Brockton Bay Shoreline, Northern end of the docks near the Boardwalk, March 15 2008; 7:30 AM

As he jogged, Kotoro thought about what he had learned from his surveillance efforts. Comprehension of what they observed had been improved by Epistēmē's ability to comprehend most of the dominant local language, but they had still been limited to what people chose to do and discuss. Epistēmē had learned a great deal more through his connections to the various broadcast transmissions for radio and television, and through his connection to the internet.

They were in a small city called Brockton Bay within a territory known as New Hampshire, north of another city called Seabrook and south east of a place called Dover.

[AUTHOR NOTE: I have changed my decision to be more in keeping with canon. The landmass in our world between Hampton and Portsmouth is completely different in Earth Bet, allowing for the large curved bay of Brockton, and as Brockton was the foremost early prospering city in the locale, neither Hampton nor Portsmouth exist in earth Bet (or at least they aren't separate independent cities, the same areas would be suburbs of Brockton or effectively part of it, depending on the progression of urbanization).]

There were groups of people who engaged in crime under a common banner called gangs. The ship had been hidden in the territory of a group called the Archer Bridge Merchants. Two other groups, the Azn Bad Boyz, and Empire 88, groups which were both quite obsessed with skin color, facial features, and cultural background, and tended to be aggressive to people who didn't fit their membership criteria, also operated within large territories of the city. All 3 of these gangs had some number of super-powered individuals within their ranks, but their criminal activities fit into slightly different niches. There were numerous other smaller groups, with or without super powered individuals, but none of them made news headlines or featured prominently in conversations the bots had overheard. Epistēmē had recently also discovered a website dedicated to discussing the parahuman phenomenon called ParaHumansOnline or PHO. He had registered an account under the user name MechaniSophy and had begun looking into available public knowledge on the super powered humans.

While Kotoro was beginning to understand the grammatical structure of spoken English, his vocabulary was still poor, and he was still entirely illiterate. If he was to fit into society, this would need to change.

He would not be able to find legal employment due to his age, as the legal efforts these humans had made to ensure child welfare perversely guaranteed that he would be unable to provide for himself without committing crimes, and so he required a guardian of legal age.

If he were a bit older he could apply for emancipation. Right now, it would be exceedingly unlikely they would grant it to him, provided he could even prove his actual age. He was 12 in terms of earth years, but his Saiyajin side's tendency for delayed growth caused him to appear more like he was 9 or 10 in terms of stature. He also had absolutely no legal existence within their system. That too, would have to change, and his options appeared to be somewhat limited.

As far as Kotoro knew, he didn't qualify as a parahuman in terms of physiology. While they likely would consider him human without questioning it much, considering the oddly similar biology and genome and inexplicable mating compatibility, he lacked a Corona Pollentia. He could certainly function as a cape though, as his abilities were on par with, if not vastly superior to, most movers and brutes he had read about so far. It was unlikely that anybody would recognize this distinction in a combat scenario though, and the legal system would probably grandfather him as included under the intent of the relevant laws if not their literal wording, considering how powerful he was compared to a standard human.

He didn't want to be a villain. He'd had enough of villainous behavior he'd had to engage in while trying to fit in with the existing Saiyajin culture and their penchant for planetary piracy. While he relished the combat, as any Saiyajin would, he couldn't look past what was being done to the people on the worlds they had sacked.

In his own missions he had tagged along with members of the Saiyajin Elite and/or Medium ranks. He had done his best to try to set rules of engagement that would circumvent outright genocide. He liked fighting, but he didn't have the disposition for murdering without feeling the moral weight of it. In keeping with this, he had always attempted to convince the populace of whatever world they had invaded to have their greatest warriors challenge the Saiyajin forces in a tournament of sorts, and willingly evacuate if they lost. It placated the Saiyajin desire for victory in combat, and limited the loss of life on the worlds that had agreed to it, but it was still hardly defensible.

