AN: This is a story is a Self-Insert as Vista's twin brother with the Celestial Forge as my power. It was inspired by Brocton's Celestial Forge and if you haven't read that fic, I highly recommend you do. Not only is it excellent, but the SI has read it and makes references to it that you might not get if you don't know what goes on in that fic. They're minor references and not necessary to understand to enjoy the story but still.

For anyone who's skipping BCF and any other Celestial Forge stories, I'm writing with a certain set of rules. The Celestial Forge is a collection of crafting related perks from many different jumpchains. Every 2,000 words I write, I get 100 points and pick a random perk from the Forge. If I have enough points, that perk gets added to the SI's powers. If not, the points are banked until next time.

Also, minor trigger warning. There are some brief mentions of suicide in the first chapter. Please be advised.

That should be everything you need to know. Please enjoy.

I woke up in the hospital with two different sets of memories explaining how I might have gotten there, as well as a dozen constellations cluttering up my brain. The constellations were brilliant, glimmering things, filled with distant, beautiful balls of light, knowledge and power. Within those distant stars, I could tell there was the power of the gods, to build and rebuild worlds and knowledge that men would kill to possess.

I shoved all that nonsense aside for the moment and instead focused on figuring out who the fuck I was.

According to one set of memories, I was a grown-ass adult, with a job and bills and the sort of tiredness that only occurs when the mundanity of life has slowly worn away all your hopes and dreams for the future. It was December, 2021 and I was supposed to be on a cross-country flight to visit family for Christmas vacation. The last thing I remembered was quietly accepting fate while the air was filled with screaming voices and screaming engines.

According to the other set of memories, I was a snot-nosed brat, a pre-teen in the middle of middle school. It was April, 2011 and I had the house to myself today. Instead of doing homework or playing video games or subverting the parental controls on the internet for 'research', I'd decided to put my temporary privacy to better use. The last thing I remembered was writing a goodbye note to my sister, then lying on my bed and waiting for the bottleful of pills I'd swallowed to end me.

Judging by how small my hands were, I had to assume the second set was more accurate.

Also the fact that Panacea was standing by my bed, talking at me as I tried to get my mind back in one piece. I was a little too busy to pay attention to what she was actually saying, since I was instead freaking out about the fact that Panacea was talking to me.

Holy shit, I was in the same room as Panacea.

Holy shit, I got medical treatment from Panacea.

Holy shit, Panacea was real.

That last thought struck me both as odd and as a completely rational reaction. Naturally, that was disorientating and annoying and I really needed to figure out what the fuck was going on in my head.

Unfortunately, I had to put that off for the moment, since Panacea was snapping her fingers in my face, demanding my attention. I blinked and rubbed my eyes with my hands and forced myself to focus on her.

"I- I'm sorry? What did you say?" Damn, my voice was scratchy. Damn, my voice was cute as fuck. I needed some water.

"I was asking you," her voice was filled with annoyance, "how you were feeling. I healed you but I don't do brains, so if there are any side effects remaining, we need to get an actual doctor in here."

I was both surprised and unsurprised at her brusque bedside manner. This whole dual reaction thing was really starting to get annoying and all I wanted to do was sort it out. But I needed to get some time to myself for that, and that meant dealing with Panacea's questions first. "A little disoriented. Headache. Feel fuzzy, just a bit."

"Hrm." Panacea grunted in annoyance and grabbed my arm. After a second, she let go. "That's all minor stuff. You should be fine with plenty of water and bed rest. Also, if you're annoyed to still be alive, blame your sister, not me."

"My… sister?" Memories of two different people surfaced and I focused on the younger. She wasn't supposed to be home today. At least, not the home I was at. "Is she-"

Panacea ignored me and stomped over to the door so she could throw it open. "Hey, kid. Get in here, your brother's awake."

My sis was in the room and throwing herself on me so fast, I swear she used her power. I didn't have a better explanation for why one moment I was just sitting in the bed and the next I was knocked over with approximately ninety pounds of crying, sobbing blonde on top of me. "Miles! You're okay! You're awake! You were… You…"

She broke down into tears while I lay there, frozen. I never thought she'd be this upset. I hadn't seen her this upset in years. Hell, I hadn't seen her cry at all. Not since she got her powers. Since then, she was the strong one, the brave one, the one to stand up against life when it got rough. My sister, the superhero. "Missy…"

Holy shit, Missy Biron was my sister. I was the twin brother of Vista, the second-most badass girl in Brockton Bay and definitely the coolest Ward. I felt so much admiration for her, so much sympathy, I respected her twice over and it was almost enough to cover the evil, pathetic envy I felt at the thought. Immediately, I hated myself for feeling that way, twice as much as usual but half that immediately switched to… sympathy? For myself? It was totally reasonable for me to feel envious but I still hated it and hated myself and I really shouldn't feel that way and fuck, I was spiraling.

I forced myself to go back, think of something else. I was the twin of Vista. That was cool. I… didn't exist? I wasn't supposed to exist? But- Fuck, no, no, not like that fuck, shit. I really needed to figure this shit out but I couldn't because now Missy was pounding on my chest with tears in her eyes.

"You idiot! You fucking asshole! You… you… absolute fucking moron. How could you? Why? What is wrong with you?" She shouted as she slammed her fists childishly against my chest. Except whatever workouts they had her doing in the Wards were working out for her, and every time she hit me, it genuinely hurt.

"Ow! Missy, stop! Please, seriously, ow!" I shouted to be heard and she instantly froze.

"Oh god, no. Miles, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean- Oh, fuck, are you okay? I-" She was starting to panic, so I reached up and pulled her into a hug.

She resisted a moment, before settling down. I rubbed her back while I whispered to her. "It's alright. I'm okay. I'm here. You're right, I was a huge, dumb idiot but I promise, I-"

And that was when the door crashed open again and the two people I hated most in the world burst into the room: my parents. You will never meet two humans more petty and filled with low, guttural spite than Henry and Karen Biron. They barely spared me a glance before they began trying to blame each other.

"Miles! Oh, it's so good you're okay. Don't you worry, Honey. You won't ever have to go home with your father again."

"Are you serious? He stayed with me to escape you! I bet you drove him to this? Aren't I right, Miles?"

"How dare you! This just proves that you're utterly incapable of caring for anyone! It was your house where-"

"Yes, my house! And it's not like he'd be any safer at my other house, which you stole-"

"Don't you fucking dare-"

"So help me-"

"-utter asshole, you know that-"

"-cheating bitch of a mother-"

And now they weren't even trying to argue with each other. They were just shouting everything they hated about each other at the top of their lungs, regardless of whether it was relevant or not. God, this was a nightmare. A familiar one but one I was looking at with fresh eyes anyway. I hated this. I hated them. I knew they were terrible people before, what with causing Missy to trigger and the dog killing but seeing it live just-

Wait.

Missy's dad killed his wife's dog.

Dad killed our dog.

DAD KILLED MY DOG! THAT ABSOLUTE SHITHEEL KILLED MY DOG!

AND THEY WERE STILL FUCKING ARGUING!

"SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Everyone turned to me, surprised at how I was suddenly shouting. Both my parents opened their mouths to talk, but I just kept going. "Shut the fuck up and get out! Go! Fucking Leave! I tried to kill myself to escape BOTH of you because you are absolutely awful fucking people! I want nothing to do with you! So why don't you do Missy and I a favor and just go die already!"

They were both stunned. I guess it made sense. Nobody expected anything from me. Quiet Miles, polite Miles, worthless Miles. Not anymore, not for this one moment. It felt like such a relief to finally let out everything I'd been bottling up all this time.

"Honey-" Mom started to say something in her fake sweet voice but she was cut off when Missy pointed at the door.

"You heard him. Get out," She said with pure, ice-cold venom in her tone.

"Sweetie, we can't just-" Dad tried to do his 'reasonable-but-stern' act but was cut off before he could even get started by Missy. Something eye-watering happened to the space around them, as the area they were standing on just inside the door was suddenly stretched so they were outside the door. Then the door itself tilted upwards until gravity slammed it shut and then Missy let everything snap back into place.

There was a moment where the only sound in the room was us twins angrily panting in sync. Shouting like that had taken a lot out of me, since I was still recovering from a drug overdose.

"Um."

Both Missy and I snapped to glare at the sound and Panacea flinched away from us. When I realized who it was, I forced myself to relax and beside me, Missy did the same. I'd forgotten Panacea was still here. She hadn't left when Missy arrived and she'd been stuck watching that mess ever since.

Unlike before, she didn't look grouchy, just incredibly awkward. "So, uh, I have a few… phone calls I have to make? I'll just leave the two of you here. Try to relax and get some rest, okay?"

"Can you make sure they don't come back in here?" Missy asked.

"Please," I added, begging her with my eyes.

Panacea stood there awkwardly for a moment, before standing up a little straighter. "Of course. I'll get a nurse to guard the door or something. Goodbye and… good luck, I guess."

Panacea left, quickly closing the door behind her, preventing our parents from getting back in. For the brief moment the door was open, I could hear them gearing up to argue with Panacea too. I hope she could hold up her promise and keep them out.

"Miles…" Missy said softly, pulling my attention back to her. "Are you okay?"

I sighed and collapsed back onto the worthless hospital pillow. "No. Not really. I just… I need some quiet, okay?"

"Okay." Missy agreed. She nodded and wiped her tears from her face. "Okay, I'll just-"

She tried to get up but I grabbed her arm and stopped her. "No. Stay here? Please? I need… I wanna hug."

Missy smiled at me sadly, fighting to stay positive for my sake. She was so adorable and cute and I hated my parents for making her cry. I hated myself for the same reason. And while I was stewing in hate, she curled up by my side, hugging my arm. "Alright. Miles… I'm happy you're still here."

"I'm sorry I tried to leave." I whispered back. I settled into the uncomfortable bed as best I could but then I remembered what Panacea said about blaming my sister for my survival. "Missy… did you save me?"

It took her an oddly long time to answer. "...Yes. I-"

"Thanks." I cut her off. I didn't want her thinking for a moment that I resented her for stopping me from dying. "It was a mistake."

That was something my older memories were convinced of and my younger memories- Urg, no, I wasn't feeling like two separate people, so thinking of it that way wasn't right. Hopefully now I'd actually be able to figure that shit out.

In the back of my mind, the constellations moved. A large star from one of them passed close by me but nothing else happened. I was glad. I knew what it was, or at least I was pretty sure, but I'd rather sort myself out before delving into that insanity.

As Missy's breathing settled and she began to fall asleep, I laid back and contemplated. I wasn't thinking two thoughts at the same time or hearing voices in my head, so I was reasonably sure I was still one mind, just with two different sets of memories. And because of that, I'd gone through some quick flashes of dissociation but on the whole, I seemed to be doing fine. Going through both sets, it seemed both of… me, I guessed, were very similar. Obviously, the older memory set was older, calmer, more mature but when I was young, I was pretty much the same as my younger set was now. Younger Miles was more depressed though, but given the circumstances of my life, that was pretty justified.

So that left me with two possibilities. One was that my older self had reincarnated into my younger self and the trauma of nearly dying again had reawoken my memories of my past life. Or I really was two separate people and when my older self died, my memories were somehow given to my younger self, who was the closest match to my personality across the multiverse.

While gifting my memories to some poor kid, giving them the tools to live a better life and the lessons of what not to do, was totally something I felt I would do, I decided to go with the reincarnation theory for now. Mostly because it was similar to a manga I loved back in my old life. It didn't really matter, besides giving me a framework to organize my thoughts around.

Once I'd come up with a hypothesis of what was going on, things seemed to slot into place a lot faster. I was still Miles, I just had the coping mechanisms I'd come up with my old life to deal with existential dread, evil brain chemicals that wanted me to kill myself and social anxiety. I also had a very good opportunity here. My old life had not been very exciting. I had so many dreams I'd wanted to chase but I never really pursued any of them, leaving me unhappy and feeling like I'd left things too late. Well now I actually had the chance to go out and make something with my life and I wasn't going to let it go to waste a second time.

Although, it wasn't like I had much choice in the matter. I was in Worm now, in Brockton Bay, with the Celestial Forge as a superpower. I wasn't going to have a peaceful life even if I wanted one and I had better learn to run quick if I didn't want my second chance at life to end real quick.

Of course, thinking of the Celestial Forge brought up the other big elephant in the room. Not the Forge itself, but the fact that it was possible I was just fictional. I was in one of my favorite settings, with one of my favorite powers, I was someone who didn't exist in canon and I'd written fanfiction before. I might very well be a Self Insert character. I couldn't be sure if I was really real. And… I decided it didn't really matter. There wasn't anything I could really do about it if I was just a character, so why should I worry about it?

You say avoidance, I say acceptance. Freaking out about shit I couldn't control was one of the things I'd learned to avoid in my old life.

On to things I actually could deal with. Namely, superheroics. Or at least I hoped I could, but with the Celestial Forge in all it's overpowered, out-of-context awesomeness, I was pretty confident that I could build something that'd let me fight crime, even if I personally fell short.

Anyway, it was early April now and while I wasn't sure if Worm started in April or March, the fact that I hadn't heard anything about Lung being captured told me that Taylor hadn't had her first night out yet. So I just had to keep checking out the Docks every weekend from here on out and eventually I'd find her and Lung duking it out. It was Thursday today, so I didn't have that much time to prepare for the first weekend, but if that came and went without incident, maybe I could seek out Taylor some other way.

I wasn't just interested in Taylor because I admired her as a character and hero, though I did. And it wasn't just because I wanted to hopefully keep her on the more heroic side of things from the start, though she certainly deserved a better reputation for her efforts. And it wasn't just because she was objectively badass, with a terrifyingly effective power that'd be a big asset to anyone who could get her on their side, although that was obviously true as well. But I wanted her talents to help deal with a specific incident.

After the Lung fight, came the bank heist, and more importantly, the kidnapping it covered for. I refused to let Coil take Dinah without a fight, for both practical and moral reasons. Not only would getting his clutches on her make him that much more dangerous, but obviously letting a pre-teen girl get kidnapped by a creepy old guy with a penchant for torture and forcing compliance wasn't something any good person would do if they could help it. I could look her up on social media and get her school and maybe even her home address, the two most likely places the kidnapping would take place, but that didn't mean I'd necessarily be in the right place at the right time. Coil was a sneaky bastard after all and unless I could monitor the entire area, it was possible his goons could sneak away with Dinah while I was looking the wrong way. If I got extremely lucky with the Celestial Forge, I could build something to cover that weakness, but recruiting Taylor was a much more reliable option.

And while I was lying there, unable to move without waking up Missy, I figured I might as well lay out the groundwork for plans beyond that as well. After the bank heist, I was pretty sure the next big thing was the battle with Bakuda at the storage lockers, which was really just a prelude for the bombing spree. That really wasn't something I was looking forward to. Still, if I avoided the mistakes Apeiron made, I could at least avoid Flechette being called in as back up, leading to March chasing her and making the whole thing worse. If that didn't happen then I'd… still have to deal with an unhinged, sociopathic egomaniac blowing up the city, just randomly instead of carefully planned out. Joy.

I wondered if there was some way I could prevent it from happening entirely. Obviously, capturing Bakuda before she could start her terror spree would be best and that was something recruiting Taylor or inventing tracking/searching tech would help with. But at this point, I couldn't guarantee either of those things happening.

Then an idea struck me. What was Lung planning to do with Bakuda once he recruited her? I doubted he approved of the idea of random chaos and destruction, otherwise he'd be out rampaging across the city every day. If he avoided getting captured because of fighting Taylor, would he just sit on Bakuda? Obviously he'd make some use of her but would he keep her under control? I thought it was probable.

Of course, there was the issue of even achieving that in the first place. I couldn't just stop Taylor from fighting him entirely, since then he would go on to slaughter the Undersiders unimpeded. If I wanted him free to curtail Bakuda's murder fetish, I'd have to engage him long enough for the Undersiders to escape unharmed but also avoid just knocking him out outright and leaving him for the authorities to capture. A thin, dangerous line to dance and one I'd probably lethally fail without getting really lucky on what the Celestial Forge doled out.

If I couldn't do that, I had no idea how they dealt with Bakuda in canon. I knew her weaknesses, the targeting system in her mask and the control ring(s) on her toe(s) but other than that, I had no idea where or when she'd make appearances. The folly of reading fanfiction but not the original. Once again, my best bet for finding and taking out major threats lay with either Taylor or technology that could do the same things she did.

After that was the Fosberg Gallery or whatever the name was. Didn't care about the Undersiders humiliating the Protectorate. Skip.

I was pretty sure the Empire's identities were revealed before Leviathan. That… could be an issue. Or an opportunity. We'd have to see.

Speaking of Leviathan… yeah, no. Unless I could infiltrate Coil's underground base and deal with Echidna before… Let's see, the Simurgh attacked in late February, so that meant the next attack was sometime in May. I probably had a month and a bit to handle that which wasn't totally out of the range of what was possible with the Celestial Forge. Of course, at that point, I might be a big enough threat that I'd replace Echidna as the Endbringer beacon. So yeah, let's assume it was happening anyway and focus on building up tech to deal with it.

I was pretty sure Coil taking over the PRT happened after the Leviathan attack and I knew that the Slaughterhouse Nine coming to town did, but I wasn't entirely sure about the order of events there. And since Leviathan was happening, that meant the S9 would happen definitely as well.

God. I shuddered in bed at the thought of everything coming our way. Reading about all these monsters was one thing, living in the same world as them, hearing the tales, seeing video footage of their attacks, that was something else entirely. And I was going to have to fight them. No pressure. Fuck.

Anyway, I knew the secret of the Siberian, so that was one massive advantage, and so was knowing about Jack Slash's master power. I'd have to invest in tech that didn't have silicon components at some point and finding Manton was yet another thing I needed Taylor/Tracking tech for. Other than that, most of the S9 were kinda straight forward. I assumed by that point, I'd have tech to counter most of their powers, hopefully including Cherish and Jack's mind fuckery.

Although, was I even a parahuman? I didn't have an active presence in the back of my head like Apeiron, but that might just mean my Shard wasn't as talkative. I certainly didn't get the whole explanation hallucination that Apeiron did, but again, maybe my Shard was just normal and wiped my memories of the whole Trajectory, Agreement thing like it was supposed to. Panacea didn't mention anything about the Coronal whatevers, though and I had to assume she would have, especially since she knew Missy's secret identity and I was her brother. If she knew, my secret identity was dead on arrival, so I hoped she didn't. But if she didn't notice any shiny new brain tumors, that maybe meant I had the Celestial Forge without having triggered and that could be useful. I'd have to brain scan myself at some point to find out.

I was distracting myself though. I tried to get back on the track of planning things out but then another constellation swung by in my head. The Celestial Forge worked by slowly building up reach or power or grip strength or something and occasionally, if you had enough reach stored away, you could snag a new node off of one of the constellations. Like I did now.

Gaining a new power felt… calling it good was an understatement but saying pleasurable carried the wrong implications. Especially since I was twelve. It was like… It was like a warm summer day, sitting in the shade of a giant oak, breathing in the scent of fresh grass and enjoying a break with friends. Or being huddled by a crackling fire under a blanket with your family, laughing and cuddling and having a great time. It was comfortable, happy, almost zen. Something had clicked into place and suddenly the world made a little more sense.

The feeling only lasted until my new power actually manifested itself. Not because the feelings themselves suddenly disappeared, but because a green glove with teeth and eyes appeared in the air above me. It then fell, naturally, right onto Missy's head. Instantly, she jolted up and started screaming, which completely distracted me from the lingering warm-fuzzies I had from unlocking my first part of the celestial forge.

"AAAH! AAHH! What the fuck! What is that? Ow, ow ow!" Missy's screams of fear turned to screams of pain as she shook her head and got the Avid Glove's teeth tangled in her hair.

"Missy, stop! You're making it worse." I said as I grabbed her shoulders. "Just calm down, I'll get it out, okay? Turn around."

Missy shuffled around so that she was facing away from me and I could see the Avid Glove hanging in her hair. Thankfully, her hair wasn't super long and there wasn't too much to get caught on the Glove's teeth. However, the Glove was trying to free itself anyway and not making much progress. All it was doing was pulling on Missy's hair and making her flinch.

"Stop moving." I commanded and the Glove froze. So did Missy but that was probably for the better anyway.

"Wh-what is it? Is it a bug? A spider? Ooh God…" Missy whined as I got to work, carefully unlooping hair from the Glove's fingers and fangs.

"Something like that…" I muttered as I finished the job. Once the Glove was completely free, I lifted it up to my shoulder, which it scuttled onto and sat on, like a parrot. "Here, why don't you take a look."

I was planning on sharing my powers with her anyway and I couldn't really keep it a secret now anyway. Not without a lot of semi-comedic failing as I tried to keep the Glove out of sight until she left and I really wasn't feeling up for that sort of cartoonish tomfoolery.

"What? Miles, no, I don't wanna see a gross bug or-" She said that but turned around anyway and froze when she saw the Avid Glove properly for the first time. "What. The Fuck. Is that."

"It's a glove. With eyes. And teeth." I explained. Missy stared at me. "...Isn't it cute?"

"No! It looks freaky!" Missy yelled, making the Glove cower. I'm sure if it could actually make sounds, it would have whined piteously. "What the fuck is it? Where did it even come from?"

"Riiiiight. About that…'' I ran a hand through my hair, trying to think of exactly how I could explain this. "So… I have powers now. I was gonna tell you, but then the parents showed up and there was screaming and I just-"

I was cut off when Missy pulled me into an almost-painful hug, dislodging the Avid Glove from my shoulder. It was hard for me to even breathe, but I hugged her back anyway. "Oh, Miles…"

"I'm okay. I'm okay…" I mumbled back at her. We sat there hugging until we both calmed down. Again. It took awhile. I was… mostly fine. Even if I'd practically had two trigger events at once, I was mostly fine with what had happened. Probably. I'd have to see if nightmares or anything else showed up later. But for the moment, I was fine. But Missy was worried about me, so we hugged.

Eventually we separated and Missy looked at the Glove again, partly curious, partly uncomfortable. "So, you're a parahuman now. And your power is a freaky living glove with teeth? Not even a pair of them, just one? No offense Miles, but that's both the most random and the most useless power I think I've ever heard of."

"So you're saying it fits me perfectly." I deadpanned. Missy immediately pushed me and I fell to the bed, laughing.

"Oh my God Miles, no! You're not funny!" She said that but I could see the smile tugging at her lips anyway. But then she sighed and held my hand. "You're not useless. Okay? You're not, no matter what our fucking progenitors make you feel like."

"Yeah, I know. I was just joking." Mostly joking but hey. I had the Celestial Forge. I was anything but useless now. "Anyway, my power is a bit more complicated than just getting a cute new pet. Here, let me show you."

I got up from the bed and went to the door, Missy watching from the bed with a curious expression, only for me to realize I left something behind.

"Can you grab that for me?" I asked and before Missy could figure out what I was talking about, the Glove had grabbed the key I left on the bed and was scuttling across the floor towards me. I took the key from it and let the cute little guy onto my shoulder again.

The key itself was nothing special to look at, probably by design. You wouldn't want someone stealing this thing, even if it was pointless. If I ever lost the thing, it would reappear in my pocket in a few minutes. I'd had it in my fist when I woke up but considering everything else that I had to deal with, a magic key wasn't even really worth acknowledging.

Now though, it would give Missy a little taste of the insanity to come and hopefully get her to listen to what I was going to say. Sliding the key into the door's lock and turning it, nevermind that it wasn't supposed to fit, I opened the door not into the hospital's hallway but a stark white cube of a room.

"You coming?" I gave Missy a cheeky grin before I walked inside. Behind me, she scrambled off of the bed and hurried to follow.

The entrance hall of my new extra-dimensional workshop was a plain cube, as I mentioned, with nothing inside but the white concrete walls and the fluorescent lights overhead. There was no point in examining it closer, so I skipped over that and went right to the only other doorway it had, Missy trailing behind me slightly as she took everything in.

The next room we entered, the only other room in there at the moment, was an actual workshop, filled with tools and supplies. Screwdrivers, hammers, mallets, wrenches. A wood saw, table saw, band saw, jig saw, lots of saws. Sandpaper and sanding belts. Metal and wood, screws and nails, safety goggles and gloves. It was a bit cluttered, with no thought given to workflow but there was enough space to work safely at least.

Missy entered, took a look around and threw her hands up in the air. "Alright, that's it. I give up. I have no idea what's happening. I thought maybe you had a space creation power to match my space bending power but where the hell did all this stuff come from? How do you have electricity in here?"

"No idea. It just works. Powers bullshit." I said with a shrug. "Which is going to be something of a theme going forward I feel…"

Missy gave me the stink-eye, distinctly unamused. "Miles, do you know how your power works or not."

"I do, alright? Just give me a sec…" This might get tricky. Parahuman powers didn't exactly come with instruction manuals. Meanwhile, I knew exactly how my power worked because I read about it. In fanfiction. Which might not be the most reliable source but I'd already decided to not get mixed up in meta thinking. Right now my problem was sounding vague enough that it sounded like I was getting the same instincts as a normal parahuman while also providing enough information that Missy would understand my 'Wards bad' position.

After a moment's thought, I clapped my hands and grinned. "So! Basically, I'm not actually a Tinker, I'm a Trump that just imitates one. I can feel a bunch of powers in the back of my head, right? But I can't access any of them, the most I can get is a vague feel for what they might do and they're all stuff related to Tinkering and science. But I've also got this, like, power gauge thing building up and when I've got enough power or whatever stored up, that basically makes one of the actual powers accessible.

"Right now, I've only just the basic workshop and my cute new Glove here, but I'll be getting more powers soon enough. I'll develop multiple Tinker specialities, more advanced laboratories and special materials will be added to the pocket dimension, Thinker powers that boost my smarts, I'll even get powers that make me work faster and-slash-or more efficiently. Anything and everything that could possibly be related to making me a better Tinker."

"That's ridiculous." Missy crossed her arms and frowned at me. I just grinned back, which only annoyed her more. "No, seriously, Miles. That's ridiculous. That's not how powers work. You can't just… develop new powers forever without limit. Even Eidolon can only have three at a time."

"Eidolon also gets to pick and choose what powers he wants. I can't control what powers I'll get. Also, I have no idea what exactly makes the power-grabbing power build up. So there's a few limitations." I waved a hand around at the workshop and my Glove. "Besides, how else do you explain the fact that I have two very different powers? What does a pocket dimension workshop match up with a living glove except as Tinkering resources?"

"Actually, what does a glove have to do with Tinkering at all?" Missy countered.

"Safety equipment. Don't wanna cut my fingers."

"Okay, but why is it alive?" She insisted.

"Sometimes you need an extra hand while building something." I answered, thinking back to my experience building bikes for my job in my old life. "You need someone to hold something in place or pass you tools."

"And the teeth? Explain those."

"Guard dog?" I guessed. "If I'm gonna be building cool shit, I don't want anyone stealing my shit while I'm out."

"But you can just seal away the pocket dimension…" Missy muttered before pinching the bridge of her nose. "You what? Fuck it, I give up. Don't care."

"Aw, c'mon Missy." I slid closer and put a hand on her shoulder, smiling. "Gimme just a bit of time, another power will pop up and I'll prove what I'm saying is true."

"I just said I give up, didn't I?" Missy grunted. "It'll be up to the PRT power geeks to figure this out, not me. They'll tell you you're wrong and they'll prove it too."

"Uh, actually… About that…" I looked down and scratched the back of my head. "I wasn't actually planning on joining the Wards."

Missy narrowed her eyes at me and gave me the driest, flattest "What." I'd ever heard.

"I said I wasn't-"

"I KNOW WHAT YOU JUST SAID!" Missy exploded at me. "Do you have any idea how- how stupid that is? You know how dangerous being a Cape is, right? I know I've told you all about it! Hell, you helped stitch me back up after that time I ran into Hookwolf by accident. Most independent capes don't last past three months, you know that, right? And it's even worse for Tinkers, cause you can get tracked by the materials you buy and you start off without anyway to defend themselves and-"

"Missy!" I put my hands up placatingly. "Missy, please. I swear, I'm not being an idiot here."

"YES YOU ARE!" She screamed, tears threatening to fall. I saw those tears and I realized why she was so upset. She'd just saved me from killing myself a few hours ago. I was so excited to get to work, I was well on my way past it, but for her it was still fresh. She didn't have plans and future knowledge and sorting out two lives to keep her distracted. And here I was, practically trying to commit suicide again, at least from her perspective.

One of the constellations in the Forge passed nearby without giving me anything but I barely paid attention to that.

I pulled Missy into a hug and she clung to me with all her strength. I rubbed her back and sang soft nonsense while she cried. Even my Glove delicately patted her shoulder, being careful with his teeth. It took a long time, but eventually Missy managed to calm down again. I gave her one last squeeze with a sad smile. "Sorry. I promised I wouldn't make you cry again and here I am, breaking that promise not thirty minutes later."

Her eyebrows bunched in confusion. "Uh, no you didn't?"

"Well, I should have. In fact, here. I promise I'll do my very best to never make you cry again." I swore with all seriousness. "In fact, no one is ever allowed to make you cry again. I'll stop them if I have to."

"Miles…" Missy smiled at me before wiping her eyes and taking a deep breath. When she was done, she looked calm and confident once again. "Thank you. So you'll join the Wards then?"

I smiled awkwardly and couldn't meet her eyes. "Well, I-"

"Miles, what the fuck?!" She shouted in anger, throwing her hands up.

"Okay, okay, listen! At least give me an opportunity to explain, okay? I have some good reasons here." Missy crossed her arms and frowned at me, but leaned against one of the shelves and nodded. I breathed a sigh of relief before continuing. "Okay, so. That three month thing? Technically accurate probably, but there are two issues with it. One, how many independents actually die in their first three months and how many simply cease to be independents by joining up with someone else? And I'm not just talking about joining a gang or villain team, how many independents join up with the Protectorate or Wards after realizing how dangerous it is? Cause I'm willing to be the PRT still includes them in the percentage of independents that 'don't last' cause it pumps the numbers up."

Missy opened her mouth but shut it again, thinking. "Okay, you might be right about the inflated stats. Maybe. But it's still dangerous to go alone," she eventually admitted.

"Yes, but probably not for the reason you think. Have you wondered why the PRT picked three months as the timeframe for this little statistic?"

"No, not really." Missy shook her head, not sure where I was going with this.

"Well, what else happens every three months?" I asked and her eyes widened in shock.

"Wait, you mean-"

I nodded. "Yep. Now, I'm sure there are a bunch of stupid new capes that let the power go to their head and fight Lung their first night out or the local equivalent in other cities. But I'm willing to bet most stick to fighting gangbangers and preventing muggings until they're more confident. But Endbringers? Everybody helps out against them, no matter how experienced, and Endbringers don't care how experienced you are either. So of the amount of independents that actually do die in their first three months, I'm willing to bet most of those die in Endbringer battles. And trust me, I'm not fighting an Endbringer until I've built self-sustaining, environmentally sealed, nigh-invulnerable power armor."

Something that would probably take me a week if I got lucky with the Forge, but Missy didn't need to hear that right now.

Instead, I just moved on. "As for the whole 'Tinkers are vulnerable until they get built up' thing, it's not really relevant in my case. I have my own private, secure workshop I can access from anywhere, including the safety of my own home. Plus, I'm pretty sure that it resupplies itself thanks to power bullshit, so I don't have to worry about weird purchases leading the gangs right to our door. Oh, and while we're on the topic, I'm pretty sure that the PRT is more likely to track down a Tinker that way than the gangs. They have an entire division of Thinkers for monitoring that kind of thing, don't they? Which is more than most gangs can say."

Missy scrunched her face up adorably before clicking her tongue. "Tch, you might be right. I think that's actually how we got Kid Win…"

"So that's two reasons why it's okay for me to not join the Wards, but my last argument is an actual reason why I shouldn't." I licked my lips nervously. This last bit was going to be hardest to sell to my sister. "Basically: Red Tape."

