Splash 1.1

Friday, 2:54pm, April 22nd, 2005

It was a quiet afternoon as I made my way west along the motorway, leaving the coastal city of Sydney behind me as I headed inland towards the Blue Mountains. It wasn't rush hour quite yet, but there were enough vehicles on the road that I had to focus. Focusing was good - I was glad for the distraction. Anything to keep my mind and my eyes from wandering over my shoulder to the blankets I had covering the gear in the boot and backseat of my car. I'd turned the radio on to help drown out the nerves, but quickly found that the idle political chatter on ABC Radio just became a new kind of background noise.

Having to brake behind a particularly slow moving truck was enough to shake me from my stupor, just in time to be surprised by a trumpeting tune that heralded the beginning of the news.

"Good afternoon, it's three o'clock and I'm Darren Walker, here with your ABC Radio News update," the voice began. "It's been a day of excitement and showboating today as the Medi-Evils villain duo Steam Punk and Battle Bard carried out a robbery at the Eastwood branch of the Commonwealth Bank. As usual, Protectorate capes Gloryhammer and Excalibur were first to arrive at the scene to attempt to stop the pair. Unfortunately, the heroes were occupied protecting civilians from Steam Punk's clockwork soldiers and both villains managed to escape. The Protectorate plans to make an official statement on the clash later this evening and the Commonwealth Bank has declined to give details on how much money was stolen."

"People don't like Americans poking their noses in… Why do we need Aussie capes flying the Protectorate flag, anyway?" I commented out loud over the ongoing radio broadcast, turning pointedly to the side to address my helmet, perched on the passenger seat. Its birdlike gold-and-white visage peered back at me, partially covered up under some rags. Of course, not expecting an answer from the inanimate object - I was nervous about the upcoming tests, not crazy - I turned my attention back to the road, one hand loosely over the top of the steering wheel, the other hanging limply over the centre console near the shifter.

The newsreader continued and I tuned out the non-cape stuff. Things like the housing market or a party's latest political stunt didn't interest me.

"Speculation continues to swirl around the current construction going on beneath the Atlas Alliance's headquarters in the harbour. The area has been closed off from the public eye for the better part of six months now - with all members of the AA, their connections in APRA, and their corporate sponsor Cardon Enterprises all refusing to elaborate when asked. And, our final story - in news following the recent string of attacks and killings occurring at nightclubs across the city, APRA and AA confirmed this morning that there is parahuman involvement, according to recovered CCTV footage showing at least one suspect with powers. Specifics of the power or whether the suspect is acting alone were not addressed in the statement. Authorities have advised people to avoid going out in the city for the time being, and to keep their eyes open for unusual activity. If you see any parahuman incidents, please call for emergency services or the Atlas Alliance directly via their hotline, 1800 ATLAS, that's 1800 28527. I'm Darren Walker, and this has been your 3pm ABC Radio News update."

The next half an hour or so went by quietly, and nowhere near fast enough for my liking as I was forced to maintain the speed limit. My thoughts started drifting to my sister again. It had been more than a week now since I'd last heard from her and all I could do was worry. Tinkering had helped to distract me from… everything else that was wrong but it could only take me so far. As anxious as I was about going out in costume before I thought I was completely ready, my workshop had started to feel like a prison of my own making.

A field test had been the only logical choice. Somewhere safe and secluded where I wouldn't accidentally stumble into a cape fight or have other capes stumble into me, not until I was completely, totally ready.

If I can ever be ready, really.

If I really tried, I could probably make excuses to spend the rest of forever in my workshop endlessly pulling things apart and putting them back together for the umpteenth time to make sure they were perfect even though I knew they were. I couldn't let my workshop become another prison though, I'd spent too long in one of those already. I sighed with relief as I finally exited the motorway and spent a few more minutes bobbing and weaving down smaller roads, following my Sat-Nav uplink until I reached a small rest stop area adjacent to a bushwalking track that lead into the Blue Mountains National Park. Here I could focus on topics other than my sister while being somewhere other than my lab.

Well, first thing's first. Step one: Due diligence. Let's see if there's anyone about right now.

