dr doc

by thejarl7166

dr doc

3. Anomalous Materials

Anomalous Materials

My hands latched onto something with a misshapen, crooked surface, red and matte, but coated in rust. All the desperate resistance and perseverance of a fresh, borderline paraplegic culminated in my disobedient ankles as I attempted to force myself to a stand.

Fuck!

I found that I couldn't.

My legs felt weedy and feeble. Gravity was pulling on me twice as hard, while I was only half as strong. I couldn't even retain a spinal column stiff enough to resemble a human, rather than a mass of wobbly, viscous flesh. There was no structure or cohesion to anything in my body, and when I attempted to counteract the sensations of weakness by forcing movement, I found myself drowning in a deluge of agonizing, mind-whitening torment. Every single bone in my body felt like it'd been ground into fine dust, and my ligaments felt like they'd been shredded apart with shards of glass.

All at the same time, my blood was racing, my eyes were lubricating, my heart was throbbing, and my veins were hardening. It felt distinctly like someone had placed a rabid chimpanzee inside my skull, offered him a submachine gun, and told him to go absolutely bananas on my brain, and the chimpanzee obliged with vigorous passion.

It was as though someone had placed a claw hammer - the head superheated until it started to blaze a crimson red with hints of yellow-white - in my throat and it was slowly going down and stripping layers of esophagus away with its brutal progress, blood starting to flood my throat.

I realized it wasn't a hammer. And that liquid feeling wasn't blood, either. It was something else: an acrid, mouth-gagging bitterness, with hints of sugar-sweet.

It was hot and sticky and faintly smelling of bile. It was bile, I realized as soon as I thought that, as I gagged uncontrollably and then released with a squeeze in my throat. I puked all over the car door that I was clinging to. It poured out of me like water out of a hose, flecks of the tainted spew flying under pressure and freckling the side of the car.

An unholy taste filled my mouth and overwhelmed me like a song overwhelms a synesthesiac; sweet like candy, sickly like stomach acid, and wretched like finding a scolopendra under your pillow in the morning. It smelled and tasted and felt like someone had put a smelly clove of trash on a spoon and force-fed it to me.

An impressive quantity of vomit made it inside the car through the cracked window, and onto the upholstery of the driver's seat, maybe also the floor. As soon as I was done throwing up, I unlatched myself from the car door I was clinging onto for dear life, and managed to stumble and retain some measure of force in my feet. Enough that I didn't fall over instantly.

My breath was laborious, chest heaving up and down with every inhalation. My body was shaking like I'd been dipped in arctic water. My hands were vibrating and my every cell sang a chorus of discomfort and dull pain, a tingling sensation running across my skin.

My vomit wasn't natural. It wasn't the yellow-greenish bile that I expected, but rather, something that mixed in normal bile with blood and some kind of azure-blue fluid.

My eyes lazily scanned my surroundings, attempting to latch onto something definitive and revealing. I was in some manner of scrapyard at the edge of a city, filled with scrap heaps as tall as one story and crushed cars stacked on top of one another like pancakes. It smelled of smoke, pollution, mold, rust, and yeast, and other unpleasant flavors that filled my nostrils as soon the taste of unnatural vomit faded away; a scent palette characteristic of a polluted industrial zone. It was like I'd been saturated in an oil made of uncleanliness and then covered in breading made of shit and deep-fried, and it was engulfing me; a deluge of somatic dissociation and experiences each vying for a position to haunt me.

My brain tried to make sense of what exactly brought me here, but everything related to that field of questioning flowed slowly, like molasses out of a pipe, into a sea of absence.

What was the last thing I remembered?

I fell deep into thought, floundering closer to the car I'd vomited onto and into.

As hard as I thought, as much as I chased every errant spark of an unconscious idea that popped out, nothing concrete or detailed was coming to mind, not even from the deepest, remotest pits of my cerebellum. A couple of fleeting sensations danced in my skull, that felt almost like the shadowy phantoms of memories.

A moment passed, and I found that I no longer had even those phantoms. I forgot the details, the associations, as soon as they came up, leaving even these couple of strings of potential blanked out. And I could tell that I wouldn't miraculously recall them.

There was nothing. As far as I could discern, there was nothing to me.

Had I lost my memory, in some way? Was I amnesiac?

Was I…

Belatedly, I realized that I didn't even know what my own name was.

A cold mote of crystalline panic settled in me at the realization, like a fleck of demonic frost from the deepest and most condemned lakes in hell. It spread over me, cold veins digging into flesh and once more coming to overwhelm me. And then, in a snap, that ice transformed into pure, fluid nausea and vertigo, like reality had collapsed and I was flying through a vertiginous space, with no control over direction or trajectory.

I bent over the car again, hands tightly gripping the side of the door, and puked what little contents I had left in my stomach. It burned my throat as it made its way out, a coppery and hot sensation like an iron press and steam congealed into molten alloy. My elbows started to buckle as I unleashed the dragon's breath over the upholstery. I held on.

At the end, I was left coughing and wheezing, cleaning up the last dribbles of vomit with my sleeve. My stomach felt indescribably hollow and empty, like an egg that had its contents sucked out with a vacuum cleaner tube. My skin and face were both dry like sandpaper. If I wasn't also sick and nauseated, I probably would've said that I was hungry and thirsty.

In summary, I felt wretched and miserable, like a human piece of shit that was in the process of getting picked apart by merciless flies and colonies of bacteria.

"S-Sir?" A voice of a concerned old woman came to me from far away, behind a short chainlink fence. "Are you alright?"

"No!" I shouted back, voice hoarse and rasped, like gravel caught in a motor engine. "It feels like my lungs are trying to kill me!"

"Oh. That's bad," the sweet old woman said. As if nothing had even been said, she turned and kept walking in the direction she had been going earlier, groceries in hand.

I only barely registered her disappearance, as occupied as I was with the paradoxical task of not throwing up even more, and being rather bothered by the fact that I was unable to throw up even more. After several minutes of hyperventilating like a wheezing toad, breathing like a respirator, and swallowing the little pools of saliva that my dry mouth managed to produce to clean the vile taste from my tongue, I moved back away from the car.

I needed to get out of here. I needed to get out of here and find help.

Almost like a drunkard, or maybe like a zombie, I stumbled across the scrapyard's clear, barren paths, the ground beaten by what must've been the past footsteps of its workers. There was a challenge even in this, and every footstep I took, I felt as though I was on the verge of stumbling and falling over. I didn't know if I could stand up, if that happened.

It was a walk of shame, in a way - in knowing that I'd eventually be found and have to explain my circumstances to someone, to receive even a glimmer of aid. Unless I was, unbeknownst to myself, some kind of royalty, I doubted I'd have friends and relatives clamoring to deliver me to a hospital for premium care. And I heavily doubted that I was.

As much as I wished to surrender, or to magically skip forward to the next morning - when everything would surely be much better - I knew, deep down, that I had to continue walking.

So I did.

As I walked, sometimes hanging onto protruding pieces of rusted metal and crushed junk for a bit of balance, I noticed an odd-colored shape out of the corner of my eye. Dreary and barely able to focus my eyes, I looked harder and saw a pair of small tattoos on my left arm. Curious, I slid up my shirt's sleeve to examine them.

A sophisticated tattoo in the style of the letter C, but with lines moving away from the opening and then curving at the end. And right under it, a somewhat more complex and faded symbol: it resembled a circle with angularly-cornered prominences in a kind of tripartite radial symmetry, every protrusion acting as the center of an inward-pointed arrow in the middle. The arrows were connected by a dark circle, binding them. It was faint on my skin, as though engraved many years ago, more so than the stylized C.

It was extremely interesting. I didn't know anything about myself, but on pure instinct, I didn't think I was the sort of person who'd be interested in tattoos. At least, not in ones so heavily symbolic and abstract. I mean, I wasn't even fully certain what I was looking at. Obscure religious symbols? Some fucking company logos?

I covered up the tattoos, sliding my sleeve down, and moving on with a cough.

After several minutes of bumbling my way through the scrapyard like an unseemly hippopotamus, I found a spacious, open area, with a small modular building to the side, the sort you'd expect to see as the foreman's office on a construction site. The gate past it was mercifully left open, rusted barrels and long piles of chopped, scrap metal scattered around it.

And beyond its gate, I could see a long, narrow, industrial street with a bunch of factories and dilapidated buildings lined up on every side, their ancient red bricks and smashed-in windows showing how truly, utterly fucked this district of the city must've been. And yet, that sight was a comfort for my sore eyes, because it meant freedom from this smelly fuckspace, and the possibility of finding some kind of medical aid: actual civilization with actual people who could offer me help.

God knows, I really needed help, since I potentially had actual brain damage and couldn't remember my own name.

