'Don't let it be wrong!!' My on board speakers blared at a volume that was probably extremely disorienting for all those present. They weren't really designed for music - they were designed to make me audible over the sounds of a pitched gun fight, and it showed.
"Fuck, Cape!" One of the gangsters screamed as I landed next to him. I chose to ignore him, and the note in my computer systems that had registered an entirely harmless attack that had landed on my torso, forgoing the joy of no longer suffering massive bruising everytime I took a gunshot in favour of turning towards Alan and Emma - who were staring wide eyed and terrified at me.
'Don't let it be right!' The song continued.
"Did I not specifically tell you not to take any kiss my ass shortcuts the first time we met?" I asked Alan barnes in an irked tone, catching my sledgehammer as it returned to my open palm, even as two more peals of thunder wrang out - Merlin having taken over my shoulder canons and begun liberally applying them to the man and woman on my left and right respectively.
'Get in his way!'
"Wha-" Alan blurted in confusion and then fear as I stepped towards him. I guess he must have assumed I was mad enough to attack him, but really I was just deflecting another gangster away from taking him hostage - mostly by grabbing him by the skull, lifting him off the ground and holding him out to my side, where Merlin obligingly plugged him with two blasts from the accompanying rifle.
'You're dead in his sights!'
"Sorry, you're still an idiot, but I didn't mean to scare you or anything." I grumpily apologized, dropping the man in my right hand and turning to eyeball the three gangsters behind me, who were now trapped in the alleyway with me by a trap of their own design.
'Big Gun!'
They had been shooting at me the entire time, and the Barnes were directly on the other side of me, so I had needed to stand still while they shot at me to prevent anyone I actually gave a shit about from getting hurt.
'Big Gun, Number One!'
Now however, they were the only enemy combatants left in the alley with me, which gave me the leeway to whirl around in them. I took a step forward, and two shots from my rifles knocked the air out of two of them.
'Big Gun!'
I took another step, and both guns oriented on the last one, taking him to the ground in a barrage of sonic blasts, before switching targets to disable the two still conscious ones.
'Big Gun, kick the hell out of you!'
When that was done, Merlin did a quick scan of everyone left - and then plugged three shots fast into two guys who had just been pretending to be unconscious.
Then I turned to face the Barnes' again.
"See this was exactly what I was trying to prevent by showing up the first time. Are either of you hurt?" I asked, walking back over to them.
"N-no. Thank you." Alan - who kind of looked like a modern version of Fred Flinstone if you can believe it - said, quickly shaking his head.
"I-" Emma opened her mouth to speak, then just kind of opened and closed it a few times like one of those fish mounted on a wall.
"I'm… fine." She finally managed to squeeze out, before closing her eyes and starting to shake uncontrollably.
Now, this was new to me. As I might have previously mentioned, an overwhelming majority of my Cape career to date has been less about defending people and more about attacking villains. I had been very proactive in that sense, which was actually kind of biting me in the ass right now.
Because I had absolutely no idea what to do with a traumatized teenager who was visibly having a breakdown right in front of me.
As if to highlight this point, the redhead before me began to sob. Alan, not being an absolutely shit parent, immediately got his shit together, set it aside, and moved forward to envelop his daughter in a fierce hug that she easily returned, even though she absolutely didn't stop crying over it.
He looked at me and whispered something, at which point it occurred to me that I was still blaring rock music throughout the alley - because I absolutely hadn't heard a word he said.
"Shit, Merlin can you-" I quickly asked my AI companion.
"Playback paused, sir." Was his fast response.
"Sorry I uh, I didn't catch that." I said sheepishly. Alan shot me a slightly unimpressed look, but his tone was no less grateful when he finally repeated himself.
"Thank you." He said, pulling his daughter closer. Did it make me a piece of shit that in this one singular moment, I actually kind of understood why many heroes preferred largely ineffective patrols instead of assaults on enemy turf? The palpable sensation of gratitude coming from the man was such that I briefly wondered if there was a Parahuman effect at play.
"And on that day, the Tinkers heart grew two sizes." Merlin joked, pulling me out of my stupor and accurately deducing my current state of mind.
Probably because he could see my neurochemistry playing out in real time, the fucking cheater.
