You wake up with a sudden flinch.
There is no transition period, one moment you do not exist, the next you do. You look around in a confused daze, only to realize there is no light yet you can see you're in a box of some sort. You shouldn't be able to do that, should you? And, of course, you have no idea how you know that either. Wonderful.
Okay, first of all, you need to get out of this box you're in. You try to just... push against the top, but that doesn't work. Okay, next try. You have no room to really wind up your punch, but you do the best with what you have. With a satisfying CRACK, you smash your fist into the wood and get a slight crack in the box as a reward for your effort. Okay, time to keep on going.
Once you have a decently sized opening, you put your hand into it and pull. Much easier to widen it that way. Oh hey, soft earth on the other side. You keep on working for a while, making good progress on getting out of here. Good thing, too, you're starting to get real thirsty. No wonder, what with all this work you're doing.
Once you can push yourself out of the opening, you do so... or try to, what with all that earth in the way. You have to kind of... wiggle your way upwards while digging your way free, but at least you're making headway to getting... somewhere. That is not here, preferably. You're starting to get a little claustrophobia here, you never had an issue with tight spaces before, but this is getting a little much for your tastes.
Once you're finally free of the box, and...
Okay, time to stop denying the obvious. You're surrounded by tombstones. What you just crawled out of was, rather likely, a grave, with a coffin and all. Your grave, to be exact. You still don't remember much of anything about yourself, but you have no issue calling upon basic logic.
Now, it seems you've been buried. Which usually happens to dead people. Thus, unless someone fucked up in a rather fundamental manner, it is quite likely you were dead. ARE dead, rather. Yup, no pulse. Huh.
Alright, so that is a thing now, apparently. Once you shake off the sheer WTF of this situation, you take a moment to consider yourself. You look down and see...
A masculine body. You're a guy...
Of course you are. Strange to have forgotten that kinda thing, but then again, this whole situation is fucking strange.
You don't ponder on that for long, though. You're getting really thirsty. Like, really really thirsty. Fuck, now where to get something to drink in a freaking graveyard...
Wait, did you just hear something?
Okay, there he is. ... How do you know that? Like, you can hear a guy saying stuff, but you KNOW that you shouldn't be able to figure out his exact location just from that. Do you have, like, echolocation now? Are you a cape? Okay, that kinda was obvious from the moment you rose from your grave without a pulse, but you apparently have powers beyond being a corpse. Go figure.
Either way, you exit the graveyard proper and go around the outer wall to where you heard that voice. What you see when you arrive is... not pretty. Looks like a guy got wasted... correction is getting wasted while pissing on the wall. While singing quietly to himself. Something about 26 little Endbringers? Must be a particularly tasteless drinking song.
"Hey! Hey you! Tha' fugg ya' looking at, huh? Never saw a dick before, eh?"
Well shit, now he's seen you. And is... still pissing on the wall, though you think he's started turning around. While pissing. Ugh.
What do you do?
You grab onto him, one hand onto a shoulder, the other around his midsection. He, on the other hand, is just... standing there, trying to figure out what just happened.
With a great heave, you unhinge your maw and-
What... what am I doing...?
BITE!
With a tearing sound, your teeth, which you just now realized are much bigger and sharper than they should be, tear into his neck. Even as he goes stiff in your grip, you begin to suck his blood down with great gulps, a moan rising up your throat at just how... good it feels to drink him dry, even while the light leaves his glassy eyes.
As his body drops onto the ground, propped against the same wall he was pissing against, getting soaked in his own urine, you stand there, reveling in the sheer rush of life you experience.
At the same time, what is happening inside you?
Marco was always a decent sort. Not great in any way he'd say, but he would always have an open ear if someone needed it, and he freely put his skills to use to help others when they needed something fixed. That led to him becoming a plumber after high school, and eventually meeting his wife, impressing her with his nervous, but honest charm as he 'put down pipes' for her. You'd be surprised how many people you meet in this business, and they all had a smile on their face after Marco was done, as well as a functioning toilet.
The good times would not last forever, though, as Jackie, his wife, died in a car accident two years after their eventual marriage. Marco never really moved on, but he tried his best to stay the funny, friendly plumber coming around to help when people's shitters malfunctioned. He eventually managed to put on the mask of the guy he was before, but once a year, on the day of his wife's death, he would go visit her on the graveyard and get shitfaced afterward, in remembrance of better times. Except this year, he met a mysterious stranger...
Okay, that was, uh... that was something, you think to yourself as you come out of your daze of glorious blood. Alright, alright, freaking out later, dealing with the now, now- oh fuck, I have a corpse right here.