As I stepped onto the street and breathed in the local air - extremely polluted and contaminated, but a little cleaner than before - it felt like a ball-and-chain tied around my throat was released, and I acquired some minor amount of reprieve. However, as soon as I thought that, I lost myself to nausea again and fell down on the sidewalk, onto my knees.

"Ne, gesuyarou!" An angered man's shout reached my ears, from the right. Somehow, my brain's synapses fired in the correct way and recognized the language: Japanese.

I had no idea what he'd said though. Based on his tone, he was probably trying to get my attention.

I turned towards the source of the voice. I saw a thin-haired Asian man with a bunch of tattoos of dragons and flames on his face, wearing a green bandana around his neck and a red hoodie. He was with another Asian man, similarly dressed but with longer hair, several piercings on his face, and no tattoos. He was smoking a cigarette.

"What does that mean?" I asked, my voice feeling hollow and empty, as I didn't have the strength to converse.

They approached me and squared me with their eyes, up and down, as I keeled over and dry-gagged. As if reacting to my uncontrolled urge to vomit, kept back only by the fact that I didn't have anything to throw up, the tattooed man smirked while his smoking companion frowned in disgust.

"Man, what the fuck happened to you?" I looked up, to see the man with the tattoos had asked me that question. "Did you crawl out of the asshole of a whale with diarrhea?"

"I-" And then, I found that, apparently, I was wrong. My stomach did have something in it remaining. My throat squeezed as I forced out several, last chunks of viscous bile and the strange azure liquid, one that looked as though it should be a coolant for heavy machinery.

No longer able to keep in the constant pain and discomfort of my body rebelling against me, I cringed, eyes rolling up, and then started laughing uncontrollably, feeling inexplicably funny. How much worse could I possibly feel? It seemed like I logically ought to reach some kind of hard limit soon enough and pass out unconscious.

"I didn't think the joke was that funny," the man muttered.

I choked and coughed too much to be able to answer him immediately. They waited, observing me with something that resembled amazement.

As soon as I gasped in the first clear breath, I answered, "I have no fucking idea. I woke up in that scrapyard feeling like absolute shit, and I can't remember anything. I don't even know where I am. Like, what city I'm in. I know we're speaking English and that's about it."

"Ah, LSD is tough, especially if you down it with liquor," the pierced fellow said wisely. "But I never thought it could fuck your brain that much."

"LSD?" I asked him, breathlessly. "Is that the blue stuff in my vomit?"

"Depends," he replied, shrugging. He looked over at the liquid I'd poured onto the street in a bucketful. "You're lucky to be alive if all that stuff is LSD."

"I don't think LSD's blue," the other man cut in. He gestured at my vomit, particularly at the blue part of it. "I mean, look at that shit, man. That's at least enough to fill a cup of water. There's no way you can take that much without, like, a heart attack or brain failure or something. You'd be dead in a moment!"

"I'll be honest. I don't have any idea what I took, or even if I took anything." I stared at my own vomit, only a foot away. The azure part of the pool - the unidentified liquid - glittered in the sun, with a sort of iridescence, like a blown bubble caught in the light. "I can't remember anything. I can't remember my fucking name."

The atmosphere got marginally more serious, as the smirks faded off the men's faces.

The pierced one nodded once. "Do you have a wallet on you?"

I breathed in, then out, and then in and out again, as I moved back slowly. I patted around my pants, but couldn't feel anything. "No…"

"No phone?"

"Doesn't seem like it," I answered, starting to feel a sinking sensation in my stomach. One that went past the merely physiological level. I was fucking terrified.

"Holy fuck," said the tattooed man. "You're destitute, huh? No ID, no nothing."

"Oh, Christ." I keeled over the vomit pool and let out a burp, but didn't throw up. "Jesus fuck. What is happening to me?"

"We should call nine-one-one," the tattooed man said quietly to the other.

"As if they'd respond down here."

"You're right. Let's take him to the shelter."

"Can you stand up?"

As they spoke, I was focused on breathing, on controlling my breath and lungs, making sure that I wouldn't throw up or shit myself.

After he asked the question, my brain, working at a snail's pace, registered the numb feeling in my knees. My legs twitched like a corpse struck by lightning.

"Yeah. Yeah. Give me a secon-" I attempted to stand up, but ended up losing control as my knee buckled, sending me forward and off the sidewalk. I managed to catch myself, hands extended, and then pushed myself back to my feet, breathing like I'd run a marathon. I was about to fall over again.

"Jesus," the tattooed man said. He caught my shoulder with a hand and pulled me up to my feet and held me straight. "There you go. Better? Can you stay up?"

"I don't know," I whispered, coughing. "Maybe."

"Lean on me then," he said, and we began walking, slowly.

All three of us proceeded to walk down several blocks, accelerating our pace as we went, until I could walk more or less fine on my own, occasionally catching the man's shoulder when I stumbled. They led me deeper into the dilapidated city district, past factories with ruined chain link fences and broken-down buildings. They'd mentioned some kind of shelter.

"What is this city anyway?" I found myself asking. "And where are we going?"

"Damn, that bad huh?" the pierced guy whispered, almost impressed. "You're in Brockton Bay, Maine, United States. And we're going to a homeless shelter."

"Well, I'll take that over the scrapyard," I admitted.

He snorted, but didn't add anything to the conversation.

It took us almost an hour to reach the shelter on foot. It didn't help that my condition disagreed with any kind of movement whatsoever. Every five minutes or so, I had to stop for a moment because I was dizzy or because I had to puke again. As we proceeded, these breaks started to become much less and less common. They were kind enough and patient enough to put up with my bullshit whenever nature called, simply looking away or smoking cigarettes while I was heaving, puking, hyperventilating, or doing whatever else. Finally, many tribulations later, we reached our destination.

"So, here we are," the pierced man said. He gestured grandly at the building ahead with one arm, across the street.

It was an old building made out of red brick and poured concrete, with barred windows and ancient splotches of paint that came off in stripes and pieces as soon as you looked at them wrong. A long line of people stood by the door, all of them universally in rather poor condition and state of dress, being allowed inside or handed packets by a middle-aged woman who shared the same features as the men who'd been lending me a hand. It was a slow and haunting realization, but I came to understand that I was on some kind of gang territory: perhaps a ghetto of some stripe.

"Get in line, and they'll let you in when it's your turn."

I nodded. "Hey, thanks for your help. What are your names?"

"Shiro Aoki."

"Jing-Sun Tao."

"I'm, uh," I looked down at myself, noted the white skin, and forced myself to invent a name on the spot. "I dunno. Robert?"

"Robert?" Shiro asked.

"I, uh," I shrugged, incapable of explaining how I came upon that. It was the first name that came to mind. "I dunno. Robert, you know?"

"You don't look like a Robert, though."

"Yeah, more like a dickhead," Jing-Sun said.

"Good one."

They laughed at me for a moment, to my consternation, and walked off.

A little bemused, I approached the queue of homeless people in front of me and peered above their shoulders to spot what the middle-aged woman was handing off. Maybe food?

The line proceeded slowly. Some people made conversation, but I was too weak to converse with anyone - both socially and physically. If I attempted, I might end up unironically passing out from the sheer exertion of the feat. A few of the homeless people like me were being allowed inside, while others were given bags containing food, clothes, or other expendable commodities that they presumably wouldn't have access to. It seemed like clothing was among the most scarce resources, alongside cosmetics, and food was a little more common.

After a good ten minutes, I'd reached the front of the line.

I was sorely disappointed.

"We don't have any more food," the woman said, her expression vaguely sympathetic but not exactly committed. Her voice was dry and coarse, like sandpaper against broken glass. A habitual smoker's voice. It didn't really match her face. "But we'll have a free bed by tomorrow night. You'll have to spend this night outside, still."

I nodded, slowly, and came to terms with the idea. It wasn't perfect, but at least a humble promise of getting to sleep indoors was good.

"Do you know any other place I can stay?"

She didn't.

My first night in Brockton Bay was spent sleeping in an alleyway with a pillow made from a garbage bag stuffed with beer cans and apple cores.

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Birdsie

Nov 5, 2022

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Nov 6, 2022

#23

My eyes opened to the oddly pleasant sound of a pigeon's gentle coo.

It picked at the ground next to me a few times and was promptly startled when my head whipped around to look up. I shuffled to resettle myself in my uncomfortable sleeping spot. I let out a hopeless sigh for what must've been the seventh time since I went to sleep.

Above me, the world was an azure sky with clouds like dreamspun tufts of cotton silk.

It was bracketed on two sides by dirty brick walls, a dingy lightbulb hanging above a service door, and an olive dumpster that smelled faintly of hopelessness and rot.