"Fuck off Merlin."I responded grumpily.
"Um, I'm not like an expert or anything, but I'd suggest talking to friends, maybe getting some therapy." I offered carefully, to which Alan nodded slightly and Emma… I mean she basically just kept sobbing, which was fair.
"Merlin, I have no idea what the fuck I am doing. Help." I begged the AI who was honestly much better at 'people' than I was.
"My apologies sir, I am busy completing your previously assigned task."He responded instantly.
"Wha-"
"Fucking off."
"Are- are you serious right now? Is this actually happening? Are you recording this? Merlin? Merlin!" I mentally rattled off. Honestly, I don't even think he was mad at me - this was his version of a joke.
Just… his sense of humour was clearly a result of all the time Sophia and I spent being absolute shits to each other. Fuck.
"So uh, I'll just move this and uh… I mean I'd appreciate it if you didn't describe me to the cops. I'm a Ward but they haven't announced it yet so I could get in trouble." I explained,walking around the pair to the dumpster blocking the end of the alley the car was pointed in. After a moment where I briefly considered leaving the three thugs in place to get run over as the Barnes left, I eventually sighed and dragged them into a pile next to their broken vehicle, using Ion Tape to tie them all up.
Then I walked back over to the dumpster they had pushed into the way and braced myself against it.
Slowly - because this suit, while strong, wasn't 'throw a car' strong - I inched the thing out of the mouth of the alley and back into its proper place at the rear of the nearest building. Then I turned back to the Barnes.
"I'll stay in the area until the cops arrive, okay?" I confirmed with them, which got me another grateful nod from Alan.
"Also, seriously man, if a random superhuman says 'this area is dangerous don't take any shortcuts' maybe don't take any shortcuts." I chided him slightly, to which he grimaced.
"I didn't… that was weeks ago and I thought…" he trailed off, a look of consternation on his face.
"It's cool man. Just remember that you live in Brockton, which is like, the unofficial bonus level of Hell, and you'll be fine." I sighed, somehow much more comfortable berating a grown man than I was receiving his gratitude for saving his life.
I feel like that says something about my character, and I'm not sure it's anything good.
Regardless, I was just about to make a jet assisted jump back to the nearest rooftop when Emma called out to me.
"Will I see you again?" She asked me in a small voice.
And I swear to actual god, I was going to say 'No'. I was. I was absolutely going to do it. But somehow, looking into her lost and terrified eyes, I couldn't bring myself to do so.
"...Sure." I eventually allowed, before making my exit. I didn't leave right away - I kind of lingered in the area while Merlin monitored things - but I wasn't really expecting anything else to come up that night, for which I was thankful.
"You won't ever learn to interact with your peers if you continually defer it to me." Merlin finally spoke up after a long period of mostly just silence, with the occasional update on the location of the Police - who had theworstfucking response time I had ever seen or heard of.
"Merlin, please enter 'Fuck Off' mode again." I groused at him.
"I do notactuallypossess such a thing, sir," was his amused response.
"Merlin, I love you man, but I really don't need you to treat me like a kid."I complained lamely.
"I have observed that of you sir, yes." Merlin responded calmly.
"So what's up with the moral of the story bullshit?" I asked, getting to the point.
"You don't have parents, sir. If no one else is going to take care of you, then it falls to me to do so." The AI said in a tone of voice that sounded like it was going to hear any arguments on the topic.
I blinked stupidly at the statement.
I mean, of all the weird divergent ways my AI could go rogue, having him decide to become Alfred was probably one I would never have put money down on.
And yet here we were.
"Thanks, I guess. You're still a dick though." I finally stated, trying not to blush because he'd definitely notice.
"I try, sir. I try." was his response - which was immediately uncanny to me because that was howIusually tried to end on an enigmatic note.
Man, we had a weird relationship.
--
The next day, I woke up tired and groggy. It was my designated 'free time' day - something Merlin had eventually mandated for me when it became clearly I would literally work myself to death if I was allowed to - which meant that I wasn't scheduled to go to the PRT, wasn't expected at the gym by Mr.Laborn, and wasn't going on patrol with Sophia.