"Seriously?" Missy gave me a disbelieving look.

"Seriously. Protectorate Tinkers have to get all their tech screened, right? Regular scientists have to take a look, try it out, make sure it won't give everyone in a quarter mile radius cancer or anything? Any idea how long that takes?"

"A few days, I think?" Missy tried to remember. "I know it's enough for Kid Win to complain about it almost all the time. Whenever he's not complaining about his power being dumb, actually."

"Exactly. And Kid Win's a normal Tinker." I nodded firmly. "Me? I got a new power while just lying in bed, just a few hours off my initial trigger event. If I keep gaining powers at that rate, I'll soon be advancing my tech level so fast that stuff I made the previous day will need upgrades to be relevant. Stuff I made a week ago and just got back from testing? It might as well be highly advanced garbage for all the use it will be to me. I'd never be able to use my most advanced gear and they'd never let me use anything untested, so basically I'd be in a cycle of making something, sending it off for testing, and then immediately building something even better, which I'd also need to send off for testing and by the time I got anything back, it'd either go in the trash or get stripped for the new thing I was building just to send off to testing. But if I stay independent, I can actually just use my newest tech as soon as it's built and that means I'd actually be able to go out and help people. You know, like a hero."

"Okay, but that's all if your power works like you think it does." Missy insisted.

"It does." I insisted right back.

"Even if you're right, and I'm pretty sure you're not, but if you're right, there's a reason for the testing. Like you said, it's no good if your tech gives everyone cancer."

"I'm not gonna build a cancer bomb, Missy." I groaned. "Besides, that's what I have you for."

"I- excuse me?" Missy gave me a very startled look and I realized I probably said things in the wrong order.

"I meant I have you for testing, not giving cancer to everyone." Wait, that wasn't much better. "I mean- Guh. Just… give me a second?"

Despite the seriousness of the conversation, Missy giggled at my foolishness and gave me the moment I needed to straighten my thoughts out. Once I had my mouth reset, I continued. "Okay, so obviously, you've been doing this whole cape thing for years."

"Obviously." She agreed with just a small level of smug. I used to hate when she did that when I was just myself, but now that I had my old self's knowledge, I knew she was just proud of her accomplishments. It was one of the few things she really had going for her thanks to my parents fucking us over and really, more people should have acknowledged her experience.

"So you know standard levels of force, what the best strategies for dealing with bad guys are, what's okay to bring to a fight and what's just plain overkill. I can show you everything I build and you can help me figure out what's safe to use, not just for me, but for anyone I'm fighting as well. Sound good?"

"Mmmm…" Missy bit her lip and thought about it. I knew she would like that I was trusting her and leaning on her experience, which… Okay, that might have been slightly manipulative, but I wasn't lying to her. I did need to remain independent to be fully effective and I did want her to help me be a better hero.

Eventually my sister sighed and gave in. "Okay. I can't say anything you've said is wrong, per say, and we really could use a more active hero in the Bay."

"Sweet! So-"

"BUT!" She cut me off. "That's only if your powers work like you say they do. I'm still not totally sold that you're some sort of ridiculous ultra-Tinker."

"That's fair enough." I agreed amicably. "Can you at least give me a couple days to prove it? I should get enough powers to prove I'm more than the average Parahuman."

Missy kept me waiting for an answer for a good couple of tense seconds. But eventually she nodded back at me. "Alright. You have the weekend to prove it. But if you don't have new powers by Monday, we're going straight to PRT HQ after school."

I grinned and gave her a quick hug. "Cool. Let's get out of here. I have no idea what happens if someone tries opening the door from the other side."

We quickly exited the workshop back to regular space, leaving my Glove inside. He saw us off with a little salute of his index finger. I'd have to give him a name soon, so I could stop thinking of him as just 'the Glove.'

But on the topic of opening the door from the other side, no sooner had I closed everything up and pocketed the key, than there came a knocking on the door. "Missy? Miles? It's me, Panacea. Can I come in?"

Missy and I looked at each other and she shrugged. Since there was no problem, I reached back over and opened the door. Out in the hallway, Panacea was still looking as awkward as when she left. Maybe even more.

"Thanks," she said as she stepped inside, closing the door behind her, "I have some things I have to tell you. First, some good news. Your parents won't be bothering you again, at least for tonight. They were causing a scene and disturbing the other patients, so I had an excuse to get Security to remove them."

"Woo!" I cheered softly, throwing my fists up. But then I tilted my head as I thought of something. "Wait, hospitals have security guards?"

"I don't know how they do it in other cities, but in Brockton Bay? For sure." Panacea said with a shrug. Then she started to fidget with the long, flowing sleeves of her costume, tugging slightly at the cuffs as she switched subjects. "Um, so for the second piece of news, it's not really bad, just… Well, Miles, you'll be staying in the hospital for the night. And Missy, you'll be staying with some friends for the night too. I know it's inconvenient but-"

"Wait, which friends?" Missy demanded, eyes narrowed in suspicion. I was confused too but not too concerned yet. A night without having to deal with the parental assholes was a good night in my book and I wasn't inclined to go looking gift horses in their mouths.

"Oh, you know. Carlos, Dean, Chris, those guys…" Panacea said, looking and sounding awkward. It was pretty clear she was more used to being brutally direct and this attempt at subtlety was not a great fit.

"Wait, I need to stay at Wards HQ? What? Why?!" Missy demanded, keeping her voice just low enough to not be heard outside. She was still plenty angry though.

Panacea's eyes widened and started looking back and forth between me and Missy in a panic. I sighed and rolled my eyes. "It's fine. I know even though I'm not really supposed to know but c'mon, why wouldn't I know? So we don't mind if you know that I know but if you could keep quiet about me knowing, so nobody else knows, that'd be really sweet of you."

Panacea looked at me in confusion. Missy smacked me. One of the constellations in the forge passed by without making a connection. I sighed. No one appreciates my humor, not even my power.

"Can you be serious for a second here? Or at least shut up?" Missy asked me and I acquiesced with a nod. Satisfied, she turned back to Panacea. "I assume you talked to someone in the PRT and they told you that Miles didn't know I was Vista, right? And they told you to keep it a secret?"

Panacea nodded, still too confused to speak up.

"Well, don't bother. He's known from the start, he just never signed an NDA, so everyone just thinks he's a blind idiot who never noticed anything."

"And we like it that way." I added in with a cheeky smile.

"You just don't want to do any paperwork." Missy accused me. She wasn't wrong of course, but that didn't stop me from sticking my tongue out at her. "But yeah, if you could not mention that he knows the big secret to any of the adults, it'd be appreciated."

"Uh, sure…" Panacea agreed cautiously. "He doesn't know any other identities, right? You haven't shared anything important with him?"

"Of course not. Missy's not an idiot, you know? And she's not gonna break the trust of her teammates." I spoke up to defend my sister. I didn't mention that Panacea had actually just given me more clues to the Wards' identities than Missy ever did, carelessly throwing out their first names like that. She didn't need to be made to feel worse than her own mom already did and besides, it was a moot point anyway. I knew the identities of every important cape in the city anyway.

Then I remembered something and got confused. "Wait, you saw Missy use her powers in front of me earlier. When she got our parents out of here, remember? What, did you think I missed her just casually bending space like playdough?"

Panacea's cheeks grew flush with embarrassment. "Uh, no. It's just that I had to talk to the hospital staff and CPS and the PRT and they made a really big deal about keeping Missy's identity safe and it just slipped my mind, okay?"

"Really?" I raised an eyebrow in disbelief.

"Yes, really!" She bit back defensively. "Look, when you're around Vicky as much as I am, you tend to get used to casual power use. I just… didn't make the connection at the time."

"Whatever, it's fine. Can we get back on topic here? Why aren't we going home tonight?" Missy asked.

Panacea closed her eyes and took a deep breath before answering. "Well, after I got your parents kicked out, I… kinda had a conversation with Child Protective Services and-"

"YES!" I cheered.

"YOU WHAT?!" Missy screamed.

Then we turned at each other and yelled at the same time. "Seriously? What is wrong with you?"

"What's wrong with me?" I broke the mirror match by shouting faster. "Missy, what the hell, don't tell me you actually want to keep them around."

"Of course not!" Missy shouted back. "But that's not what's gonna happen! What's gonna happen is we get a bunch of holier-than-thou adults come in, bug us a bunch and decide we're just being whiney kids. Mom and dad will get a pat on the back for putting up with us and we'll be right back where we started!"

"Missy, that's ridiculous." I boggled at her.

"That's what happened when Mom and Dad started getting divorced! The lawyers came in and didn't give two shits about us! Hell, they decided to split us up!" Missy cried. Like, actually cried. With tears in her eyes and everything. Fuck, I'm really failing at the whole 'protecting her smile thing. "A-and when I joined the Wards, the PRT didn't care either! They knew what my Trigger was and they just left us with them! A-and even if they did do something, they probably would have left you behind, since they only care about my powers and-"

Alright, enough of that. I stepped forward and pulled her into a hug. Again. We were hugging a lot today and I just wished it would be under better circumstances. "Hey. It's okay. I'm here. No one's ever taking me away from you, okay? I won't let them."

We held onto each other until Missy had dried her eyes. She stepped back and stood up straighter. "Ahem. A-anyway, you get why I don't like this right? CPS either won't do anything or they'll just fuck it up. We need to deal with them ourselves. We can get through this together, right?"

"Oh yes, because you've been doing so well on your own already. And Miles trying to kill himself was all part of the plan, right?" Panacea spoke up sarcastically, earning venomous glares from both me and Missy. She had the decency to look ashamed at least. "Uh, sorry. That just… slipped out."

"Riiiiight... " Missy continued to glare daggers at her, so I patted her on the shoulder.

"Easy, Sis. Rude as she was, she did have a point. Just trying to endure their awfulness really wasn't working out so well." I pointed out. "And just because we've been unlucky so far, that doesn't mean every adult is going to be either useless or heartless. I refuse to believe that the entire world is bereft of goodness. There's got to be somebody nice out there."

"Also, since the 'Great and Benevolent Panacea' is involved, people are more likely to take your case seriously." Panacea pointed out, her voice bitter. She looked like she'd just bitten into a lemon, annoyance at her situation leaking through.

"To continue the cynical train, I'm pretty sure the fact that I tried to kill myself will be great evidence that they're unfit to be parents. Also, is there some organisation whose whole deal is keeping Wards safe? Wouldn't this be right up their alley?" I mentioned, drawing on my older life's memories.

"The Youth Guard?" Missy laughed bitterly. "Yeah no, they'll probably say we need to stay with our parents because 'family' and 'togetherness' and 'traditional christian values' and other crap that makes me want to puke."

"To be fair, they may have a point about family and togetherness when it comes to you and me. It's just Mom and Dad don't count." I joked with a wry smile. Missy tried to hold back but couldn't and a few giggles snuck their way out. I grinned at getting her in a better mood. "Cheer up, Missy. I'm sure things will work out. At the very least, the situation can't get much worse."

"Ugh, I still don't like it." Missy groaned.

"Well, it's not like I can go and tell everyone 'Sorry, the kids don't actually want anyone poking around their lives. Can we call the whole thing off?' Doesn't really work like that." Panacea pointed out. "For what it's worth, I am sorry that I butted in without talking to you guys first."

"It's fine. You saw something bad going on and you did your best to fix it. That's just what heroes do and I'm not gonna complain about someone trying to help me out. Right Missy?" I prompted my sister, who grunted her reluctant agreement.

"I guess… And you did save my brother's life so… Thank you." She said sincerely.

"Yes. Thank you very much." I agreed with similar honesty, before stepping forward to hug Panacea.

Naturally, this took the older girl off guard. She tried to push me away and slip out of my grasp but I was used to that sort of thing from Missy when she was in her 'I'm too cool and mature for such childish things as physical affection' moods, so she wasn't getting away that easy. "Wha- I- Hey! That's not- You really don't need to hug me! I don't-"

"Nonsense. You saved my life and you went out of your way to try to help us. You deserve all the hugs. Right Missy?" I grinned back at my sister while continuing to squeeze Panacea.

She caught on and with an evil grin of her own, she glomped onto Panacea as well. "He's right! You get all the hugs and you can't escape us!"

"But I don't want-" Panacea tried to protest but realized it was futile. Giving up, she eventually began to relax. Just a bit. A little, tiny bit. But considering how wound up the poor girl was all the time, I consider that a success. "Can you guys let go now? I have places to be."

"Alright, fine." We let go and waved her off. "Thank you again. If we can pay you back in any way, just let us know."

Missy nodded beside me. "Seriously, we owe you one."

"It's fine, Don't worry about it, I'm just doing my job." Panacea replied, as grumpy as ever. But as she turned away, I thought I saw the slightest hint of a smile. Although that might have been wishful thinking.

Once she was gone, Missy turned to me. "Alright, what was that about?"

"What do you mean?" I blinked in confusion.

"You're normally a lot shyer around strangers. And here you are, hugging an older girl out of nowhere." Missy said, narrowing her eyes at me.

I paused for a moment. Thinking about it, yeah, normally I wouldn't do such a thing. Not in either life. But at the same time, I liked hugs. A lot. I was of the opinion that more hugs was never a bad thing. And Panacea certainly needed a lot of them if even half of what I knew about her life was true. Eventually, I just shrugged at Missy. "She looked like she needed one, that's all."

Missy's eyebrow shot up and she looked at me with disbelief. "Suuuuuure. If that's what you think, okay."

"What?" I asked, confused by her reaction.

"Nothing! Nothing at all." She grinned at me before skipping out of the room. "Anyway, I probably need to go talk to the PRT and stuff. You get some rest, okay? Bye bye!"

"Missy? Hey, wait! Seriously, what was that about?" I shouted after her but she just laughed and ran off.

So I was left by myself with nothing to do and no one to distract me. That sounded like a perfect opportunity to start Tinkering. Or it would, if I hadn't suddenly unleashed a jaw-cracking yawn. With nothing else to do, exhaustion quickly set in, despite the sun still streaming in between the blinds. It made sense, I was still recovering from an overdose after all. I'd just forgotten in all the hubbub.

Even though I longed to get back in my workshop and start making shit, I didn't have the energy. And working power tools while sleepy sounded like a great way to lose a finger or two. So I closed the door, turned off the lights and laid on the bed. I was just going to rest for a little bit, I promised myself, ten minutes at most. Maybe a quick nap. But that was it.

Then I woke up and it was three o'clock. In the morning. Whoops.

Still, despite the ungodly hour, I felt fully rested. Guess that's just what happens when you go to sleep in the middle of the afternoon. Hopefully I hadn't fucked up my sleep cycle fully, I always struggled to get that back on track. But that was a future problem. For now, I recognized that I wasn't getting back to sleep, not with how energized I felt.

I got out of bed and pulled out my workshop key. People were unlikely to visit or check on me this late at night, so now was actually a pretty good time to get working on that Tinkering I said I'd do. When I opened the door, my Glove was there, waiting just where I'd left him. Exactly where I left him, reminding me that when the door was closed, time inside the workshop froze. I could see that being useful in the future.

My Glove scuttled up to me and rubbed against my leg, like an affectionate cat or dog. Giggling at the cuteness, I picked him up and deposited him on my shoulder where he liked it. "Alright, time to get to work. You ready, buddy?"

He bounced up and down, his equivalent of a nod. It was adorable and put a smile on my face. A smile that only grew to a grin when the Celestial Forge finally stopped missing and granted me a new perk. And this one was a doozy.

The workshop rumbled for a moment as the new perk settled in. As the shaking settled down, the last change to the workshop was a new door forming across from the workshop. But while the workshop just got a simple empty door frame, this new door was actually a heavy metal bulkhead, the kind you got in sci-fi military shooters on spaceships and star bases. It opened automatically as I approached, rubbing my hands together gleefully.

The new room was much in the same style as the door: steel plated walls, exposed pipes and grates, it was all very industrial looking. However, most of the machinery inside was damaged. Smashed consoles, broken power relays, exposed wires and circuits. The lights above were mostly burnt out or busted, with the few still working left flickering annoyingly. However, despite the damaged state of everything, the machine in the middle of the room put a grin on my face.

See, the new perk I got was called A Gate To The Heavens, which was a bit misleading as it mainly functioned as a portal to Hell. The big machine I was looking over was a massively powerful teleporter. Not only could it enable travel over interplanetary or even interstellar distances, accurately too, but it could also teleport you between dimensions. Considering that it had a bunch of protective measures included to prevent invasions from the other side, including anti-demonic wards, it was pretty clear this thing came from the Doom franchise. But what got me excited was the ability to scan for new dimensions, realities and timelines as destinations. So step one of killing Scion was already partly done. Now I just needed to fix the damn thing and build some anti-matter nukes or something.

Exciting as my new teleporter was, it was still totally broken and I was nowhere near qualified to start analyzing it, let alone fixing it. So after having a giddy look around, I left before I wound up tripping over something in the dark.

The Glove, which I still needed to name, and I headed back to the mundane workshop instead. It was more accommodating to my level of skill. Barely. In my new life I'd never worked with any of this, not even using a hammer to hang up a picture, and in my old life my experience amounted to a quarter of a school year of shop class and assembling bikes for my retail job. Why a quarter of a year? Because my high school had this weird thing where first years had a mandatory course that gave them a sample of the four trades classes available: shop class, sewing, cooking and computer-assisted drafting. The idea was you'd spend a couple months doing each so you knew which elective you wanted to take in future years.

I, of course, did none of them and joined the school choir instead. I had fun but man, more time in shop class sure would be useful now.

Luckily, I retained the basics of two of the simplest things you could do in a workshop like mine: soldering and cutting wood. And since soldering wasn't going to do me much good on a scale larger than a circuit board, I wandered over to the bins of wood to get started.

Of course, I knew that basic wood wasn't going to be much use compared to rage dragons, living blenders and pretty much every other villain in town. But I needed to do something while I waited for the Celestial Forge to be a bit more accommodating. So I might as well get used to the workshop and working with my hands while I built up some more reach.

As I got to work, I decided to sing. I always worked better with some music, no matter the task and hey, might as well get some use out of those choir classes, right? Picking a song I liked basically at random, I got started.

"Can you feel the sunshine, does it brighten up your day..."

Last edited: Apr 15, 2021

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RexHeller

Apr 15, 2021

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RexHeller

RexHeller

Apr 22, 2021

#81

Three hours and a lot of mistakes turned scrap later, I'd made a few items I felt I could be proud of. Sure, they were still made of wood and would be worthless the moment I got literally any crafting power. Heck, they were damn near worthless now. But for someone with no power-backed skills yet and practically zero training, I'd actually made something. Multiple somethings. The fact that I made anything at all should be considered impressive, honestly.

I started off by picking out the right wood, looking for something hard but also light enough I wouldn't get exhausted just carrying it around. Since the different bins of materials weren't labeled, I tested them out by grabbing dowels and whacking them against the counter until I found one that didn't break the first few hits but still felt comfortable to carry.

From there, I got work. It took many, many failed attempts to not fuck up what I was working on. I kept in mind my half-remembered training from my first life and other general bits of advice I'd picked up. Measure twice, cut once and all that. I also spent a lot of time on how to get the machinery to work since the buttons on them weren't labeled either. But the more I worked, the more I got into the groove of it all. And with Robespierre (I finally named the glove) handling the job I hated most, sanding, I eventually had eight finished pieces.

The first I barely did anything to. I just grabbed a thick-ish dowel of wood and cut it down to a reasonable size for my pre-teen body and bam, I had a quarterstaff. Or maybe it was a bo staff? I wasn't entirely sure of how they were defined.

For the next two items, I did a little bit more work. Again, I got some dowels and cut them to the right size, but this time I also cut down two chunks of wood and drilled a large hole in the middle. Slip the rectangular pieces part-way down the dowels, apply wood glue and let set. That was my recipe for a pair of blunt 'swords' I could beat people with. I have to admit, I felt pretty badass, twirling them around and striking at imaginary bad guys.

After that, I decided to make armor. Partly because getting hurt sucked, partly because it was just smart but mostly in the hope it would show Missy I was taking this seriously. I needed her to see that I wasn't about to rush off half-cocked and get myself killed.

So I made a breast plate, arm guards and leg guards, all secured in place with straps I nailed to the wood. Figuring out how to attach the fasteners was a pain and I was pretty sure I did it wrong anyway, but they seemed secure enough. The hardest part was getting the inner curve so they fit on me comfortably. I had to chisel them out because I wasn't sure which, if any, automatic machine would do it and the result would be horrifically beat up and scarred if Robespierre didn't do such a great job sanding down the imperfections.

And the most amazing part was that I managed not to hurt myself at all. For a natural klutz like me, that was quite the accomplishment. But I knew how dangerous this stuff could be, so I kept every safety fact I could remember in my head and it seemed to have worked.

Satisfied with a good night's work, I bid goodbye to Robespierre and closed up shop. I headed back to bed. Or at least I tried, but then I heard shouting outside my door. It didn't sound like Mom and Dad, so that left me wondering who else would be getting in a yelling match at six in the fucking morning. That was way too early for yelling, or anything else really.

Opening the door a crack, I found an older nurse berating a guy in a security jacket sitting on a chair just outside. The nurse looked like she was definitely someone's stern granny, a hispanic lady with grey hair and a thin face. She had a tray of food balanced easily on one hand and was wagging her finger at the security guy. I'd never actually seen someone do that in real life before, in either life.

As for Security Dude, he was much younger. In fact, he didn't seem like he could be that far out of high school. The security jacket was much too large for him, hanging off his wiry frame like he was borrowing his dad's clothes. I could see the edges of a tattoo on the back of his neck and I thanked god he didn't have a shaved head, otherwise I'd be really worried. Nevertheless, he was giving the nurse the evil eye between yawning.

"-Still can't believe you fell asleep-" The nurse was in the middle of nagging when I decided to intervene.

I opened the door fully and spoke up. "Um, excuse me? Is there an issue here?"

"See? The kid is fine. I told you so. Can you stop bitching now?" The security guy waved his hand carelessly at me. I was torn between getting pissed off at his attitude and feeling thankful that I hadn't had someone more attentive assigned to me in the night. I still didn't know what would happen if someone tried the door while I was in the workshop but I was pretty sure it would blow my secret identity wide open. I didn't think they'd have someone keep an eye on me during the night, thought it seemed obvious in hindsight. Gotta make sure the suicidal kid didn't kill himself, if only to avoid the lawsuit.

"That's not the issue here. You can't-" The nurse kept at it before cutting herself off. After taking a deep breath to calm herself down, she turned her attention to me and gave me a warm smile. "It's nothing you need to worry about, darling. I'm just here with your breakfast. Can I come in?"

One of the constellations of the Forge while she was talking and I felt the zen-warmth of another Perk slotting into place. And I only got happier when I realized it was exactly what I needed at the moment. It was called Fixer and it gave me an entire, massive database of how to build, repair and operate advanced technological equipment, directly downloaded into my brain. Power tools, manual tools, medical equipment, telecommunications, vehicles, scanners, cybernetics, force fields, teleportation. Of course, I was pretty sure the teleportation here worked on entirely different principles than my DOOM gate but hey, it was a start. Pretty much the only thing I didn't have information about were professional grade weapons and armor, but there were many items I could build that would make for great improvised weapons.

"Woah, someone's excited about breakfast." The sound of the nurse's pulled me out of my fantasies of building all the sci-fi shit. I realized I was just standing there, grinning like an idiot and resolved to get a handle on that in the future. Perks could hit me at any time and I wouldn't want to start smiling like that when it was inappropriate, like at a funeral or something.

"Ah, uh, sorry." I got out of her way and went back to sit on my bed.

She followed me and set down the meal. "So, you must be Miles, yes?"

No, I'm Missy. I bit down that sarcastic response and nodded. "Yes. Nice to meet you, Miss."

"Oooh, Miss, huh? Well, I'm not that young but aren't you the little charmer," she said and for the first time since waking up, I kind of wished I hadn't survived. Anything would be better than embarrassment. "I'm Nurse Jones, nice to meet you as well. If you're up for it, can you answer a few questions? How are you feeling this morning?"

We then spent a few minutes going over what seemed to be some standard questions. How I felt, if I slept well that night, was I feeling nauseous and so on. I answered them all, struggling to fight through the embarrassment her occasional fussing or tripping over my words would bring on. My older set of memories had this technique for getting over social anxiety, which was basically just remembering that people simply didn't care about you and that what felt like a big deal to you was going to be forgotten in seconds by the person you were talking to. However, it was a lot harder to keep that in mind than it was in my old life. Maybe it was adolescent hormones making my emotions stronger, maybe it was something else.

Still, I made it through eventually and Nurse Jones left me to eat. "If you need anything, just call."

"Okay." I waved and gave a polite smile, despite just wanting her to get gone already. Acting polite didn't cost me anything though, so I did. Once she had closed the door behind her, I could hear her nagging the guard again and I imagined her dragging him off by pinching his ear.

Didn't matter to me much, so I just shrugged and dug into my meal. Hospital food wasn't as bad as I'd heard it was but it was bland as hell, so I occupied myself with all the new tech I now knew about. I was pretty sure the database of tech was from Warhammer 40,000, since the older it got the more advanced it was. And while I wasn't really a fan of Warhammer at all, a few of the terms used seemed familiar, like Machine Spirits and the Warp. But like hell was I going to be messing with that any time soon. Still, the more mundane tools like drills, laser cutters, auto-hammers and such would be a big boon to my production capacity.

I was really interested in the cybernetics as well. It was in my objectively correct opinion that the human body was a badly designed, poorly put together piece of crap that was filled with bugs and glitches and was clearly rushed out of beta before it was ready, like a Triple A video game. The human body was the number one piece of evidence that, if God exists, he's a jackass. Bioengineering, cybernetic enhancements, brain uploading, any transhumanist tech I could get my hands on was something that made me excited.

Of course, the rest of the world didn't see it that way. Thanks, Bonesaw. Also, I'm pretty sure Missy would freak out if I told her I wanted to hack off my pathetic, organic limbs and replace them with superior steel. If I wanted to start upgrading my fleshy meat bits, I'd have to do it in a way that wasn't immediately obvious.

The knowledge of cybernetics also came with the information on how to make Servitors, which was… gross. They were basically nearly full-body cyborgs made for menial labor and low skill tasks. I definitely wouldn't be converting people into a half-machine slave race, no thank you. And while there was an option to make the fleshy bits wholesale by growing organs in tubes, I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to take that option. Even if I was willing to go that far for a lab assistant, I'd be slapped in the face with a kill order the moment I did it. Again, thanks, Bonesaw. Still, the organ growing tech could possibly be useful for organ transplants and such. I'd have to look into that more deeply later, maybe leak it on the internet.

Bio-tech was a future issue though. Right now, I was going to focus on traditional technology, since equipping myself was more relevant at the moment. But there were a couple issues. First of all, all I had right now was a mundane, 21st century metal and wood workshop. If I wanted to start making use of the more advanced tech Warhammer 40K had to offer, I'd have to build the tools to build the tools to build the tools to be what I wanted. The classic Tinker trap. Hopefully the Celestial Forge would provide an answer before I wasted too much time.

The other issue was the lack of weapon designs. Sure, I could take a mining laser or rock drill and use them as weapons, but there wasn't really anything I could use as a taser, for example. Also, if I started swinging around a rocksaw bigger than my head, I'd get labeled a psycho cape which really wasn't on my to do list. I had the inklings of a cape identity forming ever since I made my bo staff and 'mad-man with an ax' really wasn't the aesthetic I was going for.

The best first step I could think of was taking my current armaments and upgrading the materials they were made out of. Sure, I didn't have any actual designs for armor or weapons, but as I'd proved earlier, sticks and curved plates weren't hard to figure out on your own. I had a couple of materials to choose from but they all had their issues. Ferrocrete, plascrete and rockcrete were all variations on concrete, so they were out. Too heavy for me. Diamantine was the hardest, toughest material I could make but actual diamonds were on the ingredients list, so that was out.

And that left plasteel, which seemed perfect. Strong and hard as steel, but as lightweight as plastic, it would be perfect to make both armor and beating sticks out of. All I had to do was pour it into a mold and let it set. The best bit was that it had the consistency and look of plastic. No one would feel threatened if I looked like I was just a kid, swinging around plastic weapons.

The only issue was that plasteel needed some really specific chemicals to make it. Chemicals I didn't have and couldn't get. Even if I wasn't worried about the paper trail, it wasn't like anyone was going to sell a bunch of random industrial chemicals to a twelve-year-old.

While I was pondering the issue, there was a knock at the door. "Yo, Miles. You awake yet?" Missy's voice was muffled slightly by the door.

With a grin, I hopped up and ran over to open the door. "Yeah, I'm up. Come on in."

Missy walked in and tossed me my backpack. I checked inside and saw my favorite hoodie."I grabbed some fresh clothes and your phone from Dad's place," she explained.

I winced. "How was talking with Dad? Are you okay?"

"Naw, he wasn't even there. Dunno why, hopefully he got arrested for negligence or something." Missy looked around as she talked and spotted my hospital food. "Well, I can see that you had a big meal," she snarked.

She was right. I'd been so lost in my thoughts, I hadn't actually eaten after all, just moved the food around the plate. "So it turns out, hospital food? Not as bad as you'd think but still pretty bad."

"Heh. Poor Puppy," Missy teased, punching me lightly on the arm. "Want to get out of here and get some real food?"

"Fuck yeah," I agreed. Missy stepped out long enough for me to change and then we left the hospital. As soon as I stepped outside, I stretched out my back and took a big breath of fresh air. It was so good to get out of that antiseptic stink and into the sun. It put a satisfied smile on my face.

Then I noticed Missy staring. "What?"

"Nothing." She replied defensively. But after a second she opened up. "Didn't you tell me that the sun was a demon and that if it wanted to burn so brightly, it could burn in hell? What are you doing, acting so happy to be outside?"

That was true enough. I was at the point in my life that the sun was a mortal enemy and going outside meant being too hot, being too cold or being told to exercise, all of which I hated with a passion. But as I'd figured out in my older life, that didn't mean I couldn't enjoy the natural world in small amounts. With a shrug, I told Missy, "It's just good to be out of the hospital, is all."

"Oh c'mon, it's not like you were in there forever. It was just a day." Missy rolled her eyes.

"Yeah, yeah. It still sucked."

"Aw, but you got to meet Panacea. I'd have thought you'd want to stick around to see her again," she teased me, although I still didn't really get it. Maybe it was something about being star struck by a hero, even though I lived with one? Something like that?

"Yeah, that was pretty neat." I smirked. "Still, it'd be better not to add to her work load. I think I'll be staying out of hospitals for the near future."

"You'd fucking better!" Missy shouted with a laugh.

We walked the rest of the way in good cheer. There was thankfully a McDonald's not too far from the hospital and we got our usual order. Twenty chicken nuggets to share between us and one of every kind of dip, plus a soda for each of us. Once we had our food, we sat out on the patio, split our take in half and played rock-paper-scissors for the sauces. Missy was lucky and got our favorite, Sweet-and-Sour, but I got BBQ and Ranch, so not a bad trade off. The rest were all so-so, so they didn't matter as much. Also, the Forge passed by without a connection, but I was too focused on defeating my sister to be very disappointed.

"So, how was the sleepover?" I asked while starting to doodle on a napkin. The patio was empty aside from us, but I wasn't going to be incautious and just straight up ask how was sleeping at Wards HQ.

Missy shrugged between nuggets. "Not bad, pretty much the usual. The boys were all concerned, while Sophia was a bitch. The only new thing was that most of the fretting was, uh… It was all about you, not me but I still had to sit through it. What's the word for that?"

"Transitive," I answered. "You know, most girls would love to have a bunch of hot older guys fussing over them."

