"So you'll be leaving here soon?" asked me in his characteristic neutral tone of voice. The man was disturbingly hard to get a read on sometimes.
"Don't. See. Why, hah, I would." I huffed out between punches to the boxing pads my trainer was holding up in front of me, alternating which hand I was attacking while keeping a steady stream of attacks going. The point wasn't really to punch the things as hard as I could. It was to ingrain the proper posture for punching a solid object into me with repetition, which was why would periodically call out corrections to how I was standing or holding myself.
"They don't teach you kids how to fight at that fancy new club of yours?" He asked curiously as I continued our routine for as long as I could manage before finally stepping away - making sure not to crumple in on myself or go immediately limp, since that would apparently be bad for me long term. Instead, once I got my breath back, I started stretching a little to keep my body warmed up while I answered him.
"Not really. I mean I gather that there's some self defense stuff, but it's mostly cheap judo throw crap. More of an emergency response to being attacked than an actual fighting style of any kind. And you know me, I'm not here for sport." I answered him while rolling my neck in preparation for what came next.
"Seems foolish to let those kids run about without even so much as your level of training." He said, displaying a bit of pique for the first time today while simultaneously describing my own skill level using the most diminutive means possible.
Which was fair. As much as I had moved on from 'how to fall' in our training sessions, I still wasn't at the point where I could reasonably expect to defeat even a single normal guy if I wasn't using my powers or equipment. I'd have an okay shot if the person I was fighting had basically no training, but anything else and my odds dropped precipitously.
Learning to fight was, it seemed, something of a time gated task. It wasn't something I was going to mystically master overnight - much as I wished my powers came with any kind of combat skill.
"It's the government sir, everything they do is foolish." I joked as I waited for him to pull the pads off his hands and then replace them with boxing gloves that he slid on with great care.
"Mm." Was his grunted response.
And then he launched a punch at my head so stupidly fast that I only managed to avoid a handcrafted invitation to a nap on the floor by the skin of my teeth, making an ugly and poorly balanced frog leap backward to put some distance between us.
was many things, but among them, one of his most prominent traits was how seriously he took everything. If you put a task in front of him, he'd figure out how to go about doing it, then chase down that solution with a vengeance. I had told him I wanted to know how to fight when my life was on the line, and he had obliged. Once we had worked enough of the safety concerns out, we had transitioned to spending a portion of every session we spent together sparring. Only 'sparring' might be too mild for what we did. What really happened was that did his best to brutalize me with his hands, and I did my best to cope and showcase what I had learned for the day. This would be an almost trivial task if I let Merlin take over my responses, or at least help me track my enemies movements, but doing so would completely undermine the point of learning any of this, and I wasn't allowed to wear my Spell Core in the ring anyway - because it was technically jewelry.
Doing my best to center myself - something only possible because let me, I knew - I charged forward myself, launching a punch at his midsection. He easily turned it into a glancing blow by shifting his guard slightly, then punished me for it by popping me once on the nose with a quick jab that, again, he could have easily turned into free brain damage if he'd wanted to. A lot of the other guys in the gym found this to be unpleasant to watch, and there were many 'oohs' and 'aahs' of sympathy as they turned from what they were doing to watch me get my ass beat like a drum, but I didn't care.
Again, I wasn't here to have fun. I was here to learn how to dismantle another human being with my hands. If I had to be the demonstration model for said dismantling, then that was just how it had to be.
Disoriented from the blow to my face, I stumbled backwards slightly, before reflexively fixing my posture and blocking another two hits. Then disengaged and we circled each other for a second, probing each other for openings.
Now, usually, this would be the moment when the movie sensei creates an intentional opening for his student to exploit, in order to help teach him some lesson or other.
just maintained his posture, inviting me to try and hit him. Something I obviously had to do, or I would be wasting this precious experience.
So thinking, I tried for a feint, stepping forward with my left foot like I was going to try and swing a roundhouse past defensive posture. When took the bait - because lets face it, round house punches are incredibly obvious and therefore, really stupid to use in a real fight - I pivoted, tightening my posture so that I ended up entirely sideways in an almost fencing posture, and turning what could have been a roundhouse into a quick straight while simultaneously dodging another strike to my skull.
I was just about to mentally congratulate myself for the move, when fist opened and he grabbed my inner elbow, stopping my punch for moving forward and allowing him to elbow me in the center of my forehead so hard I literally turned horizontal, my feet going out from under me as I sprawled to the ground.
