"Jesus, kid. Again?" One of the gyms regulars asked me incredulously as I meandered my way through the front door and towards the changing rooms. I couldn't have told you his name because I didn't remember it.
"I pay for it don't I?" I countered with a lazy shrug.
"Dunno why..." the guy muttered as I went past him. For reasons I didn't fully grasp, the patrons of the gym were weirdly uncomfortable around me. They didn't seem to dislike me per se, in fact many of them cheered me on during the very public beatings Mister Laborn called training. I just made them uncomfortable.Maybe that was because I aas a child that acted like an adult, or maybe it was something else.
If I was being honest I didn't really care. I had a hard time remembering people that didn't matter to me in the first place.
It was currently Monday, and like the dutiful student I was, I had politely begged off of 'hanging out' with anyone to quickly jog home with Soph, where I could grab a change of clothes and make the trip to the Gym.
Mind you, I never actually agreed to hang out in the first place, being fairly anti social even with people in my own age group. When I was in class or otherwise forced to pretend I was a thirteen year old, I mostly just tried to be quiet. I might add my two cents if the ambient topic of conversation was something I was knowledgeable about, but since my current peer group was overwhelming made up of teenage boys, that topic was, with a painful regularity, teenage girls.
So you know. Not much to add there, because it weirded me out.
A side effect of this was that while I wasn't anyone's favourite person, I was at least considered worth having around. Which was why I continued to receive invitations despite never once having accepted one.
With tired, lazy steps, I made my way to the changing room, where I swapped to my workout clothes. I was exhausted. I hadn't gotten more than a few hours of sleep over the entire weekend, because I had spent the entire time finishing my armor and all its accompanying upgrades.
I don't know when it happened, but I had become deeply invested in that thing in a way that probably bordered on creepy.
My Mining Jack was the difference between me being a C lister and... well a B lister really. I certainly wasn't going to be fist fighting Alexandria in it.
Still! I wouldn't quite call the experience a Tinker fugue because I had been fully aware the entire time I was doing it. I had just... hyperfixated.
The results were great, especially after I had managed to discretely turn my half of our captured cash into more parts for tinkering.
Unfortunately, by the time I was done, I'd had just enough time to sneak back home before everyone woke up, and head to school. Worse, since Mister Laborn seemed dead serious about not missing a session with him, I was now stumbling into the gym like a walking corpse.
Taking a deep breath, I did my best to focus on what I had to do in the here and now. I was going to take advantage of the unending stamina of your average child, and combine it with my adult ability to do things that sucked, and get through this.
Then I was going to go home, and black out.
--
Mister Laborn was kind of a hardass, but never let it be said he was an irresponsible hard ass.
I grunted as he rocked forward, shoving me backwards. My body rolled with the motion while my feet quickly switched up so I would still be balanced in my new position without leaving me vulnerable.
Mr.Laborn waited approximately one second to make sure I had done it right and kept my center of gravity steady, before doing it again.
And again. Aaaaaand again.
This was apparently all I was going to be doing today. Keep my arms up, keep my stance balanced, don't get knocked over or fall down.
The last week had been entirely dedicated to making sure that I knew how to fall safely. It was apparently a safety measure, since almost every other aspect of my training was going to include a significant chance of falling on my face. If thay happened, Mr.Laborn had told me, he wanted to be damn sure I didn't snap my neck in the process.
I was a little frustrated with the pacing, I have to admit. I hadn't actually been taught how to fight yet. Not how to make a fist, not where to aim, not how to throw a punch or throw my opponent.
I was just learning how not to get knocked over the second someone bigger than me - which was nearly everyone right now - decided to lay me out.
As frustrating as it was, I quickly fell into a rhythm, my focus entirely narrowed down to just keeping my balance and moving my feet while Mr.Laborn shoved me at varying speeds and strengths. Sometimes it was a light shove, just enough to unbalance a normal person. When that happened, I was supposed to shift my feet in a way that brought me forward, so that I could counter, even though I wasn't actually performing the counter. Other times, it was a hard shove, with all the mans weight behind it. In this scenarios, I was supposed to let myself move back and then quickly juke to the side to avoid a follow up.
I don't know how long we were at that before my trainer finally called a stop, and I suddenly became aware of the sheer amount of sweat pouring off of me. It occurred to me that I hadn't stopped to rest or take a break in the entire time I had been training. For a bried moment, I entertained the idea that maybe my level - which unfortunately hadn't gone up after the thing with Whirlygig - might actually raise my stats or something.
Then the edges of my vision started to fuzz and I realized, no, no they did not.
"You alright?" Mr.Laborn asked me gruffly, reaching a hand out to steady me.
"Yes. Sorry, didn't get a lot of sleep." I explained shaking stars out of my eyes.
