I woke up the next day feeling exactly as shitty as you might expect. The bag of ice I had fallen asleep with on my face had long since melted and fallen off, leaving most of my pillow moist and cold.
Irked, I jerkily pushed myself up, feeling the various aches and pains across my body responding to the sudden wakefulness. To my right, Terry was still asleep, and to my left, the sun was just beginning to crest the horizon through the window.
My power, apparently deciding to be 'helpful' in a way I'm sure only an alien computer would consider 'helpful' promptly chose that moment to ram a half dozen options for healing myself to the forefront of my mind.
Now, as I mentioned yesterday night, an overwhelming majority of - basically all of then really - of those options were inaccessible to me at the moment. Truthfully, I probably wouldn't use them even if I did have access to the materials. I didn't have a viable excuse for being magically healed of all injury. Which was a shame because while my left eye was now capable of opening, it was still swollen and hurt in a way that made me feel fairly homicidal.
My power quickly reminded me that I had to be careful with my impulse control by quickly offering me a number of ways to kill Gerard.
Most of which included lasers and explosions, with a lesser number of them being based on poisoning him.
So I shelved that thought and considered my situation.
I had maybe a year and a half, two years tops before canon started. I was pretty sure Taylor's mom was dead already, so there wasn't anything I could do about that. Starfinder had true resurrection, but it had some pretty strict limitations. For one thing, you had to cast the spell on someone within days of their death. Since Annette would have been dead for months now at this point, if not years, that sort of precluded her as a valid target.
Just for argument's sake, I decided to try and prod my power for the plans for the fifth level spell gem I would need to be able to cast the spell and found myself frowning up at the ceiling.
All I was getting was Spell Gems for zero level spells. None of which were even healing spells. Curiously, I prodded about some more. I focused on weapons and got a library of all the starter gear your average Starfinder character would have. Level One gear basically. Armor? Same thing.
Realizing what was going on I couldn't help but groan.
Starfinder had a system of measurement for all the items - and I do meaneveryitem -in the game that equated specific pieces of gear with character levels. A level one character could use a level twenty-piece of equipment if they happened to find it - it wasn't a use restriction - they simply weren't able to craft or obtain higher-level equipment for some inane reason.
My power seemed to function based on the same principle. I would have to make and use first-level stuff to get access to second-level stuff and so on and so forth. Just like that, my dreams of spending the next two years building a Starship so that I could show up to the Leviathan fight with the planet-busting hardware needed to kill the stupid lizard went up in smoke. Suddenly, I had to start from square one.
What fresh bullshit was that? I wastheoutside context problem! I was supposed to be overpowered and bullshit, so I could Gary Stu my way through this hellhole and retire on a starship on the moon or something! Worse, I effectively had to do the work of 'leveling up' without any of the benefits you would expect from that kind of thing. I wasn't the Gamer. I didn't have a system, a menu, or a bunch of special bullshit just for me that would let me power level my way to godhood in six months flat. It was an entirely arbitrary limit on my tinkering.
Angry with the situation, I consciously put the entire thing out of my mind for a moment, returning to my previous train of thought. I had a year and change till canon. There was a fairly small list of things I could easily affect in that time. I could work on making Sophia less of an unholy bitch, or at the very least, keep her aggression directed towards people who deserved it instead of perpetrating the kind of Disney villain, anti-bullying PSA bullshit she apparently went with in the main timeline. I could maybe try and help Panacea, though I had no doubts that the situation was way more complicated and hard to unravel than just showing up and being nice to her. I could make sure Taylor didn't get bullied half to death.
There were some other secondary objectives I could probably look at, but since I was evidently not the God-King of Tinkertown, I also had to spend time keeping myself alive and functional, which meant I had to limit myself until I unlocked the actually useful parts of Starfinder tech.
Which brought me back around to my power... or lack thereof. I was a Tinker without any gear or resources. The most immediately useful things I could make myself were a suit of armor and some weapons. Which was annoying, because what Ireally wanted, was some god damn magic.
I pondered the question of how to proceed for most of the early morning after that, at least until Terry woke up, groggily rolling to his feet and digging around in his drawer for clothes before throwing the entire bundle under one arm and wordlessly disappearing through the door. A minute later I heard the shower running in the next room.
I figured that was as good a queue as any to get up myself and finally managed to force myself to a standing position. Glancing around I found my suitcase, and started digging around for a change of clothes. Blessedly, whomever I had been before my mind had been jammed into this body had a similar taste in clothes to me, so I had no problem grabbing a pair of loose jeans and a baggy t-shirt to start off my day.