"Okay, first of all, fuck you." Missy said, angrily waving a nugget at me. "Secondly, I'd much rather they take me seriously instead of like a kid and you know that. Thirdly, only half of them are hot."

"Aw, so getting powers doesn't automatically turn you into a Greek god in terms of looks?" I snarked, discarding caution in the name of a good joke. "Darn it all, the media's gone and lied to me again."

"You should have realized, you're still ugly as sin." Missy bit right back.

"Oi. Also, we're twins, so if I'm ugly, what does that make you?"

Missy tossed her hair and pretended to preen. "Obviously, I'm the good, beautiful twin, too perfect for this sinful world. Which makes you the ugly evil twin, stewing in your own jealousy and hideousness."

"I'm pretty sure most evil twins have that 'leather and spikes, evil is sexy' thing going on," I said before tossing a nugget in my mouth.

"You really think you could pull off a corset and heels?" Missy raised a skeptical eyebrow, while taking a sip of her soda.

"Damn straight," I answered in complete seriousness, getting Missy to do a glorious spit take, thankfully not in my direction. Once she was done coughing, she looked at me with the most utterly aghast expression, I couldn't help but burst out laughing. In a few seconds, Missy had joined me.

After a minute or two, we were still gasping for breath and grinning like loons but Missy attempted to move on despite that. "Ha. Haah. Woo. A-anyway, the adults were more interesting. We're supposed to meet someone from CPS later, we're going to be borrowing one of the hospital's conference rooms for that. And after that, we'll be meeting our new foster parents."

"Isn't that kinda quick?" I asked while getting back to my napkin doodle. "I'd have thought we'd need to at least meet with CPS before they even started lining up a foster family."

"I'm pretty sure you're right, but both the PRT and the Youth Guard seem to want this thing solved as soon as possible. Also, it's pretty damn clear our parents are unfit to take care of us, so sending us back with them was apparently out of the question. Nevermind that we've been dealing with them for years…" Missy grumbled the last bit, mostly to herself.

Stil, I was determined to keep both of us looking at the positives from now on. "Hey, at least they're doing something about it now."

I wondered why the Youth Guard and the PRT were so gung ho about this anyway. I guessed that the Youth Guard were pretty fanatical about protecting kids anyway, and the PRT, well they probably didn't want the media getting a hold of this and making them look bad. The faster they fixed the situation, the less time they had to leak. Of course, I was also pretty sure that if Coil wanted it to leak, it was going to leak, Missy's secret identity and all, so we'd just have to hope that he didn't see any benefit. I didn't want any microphones shoved in my face at the best of times and right now I was actually busy with important crap. Too important to lose time dodging paparazzi.

Speaking of my important crap, Missy finally paid attention to my drawing. "What'cha got there?"

I added the finishing touches and handed it over to her. "That is a blueprint for a heavy rock drill, a man-portable device capable of tunneling through bedrock with the same ease as one of those massive, building sized drills they show on the Discovery Channel. Except miles more energy efficient and provided you keep it well maintained, it should last for a couple hundred years."

"So you actually… you know?" Oh, so we were back to being cautious now? Well, I guessed Missy being a Ward and me being a Tinker were technically two different things and just because someone learned one, didn't mean they automatically knew the other.

"Yep!" I nodded happily as Missy handed back my napkin. It wasn't as if she could understand it, I just needed to prove that I could. "Want to go find a door so I can show off a little?"

"Sounds good," Missy agreed and we finished off our food so we could go. Unfortunately, while we weren't in the middle of downtown, we were in one of the better areas, so finding a publicly accessible door that people weren't likely to use proved to be a small problem. Thankfully, Missy found a nearby parking structure on her phone and since it was still relatively early, it wasn't likely to be busy.

We headed over and found a door for a maintenance room. I opened up my workshop and Missy used her powers to hide the entrance behind us, folding space so that the actual door was just a small crack in an otherwise uniform bit of concrete. It was good to know she could still use her powers inside my pocket dimension and even on my pocket dimension.

Robespierre was there to greet us, of course. He scurried up and nuzzled my ankles, then cautiously approached Missy. She was still a little freaked out but nevertheless leaned down to give him a few tentative scritches. I was sure that if a glove had the ability to vocalize, mine would have been purring at the moment.

"Good boy, Robespeirre, Good boy!" I could help but praise the little cutie. He jumped happily and I let him up onto my shoulder.

"You named it?" Missy asked incredulously.

"Of course. Why wouldn't I?" I shrugged, then started walking to the teleporter room. "C'mon, I'll show you what's new since yesterday."

"You got a new room?" Missy asked. Then she followed me in and looked around in awe. "Wait, you built all this? Since yesterday?"

I was looking around the room with fresh eyes as well. Sure, the technology was from a completely different setting, but Fixer was giving me lots of ideas on how to start repairing all the junk around. A lot of the first steps involved scented oils and the singing of hymns to appease the neglected Machine Spirits but I figured I could skip that. Not only was all this tech devoid of Machine Spirits anyway, but once I started messing around with AI, I was sure I could make them a lot better than degraded, half-insane virtual intelligences that had been left in a state of slow, perpetual deterioration for millennia and I wouldn't need to supplicate them with religious rituals before they actually did anything. And it wasn't like there were Warp demons around to possess them, so I wouldn't need the incense and oils either.

Still, if I got any actual Warhammer tech from the Toolkits constellation, I was equipped to handle it. That was good at least. For now though, I put my plans to repair the DOOM Gate on hold to talk with Missy. "I didn't build any of this. You really think I'd build an entire new room with a super powerful teleporter just to wreck the place? Naw, my power gave me this. I just need to fix it."

Missy picked up a random piece of junk, I was pretty sure it was a power converter, and examined it before tossing it aside. "So your power gives you not just a new room, but a new room with a massive teleporter and a lot of random junk. Except everything is broken and you're expected to fix it all. Even though in the first room it gave you, everything worked just fine. Miles, you officially have the weirdest power I've ever heard of."

"Thank you." I accepted the compliment. "The other new power I got is where I got that drill design from. I got an entire database of advanced tools and equipment in my brain now, full of diagrams and blueprints. From simple backpacks to scanners that can map out an entire planet."

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's not how Tinker powers are supposed to work." Missy said in good humor.

"Yeah and the pocket dimension, living glove and infinite supplies are all totally normal." I teased lightly. Then I pulled her over to the workshop side of things. "C'mon, I've got something else to show you."

Once there, I proudly revealed the results of my early morning tinkering session. The staff, round swords and armor pieces were all neatly laid out on one of my counter tops. "Tah-dah! What do you think?"

Missy looked over my impressive armory and slowly looked up at me. "A treasure trove of tinker tech inserted into your brain… and you make a stick."

"What? No!" I protested.

"Okay, three sticks and some blocks of wood." She shot back, crossing her arms.

"Awh, Missy. No…" I groaned in pain, dragging my hands down my face. "No, I made these before I got the database power. I made them all on my own! And they're not just sticks, they're weapons and armor!"

"You really think a few pieces of wood is going to keep you safe from bullets? Or super villains?" Missy bullied me.

"No, of course not. But they're not meant for that. They're, um…" I struggled to justify myself under her disapproving stare. "Prototypes?"

"Uh huh." From the flat look she was giving me, she wasn't buying it.

"Oh c'mon! It's better than nothing! And like I said, I made this stuff all on my own, no powers involved. I'm really proud of this stuff." I probably sounded pathetic but whatever. I was proud of myself for once and I wanted my sister to share in my enthusiasm. Was that so wrong?

Missy sighed and let up on the disappointment train. "Okay, okay. They're neat and all, but I'm serious, Miles. You're not going out equipped with wood of all things. I thought you said you were going to build tinker tech super fast."

"I am! I'm just ramping up is all." I protested. "It's, uh, exponential growth, you know? I might be starting off a bit slow but I'll get there eventually."

I could tell Missy still wasn't quite buying it but thankfully I was saved from having to continue the conversation when her phone rang. She quickly checked and slipped it back in her pocket. "C'mon, it's time for us to go. We have that appointment with CPS to get to."

"Alright, fine." I'd been hoping I could stick around and Tinker a bit, since Fixer had given me the knowledge of how to work with metal and not just wood. But I had to save that for another time.

Going back to the entrance hall, Missy widened the gap just enough to check that there was still no one around outside. There wasn't, so she allowed space to snap back and I closed the workshop behind us, leaving Robespierre behind again. Once that was all good, we headed back to the hospital, jogging part of the way to make it on time.

When we got there, there were a few police cars parked outside and just inside the entrance, Nurse Jones was talking to the officers. She looked frantic while the cops looked like they were barely covering their boredom with professionalism.

I was about to run up and ask her what was wrong when I got given another Perk by the Forge. This time it was from the Knowledge Constellation and it was called Analysis. It was minor but oh boy, was it fortuitous. It let me instantly identify defects in most machinery and also buildings for some reason. Now I couldn't wait to get back to my DOOM gate. Analysis would tell me everything that was broken and with Fixer, I'd be able to repair it all. Fully functional teleporter, here we come!

But I couldn't exactly just turn around, find the nearest door and jump back into my workshop. I had other things to do first, so I schooled my expression and went back to checking on what was wrong.

"Nurse Jones? What's going on?" I walked up and asked, Missy trailing behind me curiously.

"Miles?" She almost shouted in surprise when she saw me. She clutched at her chest and breathed a huge sigh of relief. "Oh thank Christ. Where have you been?!"

"Is this him then? The one you called about?" One of the cops asked and Nurse Jones nodded. "Alright then, looks like we'll be going again. And next time, please make sure there's an actual emergency before wasting the time of the police."

And with that the officers turned around and walked away. Missy stuck her tongue out at their retreating backs, while I went with a more expressive gesture.

"Miles!" Nurse Jones gasped, scandalized.

"What? They were being jerks to you." Besides, they were cops. I'm sure they faced much worse than a kid giving them the finger behind their backs.

Nurse Jones pursed her lips and tersely said, "Even so, you shouldn't be doing that. Just because someone's rude, doesn't mean you have to be rude back." A lesson my parents were clearly never taught. "Anyway, please answer my question. Where in the world have you been?"

"I went to go get McDonalds with my sister." I indicated towards Missy, who waved.

"Hello." She cheerfully sing-songed.

"McDon- Do you have any idea how worried everyone's been? We were looking all over the place for you! We even called the police, as you just saw! Why did you leave like that? Why didn't you check in with anyone?" Nurse Jones looked like she was gearing up to have a heart attack.

I wondered why this was such a big deal. I mean, yeah, you had to sign out of hospitals, which we probably should have done now that I thought about it, but that wasn't any reason to call the cops. "We were just getting some breakfast."

"And we came right back." Missy added in.

"We weren't gone very long." Back to me.

"Nobody told us we had to sign out." Back to her.

"And no one tried to stop us on the way out, either."

"We can take care of ourselves."

"And I'm totally fine. Nothing to worry about." I finished off, remembering why this was even a problem. They were probably super touchy about me and the whole suicide thing. Right.

Whoops.

Nurse Jones looked like she'd given up on the heart attack and instead decided that an aneurysm was more her speed. I didn't know why, our explanations were perfectly reasonable. But after a moment of clenched teeth, I guess she decided we weren't her problem. "...Fine. Whatever. Just… go back to your room until someone comes to pick you up."

"Actually," Missy spoke up, "we have a meeting with a Child Protective Services representative in… Conference room 203. Can you point us in the right direction?"

Nurse Jones sighed. "Alright, fine. Follow me."

We did as she asked and she guided us up to the second floor. The room we entered was a little unappealing. The same tired paintjob as the rest of the hospital, uncomfortable looking chairs and ceiling-to-floor glass windows instead of a wall, so anyone walking down the hallway could see us. Whomever we were supposed to meet wasn't here yet, so Missy and I sat down to wait.

"Wait here, don't wander off and as soon as you're done with your meeting, go straight back to your room." Nurse Jones left us those instructions and slammed the door. We watched her march down the hallway, probably on mission for an ibuprofen or a giant cup of coffee. Behavior we'd seen before in any teacher blessed enough to have both of us in the same class.

I was about to ask Missy what she thought this meeting was going to actually be about when someone new entered the room. She seemed to be in her early thirties, with bright blonde hair, comfy but still semi-professional clothes, subtle makeup and a bright, cheerful smile. She immediately gave the impression of someone young, eager and ready to help. "Hi there! You must be Miles and Missy. I'm Jenna Nicholson, but you can call me Jen if you want. Or just Miss Nicholson if that's more comfortable with you. How are you today?"

"Just fine." Missy's response was terse. We could both already tell Miss Nicholson was going to be treating us with the kids gloves and Missy already hated it.

"Pretty good!" I said cheerfully. Me, I just wanted people to stop treating me like I was made of glass and if acting like a happy-go-lucky kid would do it, great. Besides, it was even true. So far, my morning had been great."

"Oh, that's just wonderful!" Miss Nicholson said as she sat down and started pulling out some papers and pens from her bag. She was bright and bubbly, not so much to get on my nerves though, and it seemed genuine to me. "Now, I know we just met but I have a big favor to ask. Do you think you can tell me a bit about your homelife? As you know, your parents are in a lot of trouble and I'm sure you both want to get away from them, right? It would really help us, help you if you could tell me what it's like living with them. But you have to be honest, alright? Telling lies won't help anyone."

Ah, so it was a dirt digging mission, hun? That was fine by me, between the two of us, Missy and I had enough dirt on mom and dad to bury them not just six feet deep, but twelve. And in separate graves. "Okay. Well, first off, Dad killed our dog."

"Attila? But they said he was poisoned. It was an accident." Missy reacted in confusion.

"And where do you think that poison came from?" I replied, teeth clenched in cold fury. "Dad knew it would hurt mom, so he poisoned Attila. Nevermind that it would hurt us too or, you know, that he was murdering an innocent living creature. They just lied about it to us to keep us from making too much of a fuss."

"Oh my god," Missy said in dawning horror.

"That's… awful," Miss Nicholson said, sounding sympathetic but also slightly skeptical. "Are… are you sure about that."

"Of course he would, he hated Attila," Missy agreed. "He was always furious that Attila's fur got all over everything, 'ruining his expensive suits and house'. He didn't like how much his food cost either."

"He'd regularly threaten Attila during his shouting matches with Mom." I added.

"Are you sure he wasn't joking?" Miss Nicholson asked, practically begging for it to be untrue.

Missy and I just shook our heads in sync. I explained, "There are no two people with more genuine, utter hatred for each other on the planet than our parents. Trust me, they want to do every awful thing they say to each other and then some."

"I… see." Miss Nicholson nodded slowly, looking a bit shook. "Was there… anything else you can tell me?"

Boy, was there. Missy and I shared a look before diving right into it.

"So this one time, Dad was having an affair with his secretary-"

"Fairly standard really." Missy interrupted me but I kept rolling.

"-but Mom decided to get real mean about it this time. She hired this actress with a missing arm, gave her an eye-patch and had the actress go talk to Dad's secretary. She had the actress claim that dad was actually a serial rapist-murderer that liked to torture his victims and that the actress was a former victim that barely escaped with her life."

"And also that he had chlamydia. Because Mom's petty like that."

"Naturally, when Dad walked in on this, the secretary bailed and escaped through the window. Mom even recorded the entire thing."

"She still pulls it out and watches it occasionally when she needs a good laugh," Missy added.

"Oh, and just so you don't forget, he killed our dog."

"You wrote that down, right?"

"You'd better have."

"Hey, remember that time in second grade, the parent-teacher conference with Ms. Fletcher?" Missy asked me.

I thought about it. "Was that the time Dad tried to seduce our teacher or the time Mom showed up drunk and crashed into the principal's parked car?"

"The seduction one. So there he was, trying to seduce our teacher, who's like ten years younger than him, right in front of not only his wife, but also us. We were in Grade Two and had no idea what was going on, only that it was uncomfortable as hell."

"After all, it wasn't like our parents ever flirted with each other." I took over. "Anyway, so what's Mom's response to this? Well, apparently she was feeling competitive, because she starts trying to seduce our teacher as well. Badly, because if there's one thing Mom isn't, it's a lesbian."

"She still tried though. She tried real hard," Missy pointed out. "God, and poor Ms. Fletcher just wanted to show off how good that macaroni art we worked together on was.

"-And then on our sixth birthday-"

Missy frowned. "Huh, I don't remember anything going wrong that year."

"Well, I do. So, it's actually going pretty well until Mom finally pulls herself out of the wine basement, totally and utterly plastered. Then she starts yelling at us about how it's all our fault that Dad won't fuck her anymore and that 'we stretched out her cunt like a pair of overgrown watermelons.' This drunken rant against us went on for about an hour and boy, did we learn some new words that day."

"Oh my god, you asshole. I'd repressed that," Missy said, before groaning and slamming her head into the table.

"I'm pretty sure all our friends did too. Of course, after that they weren't our friends anymore."

"-and to keep us from telling anyone, they promised us a trip to Disney Land, which… I can't actually remember what went wrong when we were there."

"That's because we never went. They forgot us at the house, Home Alone style."

"Oh yeah, that's right. Best three weeks of our lives."

"-Pretty sure Mom's driven us around while drunk more times than she was sober-"

"-So according to Mom, we were supposed to call Dad a pedophile when he picked us up from Sunday School, not that we knew what that meant at the time-"

"-And that was the second time we found Dad fucking the babysitter on our bed. Now, the third and fourth time were actually the same, depending on how you count it-"

"-But Dad ducked and if Missy hadn't tackled me out of the way, that flower pot would have cracked my head open."

"-Pretty sure they traumatized our neighbor's kid for the rest of their life. They moved away after that. And I think that's it." Missy turned to me. "Did we miss anything, Miles?"

"No, I think that's it. Although, there is one thing that bears repeating: Dad killed our fucking dog!" I shouted before returning to normal. "Now we're done."

It had taken about an hour, but Missy and I had finally listed off any single thing our parents had ever done to us and each other. At least all those we could remember. And at some point during all of it, the Clothing Constellation passed by in the forge but didn't give me anything. Now we'd reached the end and the result was a terribly traumatized social worker. Miss Nicholson had come in here full of optimism and cheer, ready to take on the world and help some kids. Now she looked like a beaten down mess, with bloodshot eyes, a haggard face and a thousand yard stare. I swear, even her blonde hair seemed to have lost some of its luster. But credit where credit's due, she had listened attentively to us and had the notes to show for it.

"I… I… Thank you, children. That… must have been… rough on you recounting all that." She spoke hesitantly, trying to hang on to some professionalism, when clearly all she wanted to do was take a break. "I… can't even begin to imagine what it was like to go through all that. H-how in the world did you even survive?"

"Well, like we've said, most of their hatred was for each other, we just had to deal with the byproducts," Missy explained with a shrug.

I took her hand and smiled. "Plus, we had each other. Even so, it was a near thing."

"Ah, right." Miss Nicholson's smile grew even more brittle at the reminder of my failed suicide. "W-well, next we'll be meeting your new foster p-parents and seeing if they're… suitable. Could you step outside for a moment? I-I need a minute to… pack up."

"Sure." "No Worries." We answered together. The moment we closed the door and she had the room to herself, Ms Nicholson burst into tears.

"You know, talking about it all at once like that, it sounds a little ridiculous. Do you think the CPS people will believe us?" Missy said as we tried our best to ignore the muffled sobs coming from behind us.

"I mean, it all really happened. If they don't believe us, that's on them." I shrugged. Honestly, I felt… kind of numb? Going over everything with Missy had been kinda fun, but that was mostly because I had Missy to joke with and react off of. All the shit our parents had done… it still hurt, in many different ways. If I didn't have Missy with me, it would have been a lot harder to get through. But then again, without Missy, I wouldn't be here at all.

So I pulled her into a hug. No tears this time, from either of us, thank god. Miss Nicholson was providing enough for all three of us. No, this was just taking comfort in each other's presence and support, loving each other and simply being grateful that we could.

Eventually, the tears from inside the conference room stopped and Missy and I took that as our cue to separate. A few seconds later, Miss Nicholson emerged, papers neatly put away in her bag and looking as professional as possible. It was a bit hard with large, messy streaks of ruined mascara running down her face. "Alright, we'll get going in just a moment. I just need to fix my make up, okay kids?"

We waited patiently as she did so and when she emerged from the washroom, she was looking a lot better. Still not as untraumatized as before she met us but better. We were meeting our new foster folks at their place apparently, to make sure it was safe and we would be comfortable there. We left the hospital, Miss Nicholson signed me out properly this time and we headed out to the parking lot. Perhaps unsurprisingly, she drove a red minivan, the quintessential vehicle for soccer moms and any other woman who needed to transport a lot of kids.

As opposed to men who need to transport a lot of kids, they just use windowless white vans. I chuckled to myself and wished I could have shared that joke with Missy. The look on her face would be priceless. But I didn't want to make jokes like that in front of a relative stranger like Miss Nicholson.

The drive to our potential new home was both silent and safe, two things that had been in fearfully short supply back when our parents drove us around. No more of that, thank god. Miss Nicholson focused on the road and Missy and I simply enjoyed a car ride that didn't include angry screaming or illegal speeds.

Eventually, we arrived Downtown. Well, not Downtown Downtown, where all the big businesses did business in their big business towers, but close enough that there were a significant amount of high-rises, unlike the suburbs we lived in before. Miss Nicholson pulled up to a nice enough looking building and we all got out.

Looking up at the place, I felt another Perk from the Toolkits Constellation slip into place. A Dust Refinery was added to my workshop, something I'd have to see for myself when I had the chance, especially since it didn't seem to be the same crystalized elemental energy I knew from RWBY.

At the same time, I also felt Missy's hand sneak into mine. I looked over and saw her doing the same, a nervous expression on her face.

"What do you think?" I asked, smiling at her. "Looks cool, right?"

"I guess." Missy shrugged. "I'm more concerned with the people inside than the building."

"Fair enough. But hey, I'll be there too, you know? No matter what, we got this." I squeezed her hand and managed to get her to smile back at me. Feeling determined, we stepped into the building and hopefully into a better life.

New Perks this update

-Fixer (300CP)

This Schema contains a massive database filled with the countless bits of equipment the denizens of Necromunda Hive Primus have bought, found, built, stolen or obtained by other means over the centuries since the Hive was founded. Inexplicably it also seems to contain an extremely rare, extremely valuable and extremely heretical to own database detailing how to build and maintain Admech servitors and cybernetic parts.

-Analysis (Red Alert 3) (100CP)

You can immediately identify any defects in hardware upon casual observation. This is effective on devices, Vehicles, and buildings.

-Dust Refinery (Endless Legend) (100CP)

Able to infuse Dust with new life, the Refinery is the staple of Dust Enchantment. While Dust infused iron is common, it pales compared to the Dust enchantments this refinery allows. Allows for the crafting of Foci and magic rings, talismans, insignias, and tomes.

AN: Holy shit, it's Thursday. I'm actually posting on time for once. That the first time I've kept to a schedule with my writing in years. Yay me.

Also, if anyone has any suggestions for neat WH40K tech Miles could build, that'd be appreciated. I don't really know the setting and while I'm doing my best, I'm finding it hard to research Imperial Technology that isn't weapons and armor.

Last edited: Apr 22, 2021

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RexHeller

Apr 22, 2021

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RexHeller

RexHeller

May 7, 2021

#215

Our potential new home was actually pretty nice. I'd had a job in my old life as doing deliveries, so I'd been in several apartment buildings, from old, out of fashion and plagued with strange smells, to the ostentatious and marble-drenched in the richest parts of town. The building we entered was somewhere leaning towards the better half. A newer building, with a clean, modern architectural style, a well cared for garden around the outside. I liked the look of it and it didn't have any weird smells, so I took it as a good sign.

I was the only one looking around though. Miss Nicholson was too focused to look around, while Missy was too nervous. She just stared at the ground while clinging to my hand.

We took the elevator a good ways up, enough that if we did wind up living here, we'd at least get a great view. Personally, I loved being high up like that and I knew that Missy didn't mind either. So the location was shaping up to be a good fit but what really mattered where the people in it.

We were greeted at the door by a smiling young woman. Younger than I'd expected, in her early-to-mid twenties if I had to guess. She honestly looked like she could be an older version of Missy, almost. The blonde hair, button nose and cherubic face all helped, but that wasn't enough to make the connection. Lots of girls and women were blonde and cute. But not many had trim, athletic muscles that took dedication to maintain and fewer still had this sense of dependable strength you could pick up just by watching them for a few moments. Missy did though and so did this woman.

While I was staring and probably coming off like a creep, Missy was reacting with surprise. As soon as she saw who was at the door, she gasped and pointed at her. "B- You? What are you doing here?"

"This is my home, Missy." The woman answered with a small laugh. "Sorry for the surprise but Ethan and I volunteered to take you in when we heard what happened. I hope you're okay with that."

She spoke kindly and humbly, which was a nice change from our parents, but my mind was racing too much to really appreciate that. Missy knew her and she had a husband named Ethan? Was this really who I thought it was? Was I really that lucky?

"I'm sorry, but you two know each other?" Miss Nicholson asked. "I wasn't informed about this."

"Uh, well- That's-" Normally, Missy was pretty good about keeping her Wards excuses straight but I guessed Probably-Battery's sudden appearance had thrown her for a loop. Thankfully, Probably-Battery stepped up to the plate.

"Right, sorry. Everything kind of got set up in a rush. I'm Serenity Blue," she said, holding out a hand to shake, "I was in the same after-school program as Missy and I still help out with the organization on occasion. That's how we know each other. That won't be a problem, will it?"

That was part of Missy's cover, since she was too young for a work-study program and our school didn't have one anyway, like Arcadia did. Instead, she was in some after-school program for gifted kids to anyone not in the know. The only issue was that despite being just as smart, if not smarter than Missy, I wasn't in the program, obviously, and some of our classmates had used that as teasing ammunition. Nothing so bad as outright bullying, but it certainly hadn't helped my haggard mentality.

I put that out of mind for now though, and focused on the conversation. Miss Nicholson took Serenity's hand and smiled. "It shouldn't be, at least not on the administration end. It's all up to Missy and Miles in the end though."

"It's… fine." Missy hesitated, something that Serenity and Miss Nicholson picked up on. Realizing they were looking at her, Missy shook her head. "No, really. It's fine. I was just surprised. B- Serenity's pretty nice and, erm, her husband is… okay."

Again, her hesitation made Miss Nicholson raise an eyebrow. Serenity spoke up to provide answers. "Ethan doesn't interact much with the kids, so I'm guessing Missy's just talking about his bad jokes, right? He's solid and dependable, he just… doesn't show it all the time. Actually, I should call him out here. Hey, Ethan!" She shouted back into the apartment. "Missy and her brother are here!"

Behind her, a man about her age stepped out of a room and into the entrance hall. He had bright red, spiked up hair, an eager grin on his face and a similar martial artist's physique as Serenity. Muscles built for speed and strength, rather than size. In his hand, he was holding what appeared to be some half-way assembled Ikea furniture, which I could immediately tell was screwed together upside down thanks to Analysis.

"Hey! Good to see ya!" He greeted us happily, practically bouncing down the halls. "How are you two doing? Everything okay? Happy to get away from your parents?"

"Hello." I gave them both a shy wave. "Fine, yes and yes, I guess."

"Mm." Missy nodded beside me.

"Cool! Let's get you inside so you can look around the place, right? Make sure everything's up to snuff?" Ethan waved us in while Serenity stepped aside.

They gave us a short tour of the place, which was a decent sized apartment. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a proper kitchen, a large dining/living room and a decent sized balcony. Enough space for four people to live together, provided they got along well and didn't mind it being a bit cramped. When we got to what was going to be the bedroom for Missy and Me, we found it was a mess of half-constructed furniture, as I suspected.

"Sorry about the mess." Ethan scratched the back of his head. "Everything was so short notice, we're kind of rushing to get set up. On the brightside, you guys are getting bunk beds!"

"Cool!" I said with a smile. Bunk beds would always be awesome… provided you weren't so big that you'd bang your head on the bed above you. "Can I help build them?"

"Really?" Ethan reacted with surprise, as did the other adults. I could even feel Missy raising an eyebrow beside me.

"Sure. I like to use my hands and make stuff. Also, you attached those upside down." I pointed out as another Perk slotted into place. This time it was my first from the Vehicles constellation, and it was called I Like 'em Big. It mostly revolved around making upgrades to motherfucking Gundams, making them bigger, tankier and bolting on extra-doodads, but I could also apply that knowledge to other vehicles and possibly other projects as well.

"Oh really? Fine, let's see how you do, smart guy." Ethan handed me the piece he was holding with a grin, taking the smile I had thanks to my new perk as a challenge or something.

"Boys." Serenity said while rolling her eyes. "Well, Jenna, Missy. Why don't we sit down in the kitchen and chat while they do some male bonding."

After they left, that just left me with Ethan. Who I knew was a superhero. But who couldn't know that I knew he was a superhero, because that would lead to unfortunate questions. Which meant I had to hide my excitement. This was going to get awkward.

Hoping to cover myself, I looked around the room. It was a mess, as I'd noted earlier. Parts, tools and packaging was everywhere. Besides the bunk bed that was slowly coming together, there was also a pair of dressers or maybe bedside tables, neither of which was completed. I didn't know if Serenity had been helping with her own projects earlier, or if Ethan was just that scatter brained but either way it triggered my minor OCD something fierce. This was not how you got stuff built.

"So, uh…" Ethan started up while I rooted around a bit. "I know it's a bit of a mess, but if you wanna-"

"You didn't even open the instructions." I said, holding up my prize. Indeed, the instructions hadn't even been taken out of the plastic bag they came in. Seemed a waste of plastic to me but right now, it served as damning evidence.

"Hey, I'm a man. I know what I'm doing. I can totally figure this out on my own." Ethan protested in good humor.

"And that's why this is on upside down, right? Cause you know what you're doing?" I verbally poked him.

"Yep! All part of my cunning plan!" He said, puffing himself… before giving in with an easy smile. "Alright, you win. You want to read those and tell me what to do while I work?"

"I can help out too, you know." I protested. Maybe before this all, I'd have been lazy and accepted his offer, but as I was now, I knew it'd be too boring to just sit around waiting between giving instructions. Thankfully, Ethan didn't insist and we started building the furniture together.

We didn't work in silence though. Ethan's reputation as a jokester was well earned. "So, Miles, I've got a question for you. What's brown and sticky?"

"A stick?"

"Oh, you've heard that one. Damn. I mean, darn!" Ethan checked over his shoulder like Serenity was going to be there, ready to lay into him for teaching me a bad word. Like I hadn't heard ten times worse than that from my parents. "Okay, how about this one. Did you hear what happened to the guy who invented the knock-knock joke? He won the no-bell prize!"

I let out a noise somewhere between a groan and a sigh.

"Oh, right. Did I mention we had to sell our vacuum cleaner? It was just gathering-

"Just gathering dust, right?" I cut him off,

Ethan slumped in place with a sigh. "Huh. Tough crowd, I guess."

"Sorry if this is awkward. I'm not really good at meeting new people, so I guess I'm coming off as a bit wooden." I said completely deadpan while holding up a wooden beam.

"Hey, don't worry about it." Ethan was quick to prop me up. "I guess Serenity's right and I'm just not very funny."

"No, I'd say you nailed it." I said while hammering the backing onto one of the dressers. "My sense of humor's just more subtle is all."

"Wait, did you just-" Ethan said, realization slowly dawning.

"Nope." I picked up a screwdriver and started using it. "C'mon, keep up. I don't want to run out of time and get screwed."

"Okay, now I know you're screwing with me." Ethan punned back with a grin and I finally couldn't keep a straight face anymore. I broke into giggles while Ethan smiled fondly.

"So, you like puns then?" Ethan asked, after I'd finally recovered.

I nodded and got back to work. "Yeah, but only if you're subtle about it. The only wink-wink, nudge-nudge thing where people rub the pun in your face just ruins it for me."