"Your part time job keeping you up?" He asked carefully. I knew he probably meant caping. He had taken to the concept with shocking ease once I had laid it out for him. I wasn't just a Cape, I was the most abuseable, easy to target, and in demand kind of cape there was. A Tinker. The period of time between when I started and when I got my full kit online was when I would be at my most vulnerable. That was why this training was so important to me. I didn't want to be totally helpless if a Coil goon threw a black bag over my head two steps out of the school and dragged me off. I honestly didn't even know what I could do about that. The guy didn't actually split timelines, but he might aswell for my purposes.
"A bit yeah." I explained between huffing breaths. I was so glad I didn't have asthma anymore.
"Sit down, I'll get you some water." He grunted after stepping away to examine me for a moment.
I grunted a wordless response, crouching to slide out from beneath the rows surrounding the ring. The second I had done so, two other men quickly clambered up onto it to spar or have a match or... whatever more martially inclined types call it when you fight for fun.
A minute later I was sitting with a towel over my face, definitely not sleeping, when something cold touched my neck, causing me to yowl like an angry cat and jerk away from it.
There was a subdued snort, and when I pulled the towel off of my head Mr.Laborn was standing infront of me with a bottle of water in hand.
"...thanks." I grumbled, knowing anything else would be ungrateful.
"Mm. You need a ride home?" He asked me after a minute. I blinked at that.
"The gym is open for a while still though?" I queried hesitantly.
Mr.Laborn shrugged.
"I can have my son take you. Just got his license." He said with a mixture of matter of factness and pride in his tone. I paused to wrack my brain for a moment, trying to remember the exact nature of Brian's relationship with his Dad. He loved the man, if I recall right. He just thought the guy was a shit father. At least, to Aisha. Which... fair, I guess.
"He won't mind?" I asked tentatively.
"He'll do it if I ask." Was the firm response.
No, Mr.Laborn, that wasn't what I asked. Yeah, I could suddenly see where Brian was coming from on that front.
I weighed my options. On one hand, Grue would know where I live, since I didn't have a reason to obscure it that wouldn't scream Cape. On the other, I had been trying to find an excuse to prod the man about his son for a while now.
"Suuuure..." I stretched out, still.unsure of things. Then something else occured to me and I tensed.
"You didn't tell him about-" I whispered to him.
"Your part time job? No. Rumours have already got that covered." He told me dryly. I blinked stupidly at him, then panned my head around the gym to find a handful of people watching us talk to eachother with obvious sympathy.
Oh. Right. I had basically opened conversation with Mr.Laborn by telling the entire place my parents were dead. What kind of dick would question that?
Satisfied by my intepretation of things, I released a sigh of relief.
"Let me just shower and change." I said, standing up perhaps a bit too quickly.
It took me ten minutes tops to rinse of and change. Unlike your average teen, I wasn't awkward about having to shower in a room full of other men, which was hilarious, because the other men typically found my presence uncomfortable enough that they rapidly left whenever I turned up.
Presumably, they felt about me the same way I felt about teenage girls.
Ick.
When I emerged from the changing rooms, Brian was already there, speaking with his father near the entrance. I wouldn't have recognized him by sight alone, but he was clearly the only other teen present in the building, and bore a obvious resemblence to his father, in so far as he was brawny looking without appearing muscelbound.
Spotting me, Mr.Laborn quickly cut off his conversation with his son and introduced us.
"John, this is my son Brian. I hope you'll get along." He said, weirdly loudly.
I glanced at him in confusion, then turned back to Brian, extending a hand to him.
"Hey. Sorry about this." I offered carefully, darting a look to Mr.Laborn that I wasn't sure Brian caught. He was eyeing me in the speculative sort of way I occasionally saw Soph eyeballing Capes she saw on the news. It was a look that patently said 'I could take this guy in a fight' and it made me uncomfortable because it was probably true.
Grue had the power to emite billowing clouds of inky blackness that completely blinded anyone in them. They absorbed all light, most forms of projected energy, and dampened sound such that you had to yell to be heard above a whisper.
Everyone but Grue, who could see through the stuff like it wasn't there.
All things being equal, Grue was probably.one of the more powerful Capes in the setting, limited only by the fact that he held no interest in straight up murdering people, and hence didn't use a gun. He just got ignored a lot because what he did wasn't especially flashy.
"Don't worry about it. Your only a few blocks away right?" He asked, to which I nodded, giving a more detailed description of where we were going than 'over there somewhere' which was basically what he had gotten from his Dad while I showered.
From there things were pretty quick. Brian's car was an old beater that probably shouldn't have started up at all, but did anyway, and we pulled out into the road. We sat in mostly awkward silence for a second before Brian spoke up again.
"So, is it true?" He asked me flatly, his free hand nervously tapping the wheel until he noticed and stopped it.