The rest of the morning went pretty quietly apace like that. Auntie had already put out some toast for all of us to have for breakfast by the time I had been in and out of the shower, and Gerard was nowhere to be seen, presumably having gone to work already. She shot me an apologetic wince when she saw my face, but otherwise didn't comment. In fact, she didn't say anything at all to me, just sat on the couch watching my and Terry nibble on our toast while an awkward atmosphere settled across the living room.
That atmosphere was only broken when Sophia stomped into the room, obvious bags under her eyes. She took one look around the room, ignored her mother, jutted her chin out in greeting to Terry, then locked onto me like a heat-seeking missile.
"You're coming to school with me." She stated. I'm certain it was supposed to be a question. I already knew ahead of time that I was going to be going to school with Sophia, so it made sense that she would be walking there with me - but Sophia didn't phrase it like a question. She phrased it like an order.
"Guess so." I replied, frowning slightly around a mouthful of toast, holding eye contact with her.
Now, the types of power games children play before becoming adults always seem drastically more high tension than they do once you get older. I'm sure if I was a normal kid, I would register this as a power game of some kind. Especially knowing that Sophia had her whole fucked up Predator/Prey thing going on.
As a functioning adult who was never much for social mores as a kid in the first place, I just did it out of polite habit then moved on when we were done talking. Of course, Sophia apparently scanned the entire micro-interaction entirely differently from me, because she nodded once like she approved and then shifted to have her own piece of toast. She seemed tired enough that it wouldn't be entirely surprising if she just fell over onto her plate and started snoring, but equally, sort of seemed to be keeping herself behaving as though she wasn't bone tired by sheer force of spite.
If I was being honest, the entire thing was incredibly obvious, and the fact that Auntie hadn't noticed said an awful lot about her skills as a parent - or lack thereof.
Eventually, we all grabbed our bags, put our shoes on, and headed off to school. Terry walked us most of the way to our school before turning around to head to his own - us being in middle school and him being in high school. I wasn't positive but I'm pretty sure he graduated this year actually.
The second it looked like no one was in earshot of us, Sophia whirled on me like she had been waiting the entire time for the opportunity.
"What do you mean you have powers." She hissed at me in the loudest 'quiet' voice I have ever heard in my life.
"...My parents died. I got powers. It's not hard." I explained patiently, switching from distractedly thinking on loadouts for my first set of tinkertech to paying attention to my surroundings. Was Coil a thing in 2009? If he was, he was exactly the kind of ass clown that would 'luckily' hear this kind of conversation somehow.
"Then why the fuck did you tell me?" She continued shifting closer to me - probably because in her mind that was threatening but well... she was a thirteen year old girl.
Now, the reason I had told Sophia I had powers was because I knew that at this point in her career she was lonely enough to latch onto Emma for whatever reason, going so far as to unmask to her and seek her out privately. Presumably, if she wasn't so desperate she wouldn't go straight for the redhead later on, keeping her fucked up Predator/Prey mindset away from the fragile girl.
Also, I knew she had powers and wanted to work with her because her power was terrifying.
But I couldn't say any of that. So...
"I... kind of figured we could do something about Gerard?" I tried hesitantly. Sophia snorted like that was the dumbing thing she'd ever heard.
"He pays the bills. My Mom won't get rid of him." She quickly explained with a hint of fear in her tone that made me cringe inwardly. I'm pretty sure Gerard had something to do with her trigger event, so that made sense. No matter how powerful Sophia was as a Parahuman, that asshole would always be engraved on her psyche as bigger and stronger than her.
I mentally resolved to find a way to get rid of him before moving on with the conversation, the school looming up into the distance.
"So?" I continued, pushing Sophia to get on with the shit she obviously wanted to ask in the short time we had left.
"What are your powers?" She asked, easing away from me slightly.
"Tinker. Power Armor, Laser Guns. That kinda stuff." I answered noncommittally. Also quietly, since we were just sort of in the middle of the street.
"Can you make stuff that doesn't run on electricity?" She asked. Subtle, Sophia Hess was not. I wondered if maybe she had acquired some of her more notable skills at stealth and subterfuge later on in life. Despite having a power suited to it, Sophia seemed like she was about as good at subtle as your average Bull. I knew why she was asking of course. Her shadow form was incompatible with electricity. It was one of her big weaknesses. It also meant she probably couldn't carry anything too high tech with her when she was out caping.
I pondered the question for a second before two things leapt out at me. For one thing, nearly nothing I could make was low-tech enoughnotto use electricity. Secondarily to that though, I had fucking magic.