It should be said that I had to actively demonstrate the effects of a Healing Ampoule in order to convince the man it was okay to do this kind of thing with me. Which was just one more of the benefits of training with someone you didn't have to hide your powers from. As it was, the entire gym went silent as I slammed into the ground, no one having expected quite such a vicious attack from the older owner of the establishment.
"Are you alive?" He asked me sternly, though not without concern in his voice.
"M'good." I mumbled, rolling to my knees and waiting a second for the stars to fade from my vision before continuing to my feet.
Once more, I got into a fighting posture.
"Please fire on three. One, two, three." Armsmaster ordered from behind me, where he was examining the Odinson's shoulder mounted rifles - which also, via the magic of Fusion Seals - doubled as my new Jump Jets, being capable of rotating three hundred and sixty degrees in order to direct my movement. At the count of three, I had the suit I was piloting fire at the human shaped dummy on the opposite end of the firing range. The dummy was fitted with a whole host of electronic devices in service to this test, and as the sonic pulse my Thunderstrike rifles produced slammed into the thing it vibrated violently for a few seconds before going still.
At a glance, that might seem like not much had happened - but that was only because that was the entire point. Weapons of the model I was currently using were designed to fire a sonic pulse that couldn't penetrate skin, but that would hit with a significant amount of force, causing pain and injury, but never enough of it to kill someone.
Well. Never say never. I could absolutely kill someone if I fired at them enough times - but the same was true of normal punches too, so I thought it was kind of silly to debate the point.
Unfortunately, Armsmaster didn't feel the same, which is the entire reason we were doing this.
"Readings are consistent with your description of the weapons effects." He confirmed after a few minutes of going over readouts on a nearby computer he had set up just for this occasion.
"Told you." I grumbled at him, not altogether that bothered by the testing. It's not like I was perfect, and I certainly didn't want to kill anyone after all. I just thought it was silly to pay so much attention to the fancy rifles I had built explicitly to avoid killing people, when the magic sledgehammer in one of my hands was exponentially more likely to do so - and had been summarily ignored when I had described it as 'just a sledgehammer that came back when I threw it'. I mean, he'd gotten me to throw it once - which was awesome - but after pulping the dummy it hit and returning Armsmaster had just grunted and noted it down before moving on. Which was nothing like his focus on the Thunderstrike weapons mounted on my shoulders.
"You did. And it speaks highly of you that you are conscious of the potential lethality of the things you build." He replied to me simply.
I had come to find, to my great annoyance, that I didn't hate Armsmaster. My mental image of him as a manipulative self important prick was thoroughly undermined by how polite and simple all his responses to things were. I felt like I'd have to be actively trying to piss him off to get a response out of him - something I obviously wasn't going to do.
"Killing stuff is probably the easiest thing in the world if that was what I wanted to do. I'm pretty sure literally every Tinker would find it easier to kill you than subdue you. Hell, your primary weapon is a blade on a stick. I have no idea how you manage to use the thing without maiming everyone you come across." I answered honestly.
"Training." was his monosyllabic response, before continuing. "Nothing you have listed here accounts for several of the effects you've been recorded achieving. In particular, your ability to produce free floating lights and beams of energy." He noted.
"Oh. That's my Spell Core." I explained, directed him to the right entry on the list of equipment I had provided him with before we had started this meeting.
"The… mind to machine interface? I don't see anything here explaining the effects I referred to." He said pointedly.
"It's… complicated. The interface lets me create programmable effects, basically. The beams and lights aren't really specific equipment or anything - they're basically apps." I explained with a lazy shrug.
I knew from day one I wasn't going to be able to hide this from the PRT, so in the interest of using that fact to obscure Merlin's existence I had deliberately made my spells something that could be easily discovered. Hopefully that's how this would work out anyway - I had been wrong about a bunch of other stuff with regards to the PRT recently.
"Can you elaborate?" Armsmaster asked, his interest obviously piqued.
"It wouldn't work for anyone else… I don't think anyway, but the interface between my mind and my tech lets me basically write programming code that can affect physical space. There's no mechanism for shooting beams of energy anywhere in the device - but when it runs the correct program the results are a beam of energy anyway." I explained with an easy air about me, sending the simple command to have my shoulder mounted weaponry click back into its idle state. Normally, I'd be leaning on my hammer or something to take weight off my feet, but the suit pretty much held itself up whether I was in it or not - so it was almost kind of like sitting down just being in it.