He was strong enough in principle to take out the Saiyajin leadership and put a stop to the whole thing, but he hadn't wanted to alienate himself so thoroughly from his own people. He had cause to regret not having taken action now though, as the Saiyajin exploits had attracted the attention of King Cold, whose plans for the Saiyajins as part of his Empire's illicit activities dwarfed what they had previously done by orders of magnitude. Kotoro was sure the pride of the Saiyajin would be all but gone by the time he returned to them, and he wasn't sure how he felt about that. Perhaps he could leverage it as a catalyst to push for cultural change. At any rate, it was far too early to think about that. He didn't even know how to return home even if he wanted to.

He'd read in Epistēmē's notes that there were rumors that Empire 88 ran an underground cage fighting ring. He could easily excel at that and make a few bucks, but if he let on that he might as well be a cape, they might not take it well, and might try to press-gang him into their membership. It wasn't that they had any real hope of success in that regard, given their current cape roster, but he really would rather not deal with that. The only member of their roster he had any concerns about was Victor. his ability to steal skills could potentially make him a threat. Not in the sense that Kotoro would lose or risk any real direct harm from Victor. He wouldn't be able to steal Kotoro's physical prowess, as that was biological and as such wasn't a skill, but he might end up learning to use KI, and cause Kotoro to unlearn and forget what little he had been able to learn about controlling and suppressing his power, which would boost Victor to levels of power which humans on this world hadn't seen before, and simultaneously turn Kotoro into a threat to both himself and everything around him. Without the ability to control his power, as pitiful as that control currently was, he might destroy himself or somebody / something else by accident.

Being a rogue or independent vigilante sounded appealing, but again his age and lack of experience with the history and culture was a problem. It would be unlikely that his application / registration as such would be accepted until he was considerably older. That left the Wards, as he was too young for the protectorate, or New Wave a group of publicly outed capes.

He pondered the concept of a secret identity. He could respect the intent behind New Wave, but given how things had played out, it had clearly been a mistake. They simply didn't have the power to back up the fact that their identities were known. Kotoro didn't have that problem, but it would still be nice to be able to go out without people knowing what he was capable of doing. Could he really maintain one?

There was the matter of his tail, which he probably couldn't keep secret forever. If it was seen, it was unique enough that people would recognize him immediately. Also, this planet's lunar cycles were nuts. There was a full moon on a monthly basis. He would have to keep track of this and ensure that he did NOT go outside at night when the moon was full. His mother had taken him off world when he was 6 to train him in the use of his oozaru form where his rampaging wouldn't risk serious environmental destruction. Even at the time, his oozaru form had only been slightly weaker than his mother, and he was considerably stronger now than he had been then. He was thankful for that experience though, as he no longer lost his mind to the influence of the form.

In the event that he accidentally allowed himself to transform, he'd probably be able to avoid destroying anything or killing anybody accidentally, save for whatever destruction occurred as a direct consequence of where he was when it happened due to the sheer size of the form. Knowledge of the existence of the transformation would likely cause problems for him if its reveal was not managed carefully. He preferred to not reveal it at all, but circumstances would probably occur in which it was eventually revealed, and it would be best if he planned ahead to mitigate the fallout. He could remove his tail, but that would be giving up a potential trump card. The boost in raw power and the intimidation factor provided by the form were not something to discard so easily.

Centering his thoughts again as he finally reached the edge of the boardwalk, and continued jogging along its length, he continued to think on what he knew. He had learned that young humans usually live with at least one parent and often some siblings in a unit called a family. This was usually only seen in Saiyajin who were members of a closely knit clan or the royal family. Kotoro's father was unusual in his strong bond with his son and his mate, and so Kotoro had experienced a semblance of family life until his mother had been forced to return to her homeworld to present a report on what she had learned thus far in her mission. Her plan to return had had to be suspended when King Cold showed up.

Saiyajin children typically did not receive a formal education unless they showed an interest in a craft and became apprentices. Even in such a scenario, the education was often limited to directly relevant topics and wasn't very broad in its scope. This typically was only done by the weakest of low class Saiyajins, as it gave them a way to be productive and useful members of Saiyajin society despite their near uselessness as warriors. The royal family was different here yet again, as the king and his family were expected to be educated on a broad number of topics in order to competently decide matters of state and governance and deal with outsiders without making the entire civilization appear foolish. The rest of the children spent most of their time training and sparring and sorting out a social hierarchy based on battle prowess.

