Waking up in a ghetto version of America was not what I called a "kosher and adult-friendly" experience.
It was also not a happy experience to feel some godly being shove what amounted to a few hundred hours of experience into my head.
Fuck You, whoever did this to me. Absolutely Fuck You!
I also collapsed and fainted because of it, which got me found and admitted to the hospital, so there's also that.
Waking up with a head-splitting migraine never made life easy. There was something wrong with me for being used to such an experience, though, because I used to have three year long monthly chronic migraine.
Painful, yes. Daily routine inhibiting, yes.
Manageable, unfortunately yes.
I cracked my eyes opened and looked around even as the light from the ceiling made my head scream like a frakka-addled homeless addict. Finding myself in a sterile room was not a good sign.
I pushed myself up and then was surprised to see that I was in a single room, not one of those multiple patient packed, disease transmitting fiasco that were the shared rooms. What surprised me more was the fact that there was someone else in this room reading newspaper in the other end of the room, right next to the door. He wore some kind of military uniform.
He looked up at me and noticed that I was awake.
"..." We stared at each other for a bit before he reached down and pulled up his radio on his belt up to his face. He said a few words very softly, too softly for me to hear, and then walked outside.
I stared in confusion, but before I could question what just happened in the room, memories and experiences struck me like a freight train running over an unconscious alcoholic on the train tracks.
Most of these were instructions on how to use … my superpowers.
Okay, that was a thing.
The memories gave me basic instructions about my powers and how to use each of them.
"Ow," I mumbled to myself as the migraine worsened during that period. I closed my eyes and grounded my knuckles against my temples, willing the pain to go away. No such luck. Even as I tried to keep up with the pain because I would be crying and whimpering if I didn't, I processed all of the information that just got shoved into my head. I was already using, almost instinctively I might add, one of those powers, one I called "Information Management," or "Infoman" for short.
And paled in horror as I realized that there were other things that were shoved into my head aside from instructions on superpower usage.
I had two "programs" running inside of me. One urged me to take a territory for myself like some kind of a territorial animal, and the other urged me to kill people following Nazi-ism.
What the fuck happened to me?
Groaning as the migraine finally started to go away, I jolted when someone entered the room. The person … wore a costume? What the hell? He wore a completely black costume with a single white snake that ran all over him, ending around his head.
… Why did the description in my head sound fami-.
"Infoman" worked on its own and brought forth information related to "costume" and "white snake."
And brought me to … Coil? From the story "Worm"?
"... Hello," I opened up, staring at the costumed man warily.
"Hello to you, too," the snake man said. "Can you talk right now?"
"Yeah. Yeah. Are you the one who saved me?" I asked.
He shook his head as he stepped closer. "No, but I am trying to help you."
Another power just blurped out from within me. My mind was calling it "Discernment" without conscious prompting.
[False.]
… And wasn't that scary? He started a conversation with a lie which made me feel really uncomfortable.
Another power, how many powers-.
[15.]
-did I … ok. That's a lot of powers.
Anyway, Coil's answer and the answer from my "Discernment" got another power to rise up to the surface. I remembered the instructions forced into my head about this power and knew to call it "Escapism."
"Well, sorry. I don't want to buy whatever you're selling," I said directly. "So … bye?"
I activated "Escapism," and instantly, I was out of the sterile concrete hospital room with only one way out and in the concrete corridor.
"Hmm," I muttered to myself before using it again.
Another corridor.
Again.
Corridor.
Again and again and again-!
And some office building?
People stared at me in my hospital gown and I stared at them. After a moment, I decided to ask a stupid question.
"Do any of you work for Coil?"
"No. Are you-"
[False.]
And I am outtie.
"Escapism," again.
And plop, I teleported to the streets.
I ran for it.
As I ran along the streets away from the nicer parts of the town because "Infoman" was telling about half-forgotten information on Coil and Worm, especially the part where Coil had a lot of spies everywhere, another power popped up and acted as a radar for me.
I knew where people's hidden cashes and caches were.
I glanced and saw that I was at the "19th" and "Jameson St.," and dove into one of the "abandoned" buildings. The doorway was broken, and I smelled a lot of weed coming from there.
Just after I entered the building, "Infoman" told me about Merchants and them being around the Shantytown area, which was south of Fortress Construction office, latter of which was probably where I just escaped from and former of which was where I probably was.
It was a warning that came late, because as soon as I was through the short corridor of the building's entrance, I was staring at three rag-wearing people smoking weed, and each of them held a gun in their hand.
Three powers popped up at once as hostiles were "detected."
A fiery Blaster power, a Vector Manipulation, and a weak electrokinetic/generating power.