It was my first morning on the streets, and rather appropriately for the circumstances, I felt like complete shit. My brain recalled the memories of yesterday: waking up in a remote scrapyard, puking up the contents of my stomach, and finding refuge under a dumpster while hungry, tired, and sick.

I could still feel the lingering remnants of that sickness, like a hangover that refuses to leave. My blood was still racing, my eyes were still lubricating, my heart was still throbbing, and my veins continued hardening. At least it was a little better than yesterday. I found that when I focused, I could form complex thoughts: do basic subtraction and addition in my head. in other words, I could reliably do elementary school mathematics. It meant that whatever kind of trauma I'd suffered, my brain damage probably wasn't as bad as I feared.

Maybe if I didn't know any better, I would have suspected that I'd been poisoned. However, that was a deliberate action that another individual or myself had to take, and if there was something that my brain understood on an innate level by this point, it was the fact that pretty much nobody gave a shit about me.

Maybe with the exception of kind Asian gangsters wandering the streets. After I crawled my way out of the scrapyard, it was a duo of Japanese and Korean career criminals who saved me. If not for an intervention on their part, I would probably now be lying asleep on the sidewalk. Permanently.

I shivered. I would've puked, but I had literally nothing in me left, so I dry-gagged and coughed for several moments. Fuck.

As I dealt with the residual nausea and sickness in my stomach, I nonchalantly looked around and absorbed my surroundings. Judging by the distant sounds of the car honks and city life, I must have been pretty far away from the area where the daily commune passed through. And judging by where the sun was in the sky and the number of people in the streets, it was probably around seven in the morning, maybe as late as eight. It wasn't anywhere even near noon, though.

I picked my ass off the street and brushed the dust and lingering smears of dirt off. A few sticky stains on my pants refused to be so easily wiped away, greasing my fingers instead. With a snarl, I brought my fingers close and sniffed, and shuddered - it smelled like a mixture combining French salad dressing and stale cigarette ash. Disgustingly sour and potentially carcinogenic.

As I realized the futility of my task, I stopped and moved outside the alleyway I'd slept in, drawing in a first, proper breath of the fresh morning. Even here, the city smelled like shit. I moved back in front of the ramshackle homeless shelter.

I was hoping - maybe in vain - to be there in time as one of the first people in line this morning, if not the first. It meant that I would have food, and maybe even I would be allowed to stay inside for a time; a few nights indoors to rest my crumbling body would be the pick-me-up that I desperately needed.

The lady from yesterday had told me to come back in the early morning. Apparently, the shelter handed off a limited number of supplies at preset times every day. Around eight o'clock in the morning being one of them, and though I didn't have any clocks, the sun was yet to rise over the large buildings east of my position.

Once I arrived there, I was met with a queue about a fifth of what it was yesterday, at the front of which stood the same lady from yesterday.

The shelter itself was unimpressive and dilapidated. It didn't look even remotely as though it'd been constructed to provide shelter to the weary and needy men and women of the world. It looked more like a repurposed industrial area that was last renovated during the Reagan administration. The queue of homeless people and fellow hobos was long and some people were looking impatient, although nobody pushed or approached the front to steal. And there was no ostensible security either: a couple of people standing on the flanks, possibly assistants, but hardly security. I considered that kind of curious.

I came into the line and waited, foot tapping against the sidewalk. As the queue moved, I managed to sneak a more detailed glance at the front.

It seemed like the number of items was the same as yesterday. And so it seemed like there'd be enough for me; maybe I'd even be allowed to stay over at the shelter. That'd be the lucky break I so desperately needed, after spending a night next to a revolting dumpster.

"Hi," someone said behind me, tapping my shoulder.

I turned, then looked down, and saw a short, fair-skinned girl with a gray beanie pulled all the way down to her eyebrows, with long red hair that stuck out of its rear end. Her eyes were bright green and she had a long, pale scar cutting across her left cheek. And despite everything, she smiled at me, with an expressive sort of cheeriness.

If I was going to be completely honest - although more than a little unkind to her - she kind of produced the impression of a female rat content with its lot in life. There was an unmistakable character to her face, like she was the sort of annoying kid that got punched in the face way too often, and now had a crooked nose and some missing teeth. For clarification: she explicitly didn't have a crooked nose or missing teeth - but somehow, she looked like she should. The odd dichotomy was sharp enough to transfix me for a short moment.

"Hello?"

She smiled at me, "How long have you been on the streets?"

I wasn't sure how to answer that. Maybe because it hammered in the fact that I was homeless, penniless, and utterly wretched. I did not have anything to my name aside from the clothes I was wearing. I decided to be straightforward, if vague.

"Not long."

"Did something happen to you?" she asked, putting her hands in her jacket's pockets.

It must've been nice, having a jacket to wear. The evil, reptile part of my brain pictured robbing her and seizing it. My basal ganglia forced me to imagine the comfort of the insulation, the coziness, and warmth. Then, my rational and compassionate side slapped me awake, and I realized I could never steal from someone who hadn't wronged me.

My brain froze. It must've been a disturbing look because her eyes widened a notch. Her smile didn't drop entirely.

She shook her head and decided to speak first, "I've been homeless for a bit over two months. My employer overdosed on black tar heroin, and I lost my only source of income. What put you on the streets?"

I didn't know how to respond. I didn't even know the answer, really. I managed to respond, awkwardly, "Amnesia."

She curled an eyebrow. "Meaning you don't know, or that amnesia put you on the streets?"

I stumbled over words, "I, uh, don't know."

She brought a finger to her lips, tapping. "You don't know the answer to my question, or do you mean the answer to my question is 'I don't know?'"

At that, my confusion transformed into deep-hearted annoyance.

"Are you fucking with me?"

She vigorously shook her head. "Of course I'm not! I'm just trying to make conversation. I've read that maintaining healthy speaking habits is key to remaining sane while on the streets. I also read that a healthy diet is also useful, but it's not like we have money for it-"

"You read a lot for someone who's homeless," I commented dryly.

She looked downcast at my response. "I wasn't always homeless. You're rude."

I blinked, feeling instant remorse. "Sorry. I didn't mean to be. I've lost my memories, so-"

"Next!" the Asian lady shouted at me nasally. I looked back and saw that several homeless people who'd stood in front of me were now scattered to the wind. It was my turn.

As soon as I approached, she practically shoved a bag of supplies into my arms. I peered inside and saw a couple of dry and canned foods, a small loaf of bread, a piece of soap, a spare t-shirt and shorts, and a few other commodities that were useful. I found the apparel contained inside to be lacking - a couple of socks, some hopefully unused underwear, and a shirt - but it was apparently March, so I supposed it'd keep getting warmer.

"Do you have space in the shelter? I could really use a bed. I haven't slept in anything resembling one for several nights." It was technically true.

She looked me over and considered me; like I was some kind of peacock to be displayed on stage tomorrow; as if drinking in every aspect of me and making sure that I wasn't some kind of drug addict or violent psychopath. As soon as she was satisfied with my apparent harmlessness, she nodded once, resolutely, "Inside. Claim a bed."

The redhead behind me whooped, a fist upraised. "There you go, homeless amnesiac! I'm happy for you!"

I paid her no mind and promptly jogged inside with my provisions in my arms. I was met with the sight and stench of an unwashed population of fellow bums, at least twenty or thirty people stuffed together in a small room like sardines. I could see a number of bunk beds to the left side, with people lounging and talking to each other, most of them packing their belongings and getting up, but more than a few staying to rub their faces, or waiting for the restroom to free up. Almost no one paid me any heed as I walked past them and claimed one of the few beds left inside, near the desolate corner of the room.

Across from the area with the beds was also some kind of lounge and reception, but it seemed to be empty, potted fern aside. It seemed like a rather desolate building. A pair of stairs led to the level above, but the steps were rotted and broken in a few places, literally snapped in half, casting doubt on whether or not it was possible to move upstairs. As the shelter became less and less populated over the minutes, people leaving to receive provisions outside or to do other things, it revealed how dirty the floor was, covered in sand, muck, dirt, and other grime.

As I put down my provisions bag on the foot of my bed, I started thinking.

I felt weak and miserable. My last night's sleep wasn't the best nor the most I've had - not that I remember ever sleeping before. Every time I blinked, it felt like there were crusty bits of shattered glass sitting behind my eyelids, scratching dully on everything as my eyeballs moved. My skin was cold and felt clammy to the touch, and I smelled more than a little, from sweat and grease stains covering my clothing and body. There was a patch of dry vomit on my sleeve, and it smelled almost chokingly bad.

I sat down on the bed, sighing deeply, and closed my eyes to rest them. I could feel the maiden genesis of a headache forming in a ring around my head, and I didn't want to be fully conscious when that happened. If I fell asleep, hopefully, I'd be able to forget the pain, wake up refreshed, and brainstorm a plan of action tomorrow.