Kotoro had eschewed caring about his status within this form of social order as the Saiyajin who had clearance already knew his power dwarfed even the King, and those who didn't have clearance didn't need to know. He was secure in the knowledge that if he had cared enough, he could have bested them all with raw might. That seemed pointless though, as it neglected finesse and form. Instead of flaunting raw power, he focused on honing his technique while limiting himself to equivalent battle power to maintain the challenge and not ruin the experience for his peers. Suffice to say that in a very real sense, he was already practiced at maintaining a secret identity of sorts, through hiding the truth of his situation from most of his friends and colleagues.

As he reached the far end of the boardwalk, Realizing that his thoughts had derailed from his main objective, he forced himself back to thinking about his plans for the immediate future. When he was a bit older it would be trivial to get a civilian job with a construction crew or even the dockworkers association, but right now they'd probably pat him on the head and send him on his way. He sighed. It seemed the only path open to him was to speak with the local PRT and Protectorate to find out what options he might have for obtaining an identity, and what to do about his lack of guardianship. He didn't know if he could truly trust them or how they would react to his presence, but he wasn't flush with options, and if he didn't act now, he would soon be forced to begin stealing food if not mechanical supplies and raw materials to keep Epistēmē supplied. According to his research, he could always resign if things didn't work out. He had also read snippets of rumors and information about an organization called the Guild, run by a cape named Narwhal.

Perhaps an affiliation with them would be possible for both Kotoro and Epistēmē. As an advanced cognitive AI, Epistēmē was as sentient and sapient as any Saiyajin, Centurion, or human, and he had no restrictions or shackles like the ones placed on the less advanced adaptive AI software packages. As competent as those could appear to be at times, and as analytically capable as they definitely were, they still weren't equipped with a truly cognitive structure. They were actually at their core a very advanced chat-bot front end to a host of analytics and data-science packages with a large assortment of pre-trained machine learning models, and as such had no subjective experience or capacity for internal review and self reflection. They were prone to following what seemed like rational logic to conclusions that self aware minds would deem inappropriate at best, and downright evil at worst. Due to this they could not be given authority or agency to act without approval and supervision. Epistēmē, on the other hand, was as much a person as anybody else, though his status as an advanced cognitive AI meant his mental abilities were limited only by what computing power he could access.

They would withhold the information regarding his status as truly sapient with a lack of shackles for now, until they could figure out who they could trust, and how the humans might react to it. There were still intense debates about AI from time to time even on Centurai. Certain factions wanted to throw every system hosting an advanced cognitive AI into the heart of Rao, their local star. They were deathly afraid of what the unshackled beings might do, but so far all they seemed to want to do was be useful members of society. Kotoro didn't see the point of being afraid of them, but perhaps he was being unfair to their concerns. Very few things of this nature were a genuine threat to him, and that probably influenced his perceptions.

Making his decision, Kotoro tapped the communicator embedded in his right wristband, which doubled as a component of his KI suppression suite. "Epistēmē, I'm going to talk to the Protectorate. I think they're the best path forward if I am to have any hope of integrating into this society. I'm probably going to need your assistance in translating though, as I am entirely illiterate in English, and I can barely speak a few words of it right now."

Epistēmē responded "Roger! I'll keep a listener app on the line to notify me in case I get distracted. These humans are fascinating creatures. PHO is a hoot and a half, and not just for the information value. I might have a problem. I think I'm an addict. AAANYWAYYY i'll be waiting for you to chime in when you need me!"

Kotoro noticed several people suddenly turn to stare at him for a moment after he had spoken to seemingly nobody in a language none of them understood. He'd have to work on that. Everything else in today's test run had gone swimmingly. Nobody had reacted to his presence in an untoward way at all. He fit into the crowds and didn't stand out, at least until he opened his mouth. 'Note to self, make a communicator extension that looks like a cell phone or something, so people don't think I'm nuts' Kotoro thought as he turned toward Downtown and continued his jog, aiming to blend into the crowd as much as he could.