I had pointedly not explained the concept of 'leveling' to anyone asking me about my power - which was a thing that had been happening with significant frequency since I had gotten recruited into the Wards. It wasn't so much that I was afraid of people knowing my power was getting stronger, I just didn't want people to see that I had to win fights to get stronger and then mistakenly assume every bad decision I made was based on gaining new levels.
Even if there was a significant chance that that would be the exact reason I made said stupid decision.
"Have you tested this code with any other platform? How are you sure that it would only work for you?" He asked me quickly.
"I have, and effectively nothing happens. It's just gibberish. If I had to describe it, I'd say that a third of the code comes from the way I design my computers, a third is stuff I manually write out, and the last third is just crud my power fills in on the spot." I… Well, I didn't lie. That pretty much was what was happening if you removed all the magical context from the scenario. Still felt like a lie though.
"That's why I'm pretty sure it would only work for me - my power is actively supplying a portion of the effect." I finished.
"Hm. Programming code that affects physical reality - Spells. I see. For the time being, isolate any of your computer systems from the Rigs own network. We can investigate the details later, but I'll be satisfied as long as it's not dangerous." Armsmaster noted, returning to the list of gear I had supplied him with.
"'Kay." I responded easily. Working with Armsmaster was surprisingly easy. He technically had the ability to veto any tech I wanted to bring into the field, being the leader of the Protectorate ENE and nominally in charge of the Wards program here, but so far hadn't indicated that he took particular issue with any of my loadout.
Mostly, he just seemed curious.
"This mind to machine interface - you indicated it would only allow you to utilize this Trump effect, but can the interface itself be used by others?" He finally asked me.
"Yes, but also, no, but also… maybe? When I turned mine on for the first time it was with the understanding that if I got anything even slightly wrong it would fry my brain so…" I trailed off leadingly.
Of course, there was no mind to machine interface, not really. This was just how I was choosing to hide Merlin's existence, since without knowing about the AI it was easy to believe I was controlling certain tech with my mind.
Armsmaster shot me a look at my explanation. It was the kind of look I had come to associate with people being genuinely surprised at my continued survival. I'd be insulted, but in fairness, I was as surprised as anyone else that I had lived this long without blowing myself up or getting lynched by the Empire.
"I'd like to sit down with you so we can go over a more detailed explanation of this aspect of your powers, but that will have to wait until you have an isolated lab to work in. I'm not sure how much I can help, but provided I can understand the programming language you use I should be able to offer some improvements. I've found the design for the wavelength scanner you built exceptionally useful and would like to return the favor." He rattled off, blindsiding me.
See, what I could design was fairly rigid in nature. I was pulling from a catalogue of ideas and had only recently started modifying any of them to my own needs. I knew abstractly that other Tinkers could collaborate to improve their work, but in my head I had always assumed no one else would be 'compatible' with my tech because of how out of context it was.
But of course, Armsmaster didn't know that, so of course he would try to take the junior tinker under his wing. The notion was kind of pleasant, but at the same time, I couldn't help but recall the way he had distanced himself from Kid Win when he deemed the guy unbeneficial to work with.
I guess I would just have to see where things went from here.
"Sure. I can put together some sample code with an accompanying description of its results for you to look at?" I offered tentatively, which earned me a nod from the man.
"That would be a good first step towards seeing if it can be worked by anyone but yourself. I'll get you a secure device to leave it on. Your workshop should be finished by the end of the week, and the Director wants you to have a batch of healing serum available as soon as possible." He informed me, turning to begin putting away the equipment he'd brought out for the test.
Healing Serum was - for reasons beyond my comprehension - what they had decided to call my Healing Ampoules. Possibly because Ampoules was hard to spell? I dunno, I got the impression the PRT was going to note down a lot of what I could build under a different name than I actually used. You would think I might get annoyed that I was being constantly badgered to get production of the stuff up and running, at least, once the sample I had provided to Armsmaster had come back approved, but honestly I just didn't care. I had already written off the twenty four hours a week I was going to spend at the PRT as a waste of time, so if they wanted me to waste it in my lab (that they paid for) making tinkertech (that they paid for) then I was happy to oblige. It wasn't like the process was exceptionally focus intensive - I could easily log my hours making the stuff while also working on other projects.
So I finished up my testing with Armsmaster, had a quick peek at my unfinished workshop - just to make sure they were building it properly - and went home.
