the sandbox. Worm can be found at parahumans dot wordpress dot com.


Mistaken Identity
October 16th, 1987, Friday

The glorious Friday morning didn't last, of course. I had tried to go with classic hero colors with my suit, you know, red, blue, white, all that jazz. People still remembered their comic books. Most of the suit was dull blue, with red highlights and a white stylized atom logo on the chest. Blame the dull part of blue on my 2018 sensibilities.

Now, I don't know if it was the dull blue, but I know that the hero that came and tried to mow me down was doing his best. I almost had to say ouch. Nah, not really. Even at this early stage my foglets and suit could handle your basic brute package. His every blow was handled by my foglets, cushioning each impact, spreading the kinetic force across all of them.

His partner, on the other hand, was a problem. She was a blaster that shot green disintegration beams. Yep, you read that right. Disintegration beams. As in Disintegrate spell from DnD and its ilk. Damn those hurt. Figuratively that is. I lost a lot of foglets and had to keep replenishing them. Luckily the foglets gave me time to dodge the beams. I did not want to experience one of them hitting my flesh. What was it with smite first, ask questions later? Of course, they were coming from the direction of the house with the dead family, and I was the first cape they saw.

He was dressed in a white suit with a golden sunburst on his chest. She was in a green suit with golden sunburst with one of the rays far longer than the others. She had long blonde hair and a green domino mask on covering her eyes with a sharp arrow-like extensions going down her cheeks. His head was covered in the same white fabric as his body.

I was a bit envious of the white dude's physique. It was power-gained, but still. I myself was overweight. Not really fat but pleasantly cuddly, or that was how I saw it. There was a market for guys like me. A bit different crowd than for guys like him but still.

Oh, wow, my mind was wandering. I was sort of glad that I could do martial arts instinctually which was far more what I could do in 2018. The couple of courses I had taken would not have made this possible. I had concentration problems that led me to get bored and find the next fun thing to do. A very low ability to withstand boredom was one of my flaws.

Still, I was hoping that not making any hostile moves towards the two would at least make them talk at some point. It took a while, around ten minutes or so. Dodging disintegration beams even with my suit was tiring.

"Halt, evildoer!" Whitey shouted.

Really? OK, it was the early days, comics were still a thing, and it was the eighties. It was still corny as hell. I stayed still, eyeing the green floating one. She was a rather nice eyeful when she wasn't trying to kill me.

"Umm, no. Not an evildoer. You did notice how I didn't try to harm you?"

The guy in white did pause. "Uh, yeah. So… Who are you?" he asked uncertainly.

"Technomancer. I sure hope to be a good guy. If you don't kill me first."

"What about the family over there? If you didn't do that, then who?!" the woman shouted. Her voice was nice even when she was shouting at me.

"That was Jack Slash. Wait, you don't know yet. Jacob. One of King's men. Protege. Whatever. The blood upstairs in the girl's room was mine. Triggering really wasn't fun."

They both recoiled. Yeah, they knew that too.

"Where did you get the suit, then?" she asked. She had landed and stood next to Whitey.

I materialized a giant teddy bear next to me. It was twice my size. "Like this."

They stood silent for a while. Probably surprised. I dismissed the bear.

"So are we good?" I asked.

"I think so. Atlas," he said walking to me to shake my hand.

The woman crossed his arms across her… Chest. Let's go with that. "Circe."

"Pleased to meetcha. So what now?"

"We call the police. There has been a murder. Murders," Atlas said. I could actually hear the sadness in his voice. This was the real deal. A hero.

"Yeah. Sure. Let's do that. Give me a minute," I said and walked to the nearest house and concentrated for a moment. I used my foglets to find a landline and materialized a tap I then attached to it.

"9-1-1, what's the emergency?"

"I'm at," a quick GPS check, "at the corner of Prall Avenue and Deisius Street on Staten Island. There have been multiple murders. A family on 110 Prall Avenue and the villain King on 102 Prall Avenue. The perpetrators were Jacob and Harbinger of King's crew. There are three heroes on the scene, Atlas, Circe, and Technomancer. We'll stay here and wait for the police to give our statements."

"Yes, sir. I'll send a couple of cars and ambulances there. Are villains there still?"

"No, they are long gone, I think. Please wait while I check."

I materialized a couple of dozen drones and searched through the neighborhood. No sign of villains. It took maybe fifteen minutes. "Still there?"

"Yes, sir."

"No villains nearby. I can hear the sirens. Technomancer out," I said and closed the connection. I withdrew the tap and walked to Atlas and Circe.

"The cops will be here soon. I suggest we omit our little tiff from our statements. Not really relevant to the murders, eh?" I said to them.

They looked slightly uncomfortable for a moment, then Circe said: "Yeah, that might be for the best."


We gave our statements, the police did their thing, we changed a few more words, promised not to repeat the tiff we had the next time we met and parted ways. I had an inkling of a plan forming in the back of my mind. The first step was to establish a lair.

I took my bearings and thought about it for a moment. I knew the events of Brockton Bay the best, for obvious reasons. It would be wise to set up there. If I wasn't terribly wrong this was still the time of Marquis and Allfather, of Brockton Bay Brigade before they became New Wave.

I had time to meddle.

I dismissed my suit and reshaped my helmet into a net hidden by my hair so that I could still control my foglets. Then I turned my clothing into something era-appropriate and grabbed my backpack from bushes near where King had been killed. My drones had spotted it earlier when I had looked for the villains. I was glad that Jack hadn't grabbed it or destroyed it.

I made sure that no one saw me and materialized a 1987 Pontiac Formula with enhanced insides. Driving it was a pleasure. My first stop was a pawn shop where I exchanged some materialized jewelry for cash. I didn't feel too bad about this. Pawn shops of this era and area were infamous for dealing in stolen property. My second stop was McDonald's. Don't judge me too harshly. It was an easy restaurant to visit and I wanted to be on my way to Brockton Bay.

Then I was on my way. It was a surprisingly pleasant and uneventful five hours. I checked in to a motel, grabbed a map of Brockton Bay and began looking for a place for my secret base.