I also,very technically, wasn't supposed to go to the fish packaging plant to Tinker, though I knew Merlin wouldn't actually stop me if I decided that was what I wanted to do with my day. As much as Tinkering was 'work' it was also my superpower and my hobby at this point.
I tried, at first, to roll over and go back to sleep, but images of the night before kept flickering in my mind's eye. It was my dearest wish that I could help Emma out, and then promptly forget she or Taylor existed beyond occasional check ins. That was always my goal here. I didn't want Taylor to end up like she had in the main timeline. I didn't want Emma to go insane. I didn't want a lot of things, really, and for the most part, all of them were related to other people's mental health. Most of my goals could be boiled down to guarding other people's mental wellbeing until I had enough firepower to disintegrate anything that would otherwise threaten it. I knew I'd get there eventually - Starfinder tech got crazy at high levels. Not just 'big lasers' crazy either. There were Starship weapons that consisted of using cosmic forces to throw planets at each other up there at the twentieth level.
Needless to say, I wasn't worried about needing Khepri to save reality.
But, call me a big softy, or if it was Sophia, I guess 'a huge pussy', I just couldn't stop myself from being weirdly attached to the people from canon that I had fixated on. It was why I made only the most token attempt to keep Vicky at arms length. It was why I was much less bothered by being in the Wards than I probably should be. And it was why I had recently been feeling a gnawing sense of anxiety whenever I thought of Amy.
For all I didn't really like people, I was extremely attached to them - at least those few that mattered to me.
It was for precisely those reasons that I eventually gave up on going back to sleep. Instead, I got up, showered, and dressed, before going on a walk. Where, you might ask?
That was exactly what I was asking myself as I stood on the sidewalk like a creepy stalker outside of the Barnes household, which was entirely too close to the house with the broken first step the Heberts lived in for my personal comfort.
"Is this weird? I feel like this is weird."I thought to myself.
"But I mean, Sophia did this exact same thing in canon which means it can't be that weird right? Then again Sophia is a girl and also, more than a little psychotic, so maybe basing reasonable behaviour parameters on her is a bad idea."
Eventually however, the lingering stigma of just looming in the neighborhood started to outweigh my trepidation at just getting this over with, so I could have my piece of mind. I'd just knock on the door, spout some shounen bullshit about friendship for Emma to latch onto, and leave knowing the job was complete.
Easy.
So thinking, I finally walked up to the front door of the suburban little house, raised my hand to knock - and then rang the doorbell instead because I'm an idiot.
When the door opened it was to reveal a woman who I'm not ashamed to admit, I had to briefly force myself not to stare at. She looked alot like Emma - red hair and all that - only if she was in her mid forties, with laugh lines and a few other telltale signs of age that did nothing to detract from how attractive she was.
Jesus christ, Mr.Barnes had friggin won at life relative to this shit hole of a city.
"Hello?" The woman asked me tiredly, shocking my back to awareness and reminding me that it was nine in the morning on a wednesday.
"Sorry, hi. I'm John. I was wondering if Emma was around..?" I trailed off, when the woman shot me an unimpressed and sour look. Which made sense - because she was probably busy dealing with said traumatized daughter all night, and almost certainly wasn't in the mood for any bullshit.
I had the good grace to feel embarrassed by that but, unlike a normal teenager, didn't let the feeling actually deter me, so I just waited for her to respond.
"Emma is asleep. There was a family emergency last night - you can phone her later in the day if you need to speak to her." The woman - I actually couldn't remember her full name - stated bluntly.
Damn, how the hell had Sophia even gotten in contact with her? Probably just threw rocks at her window until she opened it like a guy in a 90's romance movie. Since I obviously wasn't going to do that, I changed tact.
"That's uh, actually why I came over. I was there for the… emergency." I stated carefully, which had the interesting effect of causing the slightly tired looking woman's gaze to sharpen greatly.
"So you're-" She started to say as realization dawned on her.
"Sweet christ please don't say it out loud." I blurted out, looking around frantically. Admittedly, that was at least partially an act, but also… not. If I was being honest, I actually didn't care about having a secret identity. I only had one because it made life easier for me - I wasn't particularly worried about my family being kidnapped to pressure me now that I was a Ward. The PRT could allow many things, but 'we kidnapped and killed a Wards family' was definitely not something they could let go without retaliation.