A headful of red hair popped from above me and beamed me a smile from what must've been an inch in front of my face. "Hey, amnesiac bunkmate!"

I flinched, eyes opening as I jumped back against the drywall behind me.

I stared at her, mouth agape and eyes steadily widening. It was the redhead from the queue. She was hanging down, peering in from the bed above me.

"How the fuck did you get here so fast?" I asked. "I didn't even see you enter the room!"

"You were pretty distracted."

"You have superpowers," I deadpanned, closing my eyes. "Can't be anything else."

"I'm not a cape! Scout's honor."

"I bet you're not a girl scout either."

"I can recite the oath by heart!" She placed a hand over her heart and raised the other with three fingers extended, and her pinky and thumb joined together in a circle. "On my honor, I will do my best to be honest and fair-"

As she kept talking, I was more impressed by the fact that she was doing so upside-down, with nothing to ostensibly latch her onto the upper bunk other than her own legs and feet. It meant she probably had some insane lower body strength or at least decent manual dexterity. It seemed impressive.

I didn't know how athletic or strong I actually was. An examination of my body, on the cursory level, suggested I was at least somewhat fit; average, or above average. However, I didn't exactly have an opportunity to look in the mirror or feel around for muscle, and the hangover, or whatever I was suffering from, obscured my general physique and motorics skills. For instance, when I awoke yesterday, I could barely even manage to walk a couple of feet unaided without falling over or feeling my stomach seize in rebellion. This morning, my state was only fractionally improved.

I didn't and couldn't know whether I possessed decent coordination or agility, because any experimentation would probably result in me falling over and masterfully giving myself further brain damage. And straining my already fatigued muscles sounded like an amazingly fucking idiotic move.

"I see," I said dryly. "For someone very talented and athletic, to be this down bad?"

She pouted. "What a meanie. You're a bully. Actual bonafide perpetrator of oppression. Like the Pharaoh with the Hebrew people-"

"I'm sorry," I apologized, cutting her off, with an exhalation that would've killed lesser organisms. "I'm tired and I feel like shit. I'm not an antisemite. What's your name?"

"I'm not sure if I should tell you, you amnesiac oppressor!" she exclaimed petulantly, crossing her arms. Still upside down, mind you.

"Alright, Red."

"My name's Harriet."

I smirked.

"My name's Robert," I answered diplomatically, followed by a pause.

"Weren't you-"

"Probably."

"-oh."

I exhaled once more, rubbing a hand against my forehead. My head was throbbing with pain now, pulsing every couple of seconds to release a dull sensation into the interior of my skull. It wasn't especially painful, but it was very distracting, like it was actively suppressing and killing sentient thought, and made even the hypothetical prospect of conversing with her any further an insurmountable challenge; like being ordered to slay a dragon with a switchblade.

"By the way, I'm really sorry for the fact you're an amnesiac. One of my biggest fears is losing my memory. It must be really terrible to not remember anything, including your friends and family - possibly the only people that could help you in a situation like that. It's probably the worst thing that could happen to anyone."

"Wow. That's one way to pity a guy."

She flopped, and she had a minor malfunction, as she considered the fact she'd apparently offended me and now wanted to explain herself. "I-I'm not pitying you."

"Says you," I said dryly.

"Yeah, says me!"

I stared at her, nonplussed.

Not five seconds passed before the conversation abruptly shifted tracks. She was masterful in that regard, I could already tell, capable of derailing the fucking convoy to follow any cardinal direction she wanted.

"What did they put in your bag?"

My hand searched for my provision bag and latched onto its grip, dragging it over. I peered inside and found a bunch of stuff that people needed to survive, like food and hygiene items. As I hadn't checked inside yet, I picked through the items, blinking at them in turn. "Uh, shampoo and canned beans. Among other things."

"I got body-wash and pickled mushrooms. Among other things too, yeah," she said.

She began to scoot forward, away from me, and I blinked at her behavior, realizing her goal only a second too late as she finally shimmied out of her bed and fell down, making enough noise to draw some looks from the rest of the room. She rested by the bedside, head beside my feet, the rest of her sprawled.

"Oh, did you know I did gymnastics when I was little?"

"Uh-huh." I stared at her in open concern.

"Oh, don't be like that," Harriet said, "I'm fine."

"Uh-huh."

"I just need… a moment."

376

Birdsie

Nov 6, 2022

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Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Nov 7, 2022

#34

I spent a handful of nights over at the derelict homeless shelter. It wasn't even close to pleasant, and it wasn't home, but it was a roof over my head.

My daytime was spent aimlessly wandering the streets of Brockton Bay. I wasn't entirely certain what I was supposed to be doing. Aside from the amnesia and general sense of jamais vu, I spent a while puzzling out the exact mechanics of hustle culture and being a hobo neonate.

On the day after I managed to catch some decent bedrest, I went to a local hospital - the nearest one I could manage to obtain directions to. The local citizens weren't keen on speaking to someone dressed and smelling like the asscrack of an armpit, and I wasn't sure whether to feel neutral or heartbroken about that.

I only felt a kind of mild annoyance, honestly. I'd already anticipated this, but I only wanted directions - I didn't like them any more than they did me.

The receptionist of the hospital, a young twenty-something nurse was evidently disgusted with me the moment I entered. She listened to my complaints with an expression that bordered a snarl, then ordered me to sit down and wait.

After some two hours, it became clear their strategy was to hope I became too dreadfully bored to sit it out, but I managed another hour and the hospital staff seemingly caved in. They had a doctor check me over for a couple of minutes.

He listened to my health report - nausea and vomiting, and my suspicions of brain damage that induced amnesia - but didn't examine me in any other way, and told me there was nothing to be concerned about. He proceeded to turn me away with some bullshit recommendation about drinking more water. It was hard to tell whether he didn't believe me, and thought I was an alcoholic or crackhead out of the loop; or whether he did actually believe me, but simply didn't care. It could've been a mix of both.

So, in short, the hospital visit went swimmingly - the prescription was a simple bottle of water, and my ills would soon be cured. I'd recover from the sensation of broken glass stuffed forcefully into every joint, and probably even regain my memories!

American healthcare was a miracle!

In case you couldn't tell, I was being sarcastic.

To my added annoyance, Harriet stalked me frequently, like some kind of ownerless puppy searching for food I didn't even have for myself. I'd made it as clear as I could using human words that I didn't want, or consent, to being followed around in such a manner on a daily basis. She always repelled my concerns with some kind of witticism about homeless bums needing to stick together or having strength in numbers, and I'd always continue by saying that I didn't care, and I wanted her to stop following me and that exact cycle of conversation would repeat itself every morning.

Incredulously, she didn't seem to care in the slightest about my feelings on the matter, and I was neither in the mood nor physical state to pursue a violent resolution, even if she made me uncomfortable. As annoying as she was, she at least seemed harmless enough.

After several days, I was none the wiser for good ideas on what to do with myself, and sitting in the shelter again, waking up to yet another day of bullshit.

Harriet's head popped out from the edge of the bed. "Looking for something?"

"My shoes," I groaned.

"Someone might've stolen them."

I frowned, feeling a spark of frustration pop in my gut. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Ask management for a new pair, Robert. Robbie. Rob. Robs-Robe. Roboto. Robin. Hah, robbing. It's funny, 'cause it's what just happened to you. Get it? Robbery." I chose to ignore her antics - a skill I was becoming proficient at.

As much as I disliked the possibility of walking around this place without shoes protecting my feet from the pathogens and used needles, I had no real choice in the matter. However, I felt insecure leaving my pack of belongings unattended after I'd been recently stolen from. It seemed like asking for a repeat of the situation.

"Can you watch over my stuff?" I asked Harriet begrudgingly.

Harriet smiled. "Sure. I'll just take your soap!"

I frowned at her, but acquiesced, and handed over the bag. Harriet smirked at me as she claimed it from me with glee, waving her fingers as she reached in and withdrew the bar of soap in question. She played with the soap, throwing and catching it, as though it were a spoil of war that she wanted to show off.

Having no choice in the matter - and feeling like not having a choice was something of a developing pattern in my nascent life - I made my way to the reception area.

The people around me were still largely asleep and unready for the day. A couple of them were starting to rise from their sleep, while others attempted to catch a few last minutes of rest before the morning started properly. However, a few of the more proactive homeless people headed for the showers with all of their possessions in tow, and seeing that, something like annoyance and understanding clicked in my head simultaneously. I understood that my mistake was leaving my stuff unattended.

The manager was sitting at her desk in the reception, looking down at a stack of papers. A journal rested on her thigh, one hand stabilizing the papers, and the other holding a pen and writing in a language I didn't quite fully recognize. An Asian script of some kind. Mandarin? Japanese? Cantonese? She was smoking a cigarette, stuck in her mouth; she'd burned it down almost to the filter, but was more focused on her work than smoking. I didn't want to disrupt her work, but at the same time, couldn't know when she'd be done. It'd be impractical to wait for an hour.