Ethan fake-gasped. "What? But that's the best part!"

"You would think so, wouldn't you?"

"Ouch! Call for yon merciful hospitaliers, for I am smote!" Ethan clutched over his heart dramatically before falling over with a quiet 'bleh.'

"You're in for a rough time if you consider that a smiting." I smirked. "Now get up and back to work."

"Can't. Light… fading. Strength… fading. So cold, so cold…"

I rolled my eyes and leaned over to poke him with my screw driver. "C'mon, c'mon. Up and at 'em. You're not allowed to rest, even if you die."

"Alright, alright! Mercy! Jeeze, what a slave driver." Ethan sat back up, a smile on his face. "So, you like puns and building stuff. What else do you enjoy?"

"Normal stuff, I guess? Books, video games, anime," tinkering, the euphoric rush of unlocking a new power, "music."

Ethan nodded along. "Music, huh. Just listening or do you make it too? Personally, I'm ten kinds of tone deaf, so I can't help but admire anyone who manages to sound half-way good."

"I can sing. Not, like, professionally or anything, but…" I offered up, already blushing. Now that I'd said that, I just knew he was going to ask me to sing something.

"Really? That's pretty cool. Can you sing something for me?"

Yep. Knew it. I really, really didn't want to say yes, but that was just the social anxiety talking. And since I knew I'd have to get over that if I wanted to be a hero, I forced myself to say yes. "Uh, sure. Just give me a second…"

He nodded and I cleared my throat a bit, hummed up and down a few scales and generally tried to get warmed up as quietly as possible. If I was going to do this, I was going to do it as good as possible, so I didn't embarrass myself more than necessary. Eventually, I started singing Can You Feel The Sunshine again. It was one of my favorites, so I was less likely to forget the lyrics and stumble over the words.

Singing in front of people, especially people you didn't know, was always nerve-wracking. When I was in a choir, it was easier, I could just lower the volume if I was fucking up and no one would notice. But doing solos, with all the attention on me? Awful. Just awful. Still, I managed to not mess up noticeably and Ethan was encouraging without going too far into embarrassingly praiseful. I wound up singing a few more songs until we finished up with the furniture.

Once we were done, we cleaned everything up but before we went to join the girls, Ethan asked to wait a moment. We'd broken the ice pretty well, so it was a bit odd to see him looking awkward once again. "Hey, Miles? I'm not exactly great at… stuff. Like, personal stuff. I'm more likely to make a joke than something encouraging. But my old man, he was also kinda a jackass. I mean jerk. I spent a lotta time chasing his approval before I realized it wasn't worth it. So, uh, I just wanted to say that, whether or not you and Missy do choose to stay with us, I'm in your corner, kid. And if I'm ever being an ass, just tell me straight up. 'Kay?"

"Mm. 'Kay! Thanks!" I nodded and gave him a smile. I didn't know much about Ethan's personal life, but If I remembered correctly, he became a villain because his father was sent to Birdcage. If his dad was a career criminal or just the sort of person who deserved jail for life, I could easily see him raising Ethan with the whole 'A real man doesn't have anything as girly as feelings' mentality. So I appreciated him making the effort to reach out.

"Don't mention it." Ethan replied with a relieved smile. "Now let's get going. I'm pretty sure Serenity said something about cookies before you got here."

Indeed, there were cookies waiting in the kitchen, delicious, fresh-from-the-oven, chocolate chip ones. Much better than the box of oreos we got at home every so often when mom or dad wanted to buy our backing in their personal war. The only issue was that, just like with the oreos, Missy had eaten most of them before I could get any.

While I was poking Missy in the side for retaliation, Ethan slid into Serenity's lap and planted a big kiss on her cheek. "Hello, my darling wife. Miss me?"

It was a funny sight, especially since Serenity was small enough she practically disappeared beneath him. Thankfully, she seemed to be amused as well, since she was clearly holding back laughter as she tried to push him away. "Would you get off? Please? We're trying to make a good impression here?"

"And yet, here you are, refusing my love and affection."

"Oh my god…" Serenity groaned while she tried to hide a smile.

I was so distracted by the by-play, Missy was able to get past my defenses and poke me back. This led to a full on side-poke war, which Ethan encouraged, Serenity tried to stop and Miss Nicholson just watched, smiling slightly.

We stopped pretty quick once Serenity threatened to take the cookies away. I was willing to share the ones that were left with Missy, despite how many she'd already eaten, because I was mature like that now. Ethan also found his own seat and then were all sitting around the table like civilized folks.

"So, what have you lovely ladies been talking about?" Ethan asked while snagging one of our cookies. He just laughed when both Missy and I glared at him.

"Not much." Serenity answered. "I was just telling them about why we wanted to foster Miles and MIssy."

"Really?" I was actually rather curious about that myself. I was willing to bet they'd been voluntold to do it by Piggot, who probably wanted someone she could trust watching Missy, rather than someone from outside her organization. Although, that didn't explain why we got Assault and Battery, rather than some PRT troopers or something.

"It's not like there was any special reason. Ethan and I have been thinking about having kids for a while now, and we were considering fostering as a way to get our feet wet, I guess. Then we heard what happened and… Well, we just wanted to help." Serenity explained. She sounded pretty genuine to me, but with how outrageous my parents were, I probably wasn't the best at picking up subtle attempts at untruthery. Still, both she and Ethan seemed nice and genuine, so I chose to believe they really did want to help us out.

The five of us kept chatting around the table for a bit longer. There were some attempts to draw me and Missy in, but we mostly answered in single words so we could get back to the cookies faster. That left the three adults to talk until we finished off the delicious sweets. Once we did, Serenity turned to me and asked, "Hey, Miles? Want to come out to the balcony? I wanted to chat a bit. Just you and me."

I shared a look with Missy, but she just shrugged, so I nodded. "Fine then." On our way over, The toolkits constellation swung by but I barely had any charge saved up and couldn't take the Perk that was offered up.

Out on the balcony was nice. Like I thought, the view was fantastic and it was just windy enough to ruffle our hair without being cold and awful. There were a few comfy chairs for us to sit in and even a barbeque in the corner which I really hoped we would actually use, instead of what our dad did and promise to cook with it, but never actually get around to it because cleaning a grill took effort.

Anyway, we sat down and Serenity was quiet for a bit, so I broke the silence. "So, what's up?"

Serenity licked her lips and threaded her fingers together. "Miles… I just wanted you to know if you ever needed someone to talk to, I'm available. I know we just met and I know you probably don't want a stranger butting into your life and your struggles, but…"

She paused to take a deep breath before looking at me steadily. "I've thought about… what you did. In the past. Doing it myself, I mean. I never went through with it but… I lost my parents when I was young and for a long time I was alone. And after that, even before that sometimes, I felt like… I wasn't doing well enough, that I wasn't good enough. Even when people told me I was doing really good, I still felt like I was worthless. Like they weren't seeing the real me, just the mask I put up around other people. It only really got better when I started to let Ethan in and see the real me. So, I don't know if you ever feel that way or if it's something else but I just hope you'll take my advice. If you do feel like… that ever again, please just talk to someone? It doesn't have to be me, it could be Missy or… or anyone else. Just don't…"

She paused and drew a shuddering breath, tears almost in her eyes. I was a bit overwhelmed to be honest. She was opening up to me, trusting me with this and I was just some kid she barely knew. Hell, she didn't know me, I was just the brother of someone she did know. It was surprising, a bit humbling, a little touching and very awkward. Like, what do you even do at that point.

I think the worst of it was that everyone was still making a big deal over the suicide thing and I just wasn't as hung up on it as the people around me. Yes, I tried to kill myself and yes, my life sucked before this. But everything was on the upswing since then. Honestly, it was a bit like falling asleep in class. Yeah, I did something dumb but it's over and done now. Can we please move on instead of bringing it up every few minutes?

Nevertheless, this was clearly something Serenity found hard to talk about but she was making the effort for me. Me. And I wasn't about to let that effort go unappreciated. I got up from my seat and hugged her. It was a little harder to hug a grown adult than it was with Missy, but thankfully, she didn't pull away in surprise either.

"Thank you." I whispered to her. "You really care, huh."

"It's hard not to." She said with a choked laugh. "I just… I've made my mistakes and I want to make up for that. I want to help people and right now, that means helping you. If you'll let me, I mean."

I nodded into her shoulder. "Mm. Maybe. Maybe later. Thank you."

Serenity let me go and dried her eyes. In a moment, she was back to her calm, dependable self. "If you don't want to talk, I also do yoga and meditation sometimes. I find it helps and you could join me, if you like."

"Again, maybe." I was of two minds on the offer. One one hand, she was coming on a bit strong with all the offers to help. But I knew she was offering in good faith and honestly, the little meditation I'd tried in my old life really was relaxing and helpful in dealing with my depression. However, with all the Tinkering I was going to be doing with the Celestial Forge, I wasn't sure I'd have the time for it anyway.

Whatever I wound up going with, I kind of wanted to just move on right now. So I changed the subject. "Hey, can I ask you a question?"

"Sure. What is it?"

"I was wondering how you and Ethan got together." They seemed to really be in love. They looked like they were happily married. But Ethan was a former criminal and I remembered something about Battery filing a lot of harassment claims early on. I just wanted to make sure they weren't together just because Cauldron pressured her into saying yes or something. I'd just gotten away from two people openly resentful of each other. I didn't want to walk into a situation where they were secretly resentful instead.

"Oh? Is that what you're interested in?" She settled into her chair, a soft smile on her face as she became nostalgic. "I'll be honest. When I first met Ethan, I hated him. I thought he was immature, reckless, insane, even dangerous. And I was right. But we were young and it's not like I was perfect either. Even once we started working together, I found him more annoying than anything else. But he kept on working on being a better person, a little bit, everyday. Then, one day we were talking and I realized that not only had he actually become that better person but we'd also become friends. I've never told him this but because of all the effort he put in to being better, he inspired me to be better too. He helped me with… what we talked about earlier and he doesn't even know it."

Serenity looked back into the kitchen, where Ethan was amusing Missy and Miss Nicholson with some story that involved a lot of arm-waving. I watched her eyes and there was a look of utter love in them. "It took awhile but Ethan is now someone dependable, kind and who will always stand up for what he thinks is right. It's hard not to fall in love with a man like that."

Then she turned to me with a mischievous look. "Also, he's actually pretty funny but don't tell him I said that."

I agreed with a laugh, satisfied that Missy and I weren't about to fall into the mudpit of another awful marriage. Then we returned back to the kitchen, where Miss Nicolson brought up the logistics of looking after Missy and me. Food budgets, chore schedules, school supplies, they covered all of that. I was pretty sure Miss Nicholson was supposed to be seeing if Serenity and Ethan had all that set up and ready already, but considering how rushed this all was, expecting them to have everything planned out was unreasonable. Instead, she wound up helping them come up with a plan instead.

When the subject of clothes came up, Missy leaned over and whispered to me. "Why don't we just get our stuff from Mom and Dad's? It wouldn't be hard to get in there."

It wouldn't be the first time we had to break into our own home either. Neither parent actually trusted us with house keys, too paranoid we'd act as agents for the other one and mess with their home. It was better than getting all new wardrobes in my opinion and there was some stuff I wanted to grab anyway. I whispered back, "Sounds good."

Missy frowned a touch. "The only question is how we're going to get there. I don't think they're going to let us go anywhere on our own for a while."

And by 'us,' she meant 'me'. Only one of us was considered a risk to themselves after all. Although, if we needed adult permission, I had an idea of how to get it. I reached over, tugged Ethan's sleeve and whispered. "Hey, can you come with me? I've got something to ask."

Ethan and Missy both gave me weird looks, wondering just what I was doing. But we got up, provided an excuse about double checking the furniture and went back to Missy's and my new bedroom.

"Alright, what's up?" Ethan asked.

"Do you want to help me and Missy break into our mom's house?"

The look on Ethan's face was great. Total confusion and shock. "I- Wait, what?"

"We want to get our old clothes and stuff and need a ride." I explained and Ethan looked relieved. But only until I spoke again. "And also maybe mess with her a bit as revenge, we dunno yet."

"Ah." Ethan chewed his lip for a moment, clearly conflicted. "...They really made your life hell, yeah?"

I nodded. "Yeah, the absolute worst."

"Unfortunately, I'm supposed to be a responsible adult and say no to you doing ill-advised and possibly illegal actions." He shook his head, looking stern and reluctant.

He managed to hold it for about three seconds before he broke into a huge grin. "On the other hand, this sounds like fun! Let's grab your sister and go!"

We did just that, making some excuse about going on a drive and getting some fresh air. On the car ride over to Mom's house, Ethan had some questions though. "So, are you two really going to break in?"

"Technically, there's no breaking involved. But no, we won't be going in the front door." I answered.

"We've had to do this tons of times. Neither Mom or Dad trusts us with the keys and half the time they're supposed to take us for the day, they forget, so if we didn't want to freeze our butts off, we had to figure out how to get in on our own." Missy added.

"Alright. Damn, that sucks though." Ethan shrugged. "Eh, I guess that means I don't have to feel bad about this at all. You guys are just grabbing your own stuff though, right? Don't snag anything that'll get you into trouble."

Missy and I agreed, even though Mom's first and only suspect would be Dad if she did notice anything missing. Better to be safe than sorry.

When we arrived, Ethan parked in front of the house and leaned into the back seat to give us one last warning. "I know you guys said your mom won't be home right now, but keep it quick just in case, okay? I'll keep the car running."

Missy and I headed out. The first thing we did was open the gate and get into the backyard. Mom had high fences and lots of trees and bushes around the property to keep things private, which is probably why the police calls the neighbors made was only a fraction of what it should have been. Right now though, it meant that nobody could see Missy use her powers and bring the second floor down to our level. We never left our bedroom window locked, so we simply slid it up and stepped inside, easy as pie. Missy let her power go and everything was back to normal.

As soon as we got into our bedroom, Missy started pulling clothes out of drawers immediately. I had other plans though, and I went into the hallway, getting her to ask "What are you doing?"

"This." I said as I used my workshop key on the door to the bathroom. As I did, I failed to get another perk from the Forge. Two in a row but my reach was growing. Robespierre was there as always and scuttled out on my command. "You help Missy grab all the clothes you can, alright Robespierre? I'll be back in a minute or two."

Missy gave me a questioning look but didn't ask. "Alright, but remember what A- Ethan said. Be quick."

"I will!" I shouted as I ran downstairs. I moved my workshop down there as well, so I didn't have to make such a trip to load stuff into it. I could see the new door on the rear wall of the entrance hall that led to my new Dust Refinery. It was surprisingly beautiful, hand-carved with subtle curves from this enchanting, deep-red wood and engraved with this shining, golden metal I assumed was Dust itself. I wanted nothing more than to head in and check it out but I just didn't have the time.

The first place I looked was the old cupboard of forgotten toys. I ignored most of them but the paints, markers and other art supplies were plundered. Same with children's chemistry kit. I also grabbed the Nerf guns Dad had got us just because Mom said no. Then the portable kiddie speakers in purple and pink plastic. Various electronic doo-das and toys I could rip wires and batteries out of. They all got dumped in the entrance.

That was it for toys and junk. Next I went to the kitchen and raided all the cleaning supplies I could. Bleach, Borax, Windex, whatever chemicals Mom had stored away. I didn't know how useful all of them would be, but I didn't have the time to double check each one. Into the workshop they all went.

I considered stealing Mom's diamond jewelry as well so I could make what little diamantine I could out of them but I thought better of it. Unlike Missy or me, Mom would actually miss those.

I satisfied myself with raiding the fridge, grabbing all the fresh fruit that was in there. I knew that if Mom didn't eat the last piece of fruit herself, she wouldn't think to add it to the shopping list and instead would go for junk food whenever she wanted a snack. And thus, her carefully crafted diet plan would be ruined, Mwahahahahah.

Was it petty? Yes. Did she deserve it? Eh, she probably deserved worse.

I couldn't think of anything else to raid except maybe the coat hangers, but I had my infinite supply of metal anyway, so I wasn't that desperate. With my fruitful bounty gathered in my arms, I returned upstairs just in time for Missy to be finishing up.

She'd gotten out four backpacks (we had a few old extras in the closet) and stuffed as many clothes into them as possible, only missing a few things. There was still enough room for me to stuff the fruit inside too, so I did so before picking up one of the few clothes Missy had left out. In this case, it just so happened to be a bright pink skirt that went down to about mid-thigh on her.

"Aren't you forgetting something?"

"Oh, screw you. You know I hate that thing." Yep, which is why I picked it up and not my puke green t-shirt.

"Who says it's for you? Maybe I want to wear it." I teased and shoved it in the bag when she tried to grab it from me.

"Oh my god, fuck you." Missy groaned and threw one of the bags at me. I caught it with a quiet 'oof' and a shit-eating grin. From there, we quickly grabbed our stuff and left, after I let Robespierre back into the Workshop of course.

With each of us carrying one bag on our backs and one in our hands, we quickly reversed course. Out the window with the help of Missy's power and back to Ethan's car. We piled into the back seat with all the bags, in too much of a hurry to bother putting them in the trunk.

"How'd it go? Got everything you wanted?" Ethan asked as he pulled away from the curb.

"Yep! Want an apple?" I aske, pulling one out and offering it to him.

"You do realize we have fruit back at the apartment, right?" He said. That didn't stop him from taking the apple and biting into it though.

"Well, now we have more." I said as I took out a banana for myself and another apple for Missy.

She bit into it with a big crunch before asking. "Hey, do you think we could hit Dad's place as well? I think I left my running shoes there."

"Maybe some other time." Ethan said. "We should be getting back before Serenity and Jenna start to wonder where we are. I'm just not sure how we're going to sneak your clothes into the apartment without them noticing."

"Wouldn't work." I shook my head. "Even if we managed to sneak them in today, Serenity would notice if we got dressed in new clothes tomorrow. Or the next day. She'd notice eventually."

"Tch, you're right. I didn't think of that." Missy said, frustration with herself clear to me. She'd come up with the idea after all.

"We could just tell the truth. We needed clothes, so we dropped by Mom's place to grab them.

No one also needs to know that we technically broke in." I suggested.

"Now hold up." Ethan said and I caught his frown in the rear-view mirror. "Breaking into your parent's house to get your stuff back in one thing, but I'm not about to lie to my wife."

Odd moral code but I could get it. I nodded along enough as Missy did a double take. "I'm not saying we need to lie. We can just not mention the illegal part. At least until Miss Nicholson leaves. I won't mind if Serenity finds out and punishes us, but we can at least keep CPS from thinking you're a bad influence."

"If anyone's a bad influence around here, it's you. You hearing this, Missy? Your brother's a born trickster."

"Yep. He's a troublemaker" She agreed and under the exasperation, I could pick out some hints of pride in her voice.

We got back to the apartment and things basically went as I'd suggested. Miss Nicholson was a little nervous about us meeting our mother but calmed down when we explained she wasn't there. As anticipated, neither of them actually asked how we got in, just assuming we had the keys or something.

After that, the adults went back to talking about boring legal stuff, leaving Missy and me on our own. I was pretty sure they were giving us some time to talk things over between us. So we headed out to the balcony and that was just what we did.

"So…" I started, looking out over the city instead of at Missy. The sun was getting lower in the sky and I wanted to see what it would look like at night. From up here, Brockton Bay actually looked like a normal, decent down. I liked it. Sure, you could be cynical and say it was just an illusion or that the rich and mighty were looking down, too far away to see the dirt that filled the streets. But I chose a more hopeful line of thought, that this was a vision of what Brockton Bay could be like, with a little care and attention. One day, we might achieve normal.

Heh, and wasn't that just sad.

"So." Missy said, pulling out of my wool-gathering. "You seem pretty set on living here."

"I do?" She was probably right, this seemed like a good home and Serenity and Ethan were winning me over, but I didn't think I'd said anything.

"You do. You wouldn't be worried about the beds being built right or making plans to not get caught in a few days if you hated the option at least."

I had to admit, she had me dead to rights. "Yeah, I guess. The apartment is nice, I like the view, I know for a fact the furniture is well built." I got a little laugh out of Missy with that one. "As for Serenity and Ethan… I know it's early but they seem really nice and cool and… You know, both of them offered to talk to me about the whole suicide thing? Like, genuinely, with actual concern and everything. I think they might actually care."

"That's… nice." Missy said, biting her lip.

"But you still have doubts." I gently guessed, sitting beside her. It was pretty clear.

"No, not really. I know they're both good people. It's just…" She lapsed into silence, chewing her lip some more. After a moment she straightened up with a determined look. "Fuck it. I'm gonna tell you. Miles, Ethan and Serenity are-"

"Assault and Battery, right?" I cut her off and grinned as she freaked out.

"Wh- Wait, the fuck? How the fuck did you know?!" She shouted, waving her arms in an adorable panic.

"Simple," I started counting of reasons on my fingers, "you recognized them and I didn't, so they had to work with the PRT or the Protectorate, since you have no life otherwise."

"Hey!" Missy objected and I just gave her a look. "Okay, fine, but you don't have to actually point that out."

I smiled at her pouting before continuing. "Heh. Anyway, I doubted you interacted with individual PRT employees frequently enough for you to recognize them on sight, so that left the Protectorate. The Wards were right out, obviously, and of the local Protectorate members, Assault and Battery are the only ones the right age, since Triumph is too young and everyone else is older. Add in the rumors that they're in a relationship and I pretty much had the answer."

Missy looked at me for a few seconds, trying to figure out if I was for real, then punched me in the shoulder. "You fucking asshole! You could have told me earlier. I was freaking out over whether I should tell you or not all day."

I chuckled while wincing. "Is that all then? You already know my opinion, better than I do apparently, but what about you? You up for living with them?"

Missy shrugged, still smiling. "Yeah… Yeah! I like Battery, I mean Serenity and while A- Ethan's like Clockblocker but an adult, I can live with that if he's not too obnoxious. And even if I say no, we're probably not gonna get options this good again. So yeah, I'm up for giving this a shot."

Our minds made up, we went back in to find the adults. They were sitting at the kitchen table again, chatting over tea or coffee or something in mugs that let off steam. "Hi there! We're back."

"Welcome back." Miss Nicholson said with a smile. "We're pretty much done here. We just need the most important thing: your approval. Do you two want to try living here with Serenity and Ethan?"

We gave each other a look before nodding in sync. "Yes, we'd like to live here."

Ethan let out a whoop of joy while Serenity clapped happily. Miss Nicholson nodded with a simple smile. "Wonderful. I'm sure you'll love it here. Now all we have to do is sign a few things and it will all be official."

She brought out yet more papers from her briefcase and the signing began. Missy and I needed to give a couple of signatures and a few more initials, while Ethan and Serenity had more to deal with. It was still relatively quick though and before long, we were officially under their foster care.

"That's everything!" Miss Nicholson declared once we finished. She packed everything away and stood up. I noticed that she looked a lot better than she had this afternoon, after Missy and I had unloaded everything on her. "You'll all be seeing me again later, just to check how you're getting on, but for now I'll get out of your hair and let you get some dinner. Bye bye now!"

We all escorted her to the door and waved her off. As she left down the hallway, I almost got a connection in the Celestial Forge but barely didn't have enough reach for it. A touch disappointing but I was happy enough at the moment it didn't bother me.

"Alright." Serenity said, clapping once to get our attention. "It's dinner time and I was thinking we could go out for Fugly Bob's to celebrate. How about it?"

Missy and I both let out a cheer, while Ethan just grinned at his wife. "To celebrate, right? Totally not because you don't have anything ready for dinner."

"We were busy!" Serenity protested. "Besides, it's not like you cooked anything."

"I was building furniture. Right, Miles?" Ethan looked to me for backup.

"Well, I was building furniture. I don't know what you were doing." I snarked and Ethan responded with a faux-offended gasp.

After that, we all piled back into Ethan's car and off we went. Fugly Bob's was an institution in Brockton Bay. A local dinner that had survived through a lot of the stuff the town had been through, it was famous for its large servings and delicious food. There were probably a few other local restaurants that were just as old around town, but they weren't on the Boardwalk and didn't have a funny name, so… Anyway, I'd been there a couple of times before, but thanks to my influx of old memories, it was kinda like going there for the first time. I felt like a tourist in my own town.

It wasn't a long drive and we got there just as Missy and my stomachs were starting to growl. Normally, I'd have just ordered the chicken fingers and dip, nevermind the fact that I'd had McNuggets for lunch. Comparing the two was like comparing gold to pyrite. Looked kinda the same but the quality was worlds apart. However, thanks to my old memories, I knew what I liked and what I liked was spice. Thankfully, there was a spicy chicken burger on the menu, with chipotle mayo, pickled jalapenos and habanero Havarti cheese. You could even swap out the regular fries for sriracha fries instead. It looked absolutely delicious and I was practically drooling over the picture in the menu.

The only issue was that I couldn't just order it. Missy was here and if I ordered something like that monstrosity of heat and pain out of nowhere, she'd know something was up. And while I had told her about my powers almost instantly, I wasn't going to do the same with my unique memories. It wasn't an issue of trust, it was just so stupid and unbelievable that I didn't want to get into it. Plus, if Missy knew I had the memories of a grown adult rattling around in my brain, she might start treating me weirdly and I didn't want that.

Was I overthinking something as simple as ordering a burger? Almost definitely but that was just kinda what I did.

Luckily, I had a cunning plan. I turned to Missy and pointed at what I wanted on the menu. "Hey, betcha can't eat this whole thing."

Missy looked at the burger, then gave me a flat look. "Seriously, Miles? Grow up. We're here for dinner, not stupid bets."

"See, that sounds to me like you don't think you can do it." I prodded her with a shit-eating grin. "It's nice to know the great and powerful Missy is still scared of some things."

"I'm not scared!" Missy protested instantly. "I'm just more mature than that, that's all."

"Uh huh?" I leaned back, feigning disbelief. "Well, I think you're not 'mature' enough to eat this whole thing. You're too childish to eat something like that without wussing out."

"I am- You- Ooooooh." Missy ground her teeth in frustration. "Fine! You want to make a bet? Let's make a bet. We both order this spicy chicken burger thing and we'll see who quits first!"

"With the sriracha fries?" I insist and Missy nods.

"With the sriracha fries. Agreed?"

"Agreed." I slap my hand into hers and we shake once, sealing the bet. Then I turned to face across the table. Ethan was obviously amused, while Serenity was fighting to keep a straight face. When the waitress came around, Missy and I both ordered the spicy chicken burger, while Ethan got a regular burger with all the fixings and Serenity got a chicken caesar salad. Of course, this being Fugly Bob's, the chicken was pieces of chicken tenders rather than grilled, the caesar sauce was slathered on and there were thick-cut french fries tossed in as well.

I was fully prepared to lapse into awkward silence as we waited for our food, as so many of my family dinners had done so before. Maybe Ethan would try to break the silence with some dumb jokes again but I thought that would be it. But apparently Serenity had something she wanted to talk about. "So, Miles."

"Yes?"

"I know you probably won't like this but part of what the government wants if we're to take care of you, is making sure you go to a few counselling sessions." Serenity looked sympathetic, while Ethan was sitting awkwardly beside her. "It's just a few times. All you'll have to do is go in and talk to the psychiatrist a bit, that's all."

"Oh." I nodded. "Alright."

They both seemed surprised that I just accepted it. "Really? You're fine with this?"

"Yeah. I mean, considering what happened, I wasn't expecting anything else, really."

"Huh. And here we were expecting you to complain." Ethan said, slightly impressed.

"Every action carries consequences." I said with a shrug. "If these are the consequences I have to deal with, I'll deal with them gladly. It's better than the alternative."

"The alternative?" Serenity asked before she could stop herself.

"If I actually died. If that happened, Missy would be sad. Compared to that, losing an hour or two of time every week is nothing." I said, which got everyone to stare at me. "What?"

"Nothing." Missy said and they all looked away. I wasn't sure what was wrong with what I'd said but thankfully our food showed up, saving us from any potential awkwardness.

"So, this is what the big deal is all about huh?" Missy said as her burger was placed in front of her. She turned to me and grinned. "Ready to lose, Bro?"

"I dunno what you're talking about." I'd already picked up mine and I took a big bite while she watched. It was everything I'd hoped it to be, spicy and warm and absolutely delicious. The lettuce and jalapenos gave it some crunch, the special bun had some BBQ spices baked in, everything was perfect. I moaned in pleasure even as the spice set my mouth on fire. "So good…"

"Eh, it's actually tasty?" Missy said in surprise, turning back to her own burger. "Can't be that bad if you like it."

Missy took a slightly smaller bite, because she cared more about manners than I did, and her eyes widened. "Oh my god, it is good!"

A second later, her eyes widened again, this time with tears in the corners. "Ah! Ah! Ah! Hot hot hot!" She cried out in pain, dropping her burger on her plate so she could grab her soda and start chugging.

Meanwhile, I was snuggly sitting there, chewing on a french fry like an asshole, even as the spice made me sweat buckets. "Enjoying yourself, Sis?"

"Shut up." She barked at me. Then she grabbed her burger and started chowing down, manners forgotten. "This is so good! Damnit, why does it have to hurt so much!"

In the end, we both finished all our burgers and fries. As it turned out, Missy shared my love of spicy flavors. However, I had experience with spice that she didn't. So while she ordered a cream soda, I got a strawberry milkshake with my meal, which helped soothe the pain much better. When we left, we were both stuffed and satisfied, but only one of us was crying in pain.

Once we got home, Serenity sent us off to our new room. "I know you're probably not tired, but it's been a long day for you guys. Go get some sleep, okay?"

Missy seemed like she was going to protest, but I just dragged her off anyway. 'Going to bed early' served my purposes nicely. Especially since there was a wardrobe in our room, one with a keyhole.

"What's the big idea- Oh." Missy cut herself off when she saw me opening up my workshop. "Tinkering time then?"

"Yeah. And you get the fun job." I said as I picked up Robespierre and petted him.

"What's that?"

"Staying out here and buying me time if they come to check on us." I check over my shoulder and she seems bewildered. "You okay with that?"

"Yeah, I guess. Not like I'd be able to help much anyway. I'll just do homework then." She said, pulling one of her notebooks out of one of our bags of clothes. I was impressed and a little annoyed she remembered to grab them. I mean, on the list of excuses for getting out of homework 'I/my brother tried to kill my/himself because I'm/he's a suicidal wreck' was a pretty good one.

I was more concerned about her comment about not being able to help. I was quite familiar with feeling useless because your sibling was suddenly super special, and I didn't want Missy to feel that way. I went over and pulled her into a hug but I didn't really know what to say, so unfortunately, that was all I could do.

"Thanks. I'll have something cool to show you soon." I said as I let go. She smiled at me, looking a touch melancholy but mostly happy, so I figured it was okay to leave her alone.

Inside my workshop, the first thing on my list was checking out my new Dust Refinery. Normally, the word refinery made me think of huge, industrial oil refineries, filled with loud machines and pumping out pollution. This was nothing like that. Just like the door, the interior was a work of art, with that same red wood making up the walls and floors, with a white, marble-like stone making the counters, and all of it was engraved with those elegant golden designs. As for the actual facilities available, the room looked like it was half-way between a blacksmith's forge and an alchemist's lab. Beakers, mortars and pestles, burners such were spread out across the work space, along with tongs, hammers, an anvil and even a fully functional forge. There were some odder tools as well, like magnets sewn into a cloth mesh, as well as tools for etching and engravings.

Looking around the place gave me a better understanding of what the Refinery was for and what Dust actually was. Dust was this magical… dust that was capable of a wide variety of things. Small amounts could be mixed into materials like steel or iron to enhance it, you could make things with magical effects, heck, with enough off it you could just have it transform into materials wholesale. It reacted to thought and intent, though you needed tools for more accurate results, and large amounts could simply mutate and change anything the Dust came into contact with, living or inanimate. The possibilities were pretty much endless.