Pulling into the rest stop area, I peered around, looking for other cars or signs of movement. With the exception of another car passing by as I climbed out mine and started moving around to the boot, I was alone. No sounds of any oncoming cars either.

Alright. Step two: Air superiority.

Reaching into the hatch, the first thing I pulled out was a sleek looking module, not dissimilar to a hard-shell Camelbak, sans straps. Roughly the size of my own back, the underside was mostly flat, with four magnetic attachment points denoted by insert circles which aligned to matching anchors on the back of my own torso armour. In the centre was a hollow within which a sophisticated optics package sat, and the top side of the entire module was curved like the upper edge of a wing. I took another quick look around, picked my helmet up and pulled it down over my head with one hand as I flung the module up into the air with the other. At the apex, right when it would have started to fall, shimmering hard-light wings - nearly twice its length reaching out to each side, like pale blue panes of glass - quickly formed as it started hovering, awaiting orders.

Those orders would come via encrypted radio from my helmet, itself linked to a very simple haptic system in my gloves. Small pads on my fingertips made contact with patches on the insides of my knuckles, completing circuits not unlike keys on a keyboard. The real magic was the input interpreter; with my left hand I selected modifiers and on my right I typed. There were enough combinations to emulate a full alphanumeric character set, but the vast majority of functionality I achieved with a shorthand language of glyphs. Like the kanji I'd learned studying Japanese, some of the glyphs represented complex concepts; some of them were invented out of necessity, being required to help describe incredibly in-depth physics interactions I'd needed to reference when concepting and building my tinkertech.

I ordered the drone - Peregrine, as I'd chosen to name it - to fly up overhead, to about 500 metres, and keep me in sight. A tuneful chirp sounded in my ears as the Peregrine confirmed my orders and started flying over the treeline in the direction of the forested area. A moment later my HUD flashed, and two small screens appeared in the top right corner of my field of view. The first was a mini-map detailing the Peregrine's distance and position from my location, and the second was a view from Peregrine's camera.

I had to fight the urge to jump up and down with glee as I watched it fly up, up and away, until it was small enough that even its wingspan - as wide as I was tall at around 170cm - was just an ever-so-slightly brighter blip amongst the afternoon sky. With the Peregrine's optics package fixated centrally on my heat signature, I blew up the minimap to cover the entirety of the right lens of my helmet, compositing it with a simple opacity mask so that the hot signals would stand out and the ambient temperature background faded away, letting me see through it normally.

HUD set, I shrugged off my loose button-up overshirt, revealing the costume beneath. On the surface, it wasn't unlike a set of biker leathers; pants and a long-sleeved jacket in dark greys and blacks, with some smatterings of maroon to add in some colour.

I'd had neither the time nor the inclination to go the 'power armour' route so many other tinkers seemed to take. There wasn't a tinker in the southern hemisphere or possibly on the planet whose power armour could match Sentinel's, and my technology didn't particularly seem to lend itself to building bulky physical protection, anyway; I had the feeling a full suit of armour would take me months or years to produce. Instead I relied on off-the-shelf materials, practical soft protective covers, with plenty of utility - and harnessing on which to attach the tinkertech I actually felt suited for.

This served me perfectly. It was lightweight - very important when it comes to flight, as even anti-gravity isn't exactly a free lunch - and it had high flexibility. Reasonably comfortable, too. I preferred other methods of protecting myself than hard plates of steel or other tinkertech materials, anyway. Although I wasn't expecting to have to defend myself from enemy capes just yet and could have probably forgone them, I went through the process of attaching all of the soft pads and plate inserts anyway, then a set of sacrificial hard-light reactive armour projectors, leaving the cape until last.

Yes, I had a cape. I didn't care if it was cliché. If capes were good enough for Alexandria and Eidolon, they were good enough for me. Plus, the vertical gold stripes on that maroon fabric was going to look damn cool blowing in the wind once I was zipping about. I donned the cape with a swish and my transformation was complete. Annelise Maxwell was gone, and in her place stood the new tinker in town, Parthian.