So, I see two courses of action, I can either hide the corpse and hope nobody finds it, or I can just... leave it here. I mean, I'm pretty sure I'm a villain now anyway, so what if someone finds a corpse that's got some obvious signs of my teeth- what are they gonna do, blame me for another corpse? Because let's be real here, pretty sure this isn't the last guy I'm gonna drink. Huh, and apparently I'm now some kinda sociopath. Makes sense, really, what with me eating people now.
Taking stock of the current situation yet again, Well, if I'm gonna be a murderhobo anyway... you think to yourself as you search his pockets.
Inside, you find... 200 bucks on one side and a wrench inside the other? Why would this guy bring a wrench to get drunk on a graveyard? Weird, but anyway, you'll take it.
Now, to hide the body. Well, you have a perfectly fine grave, just recently emptied, so... Time to get him in there.
Except, you realize once you've carried the body over (thanks improved strength!) he, uh, he won't fit. You wiggled your way out more than you dug it, and a corpse is one of the hardest things ever to move around normally, and you have to get him through the opening you made in your coffin. Luckily, your strength (once again) saves the day. It's a bit grisly, but you physically tear the body limb from limb and then just stick the limbs inside the coffin. The torso (and head) is a bit more work, but you get it done just fine.
Now, with that out of the way, you need to... Actually, what's next? Your instinct tells you to find a safe place and hunker down, but for the life of you, you can't figure out why.
Aside from that, you have a weird feeling down your throat. It's not unpleasant, not exactly, just weird. Maybe you can do something with that?
NEW QUEST: Find A Lair
You need a lair to stay at permanently, a place to store your stuff, safely figure out your powers, and get a grip on the current situation.
Taking a last look around, you decide it's time to skedaddle. No need to stick around the site of your first murder, taking a course that, you hope, leads you towards the ocean. Lots of unused old fishing containers around there, if you can find one not too close to any homeless communities.
On the way, though, you get an itchy feeling. What's with all these feelings today? Regardless, you don't think you can concentrate at all until you get rid of this, so you concentrate and push until you-
-turn into a shadow dancing on the wall, flitting this way and that. Which is weird. Like, really really strange. You don't really exist in three dimensions anymore. Actually, a shadow is really just the absence of light, so how do you call it when you're made of the absence of something?
Confusing, that's what you call it.
Alright, so you're a shadow now. And... you don't have eyes. Nor do you have ears or any other organs for that matter. Weirdly enough, you can still see, though colors are pretty muted, they're still recognizable. Your stuff is just lying on the ground. Guess it didn't come with you when you went shadow. Sounds... you can hear something. Probably the ambient noises of the city, though they're REALLY muted. Nigh impossible to make out. No sense of touch, taste, or smell.
Maybe it's because you're a shadow that the perception of light comes the easiest to you? Or maybe it's your enhanced senses, heck, maybe it's both. At this point, you're really just guessing. Either way, time to get back to finding a lair to take some rest in. Though, with your newfound mobility as you race along the walls (whee!) and with just how... flat you are, you may have other options to seek out...
Anyway, now that you have a power that allows you to move around very fast (seriously, this is, like, easily twice the speed of a car), you should be able to find a decent lair much easier. Of course, your stuff is just lying around on the street, and that just won't do.
Quickly taking a look around and spotting no onlookers coming your way, you turn back into your human form and gather up your money, and wrench in your burial suit (which you'll have to dispose of at some point, the thing looks bad). Spotting a dumpster in an alley nearby, you walk over and stuff your stuff under it, secure in the knowledge only the wiliest of hobos would think to look there.
Next off, you look around after turning back into a shadow (which takes way too long, you don't feel the cold but standing around naked is awkward) until you find a sewer entrance and glide right on down. You have no idea about whether or not it smells in here, thanks to your deadened shadow senses, but olfactory tourism isn't why you're here anyway.
Flitting from wall to wall, you are brought to a halt as you encounter a complete sewer blockage. It seems to be made up of lots of random detritus that accumulated here for a while until it made it nigh impossible for anything to pass. Seeing this opportunity for what it is, you wiggle your shadowy form through any cracks thin enough to let you through, of which there are plenty.
On the other side, you see...
Well, a rather nice place indeed. Most of it is flooded, but the small alcoves should be plenty to store your meager belongings once you bring them here, a task that should be rather much easier than you anticipated, given that you spy what seems to be an entrance/exit in the far corner, allowing you to come and go at your leisure rather than requiring you to become a shadow every time you want to move about.