"I don't know about Armor..." I started, "...but I think I can rig up an energy weapon that doesn't use any electricity." I finally offered, contemplating the concept. Technically I couldn't do that, but there was a mod I could make to any tech-based weapon - and only weapons - that would convert most if not all the technological components to work with magic instead. That should solve the problem, and allow Sophia to go caping with something more advanced than a crossbow.
And if I could personally modify that weapon to make it literally impossible to kill someone with it, well, that was for me to worry about.
Sophia seemed to weigh that for a moment before seeming to come to a decision as we pushed into the front door of the school, which was fairly bustling with kids as they streamed into the building.
"Come to my room tonight. The principle's office is that way." She stated, gesturing in one direction and walking the opposite way.
I could tell right off that she was trying to be mysterious, which was honestly adorable for how terrible she was at it. I got the distinct impression that in Sophia's head she was basically Batman, despite the fact that she was nowhere near as competent.
Still, I rolled my eyes at her and meandered towards the principles office.
Which is about the point in time it occurred to me that yes, I was going to have to go through middle and high school. Again.
"Fuuuuuuck." I sighed to myself, as I entered the belly of the beast.
I got a quick introduction to the principal - who was way nicer to me than I was expecting from a principal in this setting - followed by the usual bundle of information. I didn't have to worry about a schedule because this was middle school. I had one class and that class moved around to different classrooms as a group between classes. Basically, all I had to do was find someone I found familiar from the first class I was led to, and follow them around like a lost duck until I got a feel for things.
The simplicity of it was soothing to me because I was already pretty stressed out about being in school again. I didn't have problems with most of the actual classes. Middle school was basically when they taught you all the default stuff a sensible person knows - like how clouds work, and how to do long division and all that. As an adult in a child's body I basically just had to apply the tiniest smidgen of attention to what was going on around me to be able to answer questions and look like I was paying attention to class.
I pointedly did not doodle tinker stuff in my notebooks during class, and in general, I just did my utmost to look normal and not stand out. I wasn't a very social person, but I was social enough to deflect most of the people who spoke to me without being rude or making them angry - which was helpful because I quickly learned something important about my cousin.
No one liked Sophia Hess. She was a stonecold bitch to basically everybody. The only reason she was merely ostracized instead of bullied was that people fully expected she'd murder anyone who tried. I pointedly learned this information when the first thing anyone asked me was if my black eye had come from her.
Honestly, it made a lot of sense if I looked at it from the right angle. Sophia had never been popular or well liked. So when Emma came along and suddenly she was top bitch in highschool, she must have loved it. It would have appealed to the part of her she pretended didn't exist that actually wanted people to like her. Shards could mess up a lot about a person, but I doubt they could completely destroy Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Humans needed to be acknowledged. It's just built into us. We can't help it.
Besides snooping on my cousin and doing my best to ignore the fidgeting of my hand as I suppressed my Tinker urges, school was... boring. Mundane, really. I did my best to keep an eye out for any familiar faces - prospective future Wards and the like - but since I mostly knew them by name and not by appearance I didn't have much luck on that front. There was only so much eavesdropping you could do while following around a random redhead to see if his name might be Dennis.
Finally, school ended, and Sophia and I made our way home. I'd describe the lack of conversation that occurred on the way home as 'companionable' but that would be a bald faced lie.
The walk was exhaustingly tense, with Sophia doing her best to stay a foot ahead of me no matter how fast we walked.
By the time we'd made it home I was out of breath and annoyed. Blessedly, my new body seemed to lack the Asthma and other accompanying allergies my old one had, because if I did have asthma, I might have died a second time trying to make Sophia's ever increasing pace. Worse, the girl had the gal to smile smugly at me as we got to the apartment, like she had just won a contest or something.
I glared balefully at her as we rode the elevator up, and had just enough time to sigh in relief as we got inside before Sophia went and derailed my train of thought again.
"We're going out!" She shouted belligerently through her mothers bedroom door, quickly shucking off her backpack, grabbing a glass of water from the kitchen, and then going back outside. The entire thing happened so fast that I still had my shoes on, and I ended up having to leave my backpack in the entryway as Sophia led me back outside and down the elevator.
"Seriously? I've been here like, a day. Give me a break." I sighed in exasperation as she yanked me along behind her like an abusive dog owner.
"You need to run more. Your cardio sucks." She answered in lieu of slowing down or letting me catch my breath. I had the momentary feeling that I might be talking to Bitch instead of Shadow Stalker before she tugged me along again.