With the Peregrine continuing to show me the all clear on my HUD, I reached into the boot of my car with a gloved hand and shifted the blankets covering up the Lightreach, laid out in full at an angle across the entirety of the boot. I gripped the handle, sending a signal to activate its self-stabilisation. With a gentle hum, the anti-gravity generators whirred to life, negating its weight and allowing me to lift it up into the air like it was a prop made of foam instead of the several-hundred-pound slab of steel and tinkertech it actually was. I pulled back and closed the boot of the car, not bothering to lock it. The fact it was a 21-year-old shitbox, and the presence of the gear stick, combined to make plenty of a theft deterrent.

With all my readings currently stable, I turned and started making my way down the trail, figuring I'd walk into the forest a little bit before taking off. Then I'd fly a little further into somewhere secluded before starting weapons testing. After a good 10 minutes of walking or so, I did a quick check of the area, made sure the Peregrine was reporting A-OK and then started running final pre-flight checks on the Lightreach.

Two months, two weeks, and three days of work since my parents- since I became a tinker, leading up to this field test. I really hope this doesn't turn out poorly.

I'd been more fortunate than most tinkers, having access to enough money that I was able to skip the 'build stuff out of literal scrap' stage of tinkering without having to join either the Atlas Alliance or the Protectorate. I didn't have a problem with them, joining just would have been… complicated, on account of existing relationships, and I wanted to make my achievements on my own terms, anyway. Even with a proper workshop and high quality materials, the tinkering process hadn't been much less difficult; but the Lightreach's power source and hard-light projectors were stable now, the anti-gravity generators weren't overheating anymore and the entire thing had finally agreed to stop ripping itself in half whenever it shifted configurations.

Even with all that in mind, I was still nervous. I had done rigorous testing in my workshop but that was a small, sterile, controlled environment. I needed to know how it would perform outdoors, under unpredictable circumstances. I needed to know how I would perform under unpredictable circumstances. There was no way in hell I was gonna throw myself at one of the leaders of a local villain group on my first night out in costume. I'd have to be crazy, stupid or both to even think of doing that. Instead, I'd decided a field test was in order. So here I was, out in the forest waiting impatiently for the console to return a zero exit code, indicating checks completed without errors.

With no errors returned, I held my hand out, palm down, fist closed around the handle of the Lightreach, and let go. I took a step back to watch it hover and just kind of let my mind be blown for a second that I built this. I'd built this board and it was hovering in front of me, currently defying physics while simultaneously exceeding any technology my world was currently capable of producing without the use of powers.

I put my hand up on the surface of the board, pushed down as I jumped up, putting my back foot behind me on the rear end, front foot up towards the forward tip, and raised up to a standing position, hovering a metre off the ground. With a subtle 'vvmm', the soles of my boots magnetised to the surface of the board, keeping me steady. The balance gauges on my HUD danced momentarily but quickly settled well within acceptable ranges. I was flying.

I'm flying. I'm not just standing on it in my lab. I'm outside, just me and Lightreach, there's no safety nets, and I'm ACTUALLY flying!

I couldn't resist letting out a little whoop of excitement and joy. Pushing down with my back foot, closing one fist as I leaned forwards down to my knee, I angled the Lightreach upwards and began to accelerate - slowly - up towards the treetops.

I watched as the ground began to fall away from beneath me as I simultaneously observed myself rising up towards the Peregrine from its own perspective. The drone gave a tuneful chirp as a marker pinged on my mini-map, indicating a decent sized clearing further into the forest that was suitable for the weapons test. I angled around - awkwardly at first, having never actually turned this thing at speed before, only hovering in the workshop while stationary. I touched my thumb to my knuckle, then slid it out towards my fingertip, the command gesture for the board to start accelerating. I hunched down further, letting the nose of my mask split the air in front of me as the wind started whipping past.

