We didn't run into anything particularly interesting after that. There was a point where Sophia and I found a couple arguing on their balcony, but whatever they were going to argue about, they quickly stopped when they noticed Sophia looming menacingly over the edge of the roof above them.

Soph was somewhat less than pleased by the lack of morally acceptable targets, but there wasn't anything for it. I had flatly refused to go into active gang territory before I had more gear. Sophia seemed like she might have chosen to split off from me at that point anyway - something I'm fairly certain she was more than qualified to do - but opted to continue wandering around the comparatively safer neighbourhood with me until we decided to call it quits.

So, I let my Junk Armor fall apart in an alleyway, and played lookout while Soph shucked off her costume. Then we went about the somewhat dangerous task of sneaking back into the apartment.

If Sophia were alone she could just use the weird properties of her shadow form to jump straight up to our balcony on the second floor, then from there sneak back to her room. Auntie and Gerard would be asleep right now, and Terry rarely left his/our room while he was home.

Whether or not Terry was going to be home or not was hit or miss, I had found. He had a tendency to spend two days out of every week at one or another of his friends houses, and was old enough that nobody gave him too much trouble over it. Tonight was one such night, which was the only reason I had been able to go on patrol. Soph could just jump straight through the wall of her room to sneak out, but I shared a room with Terry now, so there was no way I could sneak past with him less than two feet away.

I mean, I could, but it'd be both obvious and suspicious as hell. This being Brockton Bay, the only possible reason for it was that I was either a Cape, or a crackhead, neither of which was going to work for me.

Once me and Soph had made it back inside - she through her usual route so she could unlock the door for me when I came up by way of the elevator - and trundled back to my room to ponder the trials of the night.

My performance had been lackluster. Sophia didn't say it, but basically all I did by coming with her was hold her back. She seemed to be tolerating it for now, but I knew that I was mostly just riding the good will from giving her the Mercy Pistol. Everything I knew about Sophia told me she would eventually snap and do something really dangerous or violent if I didn't start pulling my weight.

So the question then becomes, what can I do better?

Get more spells, obviously. My paltry library of them was frankly a joke at present. But the list of spells I had access to was mostly for utility. Hacking things or making illusions and the like. It wouldn't cut it if I got into a major conflict.

Thankfully, my metaphysical 'level' had apparently gone up to two over the course of the night, so I had a few more options.

Eyeing my dwindling pile of quartz crystals, I resolved to convert the last of them into Spell Gems containing the Mystic Cure spell.

Mystic Cure did what it said on the tin. It healed people. For the amount of power I could currently eke out of a Spell Gem, I could heal a person for an amount of damage roughly analagous to a single gunshot or stab wound. No, it wasn't ideal - but it was a fair bit better than dying of a gunshot or stab wound.

Because I had realized something tonight. Having powers didn't magically trivialize normal criminals. I could still die to normal people. And that was scary.Heck, if I hadn't been wearing the Junk Armor today I absolutely would have died. And the armor didn't even cover my head! If that guy had aimed even slightly higher, I'd be screwed.

So yes, I was feeling very mortal right now.

Which brought me to my next thought - I needed actual armor. Something that could tank grenade blasts at minimum. There were too many powerhouses in this city for anything else.

I also - and this was embarrassing to admit - sucked at fighting. It was just something I had never had to do before, because I came from a world that wasn't imminently descending into complete anarchy. I had a few ideas for how to resolve that, evenly split between tinkering up a solution and actually learning to fight from someone. I would drastically prefer to cheat with my power in this case but I had so many other potential projects that came first that dedicating the resources to something I didn't technically have to simply wasn't viable.

For instance, I nearly killed a guy today. I'm still not sure how to feel about that, given that he tried to kill me first, but the problem was I didn't have a non lethal option. Energy Ray came in three flavours. Fire, Lightning, and Ice.

None of those were healthy to apply to an unarmored person.

So where did that leave me?

Healing spells I could start working in right now, if I didn't mind being dog tired at school tommorow. Armor was going to take too many resources to safely sneak them into the apartment, but there was enough loose metal sitting in the fish packaging plant Sophia used as a base for me to start building over there if I moved my tools over. I had a nonlethal weapon in mind that I could work on at the same time.