I wanna stress, this wasn't a friendly easily misunderstood arm lock. There was no possible way someone could mistake this for anything friendly. Sophia had her hand clamped around my weedy bicep and was practically frog-marching me forward for the first block or so until she got tired and relented.
"Soph, seriously!" I panted, stopping the minute I was no longer being forced forward. She shot me a peeved look but waited for me to catch my breath, eyes scanning the crowd the entire time.
"Where are we even going?" I finally asked once I had finally evened my breathing out.
"Shopping. You have workout clothes? You seem like the type of pussy that wouldn't." She explained liked I was the dumbest person on the planet.
I, being sort of off-kilter from the entire experience, shook my head dumbly at her.
"Come on then." She commanded, breaking out into a light jog. A light jog for her. Sophia was tall and leggy, so her relaxed gait ate up the ground like no ones business. I, on the other hand, was by no means athletic, and so ended up huffing and puffing next to her as she relentlessly drove onward.
Eventually, we ended up in a section of the city that - while not quite abandoned - was definitely not well maintained, and she led me into an alleyway with a big empty dumpster at the end of it.
Then without saying a word, she slipped behind the dumpster. Before I could follow her she came back clutching a backpack I'm almost positive hadn't been behind the dumpster. It was obvious to me that she had probably hidden in inside a wall or something using her power, but I tried to look surprised regardless. I guess it worked because Sophia shot me another 'I am better than you' look before slinging the backpack on and jogging off again.
I stared after her for a second before it occurred to me to follow her. Not because I was surprised by the bag or that she had taken off.
It was because I realized at that moment that she probably intended to jog for this entire fucking outing.
With some exasperation, I sped to catch up with her.
"Where... are we... going..." I gasped out once I caught up with her.
"Lords Market." She shot back instantly. We spent the rest of the run in silence. Mostly because it was all I could do to keep up. When we were a block or so away from the Market, Sophia ducked into an alleyway and unzipped the backpack, which turned out to contain a sizeable mound of hard cash in it. Hesitant for a second, she pull some of it out - maybe a hundred dollars worth of loose bills - then turned towards me.
"Hey, what are you gonna need for the laser thing?" She asked uncertainly. I blinked for a second, then thought about it. Alot of Starfinder tech is basically Magitech. I could comfortably do some pretty interesting stuff with nothing but raw materials, some spools of wire and the tools to engrave some magical circuitry on metal plates. I'd obviously need more advanced facilities and materials later, but for the purposes of the level one stuff I currently had access to, that was good enough.
Of course, that was only if we were talking about the single weapon I had sort of promised I would make for Sophia. It was a completely different story when it came to my own needs. Besides the stuff I had already mentioned, I was going to need a sizeable amount of raw steel to make myself a hardsuit, at least a few decent sized precious gems to get my spellcasting online, and some computer hardware to get myself set up in the long term.
See, I had a plan. I could technically make any item in my level range, but because I didn't have a traditional Starfinder 'class' I was sort of limited in how useful alot of it could be. I really didn't look forward to spending hundreds of dollars on individual gems that would break after I used them to cast a single spell.
However, Starfinder had a class called the Technomancer. Technomancer's had this thing called a Spell Core, which was basically a computer they could program spells into.
The computer cast the spells for the Technomancer, and basically functioned as that classes equivalent of a spell book. And while it wasn't technically an object you could 'buy' or 'craft' in Starfinder - being itself a Class Feature - itwastechnically an 'Item', which meant much to my surprise, I could Tinker one up.
That was going to be my in. I might not be able to take class levels in Technomancer, but I could damn well fake it.
I explained as much to Sophia, mostly just listing the materials I would need, and watched her have an aneurysm in real-time as she looked angrily between me and the literal bag of money she was holding. Finally, she growled at me like a feral cat and shoved the entire bag into my chest.
"Get what you need. Nothing else." She ordered.
I raised both eyebrows in surprise at that. I had been very clear on the difference between what I needed for just her gear, and what I needed to myself up and running. I had halfway expected her to refuse me the stuff I needed in favour of just getting her new gun made. She certainly seemed conflicted about it. Which, now that I thought about it, sort of reminded me of the elephant in the room.
"So... I guess you're a cape?" I muttered to her casually as she turned to get back to jogging into the Lords Market. She jerked to a stop as I spoke, spinning around to glare angrily at me.
"How the fuck-" She growled angrily at me. Always angrily with Sophia.