And all of this would be super cool and useful and game-changing… if I had any of the stuff. Unfortunately, this was a refinery, used to take inactive or semi-active Dust and enhance and revitalize it. From there, you could use it for a wider range of purposes and manipulate it easier. But the refinery didn't actually produce or collect the stuff. Right now, all the Dust I had was inside the tools and the refinery itself, that was part of what made it work. I could take some of the tools, melt them down and extract the Dust that way, but that would mean taking apart things I might need in the future. I couldn't even scrape the golden Dust out of the walls, since the designs actually helped revitalize the Dust you were refining… some how. It was fucking magic, it didn't exactly come with an instruction manual. As it was, all I had right now was a nice, high quality blacksmithing forge and some alchemical tools. Which I totally would be using but the higher aspects of this Perk were locked off for now.

As I walked out the door, my disappointment was erased by the arrival of a new Perk. It wiped out all my stored reach but it was worth it. Coming from the Vehicle constellation, it was called Field Meister and just like I Like 'em Big, this one dealt with giant robots. I didn't recognize this particular type though, which were called Mortar Headds. But I now knew all about how to repair and finetune them, even while in the field and with limit parts and tools. And this frankly unreal ability to repair was applicable to other types of machines as well. I was glad. Anything to get the DOOM gate up and running sooner.

That wasn't where I headed next though. As much as I wanted the teleporter working ASAP, I had a few things that were even higher priority, so it was time to get to work in the basic workshop.

Fixer had given me many, many new and useful items I could build, each with innumerable variations that were stored in the database. The first thing I wound up building though was one I had initially written off as too specialized to be of much use, meaning it wasn't a priority. However, I'd realized something right before I made a terrible mistake that might ruin all of my plans.

Namely, I couldn't close the door to my workshop.

I wasn't worried about somebody walking it. Well, not that worried, since I had Missy standing guard and planned to always have some amount of privacy when I was tinkering. But the thing was, tinkering made noise. Hammering metal, sawing through the same, using heavy machinery, brewing potentially explosive potions, there was a ton of stuff I'd be doing that would make a huge racket. And that would bring Ethan, Serenity or even the neighbors running. And I had to Tinker at home, because I was twelve and not allowed to find a nice, private spot in the abandoned parts of town where I could tinker without interruption.

Thankfully, Fixer had a solution. I cracked open plastic casing on the speakers I'd grabbed earlier, grabbed a screwdriver and a soldering iron and got to work. The wonderful thing about Warhammer 40K tech was that, if you didn't mind the quality that much, you could build pretty much anything with limited tools and skills. Which is exactly what I did. Twenty minutes after I got started, I had myself a stummer, a small device which could generate soundwaves that canceled out noise in a given area. Since mine was made from crap, that area was small and the battery life was crap but it was big enough to cover the dimensional door into my workshop and I made sure I could just plug it into a wall socket.

With my first task done, I left my workshop and returned to Missy. "Hey. Check out what I built!"

She turned away from the desk she was working at and right as she was about to talk, I turned the stummer on. It was like hitting the mute button on a remote, as Missy's mouth moved without any sound coming out. She quickly realized what was happening though and I turned the stummer off before she could panic.

"What the hell was that?" She demanded, so I quickly explained what it was and why I built it.

Once I was done, she nodded slowly. "Okay… but if you turn that on, how am I going to warn you about Serenity or Ethan?"

"Simple." I plucked Robespierre from my shoulder and set him on the desk next to Missy. "Robespierre can come and get me if they knock, while you delay them."

"I guess that works." Missy nodded. "You're leaving that thing out here, right? What if I need to turn it off?"

"It's not hard." I quickly showed her where the buttons were and plugged it in next to the wardrobe. Missy gave me a thumbs up and I dove back into my workshop, ready to get to work.

The next item on my list was something I was actually going to be using in the field, so no rush jobs or cutting corners here. I had armor for my chest, arms and legs, no matter how poor it was for the task, but nothing to protect my head. So it was time to make myself a mask.

First, I actually looked through the chemicals I'd stolen from mom and luckily, I had just enough to make the amount of plasteel I needed. It would have been nice to have more but I'd take what I could get. Actually, I'd already taken it, heh. But before I started mixing up a batch, I had to make the internals.

An auspex was basically the Imperium of Man's fancy word for a scanner. But considering all it could do, maybe a fancy name was justified. Capable of picking up chemical traces, movement, heat, energy signatures and more, as well as scanning through walls, an Auspex was vital if you didn't want to get ambushed by marauding xenos or the force of Chaos. Or in my case, super villains and their gangs. I had the plans for one that could be integrated easily into the mask I was making, although unfortunately I couldn't make the highest quality designs I had in my head. Also unfortunately, there was more tech I wanted to include but couldn't, like a omni-scope, rebreather and vox-caster. I Like 'em Big gave me options for how to integrate them but I just didn't have the space to include them unless I wanted them just bolted on the surface of the mask. Maybe if I made myself a helmet instead, but I didn't have enough chemicals for that much plasteel and besides, a helmet wouldn't match the look I was planning out.

Once the auspex was constructed, I got to work separating out the chemicals and mixing what I needed to make plasteel. The equipment in the Dust Refinery was a big help this time, since it meant I didn't have to waste time crafting my own beakers, bowls and mixing rods. It was still a pain in the ass to mix, like stirring cookie dough, but eventually I got it. I poured the mixture into a mold I'd carved from wood earlier, set the circuitry for the auspex inside it and set it aside to set.

That had taken me about two hours to build, all told, and most of that was crafting the auspex. Once again, I felt thankful for just how simple Imperial tech was to build. If I had to make something similar from a different tech base, there was no way I would be able to get it done as quickly as I did.

While I was waiting for the mask to harden, I started work on my next project. This one was a bit more complicated and bulky than the mask, and that unfortunately meant that I could only get it partly done in the time I had left.

I was pulled out of my tinkering when Missy walked in, carrying Robespierre in her hands. It was nice to see her accepting him more. "What's up?"

"Bed time. Serenity knocked on the door to make sure we were in bed." She answered, while looking over the mess I'd made of my current work bench. Parts were strewn about and so were tools, with the device I was working on in the center.

I clicked my tongue. "Damnit. Do you think I can get away with staying up late? I'm not nearly done yet."

"Hell no." Missy shook her head. "You were already up late last night tinkering, I'm not letting you stay up this night too."

"Technically, it was early this morning…" I muttered.

"Technically, you can shut up." Missy grabbed me by the arm. "Besides, I'm tired and I won't be able to stay up much longer to play guard dog for you."

"But-" I tried to protest but my own body betrayed me, forcing me to yawn. "Fine. Just let me close up."

I let Missy drag me out to our room, where I said good night to Robespierre and locked him into the workshop. Then took turns getting changed, Missy claimed the top bunk by just stepping up there with her powers, disregarding the ladder, and we finally fell asleep.

Perks added this chapter:

I Like 'em Big (200CP)(Gundam AGE)

Your pace continues into your preferences in MS design-along with some basic knowledge of 'Right, so I take this bolt out and everything falls to pieces without it. Don't touch it.' in your head, you can make upgrades to Mobile Suits that revolve around extra armoring and utility-making replacement parts cheaper and easier to install, reinforcing plates and glass, and generally making a unit tankier and sturdier.

-Field Meister (Five Star Stories) (400CP)

Ordinary Meisters have sponsors and workshops lined with tools and mortar headdscraps. After all, that's their job –to build and tune the mortar he adds which form the backbone of literally every single army in the Joker Cluster. Naturally, they're highly demanded –especially the ones who have made a name for themselves. You're not quite there yet, but whereas others have fame, you have talent. While no one will say it to you outright, in reality a lot of people are rather envious of your abilities as a Meister. Perhaps your lack of obfuscating memories made it earlier for you to adapt to the necessary qualities to become one –but your potential as a Meister is so strong that you could tune and repair a MH even in the middle of a battlefield with nothing other than a plasma torch and some scrap metal .Frankly, you could probably rig up a temporary workshop just with stray tools lying about –but it's probably best not to tempt fate by setting up permanent shop in the middle of the battlefield!

AN: Alright, I actually managed to get this out before midnight! Woo. Also, I appologize if this is somewhat lower quality than it should be. Because of how late I worked on this, it's only partly beta'd. I hope you enjoyed regardless.

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RexHeller

May 7, 2021

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RexHeller

RexHeller

Jun 17, 2021

#246

That night I had a nightmare. I was back on the plane as it was crashing. I was going to die. That wasn't what scared me. I'd made my peace with death in those moments before and now was no different. No, what was different was that Missy was there with me. I tried everything to get her to save herself. Not me, not everyone else, just her. I begged, I pleaded, I screamed and threatened. Nothing I did got through to her. She just sat there, eating her spicy chicken burger as the impact happened.

Fuck the human brain.

I didn't wake up screaming or by catapulting myself out of bed, like in the movies. I did, however, wake up far too early. After I checked that Missy was still there, sleeping soundly and after I'd stopped crying, I peeked at my phone. Five AM in the morning, which was just all sorts of wrong.

In an attempt to distract myself from the left-over feels, I thought about the two perks I'd gotten yesterday. I'd been distracted when I got I Like 'em Big and Field Meister and I'd kind of dismissed them without really analyzing what they could do. Giant robots were cool and all, but not really relevant to my current tech base, that had been my thinking. And while I wasn't wrong, I wasn't exactly right either.

Unlike Fixer, I Like 'em Big and Field Meister didn't just dump a bunch of blueprints in my brain and call it a day. Instead of giving me designs to follow, they gave me the skills, knowledge and instincts to make and build my own. For I Like 'em Big, that meant everything relevant to modifying gundams. Engineering, metallurgy, high energy physics, weapon design, welding, programming to make sure that the add-on systems played nicely with the core computers, even some architecture since these things were the size of buildings. And Field Meister was even more robust.

In the world that Field Meister came from, the local giant robots were called Motor Headds and they were a big deal. They held a place of honor and reverence in their society and for good reason. These powerful machines were insanely powerful and high spec, even by mecha standards, and as such only the best of the best engineers were allowed to work on them. These geniuses earned the title of Meister and were highly sought after by the kingdoms and nations of the world.

Field Meister basically made me an up-and-coming prodigy of a Meister. I didn't have any specific knowledge of any individual Motor Headds, but I did know how they worked. And that was really, really useful because Motor Headds were complex as hell. Most Mecha were built like, well, machines. But Motor Headds were built like the human body, just made of metal and synthetic parts. And then it was like that meme of the guy with the crazy hair. What if it was fifteen feet tall? What if it was bristling with guns and missiles? What if it was a culturally important work of art? What if it could swing a sword at the speed of light? Bullshit. Absolute bullshit. Bullshit that I knew how to repair and build. Already I was thinking of how I could scale some of that tech down to simple power armor.

But even more bullshit was what made Motor Heads capable of near lightspeed attacks and instantaneous movement: the ezlazer engine. This machine took ambient energy, mostly sunlight, and spat out over a trillion horsepower. They were basically perpetual motion machines, virtually indestructible and needing near zero maintenance to keep working. You could bury one in the sand for a thousand years, dig it up and still have it power your space ship. The ezlazer engine was far, far beyond humanity's current understanding of science and also far beyond my actual ability to craft. But not forever, because I also knew how they worked too. The secret to infinite energy was inside my head.

I was distracted from my distraction by the Celestial Forge reaching for another perk. It was one of the constellations I hadn't gotten yet, but unfortunately I didn't get anything this time. It did remind me that I had to manage my time better. Sure, I could build up reach in the Forge all day long, just lying in bed and thinking about how cool my powers were. But if I wanted to actually make use of them, I had to get up and work.

After opening my workshop and turning on my stummer, the first thing I did was grab my mask. The plasteel was set after a night of sitting, so now I could actually wear the thing. I put it on, the auspex automatically turned on and suddenly I could see through walls. Kinda. The actual physics of pocket dimension confused the sensors somewhat. But as long as I left it in the simplified view and my door was open, I'd be able to see the moment Ethan and Serenity started to wake up. Until then, it was time to work.

Some of the more common equipment in my Fixer database was the recoil glove, a glove that reduced the recoil of any weapon you were firing. Pretty obvious and also pretty universal considering how overpowered the weapons in the Imperium tended to be. If you weren't a genetically engineered super soldier and wanted to be able to actually aim with anything other than your flashlight, you needed this glove. I had dozens of designs for them as a result, from the top-of-the-line versions used by the most high class of mercenaries to barely functional, cobbled together scrap made by the dregs of society.

Now, I didn't have any guns yet and I wasn't planning on making the kind that made the recoil glove necessary, but that wasn't why I was making one in the first place. Another common piece of equipment was the grapnel launcher, just like Batman, and a lot of recoil gloves had grapnels built in. The benefits of this arrangement were obvious: having a wrist mounted grapnel launcher was cool as hell. Also, the recoil glove prevented the force of the grapnel from simply ripping your arm off when it retracted. But mostly, it was just plain cool.

However, I wasn't just following one of the designs in my head. Something that wasn't commonly included with the recoil glove was magnets but I felt like it should. Being able to grab metal surfaces, as well as pull metal objects towards you, sounded like it would be super useful to me. And Fixer did have magnetic outerwear, but it was pretty much just magboots, not gloves. Of course, there were a few examples of maggloves in the billions and billions of designs Fixer dumped in my brain, but I wanted to come up with something myself. Flex my design muscles a little bit. I Like 'em Big helped a lot with the process, since I was adding more tools onto an existing item, but it likely would have wound up bulkier than I like if not for Field Meister. Field Meister's talent for doing more with less, as well as some of the artistic instinct, helped me pare down the final design to something I was happy with.

I finished up before anyone woke up, since most of the work was done yesterday. I even managed to modify a pair of old boots Missy grabbed from home into some magboots with shock absorbers in them. Now I could jump off tall places without worrying about breaking my ankles, provided I was wearing them. It took significantly less time, since I was using mostly spare parts from the glove and also the fact that both the grapnel launcher and recoil compensators were more finicky than the rugged shock absorbers.

The boots took the rest of the time I had before people started waking up. Once I saw movement on the auspex, I quickly packed everything away and closed up shop. As I patted Robespierre goodbye and shut the wardrobe door, Missy rolled over and saw me.

"Morning, Miles. Please tell me you didn't stay up all night tinkering." She said with a yawn.

"Of course not. I've only been up for an hour." I said, halving the time I was awake. Missy would be less bothered that way and it's not like I was any worse for wear. Better if she didn't worry about it.

Missy tried to frown but was interrupted by another adorable yawn. "Whatever, just don't over do it."

"I won't, promise." I said. "It's just new and fun, you know? Of course I'm excited."

"Mrm." Missy grunted and turned back over. She probably would have gone back to sleep if Serenity hadn't knocked on the door just then.

"Breakfast time, kids! Time to get up!"

Missy let out a much bigger groan while I just laughed. It took a bit of time for her to get out of bed but eventually I dragged her out into the kitchen. Serenity was there, along with Ethan who was nursing a cup of coffee. I had to wrinkle my nose at that, I never enjoyed the smell of coffee, let alone the tastes, but it's not like it was unbearable.

Serenity enthusiastically offered us a variety of breakfast foods, from fruit to porridge. Missy went with some cereal while I just went with honey on toast.

"So, what's the plan for today?" Ethan asked, once we joined him at the table.

Well, I wanted to start working on the DOOM gate, but I couldn't just say that, so… "Homework, probably?"

"What, all day?" He reacted with surprise. "Man, I thought they only loaded you down like that in college."

"Uh, well… I dunno what else to do."

Serenity sat down, having finally made her own meal. "I'm sure we can find something to do. Maybe go for a walk or play some board games. We'll be fine without you."

"Ah yes, what every man wants to hear from his beautiful wife: 'Just get out already.'"

Serenity smirked at Ethan's snark. "Hey, you said it, not me."

"Uh, I also have to go to my club stuff this evening." Missy pointed out. I guess even with my 'condition', Vista couldn't get more than a couple days off from making public appearances.

"Right, right. I'll drop you off and Ethan can bring you home." Serenity gave him a pointed look. "You won't forget, right?"

"Never. I'll see you at the P- the place later, Missy. See ya later, kiddos." Ethan downed the rest of his coffee, gave Serenity a kiss on the cheek and left.

After that, we finished our food, then Missy and I went back to our room while Serenity got started on cleaning up.

"I suppose you're going back to your tinkering?" Missy asked once we had some privacy.

"Yep. Nothing better to do." I answered as I pulled out my key.

"Fine." Missy sighed. "Send Robespiere out here, maybe I can teach him some tricks."

"Sounds good!" I let him out, grabbed my mask and headed for the teleporter room. With Missy watching out for me, I probably didn't need the auspex right now, but I figured it was a good idea to wear it anyway, so I could get used to it.

I quickly lost myself in the flow of doing repairs. There was something very satisfying about seeing something wrong, coming up with a solution, and fixing it. Repeat that process with new puzzles and you basically had what made puzzle video games so fun.

Of course, my perks were what let me even do anything in the first place, instead of staring at the machinery and being unable to do anything more than shrug. As I'd assumed, Fixer gave me a starting foundation of how teleportation might work while Analysis pointed me at the most critical damage. The biggest time saver was Field Meister though, even though I was pretty sure its origin universe didn't have teleporters at all. It wasn't a straight speed boost, though the Celestial Forge had plenty of those. No, Field Meister sped things up thanks to the instinct it gave me for shortcuts and alternative solutions. What would normally take three hours and specialized tools, I could get done in 30 minutes with elbow grease, a bit of lateral thinking and no more than a two-point-nine percent decrease in structural stability.

Several hours flew by for me and by the time Serenity was calling us for lunch, I was actually a decent way towards functionality. If I kept at it, I could probably finish by the end of the day.

Serenity had made us sandwiches for lunch. I was starting to get the feeling that she was decent at simple foods but not anything more complex. Or maybe she just wasn't worried about impressing us with her cooking skills.

"So, are you guys willing to step out of your room a bit?" Serenity asked us while we were eating. "I was wondering if you wanted to play some board games with me for a bit."

I held back the urge to groan and suppressed the feeling that I didn't have time for this. As annoying as it was to take time away from my tinkering, especially when I was so close to actual teleportation, it was better in the long run if I convinced Ethan and Serenity that I'm reasonably well adjusted. Locking myself in my room all day to tinker would look a lot like locking myself in my room all day because I was depressed, but if I was agreeable and spent enough time being helpful and hanging out with them, then I'd probably have more leeway when I really needed it.

I didn't like how I had to logic myself into being a decent person. I liked Ethan and Serenity so far, I wanted them to trust me and I wanted to be friends with them. But instead of just happily going 'yeah, let's play' I had to convince myself with a line of reasoning that made me sound like a master manipulator in my own brain. I just hoped that it was because I naturally overanalyzed things, rather than some indication of my true nature.

Anyway, once lunch was over, Serenity showed us the board games she had. I wasn't expecting much and I wasn't wrong. Ethan and Serenity only had a few 'classic' board games: Monopoly, the Game of Life, that sort of thing. I made a mental note to introduce them to something actually fun, like Betrayal at House on the Hill. That was available in 2011, right?

We eventually settled on Jenga, since it was something skill based and relatively fast. While we were setting up, the Crafting Skills constellation missed a connection. Not too concerning, since I was still building up charge for next time. I simply ignored it as we started the game.

Interestingly enough, a Jenga tower counted enough as a building that Analysis worked on it. I was basically able to cheat, seeing exactly the blocks that would most likely trigger a collapse if touched and avoiding them entirely. Missy cheated too, subtly using her powers to keep things steady or give her more space to work. Serenity was the only one who didn't cheat with her powers, either believing that they wouldn't be useful or she just wasn't willing to go that far against a pair of twelve-year-olds. Either way, it was her loss, literally. Over the forty-five minutes we played, Serenity triggered the tower collapse every single time.

Eventually I figured my social obligations were done and when the blocks tumbled all over Serenity again, I let loose a huge yawn. "I'm feeling pretty tired. Is it okay if I go back to our room now?"

"Of course." Serenity nodded and smiled sympathetically. "I've heard that Panacea's healing can take a lot out of you. Take as much rest as you need to."

"Uh, I'll come too. I'll read ahead for school or something." Missy added, which sounded ridiculous to me but Serenity didn't bat an eyelid. I guess Missy did put in a lot of effort into her Wards work, but still. What twelve-year-old voluntarily does extra homework?

After we helped clean up the blocks and had retreated to our room, I poked her in the ribs. "Reading ahead? Seriously? What a nerd."

She shoved me back with one hand. "Shut up. She probably thinks I'm just worried and want to keep an eye on you. Besides, I know you're just going to do more tinkering and you need me to keep a lookout."

"Oh, right." I shook my head as I remembered. "I should have told you earlier. I built a scanner earlier and it can give me an alert when someone approaches. You don't have to sit around doing nothing if you don't want to."

Missy looked at me like I was stupid, which was fair. "Uh, yeah. You should have told me earlier. Whatever though, I'll still hang out anyway. It's not like I have anything better to do."

"You sure? I think Serenity would love it if you went and played more games with her."

She stuck out her tongue while making gagging sounds. "And get stuck playing Monopoly for a few hours? Please, I'm not a masochist. I'll just play more with Robespierre."

"So you guys are getting along then? Great!" I opened up the workshop and the glove in question scuttled out right to Missy. I quirked an eyebrow at the fact that my power-granted fiat-guaranteed-loyal pet loved my sister more than me. Still, it was nice to see after the disaster of their introduction to each other.

While they started doing what they did while I was busy, I got busy. Back into the guts of the DOOM gate I went. It took me a few more hours to finish up what I'd started but eventually, I was behind the command console, ready to start the bad boy up. I flipped a few switches, pushed a couple buttons and then slowly pushed the power lever from zero to one. On a scale of one hundred. With bated breath, I watched as energy cycled, lights turned on and the whole thing started making cool sci-fi sounds. I slowly counted to ten and nothing blew up. I cheered at my success and carefully shut everything down. I didn't want to carelessly blow a capacitor and undo all my hard work.

So now I had a working teleporter. Well, somewhat working. I had nowhere near repaired all the damage and the true capabilities of the DOOM Gate were still lost to me. Even just looking at the math required for teleporting to other dimensions made my head hurt, even with all the perks I had so far. But still, provided I was careful with the power management and the targeting, I was pretty sure I could teleport anywhere in Brockton Bay. I even made a recall device to teleport me back to the Gate in emergencies at the push of a button. Eventually I hoped to have a full remote control system for the Gate built into my mask or other equipment, but this worked for now.

With that, I had weapons, armor, identity protection and both minor and major transport. All the basics for any aspiring super hero. Admittedly, most of those were barely there but they were there. So there. All that was left was one last thing: style.

I already had a general idea of what I wanted my costume to look like, even if the specifics weren't all together yet. Still, I had enough to get started and enough confidence that it'd come together in the end, so I gathered my armor, weapons and mask, as well as all the paint and art kits I'd grabbed from Mom's place. The final piece for now was the child-sized lab coat that came with the chemistry kit, which was the only reason why I grabbed the kit in the first place. Because what the hell was I going to do with three grams of baking soda or plastic test tubes that'd melt the moment they came into contact with anything even slightly caustic. Naw, I just wanted the coat.

I gathered everything in the entryway to the workshop, sat down and started painting. I didn't get far, only managing to finish off my mask, before Missy walked in and demanded my attention.

"I'm bored. Do something with me." She said, brooking no argument as she dropped off Robespierre.

"Uh, okay…?"

"I'm serious here, Miles." She dropped into a cross-legged sit beside me. "I've been out there all day with nothing to do while you've been in here, doing whatever. If I have to spend another second on my own, I don't know what I'll do."

"Alright." I nodded even as I felt a pang of guilt. I wasn't a normal Tinker, so I didn't have the same urge to build. Sure, working in the workshop was exciting and satisfying but I didn't have an alien parasite in my brain messing with the chemicals to make me addicted to SCIENCE! Probably. I was pretty sure. So if I was ignoring the people I cared about to go build stuff, that was on me. Even if I was really worried that the weekend Taylor fought Lung was this weekend and I felt a pressure to be prepared to help. Even then, I didn't want to do the classic superhero blunder and get so caught up in my own issues that I made the people around me think I didn't care.

So I held up my mask for Missy to see and grinned. The plasteel had been pure white before I painted it a bright yellow, with a single line smile on it. Add in the fact that the lenses were tinted black and you had a simple smiley face. "What do you think?"

"It looks like a grade school art project. Like a six-year old made a paper-mache mask." Missy said with a smirk.

"Really?" I nodded, satisfied. "Excellent. Exactly what I was going for."

Missy began to laugh until she realized I wasn't joining her. "Wait, you're not serious, right?"

"Of course I am." I set the mask aside to dry.

"What the… Why?!" Missy demanded.

"Well, for one, my art skills aren't that great, so if I'm gonna look amateurish anyway, I might as well lean into it." I leaned back so I could start explaining. "But more importantly, I need to come off as cute and harmless as possible."

"I don't like to repeat myself but… Why?!" Missy looked at me like I was being an idiot, which made sense. She'd spent most of her time on the Wards trying and failing to have people take her seriously, especially her own teammates. More training and experience than almost all of them and one of the highest PRT rankings in the city and yet she was still the mascot of the team. The precious little girl, too delicate and young to be put in any danger. It grated on her something fierce and yet here I was, saying I basically wanted to be in her position.

I sighed. "I finished the teleporter today. Just the first round of repairs but I can reach anywhere in Brockton Bay now."

Missy squinted, not sure what I was getting at. "That's great, but don't change the subject. Why-"

I cut her off. "Did you know I have the blueprints for a high-energy powerpack in my brain, specifically designed to be as easy to build as possible? Cheap materials, simple design, and with some minor adjustments, you can rupture containment, essentially creating a plasma grenade that can destroy tanks."

"And what does that have to do with your costume decisions?" Missy asked, still wondering what the point was.

"Give me half an hour and I could teleport explosive ordnance right into Director Piggot's lap. Twenty-four hours and I'd be able to assassinate every world leader on the planet in the same way. And I'm just getting started, Missy." I looked at her, dead serious. "I'm scary, Missy. My power is incredibly frightening, even though I would never use it that way. But that won't stop people from thinking up the worst case scenario and I don't want to frighten anyone. I just want to help but I can't do that if everyone is running around, too worried about what I might do to let me help them. Understand?"

Missy considered this for a bit before asking a question. "And you're not worried about going too far in the other direction and not having anybody listen to you?"

"A little, but that's why I'm staying independent. That way I don't have to worry about getting permission, I can just do what I need to. I'm not worried about getting people to listen, I'm worried about people trying to stop me when they should be stopping the bad guys. A good first impression, one that makes me seem like a harmless amateur, will help with that."

This time it was Missy's turn to lean back and sigh. "You know, I'd have thought you wouldn't have to worry about this kinda crap since you don't have a PR department messing with you."

"It's precisely because I don't have a PR department that I have to worry about this. I have to take care of it all on my own." I grabbed a paintbrush and held it out to her. "Anyway, you wanna help?"

Missy regarded the offered brush for several seconds before snatching it from me. "Fuck it, sure. I might as well make sure at least some parts of your costume look fine. Can't have my brother being a total embarrassment in public."

I laughed as I picked up my chestpiece to start on that. Missy's art skills were only marginally better than mine. I doubted anyone would be able to tell the difference between our work in the finished product. We worked together fairly quietly, focusing on the painting and just enjoying each other's company.

"Missy! Time to go!" We had turned off the stummer, since we were both in the workshop and we weren't doing anything we needed muted, so when Serenity called, we heard her clearly. It was a bit after we'd started, enough time to get everything painted and start letting them dry. Besides my smiley-face mask, my armor pieces were pure white with various symbols on them. The chest piece had a big, smiling sun on it, while the greaves and vambraces had stars, diamonds and basic shapes on them. The lab coat was purposely made a mess, with random splotches of paint just slapped on all over. There was still quite a bit of white untouched, but it looked like it had been used quite a lot by someone particularly clumsy and was now covered in stains.

I was pretty satisfied with our results and my happiness only grew when I got a new perk from the Forge. From the Alchemy Constellation too, which I hadn't gotten before and was filled with useful stuff. Then I realized what the perk actually did.

"Oh what the fuck."

"What's wrong?" Missy instantly asked.

"Nothing, just got a new power and it's a weird one. I'll tell you later." I brushed her off as I locked up the workshop. The new perk was called On-The-Fly Cooking and it let me quickly cook up treats from any ingredients I could scrounge up, no matter where I was or what I found. The weird part was that anything I made this way, without a recipe and one the fly as the perk said, would have a random magical effect. I could push it towards an effect I wanted but there were no guarantees. So I easily wind up with a carrot cupcake that let you talk to frogs or something else wacky like that.

Not something to be worried about right now, so we just met Serenity at the front door. She smiled at Missy but gave me a worried look. "Miles, will you be okay if I leave you alone for a bit? I just need to drop off Missy and I'll be right back." She clearly didn't want to leave me alone for a second.

I felt a bit of sympathy for her, since she was torn between making sure I was okay and protecting Missy's secret that she didn't know that I already knew. I gave her my best smile to set her mind at ease. "I'll be fine. Don't worry about me, seriously."

"Are you sure?" Serenity asked, not quite convinced. I nodded and smiled, she bit her lip for a moment, then sighed. "Alright, if you're certain you'll be okay. Oh, and I need to do a little shopping for dinner, so how about after I've dropped off Missy I come back and we can go out together?"

"You don't need to make a second trip. Just get what you need on the way home, I'll be fine. I promise." I was getting a bit frustrated with how concerned she was. Seriously, I could be left alone for an hour or whatever, geeze. I turned to Missy for help. "Missy, tell her I'll be fine. We're used to being on our own."

For a second I thought Missy was going to jump on the concern train as well, but after a second she grabbed Serenity's hand and tugged. "Yeah, Serenity, quit worrying. C'mon, we're gonna be late."

"Well… Alright. Miles, I'll be back in an hour, tops." She promised as Missy pulled her out the door.

I waited all of five seconds before cheering and rushing to the kitchen. I grabbed a banana to be my test subject before opening my workshop back up and running to the Gate room. I gave the banana to Robespierre to place in the chamber while I went to the console and started inputting commands. After setting everything up, I took a deep breath, my finger hovering over the 'initiate' button. Everything I knew said that it should work,I had triple checked every repair I made. And yet still, I was nervous. But then again, that was what testing was for. I let go of the breath I'd been holding and pushed the button. In a flash of orange energy, the banana disappeared. After a few tense seconds, I brought it back.

If it had exploded, then that would mean an issue in the energy regulators.If I couldn't get it back at all, then the targeting systems would need adjusting. If it came back fused molecularly with a wall, then the safety protocols needed rewriting. If it came back green and gloopy, then I'd have accidentally invented a time machine. None of that happened. The banana was fine.

If anyone else had been in the apartment, I'd have deafened them with my cheers.

I wound up teleporting the banana several times and getting more and more excited with every success. I tested everything I could think of: range, rapid deployment, deliberately aiming for occupied spaces to test the safeties. Everything worked like a charm, barring a few minor adjustments here and there.

Quickly though, I'd run out of things to test with just a banana. If I wanted to learn more, I needed a live subject. My eyes drifted to Robespierre, sitting on top of the console, watching the proceedings with rapt attention. No. Just no. I didn't care if he would likely be fine. I didn't care that he was going to be teleporting with me if all went well. And I certainly didn't give a shit that animal testing was 'standard practice' before moving onto humans. I wasn't going to betray the trust he had in me and use him as a guinea pig. And since the only other living being around was myself…

A few seconds later, I found myself in the bathroom, checking that my costume looked fine when I wore it. Besides the mask, the armor and the lab coat, I'd put on a black t-shirt and blue jeans underneath then. My magboots and grapnel glove didn't share the 'excited kid playing at being a superhero' aesthetic but I figured that was fine. I needed some way of indicating that, despite my costume, I was an actual Tinkerer. They did look oversized even though they fit perfectly, so they kinda made it look like I was still playing dress up. They fit, I supposed.

