Note: I don't own anything


Chapter 1.5: Routine


I woke up the next day at noon, on the floor, in my clothes, and I couldn't remember exactly how late it was when I came home. Seems like I was so tired that I didn't bother with, well, anything.I went into the bathroom and cleaned my clothes up by pulling at them with my powers, then undressed and took a long, warm shower, switching to a cold shower right at the end to wake myself up for good.

"I really need a change of clothes."

'Duh, no shit, Sherlock. Also, you told me to remind you to buy a phone charger.'

"Thanks."

I talked with the other me while brushing my teeth. Such a quiet and normal already-not-morning felt so weird after what happened last night. When I was done, I went back into the main room, put some of my clothes on, and turned on the TV, listening to the news while I cleaned up and made the bed. Obviously, nothing of importance was reported. The only difference I found so far when it came to the news is that instead of spewing right or left political propaganda like in my world, here they were mostly spewing PRT propaganda instead.

"Maybe PR in PRT does stand for Public Relations after all."

'Hah! It's like they want you to think that PRT is the best thing since sliced bread.'

When I was done with the bed, I started cleaning up the couch, the coffee table and the floor. The news continued on and on, talking about the oh-so-important nothings until finally, the local news segment started. I wasn't surprised with what I heard here either. Stormtiger was alive, somehow, and in PRT custody. Glory Girl and New Wave as a whole got a pat on the back for their "efforts". And nobody even mentioned that Coil's men were armed with a tinkertech weapon and a fucking grenade launcher, or that they blew up their van when they were retreating.

"Looks like I was right to go there in person. They made it sound like it was a minor thing instead of a small warzone in the middle of the city."

'Write everything down in that note pad of yours.'

And so I did, after making the floor clean itself up of all the dirt. All the hidden dust, dirt and trash just jumped right into the garbage bin. I grabbed the note pad from my jacket and wrote down everything that I discovered last night. What my fullbring could and couldn't do, the weapons that Coil's men used, their tactics, the exploding van, everything. The TV kept making noise in the background, just in case something else of importance came up in the news report.

"So, what should we do with our day?"

'I say we go shopping, maybe rob another ATM in the daylight. Make a list of everything we would need.'

I sat down on a couch and started making a list of everything I would need to buy today in my note pad. Such mundane things as shaving cream and razor, new clothes, a good toothbrush and paste, instead of that cheap crap that was left here by the owner, groceries, a phone charger, and some other stuff. I would probably have to make several trips to the stores and back here. This city did have one really big mall and several smaller ones, but this was another chance to explore the city, so I decided to visit smaller shops and stores instead.

"Should we experiment with our powers a bit as well, while we bore ourselves to death with mundane life?"

'We could train using precognition by going through crowds. And we could try using that aimbot power while leaving Mercy here. After all, the link is always there, so it should work.'

Turning the TV off, I stood up and put the rest of my clothes on, grabbed everything I needed and left the apartment through the door, like a normal person.


It's been a week since I arrived in this world. The last few days were rather boring for me, personally. I didn't have an identity here, didn't have any emotional investment in anyone or anything, no friends or family, no goals beyond ensuring I don't die along with this world. I was always an introvert, but it doesn't mean I didn't enjoy a conversation with a friend from time to time. Talking with the other me in my head was a poor substitute for that. After all, it was almost the same as talking to myself like a lunatic.

My shopping day was pretty boring. I had to return to my apartment three times, and because I couldn't jump over the roofs with the bags in the daylight I had to use a taxi every time. Having to sit in a taxi while knowing that you can travel way faster on your own? Frustrating, to say the least. The only thing that helped me to keep my sanity from committing suicide out of boredom was my precognition training. It took some time to get used to it, but by the end of the day, I could move through a relatively thick crowd without bumping into anyone. I bought pretty much everything I wanted, except for a computer, and robbed another ATM.

The next day I originally dedicated to experimenting only with my precognition power, although I changed that decision later. The main experiment was pretty simple. I just turned the ability on and kept it that way. The result scared me quite a bit. Everything was fine when I was focused on doing something, there was a clear line between what I was doing now and what was going to happen a second later if I didn't change anything. The problem appeared when I wasn't particularly focused on doing anything. That clear line between me of the present and me of the future started to blur. When I wasn't focused, my body just blindly followed my future self, doing things without really knowing why. When I noticed that, I decided to only use this ability when I actually needed it. Originally I wanted to run this experiment for the whole day, but because I finished it early I tried some other things as well.

One of the more interesting discoveries I made while watching TV with my precognition on was that my knowledge of the future was so complete that I could say what others were going to say a second earlier. This probably could be used to creep people out. I tried to use the second ability, the self-targeted time stop or time lock, with precognition on. The result was that my body stopped like it was supposed to, while my mind didn't, or at least I think that this is what happened because I didn't notice anything else. Combining precognition and time acceleration gave different results based on the activation order. If I activated precognition first, then I could still see one second of real-time into the future. But if I activated time acceleration first, then I could only see one second of my time into the future, which was equal to only half a second of real-time.