That just left training.

I really didn't want to have to train. Especially not with Sophia, who would probably make it into a game and spend the entire time beating the shit out of me and ending up teaching me very little.

There was one option I could go with based on my foreknowledge, but it was kind of risky.

Sighing - man I've been sighing a lot lately - I sluggishly meandered over to grab a piece of quartz, warmed my Spell Core up, and threw a blanket over my head- just incase someone opened the door while I was working.

Tommorow was going to suuuuuck.

--

So here's something that should be obvious but that I might not have mentioned;

I have a cellphone.

I also, however, had approximately zero friends, and was too busy to waste time surfing the internet on it. The Tinkers curse, as it were. Ididhave to resist the urge to check PHO for any information about the last nights escapades, but ultimately decided not to bother. Even if someone had noticed our singular takedown last night, I didn't think I actually wanted to know what people were saying about me when all I had on hand was Junk Armor and a crappy approximation of a blaster power.

So instead of logging on to PHO at lunch that day, I spent the time looking up local boxing gyms. To my utter lack of surprise, there were actually a ton of them. Unfortunately, an overwhelming majority of them had names like 'Blitzkrieg' and 'Valhalla'. They were so obviously attached to, or in support of the Empire, that I had no doubt that if I signed up for one they would accept mejustto have a legal excuse to beat the shit out of me.

That was fine though. I had a specific gym in mind. I just didn't know what it was called. Or... where it was. Or how much membership would cost.

See, in the main timeline, Brian Laborn, better known as Grue, was noted as being an exceptionally competent fighter. He attributed that to his Father - who ran a gym.

You can see where I'm going with this.

Since my very existence was liable to butterfly away the main timeline anyway, I figured I'd just double down on it. The Undersiders didn't exist yet, so Brian either hadn't triggered, or was still working as a small time enforcer. The idea that gangs that weren't one of the big three existed in Brockton kind of boggled my mind but whatever.

Either I could convince Brian to join the Wards - like he should have done in the first place - or I could get close enough to him that if he did join the Undersiders, he might listen to me when I try to explain how truly terrible an idea that is.

So that day, I slept through half my classes, earning the ire of most of my teachers. Then when school let out, I begged off Sophia's usual tender ministrations by claiming I had tinker shit to do, and told her she should run a patrol without me. Whether she took that at face value or just really wanted to shoot at criminals was beyond me, but I'd take it either way.

Thus, I found myself tentatively stepping into a gym that turned out to be surprisingly close to the apartment. Or... not so surprising I guess, given everything I'd noted about the trials of being black in the Nazi capitol of America.

My first impression of the place was that it was surprisingly well maintained.

My second was that all the guys here looked like fucking G.I Joe characters. I mean, holy shit were these guys stacked. I was pretty sure I'd lose a fight against almost anyone in the main room of the place even with my powers. The pure intimidation factor wasn't helped by the blatantly paramilitary themeing of the gym. There was camo everywhere, and old pictures of what I guessed were Mister Laborn's old unit on some of the walls.

I didn't recognize any of the people here, and none of them seemed to be in the correct age range to be Brian, so I forged onward.

The front desk was empty. If I was a normal teenager, I'm pretty sure that would be enough to scare me off, but since I wasn't I just grunted in annoyance and took a few tentative steps further into the gym until I found someone who didn't look too busy.

"Scuse sir, but do you know who I have to talk to if I want to get signed up?" I asked a bald headed juggernaut of a man who was sitting on a bench taking a deep pull from his water bottle.

He grunted in surprise at being addressed then panned his head to look at me, taking on a queer expression once he got a good look at me.

Now might be a good time to note that I was lanky more than I was anything else. I was freakishly skinny or anything, I just wasn't particularly impressive looking. Two weeks of running around with Sophia had improced that slightly, but only slightly.You can only see so much benefit from a training regime in under two weeks.

"Office is back there." The guy said after he finished observing me, pointing a meaty finger at the back of the gym. I looked at it, then back to him.