But I felt the outfit was missing something. It wasn't quite cute enough and I needed a little something extra to push it into the realm of utter adorableness. Maybe…

I was hit with a flash of inspiration and rushed out of the bathroom. I returned a few seconds later, this time with the jeans swapped out for a pair of black tights and the pink skirt that Missy hated. It was perfect. My hair and body shape were practically the same as my sisters, the only clue I was a boy was my face. And with that covered, my long-ish blonde hair and the skirt made me look like a little girl. A cute, harmless little girl.

Now properly dressed for going out, I headed back to the teleporter, making sure to grab my staff on the way, just in case. I set everything up and told Robespierre which button to push when it was time to go. I could have set it on a timer and taken him with me, but I wanted Robespierre to stay behind in case anything went wrong. "So when I tell you when, push this button, okay? And this big red button is the emergency stop. If anything goes wrong or I start screaming, push it immediately. Got it?"

Robespierre gave me a thumbs up and skittered into position. With butterflies in my stomach, I stepped into the machine. "Here goes. In three… two… one... Now!"

Robespierre hit the button with his thumb, then twisted his fingers around to give me a salute. After that, there was a flash of orange-red and suddenly I could feel the ocean breeze. I was standing on a rooftop in the Docks, warehouses all around me and the bay just a few blocks away. Laughter bubbled up from inside me as joy and excitement overwhelmed me. I must have looked like a mad person, laughing uncontrollably while standing on a roof in a ridiculous costume, but what did I care? I could teleport. Even with all the advanced tech Tinkers shit out, that was something special.

But the DOOM gate wasn't the only equipment I had that needed testing. And that was why I was in the Docks instead of anywhere else in town. Lots of run down buildings no one would care if I damaged, the warehouses were low enough that if I fell, I'd probably survive and few to no people around to see me. Perfect for trying out the grapnel glove and magboots.

That didn't mean I wasn't still nervous though. On the one hand, both the glove and the boots weren't damaged at all, while the majority of the Gate was still under repair, I'd just managed to get it working juuuuust enough to use. That meant that the glove and boots should be perfectly fine. But on the other hand, the Gate was created by someone else, a race that had mastered their technology before it was given to me. It was basically proven technology. The boots and glove though? Those were my own designs, modified from existing tech sure, but still ultimately my creations. I was relying solely on my own competence here, something I'd learned to doubt over two lifetimes.

Looking over the edge of the roof, I had to fight off some vertigo. Sure, doing this on a warehouse was better by far than testing on a skyscraper, but two stories is still two stories. But I forced myself to believe that a twenty foot fall wasn't as scary as being smeared across the dimensions as atomic mist or getting molecularly merged with masonry. If I could teleport, I could do this.

I lifted my arm and took aim at the next building over. Because I was a huge nerd, the activation for the grapnel was pressing my middle two fingers against the palm of my hand while extending the index and pinky. As soon as I did that, the grapnel launched, latched onto the next roof and rapidly pulled me towards it.

"Shiiiiiiiiiii-!" I swore as the sudden acceleration took me off guard. Even with the recoil compensators in the glove working perfectly, the fact that I wasn't prepared meant that my shoulder still got yanked a bit. I was super lucky I didn't drop my staff between the buildings. And let's not even get into how scary moving that fast through the empty air was.

It was so fast the fact that I got my feet underneath me to land instead of face planting was total luck on my part. Still, the boots did their job and I barely felt anything as I skidded to a stop, gravel spraying everywhere. The grapnel automatically disengaged, winding back up to the wrist launcher and I was left standing there, shooken with my heart beating like crazy.

" ...That was terrifying." I said to myself once I caught my breath. Then I looked to the next roof. "I gotta do it again."

Now, let's be clear. I am not the type of person that enjoys bungee jumping and other similar activities. I mean I'm just barely brave enough to do them, but I wouldn't do it unless forced. I just didn't see the point. When I said I had to do it again, that was my practical side speaking. If I was going to make use of this to get around, I had to get used to it. I couldn't be hesitating if I needed to escape a fire fight or rampaging cape. But as I did it again and again, launching myself between buildings at high speed, with nothing but the machine I built keeping me safe, I started to see the appeal. I began to cheer and whoop as I flew through the air, signing the Spider-Man theme song and having a great time.

It was so much fun, I almost didn't notice when I snagged another perk from the Vehicle constellation. It wasn't like it was really important, especially not at the moment, but hey, a perk is a perk. Runway Troubleshooting let me land planes. No matter what condition the runway was in, no matter what condition the plane itself was in, I was landing that plane. Even if the runway was actually a dirt path in the mountains and I was missing a wing, I could still land safely. Which was neat, but it didn't apply to my landings when using the grapnel. So I ignored it and went back to having my fun.

I did start seeking more challenges after the first few though. I started making my way to the more residential area of the Docks, where you could find three or four story apartments, or those buildings where you had a walk-in store on the bottom floor but offices above them. More height difference, fire escapes and other interesting bits of architecture gave me and my equipment more of a work out than the relatively samey warehouses.

It wasn't long after that though that I heard a cry for help. For a moment, I froze, inanely wondering if I should call the police, before remembering 'oh, right, I'm a superhero now.' I zipped in the direction the scream came from and quickly arrived at the alley in question, clinging to the side of a building with my grapnel and surveying the scene. At a glance, I saw a far too common scene in Brockton Bay: three young white punks threatening a defenseless person of color. It was so great to live in a town with an active and major neo-nazi gang running about.

In this particular case, the three Empire-88 thugs actually were wearing masks. Cheap paper ones, the kind you'd find at the dollar store for birthdays but I bet most of these assholes didn't even bother with that much effort. Their victim, meanwhile, was an older hispanic lady, slowly backing away from the three. Actually, after getting a closer look, I was surprised to recognize her. It was Nurse Jones, from the hospital. Well, I definitely couldn't walk away now.

Just as I was prepared mentally to get involved, Nurse Jones tripped over some trash bags, knocking over a garbage can and making a racket. It was hard to watch your step while trying to keep an eye on the people mugging you. Speaking of which, the three thugs started laughing and I jumped down before they could take advantage of the situation.

I landed between Nurse Jones and her attackers, the magboots doing their job of cushioning my ankles when I hit the ground. I took a second to steady myself with my quarterstaff, thankfully uninterrupted since the punks were too surprised by my sudden appearance. Then I tilted my head to the side and tried my best to sound cheerful and nonchalant. "'Sup. You guys should probably give up now, okay?"

"W-what the hell?" The guy in front, I assumed he was their leader, stuttered in surprise. He was a thin, wiry type, his dirty coat hanging off him like he was a coat rack and a pocket knife in his hand.

Skinny's two friends flanked him on either side and a bit behind him. On his left was a short guy with a bit of a gut and his hands in his hoodie pockets. He wasn't so fat to actually be what I considered fat but he was clearly overweight. Stiil, he got the nickname Fatso in my head.

I was most worried about the dude on Skinny's right though. He was the tallest of the bunch and his wife-beater let me see his muscular arms. Add in the fact that he had a metal baseball bat and he was clearly the most dangerous of the three. However, he also seemed the most cautious. While he was looking at me with caution, Fatso just kinda stared. It was hard to get a read on him. Skinny, meanwhile…

"Hey! Get the fuck out of here, kid! Go fucking play hero somewhere else or else you're gonna fucking get it." Skinny was clearly a very angry young man. Also a bit of an idiot it seemed, as Muscles was quick to pick up on.

"Uh, dude? I don't think she's playin'. She just dropped out of the fucking sky." Muscles was already starting to back up slowly. "Remember the rules? You see a cape and they ain't on our side? You run."

"Oh, fuck off! She's a fucking kid, what the fuck is she gonna do!" Skinny yelled at his friend before turning back to me.

"Uh, I do have this thing." I wiggled my staff back and forth. "You do realize I can hit you with it, right? That's something I can do."

"Oh, fucking please! Am I supposed to be impressed? You got a stick, I got a fucking knife!" Skinny brandished the weapon in question and laughed. "C'mon, tell me why I should be worried about a little fucking kid with a stupid piece of wood."

"Well for one thing, it's bigger than yours. So-" I took my staff in both hands and jabbed it forward like a spear. My aim was good and I hit him right in the nuts. His friends winced in sympathy while Skinny himself dropped his knife and slowly curled in on himself, letting out a pained wheeze. "-I can hit you from over here, while you can't touch me."

"You… fucking… bitch…" Skinny probably would have sounded more threatening if he weren't squeaking like a mouse with tears falling from his eyes. But while he was bent over, I noticed that he had a tattoo on the back of his neck. It seemed a bit familiar, so I poked his mask off with my staff. I wasn't surprised when I saw the security guy from the hospital but I was disappointed. Nurse Jones seemed more shocked though, judging by the loud gasp I heard behind me.

Muscles cautiously moved forward, taking Skinny by the shoulders. I kept my staff up, on guard for any sudden moves, but he seemed more concerned with his buddy. "C'mon man, we gotta get out of here."

"Fuck… that…" Skinny was still having trouble speaking through the pain but he managed to glare at me and Nurse Jones with absolute hatred. "Not... gonna quit until I've killed that bitch."

"Seriously, Dude? Hey, help me out here." Muscles called to Fatty, who also joined in on pulling Skinny away from us. "Maybe next time you won't laugh about Vista breaking my hand…"

I breathed a sigh of relief as the three assholes left. Maybe I should have gone after them, maybe I should have tried harder to arrest them. But I was still just a little kid with zero combat training. One cheap shot didn't mean I could take three grown-ups in a fight. Plus, Nurse Jones knew who one of them was, so the cops could take care of the rest.

And besides, I was more concerned with making sure Nurse Jones was alright. Once I was sure the assholes weren't coming back, I dropped my staff and moved to her side. "Hey, are you okay? They didn't hurt you, did they?"

"I-I'm fine. I just… I can't believe… Oh god!" She said, shivering. I patted her hand in sympathy, having a good guess how frightening this had been for her. Heck, the only reason I was doing as well as I was, was because of adrenaline. For her, it must have been particularly scary. Getting mugged was scary on it's own, but she was hispanic and they were E88, it didn't take a genius to figure out the likely result.

I pulled her into a hug to help her calm down. I rubbed her back and even softly sang Can You Feel the Sunshine, hoping the happy lyrics would comfort her. Eventually, she stopped shaking.

"Thank you. Really." She whispered, her voice slightly horse.

"Hey, don't worry about it. I'm happy to help." I said brightly. "Do you think you can call the cops now?"

"Oh, right. Okay." She let out a shaky breath before pulling out her cellphone. A short conversation later and the police were on their way.

I hung out with her a little while longer, keeping her safe and chatting a bit to keep her mind off things. I even let her take a picture to show her grandkids later. It didn't take long for us to hear sirens in the distance, just at the same time as my phone alarm went off. Double checking the time, I yelped in panic. "Oh no! I need to get home before Mom gets back! Uh, you'll be okay on your own for now, right?"

"Yes, I'll be fine." She answered and I gave her a thumbs up. I turned and aimed my wrist at the roof but then she shouted. "Wait! I-I'm sorry, but I'm not really up to date on superheroes. Who are you?"

"You can call me Crafty!" I answered her cheerfully, before zipping up to the roof. I quickly checked to make sure no one else was around before pulling out the return device and teleporting back home.

I'd set my alarm for five minutes before Serenity said she'd be getting back, which gave me just enough time to change and get everything put away in the workshop before she walked in the door. I guess I was lucky she didn't get back earlier.

"Hi Miles!" Serenity smiled when I came to the door and started helping bring in the groceries. "How are you? Were you lonely while I was gone?"

"A little but I was fine." I answered as we headed for the kitchen.

"Ah, I'm sorry I had to leave you alone. Do you want to come shopping with me next time, then?"

"Not really. Shopping's boring." I shrugged and started to help put things away. Serenity was a little surprised but it wasn't a lot and I felt like repaying their hospitality.

After that, Serenity made a quick dinner of macaroni and cheese. Since it was just the two of us, she suggested we eat in front of the TV while watching something. We were pretty lucky, since the original Stargate movie was playing. I'd only ever seen the very beginning and the last few scenes, while Serenity had never seen it at all. We had a pretty good time, the film was fun and exciting but personally, I missed the version of Jack O'neill from the show.

"Did you like it?" I asked Serenity as the credits rolled.

She nodded. "Yes, actually. I don't usually watch this sort of thing, but that was fun."

"They made a show for it too. We could… watch that together as well. If you wanted too." I offered, feeling a bit awkward. I normally wasn't the type to make invitations like that, but I was hoping she'd take some lessons from the show. Sure, the government conspiracy hiding the existence of aliens from the public were the good guys in that case, not something I wanted others to get too used to, but a lot of episodes had the team rebelling against orders and the government when it was the right thing to do. A good lesson to learn for someone in Serenity's position.

"Of course I'll watch with you. Or anything else you like." Oh. She seemed to pick up on the awkwardness and I guess she assumed it was because my actual parents never did anything with me. She was right, but… Actually, I was surprised to realize that I felt a lot better after spending some time with Serenity. So I guess there were two reasons to watch SG-1 with her.

As we put our dishes into the dishwasher, I made a connection to the Toolkits Constellation. The happy feeling I always got at adding another piece to the puzzle was tainted a bit by the perk itself. Artist's Tools, a set of sculptor's tools and paintbrushes, exactly what it said on the tin. But there was a bit more to them than just making art with them. The tools were magic and could allow me to re-sculpt someone's appearance totally, guaranteeing that the results would be beautiful to look at. Practically, it could be useful, but in practice it would mean literally scraping and cutting away at someone's face. I wasn't sure I wanted to do that in the name of aesthetics and honestly, something about the tools just felt… sinister to me, even though I hadn't even seen them yet.

"So, you like that sort of thing?" Serenity asked, pulling me back to reality. I could check the tools later but for now, socialization. "Sci-fi, I mean?"

"Yep! It's probably my favorite genre, but I also like fantasy and noir. Even horror!" I answered happily. If there was a topic of conversation I could talk about, it was narrative art, like movies, books and anime.

"Horror, really?" Serenity sounded disbelieving, possibly even aghast.

"I like seeing the different monster designs." I shrugged. "Plus, a lot of the time, the monster or whatever is really a metaphor for something else. It can be fun trying to figure out what means what."

Serenity hummed. "Huh. I guess, although I never really had the brain for that back in school.I was better at science."

We spent a while after that just chatting and getting to know each other. Serenity made some hot chocolate and we enjoyed that at the kitchen table while we talked. But as time went on, I got a little worried about Ethan. He'd been gone since pretty early in the morning and wouldn't be back until he picked up Missy. Did his shift end before hers and he was just hanging out until she was done? If his shift was a normal eight hours, then he'd probably have had time to come home for dinner. But if he actually was working until Missy was done as well, that meant a twelve hour shift. I sincerely hoped that wasn't normal for Protectorate heroes.

It was long past dark when they finally got home. I got up and ran to the door, feeling a bit kiddy but still excited to see them. I greeted them happily only to get cut off when Missy instantly grabbed me and dragged me back to our room. "Thanks for the ride, Ethan! I've got something I want to show Miles! Bye bye, good night!"

Missy smiled the whole way back but didn't lighten up her grip at all and I knew I was in trouble for some reason. As soon as the door shut behind us, her friendly grin disappeared and she got me in a headlock before I could react. Then she shoved her cell phone in my face, harshly whispering "What the hell is this?"

"Uh, it's your phone- glurcugh!"

"Don't be a smart-ass!" She whisper-shouted as she choked me. "Explain, Miles, explain!"

I took another look at her phone as she eased up on my poor throat. I recognized PHO's website design instantly, though it took me a moment to read the thread she was on. "Oh! That was quick. I didn't think she was the internet savvy type."

The thread was titled New Hero in Brockton Bay? It turned out that Nurse Jones hadn't recognized me, so she posted online to see if anyone else did. Her opening post was actually a bit touching. I'd been excited for my first time out and willing to help but compared to what other heroes did, what I knew I could do eventually, hugging someone while they freaked out wasn't the most amazing thing. And yet, that was what Nurse Jones focused on, calling me kind and caring. It made me happy to see that I'd had such a positive effect on someone.

"Don't just go 'oh'!" Of course, that didn't stop Missy from being upset. "What the fuck were you doing? You have zero training, why the hell did you get into a fight?"

"Okay, listen, I didn't plan on fighting anyone. I was just out there, field testing my equipment when I saw someone that needed help." I explained quickly.

"Do you seriously expect me to believe that? You were just looking for an excuse, weren't you." Missy accused, surprising me.

"What? No, Missy, I honestly was just out trying out my grapnel launcher. I wasn't looking for a fight, I was having too much fun for that."

Missy glared at me for several long seconds before finally letting me go. She pushed me away and I stumbled, managing to turn my fall into sitting on the bed. Missy huffed and planted her hands on her hips. "Okay, fine. I guess you're dumb enough I can believe that. Never do it again, not until you know how to use that dumb piece of wood you think is a weapon. How did you even get out there while Serenity was out, anyway? The Docks are halfway across town."

"Oh, right. I was also testing the teleporter, so-"

Missy's eyes bugged out and she immediately shouted "Miles-!" at the top of her lungs, before cutting herself off. After making sure Ethan or Serenity weren't coming to check on her outburst, she continued in a harsh whisper. "Miles, are you insane!? How the fuck is testing a broken teleporter on yourself a good idea? Are you trying to kill yourself still?!"

I awkwardly rubbed the back of my neck. She might have had a point. A small one. I was very certain I'd be fine before I used the Gate but I could see how it looked from her perspective. "I didn't test it on myself first. I tested it on a banana before I tried it myself."

"A- a banana!?" Missy was red in the face now, looking like she was about to explode. "A banana is not a person, Miles! Just because it's safe for fruit doesn't mean it's safe for humans!"

"Actually, I heard somewhere that bananas share like ninety-eight percent of their DNA with humans. And, I mean, they're kinda like humans. Protective skin on the outside, soft squishy bits on the inside."

Missy punched me.

While I was massaging my newly bruised shoulder, Missy took several deep calming breaths. After a moment, she was back to being relatively calm. "Okay. Okay. My brother is an idiot who can't be trusted to look after himself. I already knew this."

"Oi!"

Missy continued without acknowledging my protest. "If you're going to insist on being this thick-headed, I'm going to simply make sure you won't get yourself hurt. That means no going out on patrol without telling me, no more testing tinker tech without me and no more teleporting. At all. Not until we have extensively tested it and you are absolutely, one hundred percent certain that it won't catastrophically fail. Got it?"

"Not even in emergencies?" I asked hesitantly.

Missy was silent for a moment, then sighed. "You can teleport, but only if it's to save your life. Emergencies means actual emergencies, okay?" I nodded and she accepted that. "Seriously, Miles. The only reason you got me to agree to you not joining the Wards was because you promised that I'd be the one to decide if your inventions were safe or not. Don't just do shit without telling me."

"Sorry, Missy." I said, genuinely repentant. I got up and opened my arms, waiting for permission. Missy stepped closer and let me hug her. "Sorry, I just was excited to try everything, Serenity was gone and I just took the opportunity. I guess I didn't really think things through."

"You dumbass." Missy said fondly. Then she hooked my leg and judo threw me onto the ground. It was only some half-remembered instructions on how to fall safely from my old life that saved me a lot of pain. Instead I was just winded. "Also, we're getting Serenity and Ethan to sign you up for martial arts training first thing tomorrow."

I glared up at her, before I burst into giggles. Painful giggles but Missy joined in, making it worth it. Then we panicked together when Serenity knocked on the door. "Are you two okay? We heard a bang."

"It was more of a wham! Or maybe blam!" Ethan shouted from deeper in the apartment.

"We're fine! I just tripped!" I called out, not wanting to explain what really happened. Roughhousing was nothing special between siblings, but then again, I was 'sensitive' and 'recently abused'. I didn't want Missy to get into trouble or sit through an unnecessary lecture about how she can't beat up her brother for fun.

After getting me up from the floor, we got ready for bed. We changed, brushed our teeth and were in our bunks soon after that. As we were lying in bed, Missy spoke up. "Hey, Miles? I had just one more question."

"Yeah?"

"Why were you wearing my skirt?"

So. This took awhile. Pretty much all my fault, my tendencies towards procrastination and self-sabotage were tugging at me hard here. Although, in my defense, I do have a real life job that I can't exactly skip. And also, procederally generated games are specifically designed to go on forever. It's hard to find a good stopping point.

But enough about that. Here are the new perks this update.

-On-The-Fly Cooking [100 - Wonderland No More] This skill lets you create edible and/or magical treats quickly from anything in your present surroundings. You'll always find some ingredients to scrounge up and prepare in a hurry, even if your location isn't the best. If you want your food to have a specific sort of effect, you have a higher chance of your concoction having those properties, but otherwise the effects will be fairly random.

-Runway Troubleshooting (Ace Combat) (200CP)

Fighter planes are finicky things, often requiring you to land on smooth, flat surfaces like an aircraft carrier or a runway. You know that such luxuries aren't always present, and so exactly know how to move your plane, and land it in even the harshest conditions. Whether the carrier is getting rocked by waves, or if you need to land on a rough patch of ground, or any other crazy condition, you can do it. You could even land your plane if it was partially on fire and missing one wing.

-Artist's Tools (Warhammer Fantasy: Warriors of Chaos) (200CP)

This set of paintbrushes and sculpting tools are simply perfect for their mundane uses, but they have a use beyond mere tools to create art. You can use them to literally remake the appearance of others by magically changing the flesh how you please. Under your touch, the ugly would become astonishingly beautiful, and the entire process is so pleasurable that others might ask you to change them purely for how it feels.

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RexHeller

Jun 17, 2021

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RexHeller

RexHeller

Aug 12, 2021

#374

"You want to learn karate?"

It was breakfast time the next day and once again we were all sitting around the kitchen table having breakfast. I'd just brought up the possibility of learning martial arts and now both Ethan and Serenity were giving me weird looks.

I shrugged, doing my best to act like a bored teen. It wasn't hard. "I guess? Could be that or something else. It was Missy's idea."

They shifted their weird looks to Missy, who shot me her own look of betrayal before answering. "I just thought it'd give him something to do. I have my after-school program, but he just kinda sits around the house all the time. Plus, he needs to stop being such a wimp."

"Missy, you can't just call your brother a wimp." Serenity said disapprovingly.

"But it's true!" I interrupted, grinning like an ass. "And it's so easy to be one when you have a gorilla for a sister who'll beat up anyone I ask her too. I've never had to fight my own battles in my life."

That got Ethan to laugh and Missy to groan. "Oh my gooooooood…" Serenity looked halfway between looking genuinely concerned and joining her. Eventually she decided on glaring at her husband.

"Don't encourage them, Ethan."

"'Them?' What did I do?" Missy protested.

"I mean, you did call me a wimp." I snarked.

"But that's just a fact. I can't get into trouble for telling the truth, that's unfair!"

Ethan had just managed to get his laughter under control, only for Missy to say that and make him choke on a laugh. Serenity just sighed and got up from the table. "I need to get ready for work. You deal with them, Ethan."

Ethan coughed a few times before smiling at Serenity. "Ahem, Of course, Dear. I'll… I'll get right on that. Right, back on topic. Miles, do you actually want to learn martial arts?"

I shrugged again. "It's probably not a bad idea and I guess it might actually be pretty cool. I'd like to give it a shot, sure."

"Do you know what type you'd like to try?" Ethan asked. "Because, you know, there's more than just Karate out there."

"I hadn't really thought about it." I said, lying a little bit. I'd like to make use of my weapons, but I wasn't sure which martial arts used sticks and staffs for fighting.

"Mm. Well, I think it'd be good for you, but… I'd also like more enthusiasm than just a 'yeah, sure.'" Ethan said, grunting like an exaggerated teenager for the requisite part. "As part of this whole Responsible Adult thing, I want to make sure you'll stick with it rather than just try it out once or twice then quit."

"Don't a lot of places offer free first time lessons?" Missy pointed out. "No commitment, just show up to see if you like it?"

"That's a great idea. Tell you what, Miles. If you do a little research on your own, figure out what style you'd like to try, we'll take that as a sign that you genuinely want to do this. Bonus points if you find a place in town that does the free first lessons thing and save us some money. Alright?" Ethan asked as cleared the table. I nodded and he started doing the dishes. "Great! So, I got you kids all day. Any idea what you want to do?"

I missed a node from the Vehicles constellation as I answered. I didn't mind, I had a lot of Vehicle perks, relatively. I wanted the Forge to branch out a bit. "Do you think we could swing by our Dad's place and pick up our clothes like we did at Mom's?"

Ethan gave me a conflicted look, but got distracted when Serenity came in to get her kiss goodbye. Then she hurried out the door and Ethan made sure to listen for the 'click' of it shutting before he answered me. "Do you really need to? I mean, we got a lot of clothes on Friday, right?"

"Yeah, but I'm missing my favorite hoodie."

"Also most of my hair clips." Missy added.

"Also-also, I have some novels there that I want, so I don't get bored." I continued.

Ethan waved us off. "Alright, alright, I get it. Kids today are materialistic little monsters. Alright, on the one hand, I really shouldn't be encouraging and enabling literally illegal behavior. On the other hand, your parents really do kinda deserve it…"

"You helped us yesterday, why the hesitation now?" Missy asked. Well, almost demanded, really. But she managed to stay just polite enough.

Ethan scratched his chin as he thought. "I really shouldn't have let you do it yesterday either. I'm not gonna turn around and punish you or anything, that would be all kinds of hypocritical and awful, but I can at least stop you from doing it again."

"But it was fun!" Missy protested. "Don't lie to us and say you didn't enjoy it."

"I'll admit I enjoyed pulling one over on your awful parents, but that doesn't mean-"

"You do realize that the other option is actually talking to our Dad right?" I pointed out. "That's pretty much the only way we're getting the second half of our stuff."

Ethen froze in horror before clapping his hands with an excited smile. "Alright, so breaking and entering it is. Let's get going, we can probably get this done before lunch."

It was only after we were half-way there that Ethan asked a fairly important question. "Oh, hey. Your dad's not gonna be home, right?"

"Naw, he usually spends the weekends in a hotel with some floozy or other. No idea why he didn't just start taking them home after Mom kicked him out." Missy explained.

"Probably because we were there a lot of the time and even when we weren't, we still left our stuff around." I theorized. "He probably just wanted to avoid uncomfortable questions."

"Mhm." Missy grunted, while Ethan sighed and shook his head in the front seat.

"I really do not like you parents." I could hear some forced restraint in his voice, holding back anger.

"Dislike cheaters?" I guessed and he nodded.

"Yeah. I just can't understand it. Why would you go out of your way to hurt and betray someone you're supposed to love? And if you don't love them, why not just get a divorce? It just… it makes no sense!" Ethan shouted, clearly upset at the idea. It made sense. Whatever his faults, it was clear from watching for five minutes that he was head-over-heels in love with Serenity.

Personally, I agreed with him. Why go to all the effort of making someone miserable when that effort could be put to use? Why waste your time with hatred? Why wallow in misery and spread it around instead of getting out of it? Of course, I was pretty sure I knew the answer. "Because they are petty, shallow people. Because if they didn't have their hatred of each other to distract them, they would see just how empty and pointless their lives really are. With no one to blame, they would be forced to see their own faults, see that they are nothing but faults. If they didn't have each other, they would have nothing and that's worse than anything they can do to each other."

I was looking out the window, watching the streets go by and it took me several seconds to realize that silence had followed my little speech. I turned back to find Missy just staring at me and Ethan glancing at me in the rear view mirror. "What?"

"Nothing!" Ethan jumped and focused on the road again. "Just, uh… Wow. Let's change the subject, shall we?"

Despite him saying that and his attempts to follow through, I'd brought down the mood in the car enough that the rest of the trip mostly passed in silence. When we got there, Ethan gave us a similar warning as last time: be quick and don't take anything that wasn't ours anyway. Missy and I went around to the backyard while Ethan stayed in the car. Unfortunately, Dad's yard didn't have the same high hedges as Mom's to make sure we wouldn't be spotted. Fortunately, I had a solution.

Before we had piled into the car, we'd had a bit of prep time. Enough to get dressed, grab some backpacks to store our loot and in my case, take something from my workshop. Kneeling down behind Missy, I opened up the bag and pulled out my mask.

"I still can't believe you brought it. Don't you think it's a bit risky?" Missy asked while looking around, making sure nobody was peeping over the fence.

"I only need to wear it for a minute." I put the mask on and checked the auspex readings. No one in the house, as expected, and nobody really close enough to see Missy use her powers. Sure, we could have just rang the doorbell to make sure Dad wasn't home, but frankly, I just didn't want to have to talk to him if he was. Its job done, the mask went back in the bag while I nodded at Missy. "We're good to go. Get us in."

Unlike with Mom's house, the relative lack of privacy as well as how recently Dad had bought it meant that we hadn't had the chance to break into the place before. Which meant we hadn't left a window unlocked for ease of access. Instead, Missy approached the back door and stretched the tiny amount of empty space between the door and the door frame a bit. Just enough that the bolt or the latch, whatever the part that stuck out when you locked it was called, wasn't in the hole for it anymore. Then we just pushed the door open, easy as can be.

"You know, if you didn't join the Wards, you could have been one hell of a cat burglar." I said as we walked in.

"You know, I'm honestly not sure if I'd get more or less respect that way." Missy replied with a sigh.

We quickly went our separate ways, same as on Friday. Missy headed up to our room to start packing clothes, while I opened up the workshop and started stealing supplies. Again, I took cleaning products and other chemicals I could find, obtaining enough for a bit more plasteel. Maybe I'd make a proper chest plate this time. Missy and I didn't grow up in this house, so there were less toys to take, but I took what was there anyway. Maybe I'd be able to find a use for the batteries at least. I was tempted to take Dad's golf clubs so I could melt them down and turn them into something useful, but just like with Mom's diamonds, he'd actually miss those. So instead, I just took what I'd really come here for: Dad's old laptop.

Well, one of them anyway. For some reasons, despite upgrading his computer every couple years, Dad never threw the old ones out. But there was one that was special, a fairly new model that still ran okay and worked just fine. For Missy and I, it was basically ours. Dad never let us use any of his computers, new or old, even if we needed them for a school project. He probably thought we'd root around in his files or something and report back to Mom. But Missy and I had managed to guess the password on this particular laptop. Since then, we'd used it whenever he was out of the house and as far as we could tell, Dad never noticed.

"Miles, I can't fit all your books in the bags, should I just throw them in your workshop?" Missy asked as she came downstairs but froze when she saw the laptop in my hands. "Miles, no."

"Miles, yes."

"Miles, no! You can't take that, it's actually valuable." Missy protested.

"Not to Dad it's not. You and I both know he doesn't check these things." I argued. "As soon as he puts them in the cupboard, they might as well cease to exist. Besides, I really need it."

Missy gave me a flat look. "Miles, I'm sure you'll be able to live without being able to play Minesweeper."

"That's not what I need it for, Missy, c'mon." I rolled my eyes at her. "I need it for cape stuff, like making my official PHO account."

"Can't you do that on your phone?" She asked.

"You're only supposed to post as Vista from the phone the PRT gave you, right?" I answered her question with a question and she nodded. "Same idea, it's to keep my cape ID and my civilian ID separate. Also, I'm going to need a computer anyway to draft out inventions and tech. I might as well take this one and get started sooner because again, it's not like Dad will miss it."

"And what if he does miss it for some reason? What if he decides to check and finds one laptop missing?" She insisted.