Not that you won't be a shadow when coming and going anytime you can feasibly manage that, but it's the thought that counts.
Alright, as this place will do just fine as your lair, for now, you turn into a shadow again, practically flying out of your new lair, finding that the entrance to it is blocked by... well, furniture, a dumpster, several bags of trash, etc. Basically, it's a typical back-alley in the poorer parts of Brockton. Suits you just fine, though; practically no way anyone will come and enter your little hideout.
Zipping off, you quickly reorient yourself until you recognize a street you passed earlier while searching around. It takes just about no time to find the place you stashed your stuff earlier; though it's a bit more bothersome to put on the dirty burial suit, you make do and bring your belongings over to the entrance. Which is still blocked, though you manage to maneuver your way through via thorough application of your wrench and superstrength.
Once more inside your lair, you take a moment to just... relax, before putting your wrench and money into one of the alcoves.
Okay, okay. You've got shelter, for the time being, your instincts aren't screaming anything at you for a change, you're in a relatively safe place. Time to sit down and figure out just what the fuck is going on.
Now, what do you know? You woke up in a coffin, crawled your way out of your grave. You then found out you had powers AND keep on pulling new ones out of your ass. No, wait, you think you had them from the start. Though maybe you CAN gain new ones? Your instincts are confusing on the topic.
Which is strange. According to what you know, capes are supposed to have an instinctual understanding of their powers the moment they have them, but that doesn't seem to be how you work.
Then again, you also don't think capes normally got powers by dying, which seems to be the case for you. Or at least it isn't a widespread phenomenon, you'd have heard of it, you're pretty sure.
Gah... It's a giant pain always questioning what you know because you can't remember HOW you know it. Taking a moment, you try to remember who you were before all this. You were...
Yes, you remember now. It's coming over you like a flood; almost hard to believe you couldn't remember until just now. You were a college freshman; parahuman studies the focus of your courses.
You'd be surprised just how many careers lie in the field of parahumans; like, there is parahuman law, which is a possible specialization you'd been thinking of taking later on, of course, but there's also a whole bunch of options in the PRT to work in a supporting position (mostly entrance positions for PR, though), parahuman science, which is trying to make sense of the bullshit, specialized cape psychiatry, etc.
Though you suppose you're getting some decent use out of it knowing you are most certainly NOT a parahuman. For once, you rose from the grave. You didn't trigger or anything. That's a bit of a red flag there. Similarly, while you're suffering from amnesia and exhibiting physical changes, you ARE recovering your memory of your past life, which is a big no-no in terms of Case 53s. You're pretty certain you can say you aren't either.
Where does that leave you, though? Well, for once, you sure aren't telling anyone about your suspicions. Myrddin is getting enough ridicule for the whole magic thing, nobody would believe an obvious cape like yourself isn't a parahuman. Though the whole drinking blood thing, and if THAT isn't a thing now, isn't how parahumans should work, there are enough powers that also fuck up people's minds somehow to make it, well, not unthinkable for someone to trigger with a power that gives them the psychological need to drink blood. Which is yet another reason you're never going anywhere near PRT holding cells if you can help it; you'd like to avoid starving to death, thank you very much.
As well, the sheer spread of your powers makes you a respectable grabbag; superstrength alone, no matter how minor, is a gamechanger against normal civilians. Your sharpened senses give you a decent advantage in general as well; if you had to classify it, you'd call it a low-ranking Thinker power, though it's obviously more useful than it first sounds if you think about it. If it lets you smell drugs and/or people that recently consumed them, it instantly lets you tell a lot about who you're looking at, especially in Brockton Bay.
Now, the real jackpot is the shadow power. It lets you become fast, extremely so, as well as making you nigh invisible at night. Might be a bit less useful during the day, but you're sure you can work with it regardless. Great Mover/Stranger power there.
So, from what you're getting here, it seems your best strategy is to play the part of the ambush predator; figure out easy targets via your enhanced senses and observation, use your shadow power to follow them until a moment of weakness presents itself, then strike with your enhanced strength.
Now if only you could take your fucking clothing with you when you go shadow so you aren't doing all of that naked... Which, apparently, you can. Huh. You already suspected you weren't a parahuman, but if there was any great doubt, it'd be shot out of the water by this sense that you can actually train your powers to improve them. Not figure out new uses for them, as capes sometimes do, but rather change a fundamental aspect of how the power works. That's NOT a thing a parahuman can do, ever.
Now, on a somewhat related note... What are you gonna do next? You'll need to plan out where you're seeing yourself next week, let alone in five years. God, that whole thinking about your future thing sucked in college and it sucks now.