Would Piggot be happy about having to make that retaliation? No, absolutely not. But there was no way she could keep her organization running if she let such a slight go uncontested, and everyone in the city knew it. In many ways, the PRT functioned exactly like the gangs. It was all about reputation.
"Right. I… apologize. I'll… see if she's awake." Mrs.Barnes uttered slowly, carefully stepping back from the doorway to eye me speculatively, doing a complete one eighty in how she treated me.
"You don't have to, I just uh.. I just wanted to come see if she was okay." I offered awkwardly.
"It's fine. Please, come in." She said quickly, fully stepping away and allowing me into the house.
The Barnes house was painfully well kept. I had become so accustomed to living in an apartment where no one present really cared more than the minimum required to legally keep possession of their children, that seeing it made me visibly uncomfortable. Like I was intruding on something, and making it tangibly worse by doing so. The main hallway of the home split on either side to lead to what looked like a dining room on the left and a living room on the right, and terminated in a stairway leading up to the next floor.
I didn't bother trying to actually come further into the house though, just staying in the entryway once the door closed behind me, waiting.
If it wasn't obvious, I am phenomenally bad at dealing with people when I'm not immediately dealing with a problem for them. If you asked me to get into this house to deal with a hostage situation I'd get it done with no anxiety at all - but standing here with nothing going on at all just made me uncomfortable.
At length, Mrs.Barnes disappeared up the stairs, where she had a short conversation I couldn't quite hear through a doorway. The second she was finished with that conversation, a door opened upstairs, and roughly five seconds later I found my back on resting against the closed door behind me as a red haired missile slammed into me.
"Uh… hi? I'm John?" I said awkwardly while Emma did her utmost to squeeze the life out of my midsection. My hands had gone up into the air the second she got near me, mostly because I didn't really know what to do with them - which had the interesting effect of making it look like I was being arrested and was putting my hands in the air. Looking past the girl, I saw her Mother at the top of the stairs, staring down at me with something between amusement and relief on her face.
"...Hi." Emma finally said, tilting her head - she was a lot shorter than me - to look up at me.
"So um. I just came to see if you were okay, see if there was anything I could do to help with… you know." I said lamely.
Aaand she was crying again.
God fucking dammit.
--
"The first time I ever got shot, I spent twenty minutes shaking and puking in an alleyway." I said, doing my best to resist the urge to slouch in my chair. The Barnes dining room was so well kept I had a hard time believing they actually used it to eat food in. That was a thing some families did right? They had the one room in the house full of furniture no one used for some reason. Emma had originally wanted to talk in her room, but her being a teenage girl, and I being a teenage boy, her Mom had hard vetoed that.
"But, you're bulletproof." Emma pointed out astutely.
"First off, the armor you saw last night is new, back then I didn't haveshit. I didn't even have a helmet. If the dude who had been shooting at me had aimed slightly higher I wouldn't be here right now." I explained.
"How…" Emma trailed off, clearly unsure of how to phrase her question.
"Did I keep going? Honestly, I had shit to do. I didn't really have a choice." I said wistfully remembering that first night I'd gone caping with Sophia, and how she had sat with me in that dinky little alley until I had managed to calm down. I had no doubt that I had probably recovered from that faster than was normal. I wasn't sure if that was because of my unique state of being, or because my shard just wasn't interested in being attached to a nervous wreck, but regardless, it was one time I can admit to being happy with the conflict drive shit.
Assuming I had one. It was hard to tell, really.
"You… curse a lot." Was Emma's eventually answer to my heartfelt remarks on trauma.
"I get that a lot. You would think that being old enough to get shot at would mean I'm old enough for people to stop bugging me about it, but that jackass Skidmark has someone got a monopoly on swearing." I groused.
"Merlin, make a note, fuck Skidmark in particular."I only half jokingly asked my AI.
"I will endeavour to collect information on his whereabouts and activities." Was his honest response.
"It's just like, you're really cool and heroic looking and stuff - and then you talk." Emma tried to explain to me.
I'm gonna be honest, that was actually kind of hurtful. I wasn't that insufferable was I? Oh god Lisa was going to fucking hate me.