"I had my shoes stolen," I reported.

She didn't even look up at me for one second. "Tough shit."

I didn't even know how to respond. I'd expected some kind of advice or response - she blew me off completely.

"What am I supposed to do?"

"Steal them back." She shrugged. And then, she finally looked up at me, and there was annoyance in her glare like I was mosquito pestering her that she wanted to desperately swat away. "Steal from someone else. I don't give a shit."

I looked down and nodded, then marched off.

"And?" Harriet asked from above.

"She told me to steal a new pair of shoes from someone else."

She beamed me a smile. "Good idea."

I didn't feel comfortable with the concept of stealing a possession from someone else - especially people down on their luck. I wasn't naive enough to believe there weren't selfish people in the world, but I didn't understand why someone would steal from me. My shoes weren't even that decent. They had ripped soles, and they smelled of sweat and vomit...

...But they were my shoes, man.

"Is it?"

"No. I was attempting sarcasm. I seem to have failed."

"Oh." I scratched my cheek, running my fingers through my stubble. "I didn't realize."

"Which is why I'm bad at sarcasm!" Harriet exclaimed chipperly.

"Makes sense." I was distracted as I spoke. Although I didn't want to steal anyone's shoes, the manager's advice had planted a seed of corruption in my mind, and now I was looking around the room, eyeballing people's feet and trying to compare their size to my own, to see if maybe their shoes might fit on me. More than a couple of people left theirs foolishly unattended, like me. It was a prime opportunity for theft, and maybe the last one I would receive. I deliberated on it but didn't make a move.

After several moments, a shout came from the reception. "Breakfast time! Everyone outside!"

A number of people started to rouse at the abrupt shout, waking up from their slumber, and that led to a domino event where others were awoken by the clamor. It seemed like the morning queue was about to begin stacking up, and I decided to join them, having no choice. It was uncomfortable to walk outside into the cold weather and step on the tarmac and sidewalk with no shoes. After claiming my new packet of items - smaller than last time, I noticed, as the manager eyeballed me with suspicion. It contained only a bag of powdered coffee and a croissant. I went back inside and ate my breakfast.

"So," I asked Harriet, sitting above me on her bed, and eating her own croissant, "What do you think I should do about not having any shoes?"

"I read that plastic bags around your feet work pretty well for insulation."

"I don't think that's a good idea."

"I also read that shoes work wonders for not having shoes!"

"I'm not a thief," I said, determined not to let this place get to me. "I'm not going to steal."

"I'll just give you my slippers, then," Harriet said. She reached into her carrier bag and handed me a pair of ridiculously pink and fluff-covered slippers.

For a second, I was disbelieving, left staring at the slippers with befuddlement - that she'd offer such a thing, and that she'd consider this a decent solution were both mysteries worthy of dubiety. It didn't change the fact, though, that I didn't have any other footwear available to me. It was either the ridiculous fluffy slippers or barefoot.

I took them and slipped them on my feet, with some amount of struggle. They were very small, almost too small for my feet, but I managed to pull them on. They were so tight, the edge of my foot's heel almost touched against the concrete when I stepped wrong in them.

She stifled a giggle. "You look ridiculous."

I nodded. "Alright. Thanks for the vote of confidence."

She smiled and folded her arms. "Anytime, cowboy!"

I cocked my head to the side in puzzlement. "Cowboy?"

"Cowboys wear funny shoes. And you wear funny shoes."

"Oh. Right." I shrugged. No point arguing with her. "I suppose we've entered the reality in which I am a cowboy."

After several minutes of dilly-dallying and doing pretty much nothing except resting and speaking to one another about small topics, such as the weather, and the amount of larval extract in the needles by the sink in the toilet, the manager lady came up to our bunk beds with her arms folded, staring down at us. Immediately, I sensed there was something wrong, and that feeling only strengthened when she continued staring, without saying anything. It took a second for her to speak, and when she did, I thought I sensed a mote of buried regret in her tone.

"Ya gotta scram, kids."

Harriet's eyes widened in shock. "Why? We didn't do anything!"

"Not enough spaces. Every useless bum in the city wants their turn under a rooftop. You've been here for a few already, and we're packed."

Although Harriet frowned and looked bitterly disappointed, I simply nodded in understanding. She picked up her stuff and climbed down the bed's ladder.

"Fair enough." I eyed Harriet as she made her way down. "Uh, is it possible to still come over to grab some food?"

"If there's enough," the manager lady said. "I can't fund this shit out of pocket. I'm basically homeless myself. At the moment, a few of Lung's kinder men provide for everything in this territory, so long as we're nice and obedient, and let them know if anyone tries any weird shit. They're responsible for keeping the peace. If you need another place to stay, there's a shelter down several blocks south, by the square on Maxwell's Street. Are either of you Jewish?"

"I'm not," Harriet said.

"Not as far as I know," I admitted vaguely. Harriet glanced at me.

"Then you probably won't be harassed too bad down there, but it's Empire turf, and they don't take kindly to homeless folk anyhow," the manager said. She reached into her pocket and took out a pair of cigarettes, handing them over to us. "If you let 'em thugs have a smoke, they might let you go off. Good luck."

And then she left, walking away. As she did, she took a single glance at my feet, noticed the absence of stolen shoes, and shook her head as if disappointed.

I held onto the cigarette, turning it over in my hand before pocketing it.

Picking up the carrier bag, I walked after Harriet as she led the way outside. As we moved outside, we meandered past a pack of small children, most of them no older than seven or eight, being led inside by a disheveled nun in a somewhat tattered robe. It was enough to almost make me stop moving. A nun, in this godforsaken place? Was it that bad out there, that even this shelter was a decent option for children by comparison? Suddenly, I no longer felt even a mote of resentment for the manager lady.

"Someone always has it worse, huh?" Harriet commented under her breath, hovering much closer to me, almost to the point of holding onto my arm.

Aimless, we idled down the street.

It wasn't even a minute before the silence apparently started to affect Harriet negatively, because she began a conversation.

"The manager lady was rude but kind at the same time," Harriet said. "Can you imagine? How someone can be such a living dichotomy?"

"I don't know," I posed sarcastically. "How can they, Harriet?"

"I'm not sure. By sarcastically saying sarcastic things? It'd cancel itself out at that point."

I sighed with such ferocity that I almost lost consciousness.

A voice spoke to us from an alleyway. "You kids looking for a place to stay?"

I looked, and I saw a man standing over there, leaning by a dumpster.

He was a middle-aged Caucasian man with thin graying hair, maybe in his late forties or early fifties. He wore an insulated parka jacket and ripped jeans with muddy blemishes at the leg openings, as well as work boots, leather gloves, and a thick frayed sweater. His advanced and warm clothing spoke of a higher level of advancement on the hobo skill tree: he was one of the precursors; not quite a Hobo King, but definitely a Hobo Baron. His nose was crooked as if he'd been punched at some point and never fully healed, and there was a faded purple tint around his left eye, a cut at his lip; thick calluses on both hands.

He looked almost like a stereotypical old bum, including a woolen hat that he was holding in one hand instead of wearing on his head. Maybe because it was March and not quite as cold anymore, or maybe because he wanted to look polite as he approached us.

"Uh." I looked at Harriet. "Are we?"

"Yes!" Harriet said excitedly.

"Yes, we are," I said.

"Where, when, and how?" she continued.

"Calm down," he said, raising a hand, surprised by the excitement of our reaction. "There's just a couple of hooks attached."

"Hooks?" I frowned, excitement deflating instantly.

"Yeah." He snorted. "It don't come that easy, son, sorry."

"What kind of hooks? What about the line? And the cane?" Harriet asked.

He stared at Harriet like she was four sides short of a square. "Err, no. It's simple, really. Name's Jack, and I represent a community of bums like yourselves and yours truly. We live at a certain spot that we've secured, and we're looking around for new members. It works in a democratic fashion,. Whenever we need to move, we scout new spots and vote on where to go. Everyone pitches in their own money in order to help sustain other members when'ver needed. Right now, we're willing to risk a few extra people."

"That's not democratic, that's… socialist," I said.

Harriet folded her arms and nodded knowingly. "What he said."

"Maybe, kid," Jack admitted. "But we have a nice thing going."

"What do you think?" I asked her.

Instead of replying to me, she made an outright proposition, "We'd be glad to join, but we're not really big on money."

Jack stared at her. His expression was somewhere between blank and bemused. "It doesn't matter. We can teach you how to earn. Or, at least, earn enough."