While my days were quite boring, the same couldn't be said about the city. Two days after his capture Stormtiger was busted out in the middle of the night during his transfer to a more secure facility by the rest of the Empire. I didn't know the details, but people who claimed to be in the know said that Kaiser himself was there, along with Fenja, Menja, Othala and others, while Protectorate assigned only Miss Militia, Assault and Battery to prevent his escape. It wasn't surprising that PRT and Protectorate didn't give it their all. They were outmanned and outgunned by Empire capes alone, not even mentioning the other gangs. It was easier to just pretend that they tried.

The same night there was also a really stupid incident with the Merchants. Squealer and Skidmark along with half a dozen other Merchants were raiding the pharmacies across the city until Armsmaster intervened, damaging their vehicle and forcing them to flee back into their territory. What was so stupid about this? Well, first is what happened to Armsmaster's motorcycle. When Squealer made a turn for the Broadwalk while fleeing from Armsmaster, she stopped and let Skidmark use his power on the road. Armsmaster didn't have enough time or space to stop his motorcycle after the turn and it was thrown into the water. Skidmark almost fell off as he laughed. The second stupid thing was Squealer's newest vehicle itself. It was a hover sleigh tied to a giant wheel... I couldn't stop laughing for several minutes after I looked at one of the better videos posted on PHO. I wondered how high she must've been on Christmas to build something like this.

Sadly, I didn't witness either of these events personally because I was sleeping that night and the night before that. It was also a golden opportunity to look for Taylor at the Medhall, but I missed that one too. The chances that she would be there were pretty low anyway, so it wasn't a big loss. Maybe that was for the better.

The next two days and nights I trained with my basic Fullbringer powers. I learned a few useful things and tricks. First, I learned that I could walk on any surface at any angle as if I was walking normally on the ground. On my first night, I used a combination of a super jump and power-assisted climbing to get on the roof of that building near the school, and this was just a more developed version of what I did then. The gravity still had a full effect on me, so I couldn't break contact with the surface by jumping without starting to fall down, and I had to constantly channel the energy through my whole body to not feel uncomfortable. I also trained to quickly solidify the air into thin, invisible and relatively durable platforms. I could use them to airwalk, but I still wasn't fast enough at forming them to run or jump around in the air.

My biggest discovery and inspiration came when I tried moving the platforms. If they were durable enough and could be moved, then obviously they could be used to attack and defend. Sadly, my platforms were only as durable as a piece of glass you could stand on without breaking. I found out about just how fragile they were by jumping on one of the platforms. They could be used as cutting projectiles, but not very good ones. If the angle wasn't perfect they just collapsed into normal air. They made for an even worse flat side projectile because they were only about as strong as a normal punch at ten meters distance and only got weaker the further away they went. It was probably because of the air resistance. I tried to create a platform some distance away from me, which was a bit harder to do, and anchor its movement to the palm of my hand. This didn't solve the fragility problem, but using the platform for cutting and smiting became much easier. Now I could hit someone really hard in the head or even perform a vertical bisection by creating an air platform above them and moving my hand down.

But this wasn't why I found moving air platforms so incredible. It was the movement itself. Instead of running on air, I could just stick to a platform like I stuck to any other surface and make the platform itself move. Yes, I found a way not to just stand or walk on air, but to fly. The inspiration hit me when I was thinking about high-speed movement techniques from the show and how they work.

As far as I knew, Flash Step was an actual technique, as you had to use specific movements to achieve high speed. Sonido, judging by how it was presented, was more like an explosive burst of speed, relying on raw strength and power to achieve it. Hirenkyaku was quite a bit different because instead of moving by themselves, the users created a Reishi platform under them instead, and this was what moved them. It was also potentially the most energy-efficient technique out of these three because using it just once could be enough for one or even several battles. The Fullbringer's movement technique had no name and had two... levels, or something. First was the easy one, the boots-on-the-ground level, and the second one was the airwalk. Mastering your Fullbring and mastering the second level of this movement technique came pretty much hand in hand.

Yes, my inspiration came from the Hirenkyaku technique. Creating an air platform, attaching myself to it, then maintaining and moving this platform wasn't exactly the easiest thing ever, but it wasn't too difficult either. It was certainly less difficult than rapidly creating one air platform after the other to run on them. Being able to stand and move through the air upside down was just a bonus. There were two big problems, when moving like this I was slower than when I ran and jumped around on the ground and the roofs. It was probably because with this my speed depended only on how good I was at moving the platform, at using my power, while on the ground I reinforced my body by making the energy flow through it and also at the soul of whatever was under my feet.

Finally, I wasted the first half of Monday on sleeping, and was currently wasting the other half on walking around the city. There were more skinheads out on the streets in Downtown than there were before Stormtiger's capture and escape. As far as I could see they didn't bother anyone that much for the last four days, so my best guess was that they were looking out for any activity from Coil. It wasn't my problem for now anyway. Maybe I could sell some information about Coil through Faultline in the near future, but as far as I knew from PHO she and her crew were out of town right now, although someone claiming to be in the know said that they will return this week. Even if Faultline were to return tonight, trying to meet her immediately would be just bad manners, and I already had other plans anyway. I delayed it long enough, but tonight I will be searching for Taylor Hebert.


Chapter 1 - Roadbed: END


Author's Note:

Can you guess what Odis did wrong when he was training to use his powers? Eh, probably not.

Here is a clue: he already made this mistake before.

Anyway, Chapter 1 is finally done. Gonna write at least one interlude next.