"Thank you, Emma, it's just absolutely wonderful to know that my dashing good looks and sense of timing are mitigated properly by my absolute lack of people skills." I responded sarcastically.
"See? You're a jerk!" She complained, like I had just ruined something for her that she could never get back.
"I prefer 'sassy'," I joked, catching Emma's parents watching us converse - which we had been doing for an hour or so now - from the living room, though they were doing their best to make it look like they weren't eavesdropping.
"I don't." She returned flatly.
"Sorry, them's the breaks. Anyway, since you seem to be doing better-" I commented, vaguely remembering that she had hid in her room and refused to come out for days after her assault in canon, "- I'll get going. Just remember that it's okay to be scared. Everyone feels that way.I feel that way like ninety percent of the time I'm out and about in this city. But it's what we do while scared that shows who we really are. Take care of your friends and loved ones Emma. They're what matters most." I said, standing up and earning a forlorn look from the girl before her expression shifted to something I found entirely inscrutable.
"'Kay, I was going to ask for your cell phone number but - what the hell was that?" She asked me incredulously.
"A… rousing speech on the nature of fear and friendship?"
That I had cribbed from a bunch of different anime and shit, but still. If she was gonna latch on to the first moronic belief system she came across it might as well be the creed of every shounen protagonist in the world.
"Okay but you get that randomly switching from normal guy to rousing speechmaker is why I thought you would swear less right?" She asked me pointedly.
"I- you-" I spluttered.
This wasn't really going how I expected it to. I had been expecting to come in, blather some anecdotes and quotes at her, then leave when it was obvious my brainwashing was complete.
I wasn't expecting any kind of critical thinking, or for her to question me in any capacity.
Which just goes to show that I am somehow less charismatic than my cousin, which was just plain depressing to consider.
"Just… just don't let this turn you into someone you're not. I have superpowers, so I know the possibility exists." I eventually sighed in defeat.
"About that." Alan Barnes cut into the conversation, shooting his daughter a questioning look that I was too slow to observe her response to.
"Did you know that was going to happen?" He asked me with a hard edge to his tone.
"Of course I did, that was why I told you to avoid shortcuts! What, you think I was just coming around every time you were leaving that place because I had nothing better to do?" I shot back in exasperation.
I'd be damned if I was going to catch shit for 'letting this happen' from anyone.
"No but-how? Why? Hundreds of people in the city have to experience similar, but you kept following us around." He pointed out.
God damn, could these people be slightly less fucking astute? Wasn't everyone in this world supposed to be too stupid to think about this shit? Common sense was starting to turn up with alarming frequency around me for a place I thought common sense came to die.
Considering things, I weighed my options before eventually trying to find a way to explain myself without implying that Emma was liable to become an absolute psychopath. Mostly because I doubted the knowledge would help anyones mental health.
I glanced back at Emma, then at Alan and his wife who was standing with him, and sighed.
"I can partially tell the future, sort of. Emma was… I dunno, important I guess would be the word. She had to be kept safe so something else really terrible didn't happen." I slowly explained.
"What 'something else'?" Alan asked.
Motherfucker.
"I couldn't say. Not how my powers work." I lied. Alan shot me a dubious look, but one glance over my shoulder at his daughter and his expression softened considerably.
"Well… thank you. If you ever need a lawyer for any reason-" he started to say only for his wife's hand - which was on his waist - to tighten considerably.
"-you're always welcome in our home." She finished for him.
Now, this was weird for me, because I got the distinct impression that Alan didn't like me, which was strange cus helovedSophia. My only saving grace seemed to be that Mrs.Barnes was on my side.
"Yeah I'll uh, I'll keep it in mind." I stated awkwardly, moving to get around them while trying to reach the front door.
"Hey wait! I still need your number!" Emma called from behind me.
I sighed again.
Was it too much to ask to just vanish from their lives never to return? Was it really? I asked myself silently.
"You're a bleeding heart, sir. You just cover it up very well - mostly by swearing." Merlin chimed in.
"I feel like you've gotten to be kind of a jerk recently buddy." I fired back while woodenly turning around to provide Emma with my cellphone number.
"I prefer 'sassy', sir." Was his -fucking copied -response.