"I dunno," I said, noticing something off. "It seems too good to be true. An old weirdo approaches us in the middle of the street out of nowhere, right as we're leaving the homeless shelter, and offers us to stay over at his vagabond bastion and teach us how to make dough on top of that? I don't buy it."

"Don't call me a weirdo," Jack said, pointing a finger at me with a frown. "Also, it's your choice. If you don't want to, I'll leave."

"I mean… can we, like, stay with you guys for a day and-"

Harriet put a hand on my face. "Glad to accept."

I sighed into her hand. "Alright then."

355

Birdsie

Nov 7, 2022

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Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Nov 8, 2022

#46

"So, this is the place?" Harriet said, looking around with an emotion in her eyes that, in the same way that a corpse resembled a human being, reminded me of astonishment.

It was in the eastern Docks, in places where even the so-called Azn Bad Boys seldom tread. An abandoned factory standing alone by the darkened waters of the Bay.

It showed as many signs of decay as an alcoholic's liver, with cracked windows and snapped emergency ladders that formerly led to the rooftop, but were now left as nothing but creative ornamentation. The decrepitude almost reached the level of the shelter. It had a multi-floor section off at the side, supported with metal struts, without the chimneys that dominated the rest of the structure. It looked as though there used to be a managerial office on the second floor, suspended over the water and supported by metal beams that went down into the sands, but now, instead of being the resting place of a capitalist entrepreneur, a bunch of homeless people made their collective home over here. One of them, smoking a cigarette, waved from the window as we approached.

"You know, I think this area has an HDOJ," Harriet said to me, hushed and soft, but Jack overheard anyway.

"HDOJ?" Jack asked.

"High density of junkies."

Jack stopped and turned, with a raised eyebrow. There was an unexpected intensity to his voice like she'd spat on his dignity. I started to feel some frustration welling up in me at her behavior. "Excuse me?"

"Oh, I'm not talking about you. Just the vibe of the place," Harriet said carelessly, her head swiveling around.

"I'm sorry about my parasite's behavior," I told Jack earnestly.

"Shut up, Rob." She punched me in the lower back. It didn't even hurt.

"You started it, Red." She punched me again with slightly more force. I half-spun to glare at her, to which she initiated a glaring contest and stuck her tongue out at me.

"Are you two together or something?" Jack asked, with a curiously raised eyebrow.

I frowned at him, showing clear animosity at the suggestion. "No."

Jack recoiled, raising both hands defensively. "Jesus," he uttered. After a moment, he looked down at my feet, and pointed with his chin at my slippers. "Anyway, uh, we need to do something about the… fluffy situation."

"He had his shoes stolen," Harriet said, sounding chipper and helpful. Glaring at her with the passion of a sun unobstructed by the atmosphere, I was hoping that my eyes might somehow magically vaporize the blood out of her arteries and render her into a dehydrated husk.

"And he didn't steal them back?" Jack asked, genuinely surprised.

"Ugh! Fuck you both!" I snapped in frustration, huffing out with my nose. Harriet laughed at me, while Jack shook his head, as we moved inside.

The inside of the factory was completely different from the outside. The vibe - as Harriet was prone to saying - changed from crackhead hideout to homeless oasis. There were old yet clean mattresses and sofas strewn around the place in something resembling orderly fashion, makeshift tables and chairs made out of scavenged wooden planks and pallets, as well as several emptied barrels with a fire burning in them. An entire classroom's worth of people, somewhere between twenty and thirty, were casually conversing with each other while warming themselves around the sizzling fires. Assuming at least half of them weren't around, it meant the community numbered around sixty.

On the other side of the room, there was a metal staircase that led to the upper floors, which I supposed were the former managerial offices. They seemed to be devoted to the individual sleeping quarters and private rooms, although it was difficult to tell; more of an evidence-driven inference on my part. A lot of moss and vines hung down from the metal catwalks overhead, falling down several feet and giving the whole room a much-needed tinge of greenery among the sea of concrete-gray, almost like curtains or drapes. It was kind of beautiful, in a rustic and ramshackle kind of way.

When Jack shut the heavy factory doors behind us, the heads of several of the homeless community's members turned towards us, scrutinizing us to hell and back. I felt very small and vulnerable at that moment. A single errant judgment from any of these people would send me back outside in a moment. I stood ramrod straight.

"Pink slippers," one of them said; a teenager with a smug expression and hands in his pockets. African-American, around fifteen, with matted hair; thick, long, and drawn back. His clothes seemed to be the least deteriorated, with drawstring trousers, a white shirt, a dark beanie, and sneakers with laces and midsoles clean enough that I thought he must've been almost as recently homeless as me. He kept his arms folded and stared at me. "A nice first impression."

"My name's Red and his name's Rob!" Harriet said, pointing at me with her whole arm. "Thank you for welcoming us here."

"Red?" I asked, confused. "Rob?"

Harriet eyed me through the side. "They're our, uh, nicknames…?"

"It's kind of lame to introduce yourself with a nickname," I argued.

"Okay, fine." Harriet pouted.

"I'm Robert, and this is Harriet," I corrected her earlier, silly introduction.

"We'll pull our own weight, we promise."

It made for a charming introduction. Or at least a pathetic one.

"Good mentality," a man said. "Back it up with behavior."

I decided to allow Harriet to take the lead, as she seemed eager to respond. I reasoned that I couldn't possibly sink even lower in their esteem, no matter what she said - surprisingly, it was nothing bad.

"We'll do our best," Harriet said with a smile, turning towards me.

"Well, nice to meet you, Robert and Harriet. If you're wondering whose ass you've got to kiss, it's Phineas, but he's out at work right now," said the man. "My name's Arturo."

"At work?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. "Jack mentioned you do something to get money."

"Yeah, he…" Arturo stopped, crossing his arms. "It's quite complicated to explain exactly what he does. He… sells stuff, to people who ask for it."

My immediate thoughts went to a chemist making hardcore street drugs, for some reason. It seemed like the reason why they'd be so veiled about it. It was also probably somewhat lucrative, so long as he could hammer out a deal with the local gangs that seemed to be in charge. It'd certainly allow him to keep a homeless community afloat.

I wasn't certain whether I should bring that up, though. If I voiced any complaints, they'd probably kick me out, or something.

Jack shrugged. "He's our main source of income. He makes a lot, sometimes thousands in a week. It's enough to sustain a group this size, usually."

I looked to Harriet, almost as though for guidance.

"Is it incredibly illegal narcotic substances?" Harriet said, completely disregarding the conventional wisdom that suggested employing subtlety.

Arturo snorted, but there was a hint of clear discomfort in the way he proceeded to laugh. There was something deceitful about that laughter. "Nah. I'm an occasional mover for the Bad Boys. Handling packages, unloading cargo, that kind of stuff. Sometimes I'll even deal with a dead drop or two. I'd be more upfront with you about that."

Somehow, I could feel that although he wasn't entirely dishonest, they were hiding something else. This Phineas was definitely immersed in some illegal activity, although its nature eluded me. The more I understood the dynamics of this place, the more discomfort I felt, too. It seemed like it was too good to be true, and that feeling continued to intensify: not only a homeless oasis but a homeless oasis funded out of the pocket of some dude that I hadn't even met. And, who, apparently did some ill-defined illegal shit.

Jack mentioned hooks. He hadn't mentioned the crannies.

"If you want to ask about it, ask Phinny," Jack said.

"And he'll be upfront about it? You aren't," I pointed out.

Arturo leaned on one of the aged, decrepit concrete support pillars to his side. He raised an eyebrow and, in a way, almost waggled his head, like the statement he made was painfully obvious. "Because it's none of our business. He doesn't kill kids, doesn't rape women or shit like that. That's as far as our concern goes."

"Alright, I'll take your word for it," I said, although deep inside, my skepticism didn't dissipate. It only increased, embers fanning into sparks of flame. I couldn't help but feel there was something dangerous about this Phineas character. I wasn't even sure if I could rely on my hunches. Most of the time, I had to check around me and thoroughly read a room to confirm whether or not my gut feeling was right or wrong.

I hoped to God that Harriet could, for once, keep her mouth shut and wouldn't mention it to anyone. That wasn't the kind of vulnerability I wanted to be actively aired out around a bunch of strange people I barely knew, and who could've been dangerous. It was enough of a risk even coming here.

To my immense fortune, it seemed her mind was stuck in another realm.

Harriet started, "Does he sell guns?"

Arturo grimaced. "No."

"Uuuh… swords?"

"No."

"Why the fuck would he deal in swords?" the African-American teenager asked, mouth opening in absolute shock. "Who the fuck sells swords?"

"Armsmaster," Harriet said defiantly, putting her hands on her hips, akimbo, mimicking a superhero pose. I looked at her in disbelief. Even I knew that Armsmaster did nothing of the sort. Then, I realized she didn't seem to really believe her own words. The fact she did it with other people present, though, was more evidence of the fact that annoyingness was engraved in her very essence.