"Uh...is...what true?" I asked, genuinely confused by the question, since Mr.Laborn had already said Brian didn't know I was a cape.
Unless he was already an Undersider and Lisa knew somehow. When did the Undersiders form? Was Lisa already in the city? Shit. If she knew, Coil knew, which meant-
"That you're my half brother?" He pushed just as the light turned green and he hit the gas just a bit too hard, bouncing my head against my seat.
...what the fuck was this now?
I mentally backtracked everything that had happened, trying to piece together how that was the conclusion he had come to.
I had shown up out of the blue on Mr.Laborn's doorstep, loudly declared my parents were dead, then asked to speak to him in private.
Then I inexplicably started getting personal lessons from the man, who obviously layed me more attention than most because I had been very upfront about my desire to survive to adulthood. I wasn't here for sport.
Mr.Laborn, obviously not being able to tell people that I was a cape, had therefore just let rumour form an excuse for him.
Apparently, that I was his illegitimate son.
I swear I went cross eyed for a minute.
"Abso-fucking-lutely not. Holy shit, is that what the G.I Jackasses at the gym think? Is this why everyone is so weird around me? What the fuck?" I blurted out, causing Brian to sharply look towards me then back at the road.
"Dad said-" he started.
"Your Dad is a nice guy Brian, but apparently not a very smart one. My parents died and now I live with my Aunts abusice boyfriend in the Nazi capitol of America. I decided I didn't want to die in this shithole, so I found the first gym that wasn't obviously owned by Nazi's and begged for someone to teach me. That's it, that's where I'm at right now. I have not one fucking thing to do with you besides posessing enough melanin to be a target in this hellhole." I explained, my surprise and annoyance at that surprise temporarily causing my brain to mouth filter to click off.
"...So you're just some orphan kid?" Brian asked me incredulously.
"Yes jackass, I'm 'just some orphan', thank you for that." I replied irately.
Brian had the good grace to wince at that.
"Sorry, just the guys at the gym were talking about it. If my mom found out she'd..." he paused, clamping his mouth shut, but I got the gist. If his Mom thought Mr.Laborn had cheated on her while they were married - which they weren't anymore - she'd probably try and take him to court for all he was worth.
Not because she actually cared, but because to my knowledge her current modus operandi was to just sleep with guys who could provide her with drugs, money, or both.
Ripping Mr.Laborn off for all he was worth would go a long way to supporting her habits, which was, I guess, kind of why they weren't together anymore.
"Don't worry about it. No court could prove it because its not true." I said with a snort. Hell, even if it was true, I had so many options for making sure Mr.Laborn came out of things okay that it almost didn't matter. Worst case scenario I could just tell the PRT to make the mean lady go away as a condition for me joining.
But again, I wasn't in any way related to Brian, so that was entieely irrelevant.
After that, though the ride was short, we managed to talk a bit more, with Brian relaxing slightly once he realized my existence wasn't going to screw his dad. I could actually see why everyone assumed we were related. Despite being just this side of Sixteen, I almost forgot I was talking to another teenager while I was with him. It was actually sort of eerie.
Regardless, we made it to my apartment and I waved him goodbye before hazily stumbling into my bedroom, shucking off most of my clothes, and falling into bed.
--
It was Thursday night.
Despite wanting to finish my armor and immediately sortie out to beat the shit out of Nazi's with it, logistical concerns kept getting in my way.
Now that my Mining Jack was done for instance, I could safelt replace the Junk Armor spell in my Spell Core with something more useful. Unfortunately, that 'something more useful' was something I was going to have to program from scratch, which wasn't exactly easy. So I spent the majority of my Tuesday on that.
Then on Wednesday, I had another session with Mr.Laborn. I kind of hoped I'd see Brian again, but he apparently was at the Gym at a different time than me. He was doing his highschool classes online - somehow - so he had more freedom to act during the day than any normal highschooler should.
So here I was on Thursday, finally, finally ready to take my suit out for a spin.
It was bulky. Like, old timey diving suit bulky. The entire thing was basically one large thick baggy suit, similar to your average space suit, but covered in armoured plates, and possessing a large mechanical harness around the torso and back that made up nearly half the bulk of the entire suit.
The harness itself was where I had put the majority of my time, integrating a set of Jump Jets into the back. Don't 't ask me how I managed to turn a car battery and ten pounds of electronic junk and scrap metal into a jump jet. Powers are bullshit that way.
The jets wouldn't let me fly - they werent stable enough for sustained flight. What they did do was self evident. They scooted me roughly twenty feet in any direction. If that direction was straight up, I'd probably fall and break my legs, but that wasn't how I planned to use them anyway. No, using my new Jump Jets I could finally travel by rooftop with Soph, instead of having to constantly hear her bitch about how I was slowing her down.