"Fuck him." I shrugged dismissively. "And he'll probably blame Mom anyway, not us."

"Hn, you're right about that." Missy shook her head. "Alright, fine! We probably won't get in trouble for this and I can't deny that it'd be useful. You can't just build your own though?"

"Not at the moment. No supplies and none of the powers I've gotten so far have a specialty in computers." Well, Fixer did have computer knowledge, but I didn't want to mess around with that in case I accidentally made a Machine Spirit.

"Your powers are weird," Missy noted and sighed. "Fine. take the laptop. And come help me pack already!"

I did and I did. Missy was right, we couldn't fit all my books in the bags. We only had two this time and I'd bought a lot of novels with my allowance in an effort to stave off boredom and loneliness while Missy did Wards shit. But thanks to Missy's idea, we didn't have to leave them, we just threw them in my workshop, keeping a few out for Ethan to see. I'd specifically mentioned my books earlier, it would look weird if I didn't carry out any.

The whole heist went off basically without a hitch. We packed up, closed the door behind us and Ethan drove us home with no one else any the wiser. We packed everything away in our room and while we were doing that, the Toolkits Constellation swung by in my head. Unfortunately, it was a big node and I only had a little charge built up, so no connection this time.

Once that was done though, we met back up with Ethan in the kitchen, where he was preparing lunch. "So, what do you two want to do this afternoon?" He asked.

"Actually, I was thinking of taking Miles to go explore around here." Missy answered before I could say anything. "It's nice enough out there and I'd like to get to know the area."

"Sounds fun. There's a park near here actually, we could make lunch into a picnic." Ethan suggested. He wouldn't have to change much, he was just making sandwiches.

"Actually, I'd rather it be just the two of us, me and Miles." Missy shook her head. "A picnic basket would be nice though, if that's okay."

"Uh, sure. Are you sure you don't want me to come along though? I could show you-" Ethan hesitated, probably uncomfortable with the thought of letting two kids run around Brockton Bay unsupervised, like any sane, caring guardian would. Funnily enough, our parents never had an issue with it.

"No, thank you." Missy politely but firmly shut him down. "Miles and I will be fine on our own and getting a guided tour would defeat the point of exploring."

Ethan looked to me for back up but I just put up my hands. "Hey, I ain't arguing with her. Besides, we're kinda free range children already, we're used to being on our own."

"Alright…" Ethan was still hesitant but probably unwilling to risk alienating us, because he didn't argue anymore. Instead, he dug out a basket from somewhere and filled it up. The fact that he had an actual picnic basket sitting around surprised me. Who did that in this day and age? Well, probably hopeless romantics hoping for an iconic date with their crush. Which actually fit Ethan to a T now that I thought of it.

A short while later, we were on our way with a basket full of food and some instructions that we shouldn't stay out too long. The park wasn't that far from the apartment building, in fact we could see it from the balcony just by looking down. It wasn't that big, it wasn't like Central Park or anything, but it had a fairly large area of grass, which Missy and I sat down right in the center of. That way, we would look normal, but nobody could get close enough to hear us talk without being seen first, letting us change the subject if needed.

Missy immediately pulled out her phone as soon as we sat down, so I asked. "Whatcha doing?"

"Reading the opening of your thread again. I'm double checking the description of how you fought. Now shush."

I shushed as ordered and instead got out the food. We had sandwiches, a bottle of lemonade for each of us, some leftover cookies from Friday and of course, fruit. I took a few bites of the sandwich and immediately decided that I would have to take over at least some of the cooking in the house. It wasn't awful but it wasn't good and I was starting to get the feeling that Serenity wasn't that much of a better cook. Again, she wasn't awful, but everything she had made so far was pretty simple and the best of it was the cookies and pancakes, so the sugar was carrying most of the effort there. I had enough experience feeding myself and Missy by now that I could do a pretty good job at it.

I'd have to avoid activating On-The-Fly Cooking however. I could get around it by going in with a recipe and deliberately planning out each meal, rather than looking in the fridge and throwing together what I could find. It was a bit tough to see the upside of the perk, honestly. Yeah, the random effects could be useful but the randomness was a pain and I had to be careful not to reveal my secret now. A high price to pay for what I thought of as party tricks. But every perk was supposed to be useful somehow, so…

"Alright, got it!" Missy said, interrupting my thought process. I was just on the edge of having an idea there but I gave up as Missy started talking. "So, let's start your training right now. Step one: after action reports. We're going to go over what you did, what was good about it and what you fucked up on."

"Makes sense." I nodded.

Missy smiled. "Okay, good. I was afraid you'd complain. I'll be honest, I like the process but actually writing up reports is a bitch and a half. Just be glad I'm not making you write out an actual report. So, in your own words, tell me exactly what you did yesterday, starting from the moment we left."

I did as she asked, going over the testing of the teleporter, then the grapnel and magboot experimentation and finally the conflict at the end of it. When I was done, Missy seemed both surprised and satisfied.

"Huh, you actually did that pretty well, Miles. I thought I was gonna have to waste time bugging you for a bunch of details." She said. That was probably the benefit of the adult parts of my mind. I had the experience to know I should include the little things instead of just giving her three sentences and think that was enough. "So, as we've established, what you did was pretty stupid. What do you think the best way to handle yesterday actually was? I'm talking about the fight now, I'll yell at you for risky testing again later."

I finished off my sandwich and thought hard. It actually wasn't that hard. On an objective based mission, you focus on the objective, I'd played enough video games to know that. "I should have grabbed the victim and grapneled out of there again, instead of even bothering with the thugs."

Missy blinked in surprise. "Huh, wow. You're right. I really wasn't expecting you to get that first try. Pretty much everyone on the Wards took awhile to figure out the answer. Honestly, I'm pretty sure Shadow Stalker still doesn't believe it, no matter how much shit she gets in for it."

"I mean, I am a genius after all." I gave her a shit-eating grin and got a weak kick in response. I laughed while she continued.

"Alright, Genius. If you know the right answer, why didn't you do it yesterday? Hm?" Missy verbally poked at me, but I wasn't (just) a dumb kid anymore. I could handle the fact that I'd fucked up with the urge to make excuses.

"I just didn't think of it." I said, shrugging. "It felt like an urgent situation, so I jumped in without a plan."

We continued to go back and forth for a while, covering other things I could have done, like dropping down behind them for a sneak attack or using my grapnel to pull off a dive kick. We went over alternate scenarios, like what I could have done if they had guns. Eventually we decided, reluctantly in Missy's case, that I'd accidentally'd my way into a decent course of action. Not perfect, but by essentially bluffing and offering the punks a way out, I'd been able to avoid a fight I probably couldn't win. Plus, it had the added benefit of looking heroic. Because even in the smallest of cases, optics were a big deal for capes.

I knew I had to take this seriously, and I was, but the entire thing was honestly pretty fun. We were talking about something Missy clearly had a passion for and that I could finally join in on. As close as we were, ever since Missy got her powers, those powers and all they brought had been a rift between us. It was so, so nice to finally close that rift.

Eventually, we changed topics when Missy had another question, different from the others. "Alright, one last thing. Miles… Why the skirt?"

Ah, right. I'd never actually answered her last night. When she asked, I just started giggling, which got Missy started as well and we'd basically laughed until we fell asleep. With that out of our system, I could actually answer her properly.

"It just looked better with the costume." I shrugged and continued eating. It took me a few seconds to realize she was still looking at me, expectant. "What?"

"And?" She asked pointedly.

"And nothing, that's pretty much it." I took another bite. "I mean, I figure it's another layer of identity protection but I only came up with that after the fact."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I bet the gangs are already trying to figure out who I am and they'll be taking any hint they can get, so it's not hard to think 'hey, maybe the adorable blond preteen parahuman is related to the other adorable blonde parahuman.' Especially since we have the Giant Nazi Bimbos and New Wave in town, keeping powers in the family is kinda common around here. But now, instead of looking at all the blonde fraternal twins in Brockton Bay, they'll be looking for identical twins and this really isn't what you were talking about, were you." I brought my explanation to a halt once I noticed Missy looking both frustrated and concerned at the same time. It was pretty obvious she and I were on different pages right now.

"What? No, no, I was totally asking about your… plans for... " Missy hastily tried to change the subject, which just made me even more sure I'd missed the mark. Obviously, she was way more concerned about the skirt than I was, but I had no idea why. I mean, it was just a dumb skirt, it's not like it was some big, life-changing revelation that altered everything-

Oh.

"Missy, I'm not trans." I said, cutting off her bad attempt at claiming she was totally listening to me, she swore.

"I-" She blinked and blushed. "I never said you were."

"Yeah, but you were thinking it. Seriously, it's just a skirt. Don't dig too deep into it." I patted her hand and smiled.

"Are you sure?" Missy insisted.

"Yes." I said with a bit of annoyance.

"Are you sure you're sure?" Missy asked, with more motion in her voice than I expected. I looked at her a bit closer and was surprised to find tears starting to form in her eyes. "'Cause you've also been making jokes about dressing in girl's clothes and there's the skirt and you only started after… after…"

Oh, fuck. My eyes went wide as I put together what she was thinking and I immediately pulled her into a hug. "Missy, I promise you, I did not try to kill myself because I'm actually trans. You didn't miss any signs. You didn't accidentally shame me or anything. This wasn't your fault. Okay?"

Missy sniffled a bit, before pulling herself together. She took a deep breath and relaxed into my hug. "Really? You don't have to lie, I'm fine if you are."

"Seriously, Missy. I'm totally fine with being a boy." I thought for a moment, then mentally shrugged. "I mean, if I'm being totally honest, I don't really care either way and I guess that's why the skirt isn't a big deal to me? Seems like it's a bigger deal to you. Do you want me to be your sister?"

"What, no! That'd be weird!" Missy shouted instantly, before realizing what she said and blushing. "I-I mean-"

I laughed a little and snuggled her. "Oh, shush. In that case, I'm your brother, forever and always. Got it?" I squeezed her one more time and let her go.

"Got it. I just…" Missy sighed explosively and shook herself to get rid of excess feels. Then she finally started to eat her food and I took that as a sign that I could get back to finishing off the picnic basket as well.

I was mid-bite when the Celestial Forge made a connection. At first I paused, basking in the sense of completeness getting a new perk gave me. Then I realized what the perk actually did and instantly spat out my food. I scrambled off of the blanket and barely managed to avoid ruining it with the vomit that came rushing out of my mouth.

"Miles!" Missy instantly shouted in concern, while I coughed and spat the last bits of puke from my mouth. She was by my side in a second, rubbing my back and offering me some water. "Are you okay? What happened? Was it the food? I swear I'll kick Ethan's ass, I-"

"I'm fine, Missy. I'm fine. The food was fine." I said, stopping her before she got too far on the 'blame the parental figure' trail. I couldn't blame her instincts, but that wasn't what was wrong. "I just got a new power and it… surprised me."

"You got a power that makes you puke?" She asked, baffled.

"Not directly. Look, I'll explain in a bit. Let's move away from here first." I didn't want to sit next to vomit if I didn't have to.

Missy and I packed up the picnic and relocated to a park bench. We were pretty much done with the food and after my little stomach evacuation, neither of us wanted to eat anymore anyway. It wasn't as good a spot, since we were both facing the same direction and constantly checking behind us would look weird, but the park was pretty empty anyway.

I took another swig of water, trying to wash the taste from my mouth. After tossing the water bottle away, I took a big sigh and started to explain. "Alright, so. So, obviously not all powers are going to be… pretty. Or even morally right. I mean, some depend on how you use them but there are a few out there that have no possible way to use and still be a good person. Aaaand I just got one of those."

The Flesh. That's what it was called. The power was simple: wear clothing or armor made from another creature, you get a fraction of their power. The catch? They had to be sentient beings. And that's what made me sick. The only way this was useful was if I skinned a parahuman and wore their flesh.

"Do I want to know what it is?" Missy asked, looking extremely worried.

"Nope! Probably not." I answered anxiously.

"Do you…" Missy hesitated, looking the slightest bit afraid, "Do you have any urge to use that power."

"Fuck no, thank fucking God, the Buddha and Santa Claus."

Missy breathed a sigh of relief. "Alright, good. So, that dorky smile you get sometimes? That means you got a new power?"

I nodded. "Yeah. It feels good. Makes me a bit happier."

"Huh, lucky you." Missy muttered under her breath, before looking guilty. I pulled her into a hug, silently understanding what she meant and forgiving her.

After that quiet moment was done, Missy straightened up and tried to look serious once again. "Alright, while we're talking about powers, let's talk about your powers. Besides after action reports, a lot of what we do in the Wards is work together to think of how we can better use our powers. So that's what we're going to do now."

"Even the bad ones?" I asked with a wince.

"Especially those. We need to know exactly how dangerous you can be, so you can not be dangerous. Make sense?" It did, in a twisted sort of way, so I nodded. Missy then continued. "Alright, so, how many powers do you have now?"

I quickly counted my perks. "Twelve."

"Twelve? It's only been three days!" Missy briefly dropped the serious teacher act for a second out of shock. Then she shook her head and got back into it. "Alright, I'm starting to believe you when you said you were going to advance too fast for the red tape to keep up. Fuck, that would be a nightmare. Forget testing your tech, they'd never get done testing you."

"Told you so." I said and we shared a look for several seconds. Finally I sighed explosively. "And we're still going to go over them anyway, aren't we."

"Yep!" Missy said with a grin. "And you're gonna keep me up to date on any new powers right away from now on."

"Alright, alright." I agreed with a bit of reluctance. There were a few perks I really didn't want to bring up, or even think about, with the latest one being a prime example. But if I had to share with anyone, it pretty much had to be Missy. I didn't trust anyone else. "So first of all, I started with the Workshop. You saw that already."

Missy tilted her head to the side, thinking. "I'd have thought the pocket dimension came first? And then the workshop got added in later."

I shook my head. "They're the same power. The Workshop is pretty much the base for any expansions that come later. Anyway, after that, I got the Avid Glove or as you know him, Robespierre."

"Alright, no explanation needed there." Missy nodded, then frowned. "No, wait. Are you naming your powers, Miles? How'd you come up with Avid Glove?"

I winced slightly as I realized I'd revealed more than I intended. Not that I mined much in the grand scheme of things, but it was just another odd, useless thing to explain. "Er, no. Not exactly. They come with names. When I get a new power, the name of it just pops into my head."

Missy narrowed her eyes at me before cupping her head in her hands and groaning. "Miles, you don't have a parahuman power, you have a fucking video game skill tree."

No, that's the Gamer. I have the Celestial Forge. I snarked in my head before snarking out-loud. "Not really. When you put a skill tree in a game, it needs to actually make sense."

Missy let out a bitter laugh. "Hah, fair. You just had to go and break all the rules on how powers work, didn't you."

"What can I say. I'm a rebel." I said with a shrug and a grin.

From there, we continued talking about my powers. I went through them in the order I got them and Missy would offer some initial insight or ask for clarification. Some parts she was really impressed with, (Fixer literally had millions of designs ready to pull from,) while others she was understandably disturbed by, (again, Fixer. She liked the idea of Servitors even less than I did.) Still, most of it was fairly minor reactions and mostly it was just getting Missy up to date. That wasn't to say she didn't have some good ideas, particularly with a perk I'd been thinking of earlier.

"And after that, I got On-The-Fly Cooking, which is probably one of the more useless powers I have? If I scavenge ingredients and make snacks or food without a plan, the results will have a random effect on whoever eats it." I explained as a bit of my frustration with the perk leaked into my voice.

Missy, however, disagreed. "That doesn't sound useless to me. Hell, it sounds like something out of a video game again. Cakes that give you more stamina or roasted apples that heal you, you know? Can you make that stuff?"

"Sure, but again, the issue is that it's random. If I make you a smoothie, it might give you super strength or it might just turn your hair neon green." I argued.

"You don't have any control at all? Really?" Missy probed further. "Cause that sort of randomness is extremely rare."

"Er, well, If I think about the effect I want while cooking, that's supposed to make it more likely to get it." I admitted. "But I have no idea how much that would increase my chances and it's still not guaranteed either."

"Okay. So why don't you just test them? Like, make a bunch of cookies then eat one to see what effect they have?" Missy asked like I was an idiot.

Which, to be fair, I absolutely was in this instance. I froze for several seconds before covering my face with my hands and screaming in frustration at my own dumbassery. "Aaaaaaahg! Why the hell didn't I think of that?"

"Because I'm smarter than you." Missy declared smugly.

"That is categorically untrue." I glared at her from between my fingers. Then I took a deep breath and relaxed. "But I'll admit in this particular case, you have a point. I was being dumb and not seeing the obvious solution."

It didn't solve all the issues with the On-The-Fly Cooking. I'd still need to wait until both Ethan and Serenity were out of the apartment to use the kitchen or I'd have to build my own kitchen in my Workshop. Either way, I'd need a separate fridge to keep the empowered snacks in, so they didn't take a bit of banana bread and suddenly be able to see through walls. But I was already seeing the benefit of basically having fantasy potions on hand without the need for exotic ingredients. Healing, super strength, fire resistance, a bevy of helpful effects were open to me and I'd almost missed out on it all thanks to being thick in the head.

Missy must have seen the gears turning in my brain, because she smirked and smugly said "I told you it was a good idea to go over this stuff, didn't I?"

"I never said it wasn't." I agreed easily. "You're the expert here. Of course I trust your advice."

"I-" Missy paused to cough, her cheeks slightly pink. I wasn't sure what that was about exactly, but it was cute. "Anyway, let's keep going."

We did just that, going though more of my powers. However, while Missy continued to give her thoughts and reactions, as well as minor things for me to test later, there was only one other big insight. And that one wasn't even intentional.

"And then there's the second latest power, Artist's Tools." I took a little break to take a deep breath and brace myself. After Artist's Tools, there was just the Flesh, neither of which I was looking forward to explaining. "This is one of the evil ones I was talking about. The power is kinda what it says, a bunch of paint brushes and chisels and other tools for painting and sculpture. The trick is… I can use them on people. Carve them up a bit, add some paint and the end result is guaranteed to look beautiful."

I looked over at Missy and was surprised at how well she seemed to be taking it. "Hm, so you can change people's appearances? That could be really useful. One of the harder power classifications to deal with is Strangers. So I guess we'll be testing those out when we get home?"

"What? No!" I reacted with what I thought was an appropriate level of horror. Missy though, she just looked at me in confusion. "Missy, did you not hear me? To use these things, I have to actually cut up the person I'm using them on."

Missy shrugged. "So? That just sounds like plastic surgery to me. I don't get what you're making such a big deal about."

"Do you have any idea how much training it takes to become a plastic surgeon?" I demanded rhetorically, getting more and more worked up. "The tools don't come with any skills to use them, Missy! You're guaranteed to be beautiful once I'm done, not healthy or even alive!"

"Okay, okay. So it's potentially dangerous." Missy started to get it and I started to relax. But then she turned right around again. "But that just means you should practice, right? Surely it would be okay to make me just a bit cuter, right?"

I was confused and worried, unsure why Missy was being so insistent about this. She was ignoring my warnings and, even odder, ignoring how upset I was getting. Even if she didn't get it, she'd usually stop if I had a bad reaction to a conversation topic, especially ever since my suicide attempt. It was that last line that finally got me to realize what was going on. "Oh. Oh fuck. Okay, so I'm pretty sure they also have a minor Master effect going on with them."

"What makes you say that?" Missy asked obliviously.

"Missy, when was the last time you wanted to look cuter? Or reacted to the idea with anything other than contempt?"

Missy's eyes went wide as I finally got through to her. "...Shit! Yeah, fuck, I agree, this one's dangerous."

"Exactly." I nodded. "I'm gonna lock them up when we get home and try to forget about them."

"Good idea." Missy agreed slowly. "But, hypothetically, they could also make me look, more mature, right?"

"Missy!" I shouted in concern!

Missy blinked and swore violently, letting a hint of panic leak through. "Fuck! Uh, change the conversation, quick! Hopefully getting my mind off them will be enough."

Luckily, just at that moment, a connection was made with the Celestial Forge and I had a new power to talk about. I got even more excited when I felt it was from the Resources constellation, something I'd been hoping for ever since I'd started stooping to stealing kitchen cleaners. My excitement turned to frustration when I realized what the power did though and I let loose a powerful groan.

"You just got a new power, right? What's the problem? Is it evil? Useless? Annoying?" Missy asked in rapid fire, no doubt trying to get the Artist's Tools out of her mind.

I slumped on the bench, doing my best to act like nothing was wrong. I was of course worried about the long term effects the Artist's Tools might have on my sister, but if she said ignoring the problem might make it go away, all I could do was trust her. And keep a close eye on her to make sure she was alright.

In the meanwhile, I answered her question. "The second, at least for the moment. It's called Reagents and it's a bag that gives me any reagents I need for runecrafting three times per day. The only issue is that I need to have a specific rune in mind when I try to pull reagents out aaaaand I don't know anything about runecrafting. At all. It's got the opposite problem of the Dust Refinery I explained earlier. That would be really useful if I had the right resources, and now I have all the resources I could want if only I had the skills to make use of them."

"Yeah, I can see how that would be annoy-" Missy stopped mid-sentence, then glared at me. "Wait, runecrafting? As in magical runes? Is that what you're talking about?"

"Yep." I said, too tired to care about her reaction. She could tease me all she wanted, as long as it kept her mind off those damn Artist's Tools.

Sat there, staring angrily at nothing as she went over things in her head. Then, finally, she threw her arms up in the air and gave up. "Fuck it! You know what? I don't even care at this point. Your weird-ass power wants to teach you magic? I ain't even going to argue."

"Cool." I grunted.

"But I swear to God, don't mention this to anyone. Got it?" She slapped a hand on my shoulder, holding me until I nodded. Then she muttered under her breath. "I seriously don't need anyone finding out I'm related to a Myrddin copy-cat…"

I had to laugh at that and I felt myself relaxing a bit. Missy was acting more like normal and so it seemed like the Master power of those evil paintbrushes was really as weak as I'd hoped. Missy also seemed to have forgotten we had one more power to go over before I got my new one. I wasn't inclined to remind her. I wasn't going to use The Flesh, ever, so I could hold off telling her about it until some other time.

The entire afternoon had turned out to be a bit of an emotional rollercoaster, tiring out both of us, so Missy didn't have any problems when I suggested we head back to the apartment after that. We walked back in silence but it was a comfortable silence.

Ethan greeted us when we got back, taking the picnic basket from us so he could start on the dishes. "So, how was the exploration? Find any neat spots around?"

"We actually didn't get around to exploring much. We started talking when we got to the park and just didn't stop." I told him the truth. Not the whole truth, but enough of it.

"We'll have to go out again some other time." Missy added.

"Alright…" Ethan still seemed hesitant about letting us out on our own. "Well, you kids can clean up or just relax. Serenity should be getting home soon and I'm pretty sure she'll be bringing home take out."

Missy and I both gave a cheer at the news. We were teenagers and we were getting fast food, can you blame us? But after that, we headed back to our room, letting Ethan get on with his chores.

As soon as we were alone, I opened up my Workshop and retrieved Dad's old laptop. My laptop now. Well, our laptop actually, but while I would of course let Missy use it if she needed it, I was hoping to keep it solely for my cape activities.

"Something about electronics addiction." Missy teased sarcastically before actually asking what I was doing. "You gonna set up a PHO account now?"

"If I can, yeah." Somehow, I didn't think getting a Verified Cape tag was as easy as going 'But I really am this new cape that showed up just yesterday. Really, scout's honor!'

A bit of investigation and it turned out I was right. I flumped back on my bed and sighed. "So as it turns out, I need to provide a video or multiple pictures of my power in action to prove my identity. Or in my case, evidence of my inventions in action. Not unexpected, but still…"

"Huh, I didn't know that. PR took care of everything for me." Missy said, while taking the laptop so she could look at the instructions as well, "I don't see what the problem is. Just pop into your Workshop, fire the grapple in front of a phone and you're done."

"Problem: the Workshop is my secret weapon, basically. I'm not putting video of it on the internet where some curious Thinker might be able figure out how it works." I explained.

"Hh, fair enough." Missy said, accepting my argument a lot faster than I thought she would. "So, Filming In your workshop is out of the question."

"Yeah."

Missy crossed her legs and adopted a thinking pose. "And you need the video as soon as possible, to control your public image."

"Yeah."

"And presumably, it would be easier if I helped. You wouldn't want to drop your phone while zipping around, right?"

"Yeah, sure I guess."

Missy nodded, coming to a decision. She turned to me and looked me dead in the eyes, completely serious. "So in that case, there's really only one option. We need to sneak out of the apartment tonight, once Ethan and Serenity are asleep."

"Yeah, ok- Wait, what?"

New perks this chapter:

-The Flesh! (RimWorld) (100 CP)

Wearing clothing or armor made from the skin of intelligent beings empowers you. This is but a minor fraction of the strength of the original beings, enough that a full suit of human clothing would only moderately increase a baseline human's strength. Garments made from more powerful entities however... Warning: Dragon-scale underwear chafes something fierce.

-Reagents (Karaz Ankor/Warhammer Fantasy) (200CP)

Runecrafting is a time consuming and expensive art, not just because of the sheer amount of skill and precision required to inscribe runes, but also because of the incredibly specific reagents required for crafting the more powerful runes. This bag can, three times a day, produce any specifically required reagents for any single rune you are capable of properly crafting, save for unique or exceptionally rare ingredients, magically potent ingredients.

AN: So, it's been awhile, huh. The delay was partly that real life was a bit chaotic with work and personal obligations, but also just that this chapter really fought me. I was actually inspired by LordRoustabout's post a bit ago, where he decided to stop worrying about what people wanted and just write what he wanted to write. So I decided to take the same approach and it helped. Rather than worry about whether there was too much exposition or about reaching my 10K word goal, I just wrote what I wanted and when I reached a decent end point, I stopped. I think 8K words is a decent chapter and I'm not insane enough to compare myself to Lord's 20K monsters.

Hopefully with my new attitude, the next chapter doesn't take over a month. Geeze, was it really that long...?

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RexHeller

Aug 12, 2021

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RexHeller

RexHeller

Oct 20, 2021

#434

So, thanks to all the 'stop that!' and 'now, see here!' I'd been getting from Missy, I'd forgotten something rather important about her. Namely, that she loved being a superhero. She loved the excitement, the action, and being able to help people. I could remember how back when she first joined the Wards, she would come home and babble excitedly about meeting some member of the Protectorate or whatever new training exercise she'd done. Later on, those happy stories turned to complaints about not being taken seriously, all the red tape she had to deal with and Shadow Stalker. But even as those things got on her nerves more and more, never ever, not once did she mention wanting to quit. No matter how annoying being a Ward became, it was always worth it for her.

Missy never really made it a secret that she wanted me to join her either. Sure, she never came out and said it, because that would mean that she wanted me to trigger and of course she wouldn't want to inflict that on me. But she never tried to keep her powers from me. Back when she first got them, we would spend hours in our room, just coming up with stuff she could try together. We did everything together, shared everything that made us happy, so of course Missy would want me to be there with her on the Wards.

And then I had to go and ruin those dreams by getting a power where joining the Wards was the worst thing I could do with them. Well, not actually the worst, I had designs for a microchip that would turn people into lobotomized slaves in my head, but it would certainly be the least efficient. I'd kept her out of the lab while I worked. I hadn't been telling her all about my powers the way she did with me. I even went out on my first patrol without her. By accident, sure, but still.

I don't think she held any of that against me. Missy and I, we were both mature enough to know that what you wanted wasn't always what you got and it wasn't always what was best. That didn't stop me from feeling like a shitty brother anyway.

But anyway, that probably was why Missy had jumped so quickly to sneaking out at night. Was it the smartest thing to do? No, of course not. But it wasn't impossible or all that dangerous and Missy would finally get her chance to do superhero stuff with me. I think that was why she kinda swerved from responsibility, responsibility, responsibility to sudden delinquency.

She was certainly excited enough. She was bouncy and trying not to grin the rest of the evening, enough so that Ethan and Serenity noticed.

"Nervous, Missy? Don't worry, this place won't give you food poisoning, I promise." Ethan said with a laugh as he passed out the Chinese takeout Serenity had brought home with her.

Missy immediately froze, stopping the relentless foot tapping she'd been unconsciously doing ever since she sat down. "No! Er, I mean- I just…"

Once again, Missy struggled to come up with a decent excuse on the spot, so it was up to me to save the day with my unique talent. Namely, lying to someone's face without flinching. "She's just nervous about going back to school tomorrow." I explained, acting like I was teasing.

"Miles! Shut up!" Missy whipped her head to face me and glared at me. We were acting, sure, but it was close enough to how we usually were towards each other, I doubted anyone short of a thinker could pick up on the difference.

"I'm sure you've got nothing to be worried about." Serenity said as she sat down as well. She was the last to join us, having gone to the bathroom to wash up after handing the food to Ethan. "You've both been doing quite well in keeping up with your homework. You'll be fine."

"It's not that. It's just…" Missy paused and let out a deliberate sigh. "What do I tell my classmates? Everyone will wonder why we missed a few days of school."

"Tell them to fu- pi- shove?" I had to switch words everytime I started to swear and Serenity gave me a look. Having someone actually care if I said fuck was a new experience and oddly enough, I found it more touching than annoying. I was sure that my opinion would change later, but for now, it was just a reminder that Serenity actually wanted to look out for us. When she didn't object to 'shove' I continued. "Tell them to shove off. It's none of their business what happened."

Serenity relaxed once I stopped trying to curse and nodded. "Miles is right, he has a right to his privacy. Both of you do. If you don't want to share something, you don't have to."

Technically fine advice, although coming from the woman who was keeping Cauldron's existence a secret was… Not hypocritical but the opposite of that? Something about it struck me as off. But then again, our little potential family unit had enough secrets and lies between all of us, it was honestly a mess. I decided not to be upset and instead just be happy that Missy and I were finally living with good people, even if none of us were perfect.

The dinner conversation turned to less interesting things after that, but while we were eating, I got a new perk. Notes in the Margin, my first one from the Quality domain. It used up the rest of my reach, making me start over again, but I didn't mind too much since unlike the last two, I could actually make use of this one. Minor use, but still.

After dinner, we hung out in our room until Ethan and Serenity went to bed. And by our room, I mean my workshop. As mentioned, I was feeling pretty bad about pushing Missy aside to focus on my tinkering. I may have had decent reasons for that, but now that I had my mask, I didn't need her to stand guard the whole time. So we set up the stummer and Missy got to watch me do the enrapturing task of mixing plassteel.

"Alright, spill." Missy demanded as I set everything up. We were in the Dust Refinery, since they had the beakers and burners I needed to separate and mix the chemicals I needed. "I saw that smile during dinner. You got a new power, didn't you."

"Yep! It's called Notes in the Margin. Lets me make minor upgrades to tools and equipment. Small small stuff that should increase utility, like extending battery life or adjusting the grip for better ergonomics.That sort of stuff." I explained. It might not have sounded like much, but unlike I Like 'Em Big, the upgrades I could make were basically free. No downsides and no extensive need for resources.The only caveat was that I needed to see the tool in use once before I could start getting ideas and that wasn't really an issue at all.

"So, it's power assisted fine-tuning?" Missy asked, her eyes following me in some curiosity. She didn't understand the fine details of what I was doing, but I was basically tinkering right in front of her. It was hard not to be at least a little interested. "You know, I'm pretty sure Kid Win would kill for that. Maybe Armsmaster too. From what I understand, they get general ideas but actually making those ideas work can be frustrating."

"Yeah, I bet. And yeah, that's basically it. I already have some ideas on how I can upgrade my mask, my grapnel glove-" I froze as Robespierre scuttled into view, bringing me a clean eye dropper for the next step. I'd been mostly treating him as a pet the last few days, as well as a useful assistant. But really, he was a tool. A piece of living equipment, at least in the eyes of the Forge. And now I was filled with ideas on how to make him better.