I had heard and read countless times about what it felt like to fly from capes blessed with the ability to do so, and... They were right. There was this feeling of energy that flowed through my body as I started to accelerate, an almost giddy sense of joy at the feeling of freedom as I watched the canopy of trees blur past beneath me and soared over the top of them. Distracted by my own excitement, I let my hand drift outwards to feel the wind blowing past and was promptly punished by physics. I knew what kind of effect extending my arms would have at high speeds, but there's a difference between theory and practice. The air currents pushed my arm upwards abruptly causing me to overbalance. I threw my other arm out on instinct, trying to throw myself back upright, but that just made it worse. I shrieked as the board - and I along with it - angled towards the ground, continuing to accelerate. Half a dozen alerts began flashing across my HUD, snapping me out of my shock for long enough to drag my thumb across the inside of two knuckles, sending a signal for the Lightreach to level itself out. The entire incident only lasted a few seconds, but in the aftermath I couldn't stop wondering just how painful - if not lethal - a dive into the ground from my current height might have been.

Upright once again, I crouched as low to the board as I physically could with my boots still magnetised to it. Shallow, scared breaths shot in and out of my lungs for a few seconds as I grappled with my own mortality.

Good to know the magnets and command inputs are working properly. Shoot. I could've actually died.

The list of people who would miss me was depressingly short. My roommate Sam? Possibly. My dad? Maybe. My sister?

Would Elly miss me?

The fact I didn't know anymore sat like a rock in my stomach. I wasn't supposed to be thinking about her right now. Although… Consciously trying not to just brought about a kind of guilt all its own. I grit my teeth and reasserted my position on the board. I spent a few moments tweaking the maglocks, allowing me to crouch nice and low like a speedboarder, one hand gripping my board and one leg out behind me to brace against.

Yeah, having a hand down forwards helped a lot. I started to pour on the speed again, this time using the stance of my whole body to help cut through the air rather than just the beak of my helmet. I let the feeling of the air rushing past me peel away Annelise's problems as Parthian started racing through the sky once more.

I'd done the maths - the board itself would definitely push almost 400 kilometres per hour in Earth's gravity. I was, of course, wildly excited to experience that speed for myself… But real life has a way of raining on parades, and there's a tricky little issue called 'acceleration', insofar as the human body could only withstand so much. Even in my improved riding stance, I still wasn't optimally positioned, given that I was standing on top of the propelling mechanism. By the time I'd closed the distance to the clearing, on account of my own mistake, my airspeed had only just passed 120. I sighed, disappointed in myself, and started slowing down to flare out. Angling downwards, I continued to ditch speed steadily before aiming all the way down to the ground in the centre of the open area.

I came to a steady stop, wobbling just a little about a metre off the ground. Another chirp from the Peregrine told me there was no one else in the area or any approaching air traffic that might see me from overhead. The magnetic locks had released automatically as soon as the board registered a level flight below walking speed; I stepped off one side, dropping a metre or so to the ground, and the Lightreach stopped with me... Waiting. I took it by the handle and prepared to wield it.

Time for the weapons test.

I felt the anti-gravity generators and internal stabilisers clunk as they shifted to ballistics mode. With the exception of a hard-light bowstring materialising along one side of the board, the Lightreach didn't change shape at all. I had deliberately built the board in the shape of a hefty great bow with the limbs being large and solid enough to both stand on and house all the tinkertech inside it. All the changes made when swapping from hoverboard to greatbow configuration were internal; the hard-light projectors engaged and the anti-gravity generators reoriented their stability fields to act against each other - for balance, rather than propulsion. I had read online from scientific articles and PHO threads that while most tinkers had some sort of speciality or focus, others had a much broader range of things they could create. My power seemed to fall somewhere in the middle. A mix of both anti-gravity and hard-light technology. I could build some things outside of those direct categories like the optics package on the Peregrine and I could make things that used just anti-gravity or just hard-light technology, but my tinkering had always felt at its strongest when I was building something that married the two together.

I guess that makes this the Lightreach's honeymoon getaway?