"Sir, you are have four missed calls from Victoria Dallon." Merlin said, jerking me awake in his characteristic manner.
"...is it… important?" I asked blearily. I had been trying to make sure I got at minimum six hours of sleep a night ever since the series of poor decisions that led to me being briefly kidnapped by the Empire. I didn't think that getting my beauty sleep would fix all my problems, but it would definitely ensure I was focused and sharp enough to try to solve the rest. Or even notice them.
"Her cell phone currently places her as flying a loop between your home and the fish packaging plant. Five missed calls."
"Fucking… fine. Is Soph awake?" I asked, pushing myself upright.
"She is not at this time, no. Shall I awaken her?" Merlin questioned.
"Is Vicky in danger or is this just some stupid teenage crap?" I asked, seeking clarification while also trying to get my pants on without waking up Terry.
"She does not appear to be in proximity to any other flying threat, and was not in combat during the previous two hour period." He allowed.
"Then let her sleep." I sighed, picking my way into the living room and freezing when I found Gerard sitting awake and watching television with a beer in hand.
"Where are you going? It's one at night." He demanded bluntly.
"Cape shit." I said nebulously, walking past him to put my shoes on only to feel him jump upright to stand behind me.
"Don't you swear at me. Go back to sleep." He demanded, and I took a deep breath.
"One of my friends needs help and-" I tried reasoning with the man. As much as I hated Gerard, he had been pretty good about staying out of my business beyond our first disastrous confrontation. I didn't like him, he didn't like me, and we were both largely content to pretend the other didn't exist.
Until recently anyway. Apparently hand delivering me to the PRT the second they had even bothered to ask him to had given him an inflated sense of self worth.
"I don't care. It's one am, you live in my home, and I say you need to go back to your room." He declared with what I'm sure he thought was a stern tone of voice. I sighed again. Somehow, the irony of me, the teenager, being more of a functional adult than Gerard, the actual adult, just wasn't as funny right now as it should have been.
"Oookay. Let's make a couple things clear here." I sighed, standing from tying my shoes, which I hadn't at any point stopped doing. As I came up, I cast Dancing Lights, having the bright orbs of energy spin around me in complicated patterns controlled by Merlin.
"You aren't my Dad. You don't have any power over me. Any power you think you have over me only exists because you're too conveniently stupid to bother calling Child Protective Services over. I'm sure that right now you're thinking that I'm threatening you - and you're right, I am." I started to explain carefully, taking a step closer to the man who was suddenly nervously eyeballing the harmless balls of light floating around me.
Because he was a fucking idiot that way.
"But!" I snapped at him, lifting a finger to stick it in his face. "I want you to understand that I'm not threatening you with violence. I want you to understand that between the two of us, I know more important people than you. If I want you to stop having a job, your Boss is going to get an email with every bad thing you've ever done in it. If I want you to stop being in this apartment, I'll talk to my boss's boss and she'll make it happen because I matter more than you, and if I have to physically defend myself from you ever again I'm going to arrest you because as a Ward that's a thing I can do. So do yourself a favour and sit down, shut up, and drink your fucking beer." I explained to him coldly.
Then I turned around, dismissed the lights, and walked out the door.
She found me when I was halfway to the packaging plant. I hadn't bothered to get into costume, because I wasn't expecting to get into a fight, and so I was just sort of walking down the street with my hands in my pockets and my head on a swivel when Glory Girl swooped down next to me. I'm not an expert on this kind of thing, but she also, if I was being honest, looked like shit. Vicky - despite what a casual glance might typically tell you - didn't honestly wear a lot of makeup. She wore some make up, but she was also surprisingly practical about it.
This is why the streaks of makeup running down her face, and the dishevelled nature of the dress she was wearing set off very specific expectations of what had happened to her in the back of my head, and is also why I got about a quarter of the way through summoning the Odinson before it dawned on me that she had just been flying, and that the odds of anyone doing anything to Victoria flying brick Dallon against her will were fairly minimal.
"Hey." I said after lowering the hand with my Spell Core on it.
"Hi." She responded with the kind of hiccuping upturn in her tone that told me she was still just barely battling tears.
"Wanna talk about it?" I asked simply, gesturing with my head at a nearby rooftop. She nodded wordlessly in response, then darted forward and scooped me up in an awkward carry that I had never quite been able to bring myself to get used to. I noticed that even in her current state, I wasn't getting blasted by her aura too, which was good - I don't think I could reasonably deal with Vicky in any capacity if she had her mind whammy set to max for the entire conversation.