The helmet for the thing - a glossy astronauts dome that obscured my face and had my heads up display on it - handily listed how much fuel my jets had left, and how many spells I had available.
If I had one complaint about the thing, it was that I needed a ladder to get into it.
Thats right, the fucking thing was so bulky that to get in to it, I had to pull the helmet off, climb over top of it, slide into the next hole, and then grab my helmet and click it back into place.
It was annoying, but I didn't mindthatmuch. I was bullet proof (against low calibre weapons at least) and could fly (sort of).
I finally felt like I was making progress!
Now I just needed to get myself a proper weapon. Preferably a nonlethal one, though I suspected that wasn't going to cut it as my potential pool of enemies grew from the local racists to well... the local Kaijuu.
I tried not to think about the Endbringers too much. I could tell people jow to beat them, but that actually just made everything worse, because when one died, more would show up right afterward. It was like a boss rush that got continuously harder over time.
'Is this it?'I asked Soph, eyeballing the squat two floor building she claimed to have scouted previously. Unlike myself, Soph was active every single night, practically without fail. Despite her aggressive tactics and personality though, she wasn't foolish or reckless. When she had spotted gangsters going in and out of this building over multiple nights, she had decided to wait and watch.
This was how we had recently learned the Alabaster was probably here. It was also jow Soph had found her previous stash house, the one that had payed for all my starting gear.
Needless to say, I was nearly as excited to wreck the place as she was.
'Yeah, I saw that creepy white bastard pull up yesterday. Dunno if he left or is still here guarding it.'She reported intently.
Soph had, to my great surprise, taken to the concept of punching anove your weight class using cooperation just a bit too well.
It was good, because she told me stuff now.
It was bad because she really took the 'above your weight class' part seriously. She was all but itching for a fight with another Cape, and something told me she hadn't timed this outing to coincide with my new setup by mistake.
This being Worm, I full expected half the Empires Capes to inexplicably be in that building, not just Alabaster, who was arguably their least dangerous Cape.
'Second floor window?'I asked again, trying to figure out where to enter from.
'You wanna go through the same entrance? Why not split up, hit them from opposite sides?' She challenged.
'Because-'I began but was cut off by a voice behind me.
"Hey there. Are you new?"
I froze. I didn't recognize the voice, which meant I had no idea who was behind me. Evidently, Soph felt the same, because we both spun around at once, Soph going ghost while my Spell Core spooled up an Energy Ray.
Then I froze, because there was a literal knight watching me quizzically from the opposite side of the rooftop I was on, accompanied by a little girl in a green outfit.
"Gallant and... Vista?" I queried slowly, not lowering my hand.
"Yeah. Sorry, didn't mean to scare you." Gallant apologized, stepping forward slowly with his hands raised.
The fuck you didn't.
"Sure. What do you want?" I asked, slowly lowering my arm and signalling Soph to do the same.
"Obviously to see what you two are doing." Vista pointed out in a squeaky preteen voice. My heart went out to her. If this was the image she had started with, it was a small wonder she had such trouble getting people to take her seriously when she was older. The edgy need to be treated like a badass was nowhere in sight on this younger version of her, and she kept her hands behind her back while rocking antsily back and forth in that special lackadasical way only ten year olds can manage.
"...Empire stash house. Alabaster is probably there." I said, turning back to the building and crouching down to stare at it some more.
"You guys can take the bottom floor if you want. We can race." Soph said savagely, shifting to watch the building while keeping Gallant and Vista in her periphal vision.
"Console says we should pull back and wait for backup." Gallant negated pretty much immediately, reminding me that there was probably a PRT officer listening to this conversation through him.
Actually, it was kind of weird that they were here at all. Didn't Soph say the PRT usualy stays out of this neighborhood? We were practically at the edge of Empire territory too. No way the Wards would be allowed to statt a fight here.
Unless they weren't here for a fight. Which meant they were probably here to pester me and Soph. On any other day, I'd be all for it. Gallant had seemed like an okay guy when I was reading about him, circumstances behind his power and datingl life aside.
The problem was, I really couldn't afford to give up the loot from this place, which I would definitely have to if the PRT stormed it.
"Ah. That sucks. Second floor window?" I repeated to Sophia aloud, changing gears mid conversation.
Seemingly understanding my meaning, she nodded at me once, probably grinning like a feral cat beneath her mask - which I really should replace at some point.
Without warning she got some distance from the ledge, judged the angle she would need, and sprinted off, turning into her shadow form at the apex of the leap and drifting clear across the open road and into the building.
"Cheers bud." I waved, stepping off the ledge myself and activating my jets, which immediately jerked me forward in a light arc that caused me to sail straight through the window with a loud crunch as the glass and its plastic frame succumbed to my sheer bulk.
And then, I was in.