"Soph. You've got a bag of magic money and want me to make you a laser rifle. I'm not stupid." I pointed out tiredly. Honestly, I had no idea how this girl didn't get outed sooner.
Then again, maybe she had. The PRT had to find her somehow in the main timeline.
"...Fuck. Later. Get your fucking shit." She grumbled at me, unable to counter in the face of my impeccable ability to apply common sense to my surroundings.
We quickly scampered into Lords Market after that. It was more of a street market than anything else, so there wasn't much I could get for tinkering here, but I did manage to find a hippy selling quartz crystals for positive vibes or whatever the hell it was that would do okay as zero level spell gems. Besides that, Sophia did eventually bully me into getting workout clothes, and we headed home after visiting half a dozen electronics stores for the rest of what I needed.
Well.Some of what I needed. The amount of metal I'd need for a hardsuit was prohibitively difficult to sneak into an apartment building, but there was enough loose garbage in the area that I had a decent idea of how to resolve that problem. We just had to make sure to spread our purchases out over a wide enough area that we didn't set off any obvious 'thats a tinker' alarms.
Once our shopping was finally done, we made it home just before it got dark out, with Sophia ducking into the apartment first to make sure the living room was clear, before helping me hustle all of our new purchases into her bedroom, where she hid most of it in her closet.
Her closet where her fucking Shadow Stalker costume was just sort of sitting on the floor in a heap.
I stared stupidly at it for a second before turning to her and pointing at it.
"Does that actually work?" I asked incredulously.
"Shut up. Mom doesn't come into my room, and Terry threatened to call the cops the last time-" She clamped her mouth shut glaring balefully at me like I was the one who made her say all that.
"Aight, aight. So. Powers? Come on, I gotta know this shit, or I might fuck up your gun." I wheedled her. At this point I just wanted her to tell me so I could stop pretending not to know already. It added an extra level of complexity and stress to the situation that I could live without.
Sophia gave me a queer look for a second, before rushing over to close the blinds on her window and locking her bedroom door.
Then she used her power, and it was about the creepiest fucking thing I have ever seen in my life.
"I can go through walls and bullets go through me."She explained in a voice that was suddenly weirdly echoey. Her entire body looked like a single undifferentiated mass of wispy darkness, only vaguely in the shape of a person. Then I blinked and she was back to normal, smirking at me.
Honestly, Sophia had been smirking at me a lot to day. I'm sure Lisa was somewhere feeling plagiarized right now.
"Electricity fucks me up though." She explained, somewhat ashamed sounding. Yes Sophia, obviously your built-in weakness is something to be ashamed of because you totally had control over it. Jesus christ, this girl.
"Cool. You got a radio or something?" I said after a second, regaining my composure and turning to dig around in the closet for supplies.
"Why?" She asked suddenly sounding defensive.
"Cus this might get a bit loud and some noise to drown it out would be a good idea?" I asked rhetorically, lifting the jewelers kit and a piece of quartz into the air so she could see them.
"Why do you have to do it in my room?" Sophia half whined, reminding me that she was, in fact, a teenage girl and not an unrepentant psychopath.
Currently anyway.
"Cus I share my room with Terry?" I answered again quizzically.
Sophia groaned exaggeratedly at that but finally acquiesced, wandering off to turn her radio on.
With that done, I tucked in to make the beginnings of a laser rifle. A magic laser rifle.
While I did so I ruminated on the topic of my cousin.
Sophia was - despite being extremely abrasive - obviously trying to help me get started, presumably using money she had been stealing from the gangs since her trigger event. Whether that was because she expected something in return or not, it was too soon to tell, but my feel for the situation gave me the impression that - in her own super fucked up way - she was genuinely trying to look out for me. She wasn't just making me run around all day and calling me a pussy because it amused her - although it definitely amused her. She was doing it because she thought Ineededto get better at running. She was, in her own bitchy way, trying to help.
I had mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, family is important. I was glad that most of mine seemed like they cared about me. Terry was obviously doing his best to shield me and Sophia from Gerard, and Sophia was clearly trying to make sure I made out okay in her own way. But that kind of loyalty was infectious. If I spent two years with Sophia and it turned out I couldn't change her enough to stop her from making Taylor trigger... would I be able to cut her out then? Would I be able to look my cousin in the face and declare her unworthy?
I didn't think I could. And that kind of scared me. Because there is nothing worse than knowing someone you care about is wrong and being unwilling to do anything about it.
Grimacing slightly, I refocused on my work, getting all the innards of the weapon ready for when I had the materials to make a case for them. I couldn't do much about the future, not yet.
But I could at least do this.