"So…" I trailed off once I had been put down on the rooftop, walking over to sit on top of a vent nearby. "I take it you were on a date?" I asked eventually, gesturing at how she was dressed.
Surprisingly, she shook her head at me, but didn't immediately say anything. I had found over the years that when a teenager showed up to cry at you, they usually didn't actually want your opinion. They typically just wanted to get whatever was on their mind off their chest, at which point you could make the appropriate cooing noises to help them calm down.
So I waited in patient silence, resisting the urge to fiddle with my Spell Core or phone - since that would be like saying I was bored and wanted to get on with this. Which - while true to some extent - wasn't going to be helpful here.
"New Wave had a- it was a charity dinner thing?" Vicky haltingly started to explain, wrapping one arm around herself and drifting back and forth anxiously, like she thought I was going to snap at her or something.
I nodded in understanding and waited for her to continue.
"And I- and Dean was there with his Dad and-" She started to hiccup and cry again, which once more, I waited out.
"I wanted to- you know, go talk to them, but I heard his Dad saying that dating me was good for their business and Dean didn't say anything and I just-" She stopped to sob again.
"Does Dean love me?" She finally asked.
Ooooh boy. I really didn't miss this part of being a teenager.
"Yes." I said bluntly, leaving Vicky to stare at me like an especially strange animal.
"I have super powers. You punch good. I know stuff. No matter what else happens, ten years from now, you'll always remember Dean as the most important person you ever dated." I explained, loosely paraphrasing some shit I vaguely remembered her saying at the beginning of Ward.
I mean, sure, I could have probably abused this moment in time to get Vicky and Dean to break up - because frankly, he had been kind of a dick to me recently. But I mean… why? Dean wasn't a bad person, and neither was Vicky. I actually had no idea if they could be happy together in the long term, but I could certainly try and help them along. After all, my main goal in a lot of ways was to take care of the mental health of my friends. And while Dean most certainly wasn't my friend, Vicky definitely was.
Somehow. I honestly had no idea how it had happened. She had kind of just inserted herself into my life - which was an accurate way to describe a lot of the people I knew now that I thought about it.
"How can you know that for sure though?" She asked suddenly aggressively, pausing in the circuit of the roof she had been flying to glare at me.
"I honestly kind of don't. Look Vicky, no one really knows what the people around them are thinking. But you can't take something the guy may or may not have agreed with that someone else said and run with it like this. It's not fair to him, and if you want my genuine advice, I'd wait a bit until you feel better and then sit down and talk to him about it. Dude's not psychic - you're actually the one person on the planet who he has no idea how to read because his powers don't work on you. You have to tell him how you feel and then see how he responds." I explained, injecting as much compassion and kindness as I could into the sentence, even though I felt like I was rattling off the moral of a PBS special.
"But… what if he doesn't?" She asked, coming to a stop near me and sitting on the vent next to me.
"Nothing's perfect Vicky. You can't just ignore things you dislike. You sit down together, you work through things, and regardless of whether you stay together or split up, you come out the other end in a better relationship than you had before. For instance!" I declared leaping up to stand across from her now sitting form.
"Did you know your aura isn't attached to your body? It's just body shaped!" I told her with faux jovialness.
And if it seems like I pivoted into a topic I understand better to escape an awkward conversation, in complete defiance of my own advice, well screw you.
"What?" Vicky asked me again, clearly kind of confused by my change in topic.
"Your aura Vicky. You can move it around outside your body if you try hard enough. Probably." I explained, bending down and picking up a loose piece of gravel and holding it out to her.
"Here, try it." I offered. Vicky frowned at me, then the rock, then me again, wiping the tears from her face.
"You're really weird John." She said finally.
"I've no idea what you're talking about." I answered her smoothly.
"You basically just said 'Sorry about your boyfriend, move this rock with your mind'. You're weird." She repeated adamantly.
"But do you feel better?" I asked pointedly.
"...a bit." She admitted.
"See? Sometimes all you need is someone to help you realize the world isn't ending, and everything is going to be okay. Now move the rock with your mind." I said succinctly.
"Sooo weird," Vicky mumbled.
We spent the rest of the night trying to get her Stand Powers activated but to no avail. At one point she said she could feel her aura moving slightly, but that was about it. By the time the sun was starting to come up, we had gone our separate ways, Vicky heading home and I going to wake Sophia up.
She was debuting today, after all.