Jack got closer to me and placed a hand on my shoulder, to lean closer and whisper in my ear. "Is your friend… alright?"

"Parasitic, yes," I said. "Right in the head, I don't know."

The discussion somewhat veered from there, in a different direction, but I found the talks difficult to follow along with. Nobody offered to show us around, or even to our beds. No one was explaining the 'hooks' that Jack mentioned in any greater amount of detail and it felt awkward to ask, making me feel kind of clueless and hopeless, like a fish out of the water. Once they started to get into the topic, I realized that I had to speak up, or nobody else would.

"Hey, so, uh," I interrupted a discussion about the legality of owning swords awkwardly, "Do we get beds to sleep in?"

"I'll show you," Arturo said, beckoning us to come forward. He reached out with an expectant hand, and I somewhat reluctantly handed over my bag, containing the provisions and hygiene products I owned. Harriet had some more reservations about it, to my surprise, and declined the kind offer with a vocal 'nah.''

With a deliberate shrug, Arturo led the way up the spiraling staircase to the far side of the large room. The homeless people, whose names I didn't even know, continued their conversation - seemingly another one, from before we'd entered - as we moved off.

My slippers felt awkward on the high steps of the staircase, and that wasn't to mention that I hadn't entirely recovered from my rude awakening, almost half a week ago. As I climbed, I felt a fraction of the dizziness coming back to me, slithering in through an eye socket like the ghost of an adder in my skull, dripping caustic nausea-inducing venom into my brain coils. It would've been so easy to lose a grip on the railing and tumble down, but Harriet was behind me, and I was somewhat comforted by the thought that either she'd catch me, or my mass would slam into her own and we'd both die together, instead of me dying alone.

Arturo led us to a section of the upstairs - not exactly a room, barely even an alcove. More like a corner that had been sectioned off with stacks of hollow bricks and gravelite, a couple of planks that acted almost like impromptu shelves.

Instead of beds, clean mattresses awaited us. There wasn't a lot of space, though. Barely a square meter more than in the shelter. And it clumped us somewhat close together, more than I would've been comfortable with, had I not been homeless and in a real position to complain about it. This was already kind of an insane step up.

Arturo put down my bag on a mattress, and took a glance in our direction, as Harriet claimed the other bed, practically leaping into the mattress.

"So," the man said, "How did you get out here?"

"Out here?" I asked for clarification.

"On the streets. The bad part of town," Arturo said, although he somewhat hesitated on that second half. "You know: out here."

I wasn't sure how much I wanted to tell him. As little as I could, given the possibility, although it didn't seem like I had an out. It wasn't like me to offer a dumb philosophical platitude in response to a serious question, like, 'I am a lost wanderer amidst seas of confusion,' and expect him to be satisfied with it. However, I couldn't imagine that simply blowing him off or saying that I didn't trust him with that information would be well-received. I needed to choose something else or find a way to be acceptably vague.

"I'm not actually sure," I simply said after a while, shrugging awkwardly with my hands in my pockets.

And I left it at that, hoping that I could cobble together something concrete if he wanted more details. That second question never came, though.

There was a clang of metal on metal, as the large warehouse doors were pulled open with more force than was actually required. There was a harsh hushing sound coming from one of the teenagers that I spoke to before, and the room quieted down. Arturo and I moved close to the railing and peered down.

Everyone that I could see was either hiding behind a large piece of cover or standing as inconspicuously and unnoticeably as possible as if trying to blend with the concrete behind them. There was an atmosphere of fear permeating the room: one that immediately infected me, as I realized something terrible was going to happen in seconds.

This must be one of the hooks.

A voice beckoned from downstairs. A voice that I was scarily familiar with.

"Oh, come on you guys, don't be afraid!"

I looked down into the warehouse, from our somewhat concealed vantage point, and saw the tattooed Asian gangster from earlier, next to the one with piercings. They were casually strutting into the middle of the open space, like they owned it. They were leading a larger group of Asian men in colorful clothing, all wielding a variety of melee weapons. Crowbars, baseball bats, metal pipes, car jacks, and knives: everything under the sun that could be used to do something mean to a person's face.

A couple of them, standing back, and with less smugness, sauntered around in a covert way that suggested they were packing more heat than what met the eye. There was certainly enough space in those jackets for a handgun, or maybe something even larger and more dangerous.

"Harriet," I whispered, moving away from the railing.

I turned to look at her, and I could see the fear almost matching my own. She was pale in the face. There was a shakiness in her knees, and even without holding her hand, I could know her palms were clammy, beginning to develop a cold sweat.

"Arturo," I whispered to the man. "Who are these guys?"

Arturo frowned at me. There was recognition and familiarity in his eyes: he also knew these people, and probably better than me. "Landlords."

"Come out. come out! Come or you'll get shot, you unwashed motherfuckers!"

There was a young woman standing next to the entrance, her hair cut into a short blonde bob. She was standing out, so much so that even I noticed her, and that was bad on its own. Part of the reason was that she was all but shaking with fear, not looking at any of the men. So, when one of them suddenly approached, grabbed her by the hair, and pulled down harshly, it came as a surprise only to her. She let out a yell, as he attempted to keep her still, raising a knife, and something in me came awake: something sidereal to human instinct.

I moved across to the railing, leaning over it, eyes widening in disbelief even as I registered what I was about to do: commit suicide.

"Nay, gesu yarou!" I shouted, completely butchering the Japanese, waving at them. "How about you pick on me instead?"

"Hey, that's the guy that vomited on my shoes last week!" Shiro, the Japanese member of the ABB, burst out laughing instantly, chest heaving with the strength of his guffaws. After a second, he looked up at me. "R-Robert, right? Puke guy! Pukey!"

"Fuck, why do people keep giving me terrible names?"

Some of the other Azn Bad Boys members started to incrementally get in on the ongoing laughter, in a staggered manner, as if gradually and confusedly picking up on the cue that this was Laugh-At-Robert o'clock.

It took almost half a minute for the mocking to die down, during which nobody among the homeless dared to make a single movement. Not even a twitch of the eyebrow. The fear, despite the joyous sounds, was still palpable in the air. It could almost be cut with a knife.

I wasn't entirely without fear, either: maybe I was amnesiac, but that didn't mean I wanted to die here without at least finding out why. I'd drawn a lot of attention now, and some of those men were heavily armed. A single wrong move and I'd be lying in a ditch outside in a couple of moments, never to move again.

My familiarity with the men in charge provided me a bit of ablative armor, at least: I could use the humor as a form of shield; make them consider it in their interests to leave me alive to be a sort of amusing idiot than strike me dead to be an example.

"So, come on down here, Pukey." Shiro beckoned with his hand, and every single one of the other homeless people like me stared in my direction, unmoving. There was some kind of emotion in their gazes. In the heat of the moment, I couldn't tell what it was.

"Are you gonna beat me up?" I asked him. "It's looking like you're gonna beat me up."

He shrugged dismissively. "Nah."

"I mean, everyone here looks scared of you."

"I mean, they do have lots of weapons," Harriet blurted out, looking off into the distance, beneath, at all of the arrayed thugs. Only a few of the footmen in the group leered back at her, some of them with violence or annoyance in their eyes. Most of them were focused on me, where I leaned over the railing prominently.

"Alright then, come here," the boss exclaimed with another wave of his hand. He was getting more impatient with every second I made him wait.

I decided to comply, in the end. It necessitated for me to briefly move out of sight, as I stood away from the railing and proceeded in the direction of the spiral staircase. Arturo looked at me like I was a crab about to be cooked for dinner. A moment later, I stepped down into the open, pink slippers on my feet and all.

As soon as everyone saw my footwear, the abrupt laughter from before restarted like an engine brought to life, at least amongst several of them. It helped strike how absolutely pathetic and harmless I was: another point added to my silly and wholesome jester portfolio.

In the end, Harriet's charity ended up doing a lot more in my favor than I expected.

I came up to Shiro, and spread my arms to the sides, like I was presenting myself to him.

"I didn't know you're a big shot in the ABB."

"I'm not," Shiro answered. "I'm something of a... specialist, though. I'm good at taking care of business, and that makes me valuable. I prefer to be humble about it. It gets people to open up."

I frowned but didn't speak.

Shiro folded his arms, squaring me over. "You know why we're here, Vomit Man?"

I shook my head solemnly. A couple of his men continued to chuckle, or titter in the background. They were distracted from the homeless, at least.

"Rent."

"So we're behind on the bills?"

I heard Harriet's snort echo throughout the quiet warehouse, almost making me cringe. If my ballsack was any softer, it'd have shriveled up like a dehydrated fig.