Most of those ideas involved taking him apart before putting him back together again. Restitching him for a greater range of movement. Sharpening his teeth for more bite damage. That was bad enough, striking a little too close to home when I still had the Artist's Tools on my mind.

And then there was the… other stuff. The upgrades that could improve his intelligence or his strength, the stuff that had to do with the strange, unsettling magic that made him alive in the first place. It was insightful and disturbing, a glimpse at a sort of distorted rules that twisted normality. My mind churned with possibilities...

"Miles? You okay?" Missy's question snapped me back to reality. "You kinda stopped mid-sentence."

"I'm fine." I said, taking the eye-dropper from Robespierre and giving him a little pat as thanks. He shivered happily before scurrying off for the next thing I needed. "Just thinking. But yeah, new power. Nothing groundbreaking but useful. It'll give me something to do once this is done at least."

Missy nodded and then started to ask me what I was doing. I could tell she was doing it just to keep the conversation going, since it was impossible for anyone to understand Tinker tech except the person that built it. The thing was, that wasn't actually a thing with me. Plasteel wasn't tinker tech, it was regular science, just a bit advanced. Anyone with the relevant background could understand what I was doing and replicate it. But of course, Missy didn't have an undergrad level of chemistry and materials science behind her, so the difference was moot. I still enjoyed explaining everything though.

Mixing plasteel wasn't that hard and it didn't take that long either. Once it was in a mold for my new chestplate, (Missy highly approved of my decision to make more armor before upgrading my weapons,) there wasn't anything else to do but wait. My mask was still telling me our guardians weren't asleep though, so we moved into my workshop so I could start making some Notes in the Margins upgrades.

As we moved locations though, something new captured my attention. Since the last time I'd been in here, I got two new perks that added items to the Workshop, Artist's Tools and Reagents. And so there were two new boxes sitting on one of the tables. The smaller of the two was a wooden lock box with a glass lid and covers of bronze riveted over the corners. The latch itself was in the stylized shape of someone's face with a crown and a huge beard in viking style. Or maybe dwarven, considering it probably came from a fantasy universe. Inside was the carefully folded silk bag of runecraft reagents.

No issues there, but of course it was the other box that worried me. It was larger and beautifully carved from some black crystal or polished stone, with a purple symbol on the front I didn't recognize: a circle with a line coming of it at a forty-five degree angle and two crescents going through the line. The smaller one at the tip pointed outwards and the larger one going through the middle pointed back towards the main circle. I got the feeling that, if I did know what that symbol meant, it would just cause me even more anxiety. The only silver lining was that, unlike with the reagents bag, you couldn't actually see the tools inside.

I wanted to just take it and go hide the tools amid the trash in the DOOM Gate room or even teleport it to the bottom of the bay. But I didn't know how strong the Master effect on the tools was and doing that would draw Missy's attention to the box. It was too large for Robespierre to move it while I distracted Missy too. Since I didn't want Missy to see it and get Mastered all over again, the best I could do was keep a shelf between us and the Tools while I worked. I wasn't looking forward to the stress of potentially getting caught by our guardians being compounded of working near a dangerous cognito-hazard while I worked but I hadn't had the wisdom to deal with it before hand so now I just had to deal with it.

I grabbed some tools, got the equipment I was going to upgrade and sat down, doing my best to put everything but the work out of my mind. My grapnel glove was first. I got to work, tightening a few things, making adjustments to the retraction mechanism, just a lot of minor stuff. But it still got me results. I made it easier to aim, improved both the launching and retraction speed, and increased the amount of weight it could lift. And while I worked, Missy chatted with me and played with Robespierre, never once spotting the box of Artist's Tools, much to my relief.

Over the next few hours, I moved on from the grapnel launcher to the magnets in my glove and boots. I increased the strength of the magnetization, as well making them easier to activate and deactivate quickly. That and a few other minor adjustments helped to keep me occupied until Ethan and Serentify finally fell asleep.

It was around twelve when the auspex told me that they were finally in a deep enough sleep that they weren't likely to wake up until morning. Setting aside my tools, I nodded at Missy. "Time to go."

"Finally!" Missy cheered, throwing up her hands and startling Robespierre, who'd actually started snoozing while Missy gave him skritches between his knuckles. "I'm gonna go get changed. Gimme a bit."

Missy rushed out of the workshop, letting me sigh in relief. As soon as she was out of the workshop, I turned back to those damned Artist's Tools and growled in frustration. "Alright, you fucking bastard. Let's deal with you."

A minute later, I'd wrapped it up in the heaviest chains I could find, tucked it into a corner and rearranged some material bins to hide it. I'd have to invest in some more serious security later, like an actual lock for example, but for now I was just happy to have achieved 'out of sight, out of mind' status with it. Then I got changed into my costume and went out to join Missy, this time bringing Robespierre along but not my weapons. Missy would just make me put them back anyway.

I was surprised when I got there. Unlike my workshop, which was always brightly lit, the lights in our room were left off out of caution and that made it hard to even see Missy. Unlike my bright costume, she was dressed in black head to toe, including an old ski mask I didn't even know we had. Of course, Missy couldn't exactly wear her Vista costume without answering some pointed questions the next time she was at PRT HQ, but that didn't stop it from being surprising. I might have had a heart attack, seeing a dark shape moving around our room in the middle of the night, if not for my mask making things clearer. More importantly though…

"Is that my hoodie?" I whispered harshly at her.

Missy's mask covered her mouth, so instead of sticking her tongue out at me she had to make do with flipping me off. "If you get to borrow my skirt, I get to borrow your hoodie."

"Uh, excuse me? I actually like that hoodie, while you wouldn't be caught dead wearing this." I argued.

"Too bad, already wearing it." Missy was smirking under her mask, I could just tell. "Now let's get going already!"

I gave up arguing and we snuck out to the balcony, where Missy got to work. Most people in Brockton Bay didn't understand just how powerful Missy really was. Sure, you hear Shaker 9 and that sounds impressive, but unless you had actual experience dealing with parahumans, you didn't have a clue what that actually meant. It didn't help that Missy's power was basically invisible and she wasn't allowed to use the full scope of her powers in public. As a result, Missy's power was usually little more than a few tricks at PR shows and bending the area to make it harder for criminals to escape.

There was a small corner store across the street at the end of the block. You could barely see it during the day, thanks to another high rise in front of it, and at night it was extremely difficult to even make out the little corner of the roof that we actually have line of sight with. Missy grabbed that corner, brought it seamlessly up to our balcony, and shrunk the guard rail so we didn't even have to step over it, all while making sure everything looked completely normal if you saw this from any other angle. She did this in three seconds, most of which was the additional space-bending for camouflage. Two steps forward, we were down the street and six stories closer to the ground. This was easy for her.

Missy let it all snap back and turned to me as I missed a connection to one of the constellations I hadn't gotten yet. "You alright? No vertigo or anything?"

"This isn't the first time I've experienced your power, Missy." I reminded her, acting a bit snarky.

Missy stiffened for a split second and even without being able to see her blush, I could tell I'd caught her out. She probably got so excited about 'teaching the newbie' she forgot that this newbie in particular was her brother. "I was just double checking! I don't think you've ever crossed such a large distance with me. And we're gonna be doing that a lot if we want to get to the Docks and back fast enough."

"Actually, before we do that, can I try something?" I waved my grapnel glove at her. "I want to try using this while carrying you? It's got enough power to lift two people, easy, but I want to practice it before trying it in a dangerous situation."

"Yeah, that sounds good." Missy stepped closer to me. "So how do you want to- WHAAAAA!"

Because I was a little shit half the time, I grabbed her around the waist before she was ready and fired the grapnel. The building across the street was two stories taller than ours, and we zipped up quickly, taking Missy off-guard and making her scream while I laughed. It wasn't often I could pull one over on her like that.

However, I quickly stopped laughing when the grapnel released and we flew up and over the target roof rather than landing on it. "Shit!"

In my hurry to prank Missy, I'd forgotten that I tuned the grapnel earlier and it had quite a bit more retraction power than before. I flailed around in the air for a bit before I pulled Missy up into a princess carry and prepared to land. Robespierre actually helped me keep my grip on her, making sure not to accidentally bite her at the same time. We slammed into the roof from far too high up but my magboots absorbed all of the impact.

My legs might not have broken but my knees were still shaking from the unexpected complication. I let Missy go and immediately she punched my shoulder. "What the heck was that!"

"A slight miscalculation on my part." I admitted, between deep breaths to steady my nerves. "Don't worry, I'll adjust it for a safer landing next time."

"Actually, can you do that again?" Missy asked, surprising me. "It's my turn to try something I think. Can you give up a longer, more shallow arc through the air?"

"Alright…" I agreed cautiously. I double-checked that the glove didn't need adjustments and pulled her close, with her permission this time. "Ready?"

"Ready." Missy nodded. "Oh, and don't look down."

And with that unnerving piece of advice, I launched us again. Once again, we zipped through the air, passing the ledge I was aiming for and high up into the air. Just like Missy had asked, we got less height than before but a lot more distance. I was anticipating us missing the building I grapnel entirely and landing on the next roof over.

What I was not expecting was the distance gauge in my HUD, something I'd turned on to help with precisely this, to jump ahead by miles and us to suddenly be in an entirely different part of town. Thankfully, there was still a roof ready and waiting below us and we landed safely.

"What the heck was that!?" I shouted as soon as we were safe again.

"Hehehe. Impressed?" Missy's voice was smug and I just knew she was grinning as wide as she could under her ski-mask. "Up in the air with nothing in my way, I can compress a few miles into a few inches. That should speed up our little field trip, huh?"

"Goddamn…" I said, slightly stunned. As it turned out, even I could be surprised by Missy's power from time to time. "That's awesome, Missy. But you're navigating, 'kay? It's not my fault if we wind up getting lost."

"Fair enough!" Missy agreed with a laugh.

It took us just a couple more space-compression jumps to reach the Docks. We'd pretty much crossed the entire town in just five minutes, which was just plain ridiculous for a city of Brockton Bay's size.

I let Missy down when we finally came to a stop but she just kept hugging me as she practically bounced with excitement. "That was awesome, Mi- Crafty! I've never been able to do anything like that! It's always 'go slower' and 'you need to be more careful' and 'you can't just turn space into a pretzel for your own convenience'. God, that was just… absolutely amazing."

She wasn't wrong. I had a lot of fun grappling between buildings yesterday but catapulting freely through the air, barely skidding to a stop before launching us again was a major adrenaline rush. I barely even noticed the ache in my arms and the way they shook. It felt like we were flying.

"Can you build me one of these?" Missy asked, still riding the adrenaline rush even as she let me go. "Or better yet, something that'll let me fly? I mean, Kid Win made a hoverboard and he doesn't even know his tinker specialty yet, so it can't be that hard."

"Naturally." I agreed with a laugh. I was already planning on adding Fixer's anti-grav tech to my boots when I had the time and resources, making something similar for Missy wouldn't be that tough. But then, because that's just who I was, I had to ruin the moment by thinking about it too much. "Although, I'm not sure the PRT will like it if you get a random gift from a brand new tinker just out of the blue. They might set the Thinkers on me to figure out what's up and then the cats just plain out of the bag. At the very least they'll take whatever I try to give you and put it through tinker testing. It might be more practical to just ask Kid Win to make you a second hoverboard."

"I mean, yeah, I guess. You're probably right." I could hear the disappointment in Missy's voice even as she tried to hide it and I flinched as I recognized my mistake.

"Eh, fuck it! I'll build you something and we can deal with the rest later." I said with forced cheer, recognizing my mistake. Same as when I'd been working on my own earlier, I was focused more on what was efficient rather than how Missy felt. I really needed to pay more attention to her feelings. "Anyway, let's get to filming. We do have school tomorrow after all."

Without my mask, I probably wouldn't have been able to see Missy roll her eyes in the dark. She agreed though and she bent space so we could step down into the alley between our building and the next. She pulled out her phone, turned on the flashlight and started recording.

One she gave me the thumbs up, I waved at the camera. "Hi there! I'm Crafty and this is my video to get a Certified Cape tag. Tonight I'll be showing off a few devices I built and hopefully that'll be enough to prove I'm who I say I am. First, here's my grapnel glove."

I then spent a minute or two explaining my glove and my boots while Missy zoomed in on them. I just gave a basic rundown of their capabilities, without explaining the details or how they worked. I figured that was fine, considering how much of Cape culture was misinformation, especially for tinkers. It was expected of tinkers to keep their tech proprietary and not share their secrets.

I also did my best to keep Robespierre out of the camera's line of sight. I brought him along because I felt bad leaving him in the workshop all the time. However, on second thought, showing off a clearly living being that was nevertheless unnatural as hell seemed like a good way to get a kill order. Or at least put on some sort of watchlist, since it was the sort of nonsense that Bonesaw got up to. He looked enough like a child's crafts project, a goofy 'alligator glove', that I still thought seeing him from a distance wouldn't set off alarm bells but I didn't want to push my luck by giving him close ups in our little video.

Anyway, once the explanation was done, it was time for the practical demonstration. I walked up the metal siding of one of the buildings, used my grapnel to zoom between them a couple times and then launched myself pretty much straight up for the big finale. Except when I flew up past the edges of the roofs and reached the apex of my launch, I could see a bright orange-red glow rising on the horizon. Not the sun, just a fire burning in the middle of the docks and suddenly I remembered why I was in such a rush to build up my tech in the first place.

I slammed back down and was all business as soon as I hit the ground. "Stop recording. Now."

"Okay." To Missy's credit, she didn't hesitate at all. Her phone was in her pocket in a second. "Why?"

"Saw a fire burning nearby. We need to help people." I was already moving to a nearby door, workshop key in hand.

"Fuck." Missy followed close behind me. "Alright. Alright, yeah, we can help. Do you have any way to block call tracing?" It didn't matter which cell we used, Missy's Wards phone or our personal ones, the PRT could track it and then we'd be busted.

"Nope. Hopefully someone else has already called it in. Maybe we can find one on-site?" I said as I opened up the workshop. I'd feel bad about risking people's lives just to keep my identity a little safer, but I already knew that the only people there were Taylor, Lung and his ABB gangsters. And Armsmaster would show up soon enough anyway, with fire crews in tow. My main concern was making sure Taylor didn't get hurt.

"Then what are you doing?" Missy asked. "You don't have fire equipment in there, do you?"

"Nope." I said again as I turned away from the open door. "I just want the teleporter available, in case worst comes to worst. Can you seal that up?"

Missy did so, once again turning my workshop door into the narrowest crack in the wall. As she did so, I scooped her up, aimed my grapnel and launched us. As we crested the edge of the roof and entered the open air, we heard it. The roar. Loud, brutal and pissed off, the sound slammed into us with almost physical force. I could feel Missy, so confident a moment ago, tighten her grip almost painfully as she whispered "Oh no…"

The Forge missed a connection and I didn't care. I barely even noticed.

We landed just like we did on the way out here, no problems, but as I raised my arm to aim for the next roof, Missy forced it down. She struggled free of my grasp and grabbed my shoulders. "Wait! Wait, wait wait! You heard that right! That was Lung. We can't keep going."

"Missy-" I tried to speak but she just shook me.

"No! Listen, we cannot do anything right now. You have a couple sticks and I have nothing. We cannot fight Lung, got it? We can't even get close or we'll die." She looked at me, begged me with her eyes to understand. To not insist on throwing my life away.

"Someone already is."

Missy's desperate look shifted to confusion. "What?"

"Someone's fighting him. A girl." I wasn't even relying on my meta-knowledge right now. Thanks to the auspex in my mask, I could see Taylor's silhouette outlined by the flames, wild hair blowing in the winds of the inferno below her.

"R-really? Okay." Missy took a breath and I was pretty sure she smiled under her mask. "Okay, that's good. We don't have to get involved. They can handle this and you can stay-"

"No, Missy, she can't handle this." I shouted, shrugging off her hands and marching to the edge of the roof. "She's barely any older than us, Missy. She's fighting Lung with bugs for fuck's sake. She's going to die if we don't help."

Missy grabbed the cuff of my labcoat. "Miles, please! Lung is… I can't… I'm not going to let you just go and get yourself killed!"

I paused. Every second was precious right now, in case something went wrong. If Lung found Taylor sooner, if the Undersiders were late, if Taylor had slightly fewer bugs to slow him down. I couldn't depend on things going the way they did in the story I had read.

But Missy was precious too and I could take the time to reassure her. I pulled her into a hug. "Listen, I'm not… I know it's dangerous. I know it. I'm not going to fight Lung. I'm just gonna grab the girl and teleport out. It's risky, I know, but I'm not going to let a hero die right in front of me if I can help it."

Missy took a shuddering breath and let me go. "How… How do you know she's a hero?"

"She's fighting Lung with bugs, Missy. Bad guys aren't that stupid." I let out a choked laugh and launched my grapnel. I was putting on a brave face but in reality, I was terrified. Sure, I had read about Lung in one life. I knew he could be beaten, I knew he wasn't the scariest thing in this world. But I had also grown up in Brockton Bay. Lung wasn't just words on a page to me. Lung was the dragon you lived next to and prayed he didn't wake up. Lung was undefeatable, Lung was unkillable. Lung was a true and utter monster.

And now I was running right at him. My heart was hammering in my chest, the mix of too hot and too cold air tore at my throat as I gasped for breath. I ran and jumped and jumped and ran, focused entirely on getting to Taylor. Finally I landed on the same roof as her and I skidded up to Taylor's dark, lanky form. She really did look unnerving, not that I cared at the moment.

"What the fuck?" She yelled as I slammed into her and hugged my arms around her. Missy and I weren't tall for our age, while Taylor was the opposite as well as a year or two older. The top of my head barely reached halfway up her torso and my arms were wrapped barely above her waist. I hadn't felt this much like a little kid in awhile.

I reached into my pocket with one arm and started scrambling to pull out my recall device. "Fuck, fuck!" I swore as it got stuck, like a phone that was just a bit too big. And just like with a phone, yanking on it and trying to force it out wasn't doing me any good. I should have taken it out earlier. I should have-

My self recrimination was cut short as Lung let out another roar. This close to the source, it rattled my brain and left my ears ringing. Both Taylor and I froze in fear and I finally actually looked down at Lung.

Naturally, he was terrifying. Taller than a man and bulging with unnatural, uneven muscles. His silver scales reflected the burning hellscape he had created, flames dancing across his skin. His neck was elongated and his head wasn't even close to human anymore, wasn't close to any living creature except maybe some deep-sea monstrosity found at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. A mouth that split into four, each segment covered in fangs, and beady eyes that nevertheless burned with dire hatred. His legs bent and swelled and suddenly he was jumping at us.

I couldn't move. I couldn't even scream. All I could do was look at that giant mouth, filled with fangs and the dark pit down his throat. That mouth that was coming to devour me. That mouth which… actually wasn't getting closer. With a start, I realized that although Lung was still moving through the air, he wasn't actually going to reach the building, even though he totally should have. Silently thanking Missy like you thank God, I finally found the button on my recall device and pressed it without bothering to pull it out of my pocket anymore.

In a flash of light, Taylor and I were out of the oppressive heat and burning smoke and in the comfortably air-conditioned air of my workshop. (Did my workshop have air conditioning? Where did the breathable air even come from…?) Taylor, unnerved by the sudden transition, shoved me away and stumped out of the DOOM Gate. She looked around frantically at the brutalist metal walls and junk-filled floors before turning on me. "Where? What? Who? What the fuck!"

"Uh… Hi." I waved awkwardly at the panicking teen. I was probably lucky my workshop didn't have any bugs for her to set on me. In fact, suddenly having her entire swarm in entirely different positions compared to her orientation wasn't helping her settle. "Sorry for the sudden teleport, I didn't have time to explain if I wanted to save your life."

"We teleported?" Taylor repeated, sounding confused. But then, after a second, she went really stiff and hard to read. I wasn't an expert at body language to begin with, I could only read what Missy was feeling consistently and that's because we were twins, so when Taylor stopped obviously freaking out, I stopped being able to tell what she was thinking. Hard control on her emotions and a full-face mask made it hard to pick up tells, who knew? "Okay, we teleported and… you saved my life. I guess. Thanks?"

"No worries." I smiled under my mask and followed her out of the Gate. My hands were still a bit shaky but the rush was slowly dying down, replaced with a growing awkwardness. Relief as well, of course, but mostly I wasn't sure what I should say next. "So, um, I'm Crafty. Welcome to my lab, I guess. A-and you are?"

Taylor was quiet for a moment and I did my best not to flinch under the gaze of her bug mask. Honestly, she looked completely badass, with her full black and dark grey costume. She looked tactical, dangerous and on theme, with enough insectoid details to make her seem extra creepy. Just looking at her, you'd have no idea this was her first night out. She looked like a professional ass-kicker and honestly, I was super excited to meet her. It's just that social anxiety is a hell of a drug.

"I don't have a name yet." She said eventually, her voice tired, young and about as awkward as I felt. Completely at odds with how imposing she looked and something about that made me feel a bit less out of place. "A cape name, I mean. I have a normal name, obviously. I just… tonight was my first night out. I was just trying to patrol, I wasn't expecting… that."

I smiled at her before remembering that I also was wearing a full face mask and she was probably having just as hard a time reading me as I was her. At least mine wasn't as intimidating, I hoped. "I know, right? I actually just had my first fight yesterday and that was just scaring off some jerks bullying a woman. Going from that to Lung is-"

I got cut off when my cell phone started ringing. Pulling it out from my pocket, I saw it was Missy. "Just a second," I said to Taylor before answering my phone. "Yeah?"

"Are you okay? Did you make it out safely? Are you hurt? Please tell me you're not hurt!" Missy practically started shouting in my ear the moment I picked up.

"I'm fine, I'm fine! We're both completely okay, okay?" I answered, trying to get her to calm down. "No injuries, right?" I looked to Taylor and she nodded. "Right. What about you? Did you get away from Lung? Do you need me to teleport you back too?"

"Please, who do you think you're talking to." Missy responded at a much saner volume. "He never even knew I was there. You're the one who ran in and made a big deal out of it. And what did I say about teleportation?"

"Only in emergencies." I rolled my eyes and let a little playful annoyance into my voice. "You sure you can make it back on your own then?"

"Yep. See you soon." Missy replied confidently before ending the call.

I slipped my cell back into my pocket and spotted Taylor tilting her head at me. "That was my… friend, Stretch. They were doing me a favor tonight and were smart enough to hang back." I explained and made up a name for Missy in the same moment.

"Right…" Taylor said slowly, before jerking a thumb at the door. "Look, not that I'm not grateful for the save or anything, but am I free to go?"

"Oh! Yes, of course! I'm not kidnapping you or anything." I waved my hands as I protested. Then I awkwardly scratched the back of my neck. "It's just… Actually, let me show you."

The door to the Gate room slid open as we approached, with the usual sci-fi shoomph. I hoped Taylor was impressed or at least got the same little joy I did when I heard that sound, but of course it was impossible to tell. We stepped out into the stark white foyer and I pointed at the thin black line we could barely make out in the white wall. "See, Stretch can stretch objects. So we hid the entrance to my lab by stretching the sides of the door together. That line over there is actually the front door. It'll only take a minute or two for Stretch to return but we can't exactly walk out the front door until that happens."

"I see." Taylor said cautiously. She looked around the room, particularly at the different style of doors that led to my workshop, the Dust refinery and the DOOM Gate. It was all a bit odd, I knew that, and I wondered what she was thinking. "What about the teleporter? Can't you just let me out that way?"

"Oh! Well, if you really want to." I scratched the back of my neck again as the Forge failed to make another connection to one of the constellations I didn't have yet. "It's just that I promised Stretch I'd only use the teleporter in emergencies so, uh, hehe…"

"Is something wrong with it?" Taylor asked. Well, demanded really, but she sounded too exhausted to really make it work. I still flinched a bit though because, again, her mask was imposing.

"Of course not!" I protested, partly annoyed at having to defend my work. Mostly I was just in a hurry to avoid scaring her. "It's just that it… technically… isn't quite fully tested yet. It works, obviously, and I promise it's safe! Stretch is just being paranoid, that's all."

"You used an untested teleporter on me?" Taylor almost shrieked.

"It's been tested! Just… not fully." Seriously, why was everyone so caught up on the teleporter?

Okay, yes, I actually did understand their concerns. So many examples of teleporters going wrong in fiction. But that didn't stop it from being annoying to me, since I actually understood the actual risks with the DOOM Gate and a short hop a few blocks had none.

Of course, I couldn't launch into a full discussion on the technical details to calm Taylor down, so I did the next best thing. "Okay, look at it this way. Would you rather take a teleporter that I assure you is ninety-nine point nine percent safe or would you prefer sticking around with a one hundred percent pissed-off Lung."

Taylor tilted her head to the side, then answered. "Okay, that's fair. Sorry. It's just that..."

"Oh, don't worry about it. Strange tinker shows up, doesn't look like they know what they're doing, starts using untested tech, I'd be worried too." I shrugged. "Would you like me to show you around while we wait for Stretch? It might put your mind at ease."

Before Taylor could answer, the black line widened into a door again and Missy stepped through, sealing the exit again behind her. She glanced at Taylor briefly before turning her eyes on me. "Good, you're okay."

I was caught off-guard by how low and rough she sounded, before I realized she was disguising her voice. Similar to how I was deliberately raising my pitch and sounding more girly, except in the opposite direction. I nodded then raised my arm in a quick wave. "Yep! How 'bout you, Stretch? All good?"

Missy gave me a small look, before nodding. Maybe she thought my name for her was a bit on the nose? Eh, I thought it was fine. Stretch might be in the same age range and have similar powers to Vista, but Taylor was exhausted, I fudged things a little by saying Stretch stretched objects and not space, and Missy looked and sounded like a boy right now. Honestly, I was fighting back giggles at my sister doing her best Batman impression.

Missy turned to Taylor and narrowed her eyes. "And we're sure you're a hero?"

"I am!" Taylor protested. "Tonight was my first patrol and it… escalated."

"You might want to work on your costume then."

"What's wrong with my/her costume?" Taylor and I asked at the same time and I quickly added an excited "She looks badass!"

"Besides, you're one to talk." Taylor waved a hand at Missy, still in her ski mask and my hoodie. "You look like you're about to rob a liquor store."

"Or a toy store. He's a bit short to go for alcohol." I said, before breaking into giggles.

"Okay, first," Missy pointed at me, "you shut up. And second, I just threw on whatever because we weren't expecting to run into anyone tonight. But you," she shifted her pointing finger over to Taylor, "you're clearly wearing a professional costume and yet you look like a freaking super-villain."

"Okay, so the suit turned out a bit darker than I anticipated when I put it together." Taylor admitted awkwardly. "But it's more practical this way anyway, isn't it? It'll be harder for the bad guys to see me in the dark."

"She has a point." I said, grinning behind my mask. I probably shouldn't have been encouraging Taylor to go the dark and edgy route, but I got to prop up Taylor's confidence and also got to have fun arguing with Missy. A classic two birds, one stone scenario.

Missy let out a low growl of annoyance. "Seriously? Weren't you the one making a huge deal out of optics when we were putting your costume together? She's going to scare people!"

Before I could fire back, Taylor spoke up. "Look, thanks for the advice but it's really late. Can I just go?"

"Oh, right. Of course. Stretch?" I nodded towards the entrance and Missy let it snap back to normal. I waved goodbye at Taylor before she left. "It was nice to meet you! Feel free to contact me on PHO if you want to team up or just to chat or whatever. My account should be verified by tomorrow."

Taylor paused on her way out the door. "Wait, really? You want to… stay in touch?"

"Of course!" I answered as enthusiastically as I could. "As independents, we don't have the same resources as the Protectorate or Wards, so it just makes sense to help each other out. And besides, you were super brave and cool, standing up to Lung like that! Why wouldn't I want to be your friend?"

"Actually," Missy spoke up while Taylor just stood there. Maybe she was stunned that someone actually wanted to be her friend? Anyway, Missy took advantage to ask something. "I wanted to know, why were you fighting Lung in the first place. You do realize that's suicide for most people, right?"

"Yeah, I know." Taylor nodded stiffly. "It's just, I heard him telling his men to 'shoot the children' and I had to do something."

"Ah." Missy came up short, standing in awkward silence for a second or two. "Well, in that case, good job, I guess."

"Thanks." Taylor said, equally as awkward, before facing me again. "I'll send you a message tomorrow, sure."

"Yay!" I cheered, throwing my hands up. "Oh, idea! You should put something in the subject line so I know it's from you, like a code word. You know, since you haven't decided on a name yet. How about… Autothaumaturgist."

Both Missy and Taylor stared at me.

"I have no idea how to spell that." Taylor admitted.

"Fine, fine. What about Arachnophobia?"

"That works better." Taylor agreed with a nod. "Alright, I'm gonna go now. For real this time."

"Bye bye!" I waved her off excitedly while Missy kept up her grumpy act by simply raising her hand.

Once Taylor was gone, Missy turned to me. "You really want to be friends with the creepy bug girl?"

"She's not creepy, she's probably just socially awkward." I said, leaping to Taylor's defense. "But yeah. I think she's got the potential to be a really powerful hero-"

"She uses bugs." Missy interrupted me.

"And while that was a bad matchup against Lung, she shouldn't have a problem with anyone that doesn't have a high brute rating. I mean, it depends on how many bugs she can control at one time, but whatever." I shrug, trying not to sound too confident in my assessment. A lot of my opinion was still based on information I shouldn't have at this point. "But other than that, I'm worried about her. Like I said, Lung was a bad matchup for her and like you said, fighting Lung-"

"-was practically suicide." Missy finished my sentence with dawning realization and horror. "You really think that she's…"

I took a deep breath and answered seriously. "I think it's possible. Likely, even. You don't get powers by living a perfect life after all."

"Shit. And you want to make sure she's alright."

I nodded. "And help her as much as I can if she isn't. I'm not about to let a good person suffer if I can help them."

"Of course you won't." Missy said softly, and by the look in her eyes, I could tell she was smiling proudly at me. "Just be careful, alright?"

"Hey. It's me." I spread my arms in a 'look at me' gesture. "When am I not?"

"Hah!" Missy laughed at my little joke and shook her head. "Alright, alright. Anyway, let's get going. We do have school tomorrow, no matter how exciting tonight has been."

I agreed by yawning behind my mask. We sealed my workshop and practically flew back home the same way we got out there. And as we hopped across the city, I smiled. That had gone better than I could have hoped.

New Perks this Update:

-Notes In The Margin [200 - Legend of Zelda: Ancient Stone Tablets]

After watching Link in action, it would seem that Zelda and the Sages began to take notes on the various items, tools, and other equipment that he used during his adventure. As a result, they, and you, have learned how to upgrade the various minor magical artifacts that Hyrule likes to hide in caves or hand out as rewards for daring deeds. But - not 'upgrade' in the sense of turning a Hookshot into a Longshot, but in the sense that the item in question would become easier to use. Perhaps the hook of the Hookshot retracts faster, or the treads on the Pegasus Boots have been touched up, allowing the wearer to turn mid dash. Simple quality of life upgrades, nothing major like a full upgrade. The only real catch is that you have to watch the item in question be used for a while in order to get a feel for it.

AN: Alright, so that took awhile. Several things got in my way and I didn't wind up with any time to really write. School, my job, social obligations, etc. I've been thinking of setting up a or a Ko-fi, since if I made money off writing, I could spend more time doing it. But I'm worried about taking people's money when I can't promise consistent output and I can't consistently find time to write until I make enough money to quit my job. So I'm in a bit of a trap here.

But enough about my excuses. I hope that this chapter makes up for the long wait at least somewhat. I know people were probably expecting something more than just running away from Lung, but really, there's nothing Miles could do at this point except run away. I hope there's some uniqueness factor to satisfy you all at least.

285

RexHeller

Oct 20, 2021

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