I didn't get to make a choice because the roughest looking of the three Merchants held up his gun and fired without warning.
Promptly, Vector Manipulation activated without conscious command and redirected the weapon right back at him. The bullet wheezed back at a slightly different angle and then lodged itself in his chest right where his heart should be.
All four of us stared at the bullet wound incredulously before the shooter keeled over.
The other two screamed "Cape!" and shot me.
"No, wait-!" I tried to say.
And then suddenly, there was the sound of guns firing, and then two different sonic booms.
Finally, there was only one left, me.
"...Goddamn it," I muttered before I grabbed the least tattered pants and slipped it off the bleeding soon to be corpse, and moved deeper into the building where my "Treasure Hunter" was pinging me.
It was a large rotting crate. I hesitated for a second even as "Treasure Hunter" pinged rapidly at me for being so close to "loot." Then I kicked once. Then twice.
Upon kicking thrice, the crate's rotten side broke inward, and I pulled the planks apart.
Inside were boxes. I pried the top off with more kicking, and then I saw what the boxes were.
Weapon caches.
"Ohhhh shit," I mumbled to myself. This was not a loot I could move easily.
Or could I?
Another power popped up even as Infoman alerted to me a possible method to get away with something from here.
"Union" would allow me to stack all of the same guns into same space. Technically speaking, then I only needed to carry one gun out of here, which I can then disassemble elsewhere for more guns-.
-but where the fuck was I going to use guns for?
"Treasure Hunter" didn't ping me anything else in the building except for the clothes and the guns that three dead Merchants had on them. I was not touching anything else.
Cursing my luck, I quickly ran out and I was back on the streets.
I ran again.
I grew irritated. Holed up in another abandoned - for real, this time - building, I was allowing "Infoman" to sort through all of my memories and information that I had.
I came to … Earth Bet, and got kidnapped by Coil, who was the first one to find me. I woke up and fled Coil's base almost laughably easily and then killed some Merchants without even meaning to.
Or did they suicide on me?
All of these things happened to me, and I was stressed out. I would have gone to the PRT, but there was a drum in my head telling me no.
It was a drum that grew louder and louder, demanding increasingly strongly that I take territory.
I ignored it for now because it was bearable, mostly because it didn't bother me much as a migraine would.
Seriously, migraine up'ed your tolerance for shit when you didn't have to suffer it.
If that wasn't all, then Coil used his connection with Fortress Construction to get a picture of my face in the brief time I was in his building's normal office and got me labeled as a "parahuman thief."
Bitch, you kidnapped me!
Anyways, Coil now had me on the run using the PRT itself, which made going to the PRT a no-go even if I didn't want to take territory.
….
"God, this fucking sucks," I grumbled to myself.
[True, Discernment commented.
"Argh."
I held out for another day, mostly staying inside and experimenting with my powers.
I used "Union" to stack ten pebbles together, and by the end of it, a single pebble weighed more like a fist-sized concrete rubble. Then I did the same except with thirty of those heavier pebbles.
By the end of it, I had a pebble that weighed as much as I did. I couldn't pick it up with my fingers because it was too small and weighed so much.
I also experimented with "Nest," which boosted my power in my territory. Fortunately for me, the building counted as territory, and within it, I was capable of lifting twice as much as I normally would have been able to.
Still couldn't lift the pebble because my finger strength sucked and the pebble kept on slipping out away.
By the next night, I couldn't hide anymore. I had no food and needed to eat.
I pulled on the rags and clothes I picked up on the way to here and left the building to find … food, however it may come to me.
I found food!
On the display shelves of a bakery were breads and pastries.
… I didn't have any-.
Did the Merchant guy I killed and ripped the pants from have money? I wore that pants now, so maybe…?
I shoved my hands into each of the pockets and -.
"Got it!" I shouted in triumph, pulling out a ragged $5 bill. "Thank you, Lincoln!"
I marched into the shop happily, and the shopkeeper looked at me warily. I grabbed five one dollar pastries - they were mini-croissants - and placed the bill on the counter. He nodded at me, not saying a single word, and I just walked out.
After leaving the shop, I looked over my shoulder and saw the shopkeeper looking at me oddly before realizing I was staring back and hurriedly left the counter.
Weird.
Forget it, I had food!
I smiled happily with a slightly satisfied stomach and walked around the streets.
As of now, my situation was clear to me. With Coil cockblocking me from getting help from the PRT (who were less likely to believe me than Coil in his civilian ID) and the other authorities, I had to … be a villain.
Never thought I would do that.
… Well, it was what it was.
Anyways, my first prerogative was to take territory to sate the GODDAMN DRUMMING inside my head.
And I was here in this Shantytown, so why not take territory right here?