I looked around for a tree nobody was gonna miss - in case I'd... misjudged things. A quick glance let me spot an older looking, more withered tree on one side of the clearing. I raised the bow in front of me left-handed. A ray-casted, depth-mapped projection of the calculated impact point overlaid on both lenses of my helmet as I pointed it at the hapless tree. The overlay changed again as I toggled between firing solutions; I thumbed the input for Direct Fire Support, Armor-Piercing Fin-Stabilised Hard-Light, and watched as 'DFS-APFS-HL' flashed on my HUD and the projection flattened into a line. Like flash-forged silicon carbide, a hard-light arrow would fly truer than any physical arrow with a payload to deliver.

I pulled back the string, slowly - the Lightreach materialising the selected munition on demand - listening and feeling the mechanisms of the bow compound my own draw strength by tens or hundreds of times through its internal mechanisms. I loaded the limbs fully as the projector trued up the hard-light projectile to the target designator, then eased back a little bit. I wasn't planning to send it all the way through in one shot. I held it for another second, the targeting solution steady despite the excited tremor in my muscles, then let go.

With a rush of air and a supersonic crack, I watched as the hard-light arrow effortlessly speared through the trunk of the tree, sending chips of splintered bark flying as the arrow whizzed off into the forest, stopping a moment later with a dull thud as it stabbed into the thicker trunk of another tree. I let out a shocked but appreciative whistle.

Note to self. Minimise draw strength and use flathead projectiles when firing directly at people. Maybe I'd better find a berm to fire into…

I went for a walk-around, inspected the damaged tree, took a few notes, moved over to the arrow embedded in a tree further back, made a few more notes, took a close scan of the projectile's structure through my helmet optic. Each time I let go of the Lightreach to write in a field notebook, it hovered there, exactly where it was when I let it go, until I grabbed it again and it started to move with me. I returned to the clearing, lining up another shot. I drew back the hard-light string once again, listening to and feeling how the Lightreach accounted for the new draw strength limit. I sucked in a deep breath and lost it with a surprised yelp as my HUD flashed indicating I had an incoming phone call.

Elly?

I answered immediately, without even checking the caller ID, frantically sucking in another breath of air as I prepared to vomit out all the worry I had been feeling.

The automated spam call spouting something in a foreign language felt like a punch in the gut, bringing on a sudden, irrational burst of rage. I hung up with a swift gesture, gritting my teeth again as I felt the tears welling up in my eyes. My grip on the Lightreach became white-knuckle tight as I pulled the string back all the way, hitting and blowing past the draw limit indicator I had set moments ago. I didn't need to shout or scream - the thunderous cracks that echoed through the forest as I unleashed arrow after arrow into that poor old tree made my feelings known far louder than I possibly could have. By the time I was done, the tree looked like it had been on the wrong end of a machine gun.

The anger was gone and although the sadness lingered, I couldn't help but marvel at what I'd achieved with the Lightreach's firepower. A calm sense of satisfaction washed over me as I let Annelise's problems go once again. I spent the next few hours freely loosing arrow after arrow, continuing to wonder at the efficacy of my tinkertech, despite my reservations about whether or not I was ready to really make full use of it yet. Satisfied after a few more basic test shots, I started to get more creative with my aim. I practised shooting through targets, testing to see how many branches I could skewer on a single arrow. I tweaked the parameters on my arrows and attempted some curved shots, testing the way the arrows curved through the air to hit targets I seemingly wasn't aiming at. Even with the HUD aiding my aim to a significant degree, I still found myself giggling with delight as I made tricky shots, sending my arrows through narrow gaps in the treeline to hit specific knots on a trunk a distance away.

After a while of this, I started getting more confident and decided to attempt some dismount-to-shoot drills. Jumping on my board, I began flying in circles and once I'd picked up a bit of speed - though not enough to harm myself - I manually disengaged the mag-locks on my boots as it came to an abrupt stop, my boots sliding off for a very quick dismount. I managed to catch it as I fell, feeling the 'thunk' as it switched configurations - but there was a momentary delay in the switch between modes that put me off balance, causing me to land flat on my face as the Lightreach floated out of my grasp.

A brief glance at my HUD showed me to be unharmed except for probably a few small bruises on my body, and a slightly bigger one to my pride. I laid there face down in the dirt and groaned, my helmet catching the sound and reverberating my voice out into the quiet clearing.