"Can I just go in or...?" I asked tentatively.

"Just knock." The man answered with a shrug.

I waited for more than that, but when nothing was forthcoming, I eventually gave up and left, coming to a halt in front of the unlabeled wooden door and knocking on it.

There was a slight pause then sound of a chair creaking from the other side of the door, and then the door opened, revealing Mr.Laborn.

I assume, anyway. He was built like a brick shit house, and was bald as the day he was born. Clean shaven too.

Besides being just generally a big guy, Brian's dad was... not nearly as threatening as I thought he would be.

He looked down at me for a second, frowned, then scanned the gym floor before yelling loudly and right in my ear.

"Hey! Someone's kid here!" He called, drawing attention from the rest of the people present. I could see some of them quickly look over to affirm that I wasn't there sprog, then return to what they were doing.

"Actually, sir. I wanted to sign up but there was no one at the desk..." I offered hesitantly.

Mr.Laborns head swung down to me at that. I say 'down' but he wasn't that much taller than me. He just had a feel to him that made him seem bigger than he was, although that might be more because of my mental image of him than anything else.

"Sir?" I prodded him when he didn't say anything immediately.

"Do your parents know your here?" He asked sternly in lieu of answering my question. I had to restrain the urge to twitch in annoyance. I could sort of see why Aisha didn't get along with him. I wouldn't either if I was an actual thirteen year old.

"My parents are dead. Can we talk in your office?" I stated bluntly, derailing him from whatever he was about to say.

I had done this often and without shame. I had no actual emotional attachment to this bodies biological parents, so it was an easy way to emotionally bully people.

Uh. Manipulate.

Nope, still evil sounding.

Coax? Emotionally coax people into doing what I wanted.

There. That was better.

Mr.Laborn shot me a strange look at that, before scanning the gym again and stepping back, allowing me into his office before closing the door behind me.

It was a sparse well organized room. One desk, two chairs, and a filing cabinet. That was it. I guess he hadn't moved to digital storage yet.

"So." Laborn - there was actually a little plaque on his desk that named him as Shaun - said, sitting across from me.

"Your parents...?" He asked hesitantly, looking slightly worried.

"Died in a car crash a month ago. Not important. Sir I need to know how to fight." I put forth succinctly. If remembered right, Brian's dad was both very strict and very regimented. He'd probably prefer if I got straight to the point.

"...why?" He asked, narrowing his eyes at me.

"Got powers. Don't wanna die or join the gangs." I stated bluntly.

Metaknowledge was a crazy thing. Did I know with absolutel certainty that I could trust this man? No, not at all. But Ididknow him enough to think I might.

Plus, I wasn't here to learn any hippy self defense garbage. I needed to learn how to dismantle another human being with my hands, plain and simple.

...even if it was going to take a long ass time to get there.

To his credit, Shaun only spent a handful of moments looking surprised before leaning forward to peer down at me.

"It's three hundred a month and if you miss a session you're out." He stated, more commanded really. He had a sudden intensity to him as he spoke, like he was only just now taking me seriously.

I winced at that. I could afford it - barely - using what was left from Soph's stash. She wouldn't like it, but I'd make it up to her.

Assuming she didn't kill me first.

"I can do that." I agreed slowly.

"Good. You have a change of clothes?" He continued, pushing himself to his feet.

"Yes?" I replied, suddenly wondering if maybe I had rushed into this a bit too fast.

"Good. Get changed then meet me in the ring. We'll start by seeing where you're at." He said, waiting for me to stand and follow him out the door, where he gestured towards the change rooms.

Two hours later, I limped through the front door of the apartment, shot Gerard my customary glare and silent deathwish, and then fell face first onto the bed Terry had ceded to me ever since moving in.

I managed to shoot a forlorn glance at the two Gems of Mystic Cure sitting in the crevice between the bed and the wall - and then groaned.

Of course I couldn't waste my healing resources every time I went to the gym. That would he stupid.

But it'd be nice if I could.

I fell asleep with one arm over the edge of the bed, a bare inch away from one of the gems.