Absolutely and utterly defeated. Hoisted by my own petard. Flew too close to the sun. Pride before the literal fall…

I let out a little giggle, followed by another. Then a guffaw, and finally, raucous laughter; thoroughly amused as I was by my own misfortune. For a good minute or two, I continued like that - laying face down, arms wide, with the Lightreach hovering diligently nearby. Eventually, I put a hand down into the dirt and raised myself up. After a few hours of testing, it was just beginning to get dark now. I marked the clearing on my GPS; a good spot to return to if ever needed to do some more tests. For now, though, I had plenty of tweaks to do with fresh data. Ergonomics, functionality adjustments, some fine tuning, and the early thoughts for a system to help reduce my descent speed should I ever be separated from the Lightreach mid-flight.

I ordered the Peregrine to scout the way back to the rest spot, getting a chirp of acknowledgement from it as I reached up to use the bow to pull myself upright onto my feet. After waiting a minute for the Peregrine to return to the rest area and confirm that no-one was around, I hopped back up onto the Lightreach and rode my way back in under five minutes, coming to a gentle stop by my car. Reluctantly, I took off the cape, gloves, and helmet, sliding my overshirt back on and stowing all the equipment in the car.

After a few more tweaks, I really ought to go do… Something. Patrol. Maybe stop some crime. Make some friends, or some enemies. Make a name for myself. Who knows? Anything but making more excuses to do nothing. I can't afford to leave myself alone with my idle thoughts any longer.

Even those blessed distraction-free hours spent fiddling with tinkertech only managed to delay the unhealthy, anxiety-inducing brooding that I'd taken to. I couldn't hide away in the lab forever.

I called down the Peregrine, reaching out to grab it as it descended, the faintly glowing wingspan vanishing suddenly as its engines disengaged. I deposited it in the boot and tossed the blankets back over the lot to hide them before climbing back into the driver's seat. Any notifications I got on my phone should've been transferred to my HUD, so it was perhaps irrational of me to pull out my phone anyway, hoping for a text from my sister to be waiting there for me. Unfortunately… No luck.

We'd called each other multiple times a week at first, after I fled, but her calls had dropped in frequency. That was right around the time I got a text from my mother, saying I was a disgrace to her family, officially dead to her, and I should never come back.

Eventually, Elly had stopped calling entirely. I still got a text at least once a week, asking if I was okay, and she'd answer when I called her. Our conversations had been getting shorter and shorter, though. She always mentioned how much she was working and studying, but she never wanted to get into details, and she always sounded tired and hollow.

Powers in a bottle. My mother, wanting to turn me into her pet cape. My father, letting her have whatever she wanted. The unbearable weight of expectation. In a kind of sad irony, it turned out they didn't need the vial to give me powers at all. I had to run away. I had to leave Elly behind. I wish I'd taken her with me instead of leaving her in our parents' clutches. I'd always shielded her from the worst of it, and it seemed more and more like Elly couldn't handle the brunt of it alone.

This latest stretch was the longest yet without contact. Nothing since I'd last tried to call her on Monday, and she hadn't tried to call back yet. I brought up her number again, routing the call through a proxy service to avoid being tracked or identified.

"Please pick up…" I whined quietly, bouncing my knee agitatedly. With a beep, it went to voicemail.

"Hey, it's me. You know which number to call. Love you," I hung up with a defeated, heart-aching sigh.

AN: And so it begins! I'd like to give a huge thank you to my co-author Casey West and our three beta readers who've chosen to remain anonymous for now. I recognise that this is a somewhat unconventional Worm fanfic, being both almost completely original and based on an RPG but I'll be happy if even one person thinks this is cool. I am far from a professional writer so feedback and constructive criticism is greatly appreciated!

I'm going to initially be cross posting this fic to SB, SV, QQ and AO3 to see where it gets some traction (if any) and then I'll probably narrow it down to one or two forums. The current plan is to post a new chapter every two weeks or so but that may eventually slow down to monthly depending on how much life gets in the way and how quickly the fic catches up to its RPG source material. The eldritch horror within me hungers for your comments so please feed it!