"Yes." His dark eyes crossed the room. "You are all dreadfully behind."

I heard a voice speak up, a couple of feet behind me and to the left side. It was soft, attempting to conceal fear, and not doing a good job of it.

Jack started speaking, taking a tentative step forward. His voice was conciliatory, attempting to defuse tension and aggression. "Please, you said you'd give us-"

A red brick as large as my fist sailed past my head within a moment, with an audible whoosh, and hit Jack square in the temple, sending him to the ground. I could hear the gasp from his mouth. My eyes widened immediately, as several of Shiro's men casually and slowly moved past me and grabbed Jack under his arms, dragging him unceremoniously to the middle of the room, feet catching on the floor in several places, kicking up dust. I watched and didn't move, heart hammering in my chest.

"Listen up, good people of the Docks," Shiro called out, letting his voice reach every corner of the building. "My boss, Lung, is not a patient man. It'd be accurate to say he is the opposite, and he's not particularly kind or charitable, either. If you were to say that he's honorable, you'd probably be in the wrong, led by some misconceptions that you might've overheard in rumor. However, I don't think it's not completely fair to say that Lung's not pragmatic, or that he's needlessly cruel."

Shiro concluded, taking a step closer in my direction, although he didn't look at me. He was looking across the entire room, up onto the railings and above them, and down below, to where people stood in rows. Addressing everyone in equal measure; a speech to an audience, meant to strike fear and make an impression.

"And I am a reasonable man. The ABB owns the Docks, as it has for many years, and you've been granted a slice of the domain: a slice that goes unused by the dragon as a result. It means you're an ongoing drain: a cost."

Shiro approached Jack. He grabbed the man's gray, unclean, bloodied hair. In a harsh yank, he pulled Jack's face up. so that he was looking at the crowd. It looked like it hurt, given the cringe on his face.

Something in me tensed. I anticipated sudden violence.

"And Lung doesn't like costs."

He let go of Jack's head, allowing it to slump back to its relaxed position.

"But as I said, I'm reasonable. I am not like the members of the Empire, who'd rather lock you all in here and throw gasoline cocktails through the windows and watch you beautifully go up in flames alongside the building - a sad industrial accident." Shiro placed a cigarette between his lips.

Shiro approached Jack once more and thrust his hand in the old man's pockets, the ones in his jacket and pants. He pulled everything out, item by item. I had a prime angle to see exactly what he pulled out. A pair of half-eaten snack bars still in their wrapper, some hairbands, and a wad of dollars and silver coins.

Around $300, from what I counted from where I was standing, although I could've been off by a lot.

He dropped everything that wasn't the money on top of Jack's head, then turned around to face the room.

"This does for around half of it," he said, flashing a bouquet of green bills. He made a show of pocketing it. "I'm expecting the same amount, by no later than Monday morning next week. Then I'll stop being reasonable."

"How do you expect any of us to get that kind of money?" I asked him saliently. There was no rational way in which homeless people, even working in concert, would be capable of scrounging together anything close to the needed amount.

Shiro shrugged and turned around to walk away. The rest of his men did the same, lingering only for a couple of moments, to throw Jack against the floor. The woman from earlier was released as well, the knife on her throat stowed away into a pocket. "Not my problem. Whore yourself out, if you need to. Sell your liver. I don't give a single fuck."

The ABB members left the building - not bothering to close the door.

I heard a single, quivering sob coming from somewhere above me. Then, more people started breaking down: some of them crying, and others rushing out of hiding, or into hiding, or deeper into the building.

Once I was reasonably certain they wouldn't return, I approached Jack. He was lying on the floor, on his hands and knees, slowly putting a hand against his bleeding temple. I knelt next to him and assessed the wound, then yelled, "He's bleeding! Do we have anything for that?"

Somebody that I didn't recognize flinched, a woman in her thirties. She moved to bring, hopefully, a first-aid kit. In the meantime, I looked Jack in the eyes and whispered, "Do you remember how you said you'd teach us to make our own money? I think we need to accelerate that plan."

The woman returned a couple of seconds later, pushing me aside to help Jack move. Jack was seated down on a stacked pile of tires as she worked on him. A minute into the procedure, he had a crown of fresh bandages wrapped around his forehead.

"So, ow do we gather money for those pricks?"

"We beg," Jack said.

"Beg?"

"Unfortunately." Jack smiled with a pained expression.

"Do you usually go begging for money?" I asked him curiously. "Isn't there anything else we can do to earn money?"

"Sometimes, we do work. Construction work, dock work... Although, that kind of part-time market has been drying up, especially in recent years... It's been more and more difficult to subsist without the kindness of random strangers, or without doing some regrettable things. We've managed to get along, on our own, and then with Phineas helping now and then." He began to stand from the stack of tires, with heavy exertion. "It's been difficult, but it is what it is. We keep rowing on. So, we go and beg."

There were about a thousand wrong things with the sheer idea of begging for money. It was undignified, it'd take a lot of time, and there were no assurances that we'd actually get the money needed. And that wasn't to mention the danger of going to the streets with so many gangs around.

But I didn't have anything better in mind, and regardless of my personal feelings on the matter, I was now the sort of person who needed to beg for money, with no other way out or forward.

I could've escaped. I wasn't really a part of this commune, and neither was Harriet. If I departed and never returned, I doubted any of them would firmly hold it against me, assuming they ever saw me again. And the ABB was too decentralized and simultaneously too focused on profit to give a shit about something a single, amnesiac man did a while ago in relation to its homeless harassment operations. It was an option; a way out, assuming that I desperately needed one.

However, despite Harriet being an idiot most of the time, there was something true she'd taught me: homeless people like us needed to stick together. There was a strength in numbers and in the community. And being here, even for less than an hour, I could see that. Around me, people were helping one another: recovering mentally from the unexpected ABB visit, and sharing food and items, passing along ideas. There was a space for compassion here; for charity.

And there was strength in that. More strength, I thought, than in being alone.

"Alright," I accepted Jack's words. "So, we go and beg."

"Just like that?" Jack asked, surprised. He seemed to have considered the same things as me.

I shrugged. "We stick together, right? A community is what you said, hooks and all." I offered a faint smile.

"I expected some more reticence," he grumbled. "If you don't want to, you can stay here - you and Harriet. You've already done plenty for the sake of everyone here. You put yourself down here next to those little pricks, did your best to talk them out of it. I can appreciate that, kid."

"No." I reconsidered, and added, "Maybe. But even if that's the case, I still want to learn the ropes."

He only nodded. "In that case, it's better we start getting ready. We'll have to gather money."

Everyone in hearing range agreed and started dressing up in warmer clothing, as soon as the order was out. I was handed a parka jacket by the African-American teenager I'd seen before, to keep me a little warm. I offered him a thankful smile. "Thanks."

"Name's Emmanuel, by the way," he said. "Call me Em."

I nodded. "Robert, though you already knew that."

"I saw you standing up to those guys," he said. "Everyone did, I suppose. It was... stupid but brave." He nodded with respect.

I approached Jack afterward, as he was putting on that woolen hat of his, covering the bandages. It seemed a little counter-intuitive to me. If the plan was to beg strangers for money, it'd be much better to show our weakness and infirmity.

Then I remembered something, right as Harriet came down the stairs alongside Arturo.

"What about Phineas?" I asked him. "Isn't he supposed to be moneyed or something? At least, in relation to us?"

"He, uh…" Arturo scratched the back of his head.

"Left a couple of days ago," the woman from earlier cut in abruptly, gathering the remaining medical supplies she hadn't used up: a couple of bandage rolls, and some antiseptic fluid in a small bottle. There were a couple of other items, like the pair of scissors she used to cut the bandage, but she stowed them away in her pockets instead. I wondered whether she carried them around for self-defense. "We've not seen him since then. He does that sometimes, once every couple of weeks at least. It's… highly unlikely we'll see him before Sunday evening. And he might not know we'll need the money."

Harriet was scowling. "Well, he sounds like an asshole, leaving you all on your own, alone to fend for yourself, against the gangs."

"I don't believe we're in a position to judge," I said.

"He's often out," Arturo said. "And he always comes back with stuff for us."

"That doesn't excuse him, does it?" Harriet asked, on the edge of boiling anger. "According to your explanation, it's basically his fault this is happening."

"Harriet," I chastised her, hoping to prevent the outburst of a conflict.

However, it was already too late.

An intense thickness slipped into Arturo's voice, a strength to his accent that hadn't been there before as if revealed by sudden anger. "Who the fuck are you, to come in here and tell us shit, pendeja?!" Arturo shouted, getting within several inches of Harriet's face.

"Art!" Emmanuel exclaimed as he dashed forward, grabbing Arturo's forearm and pulling him back. He got closer, and whispered, with an intensity of his own, "Quitate, cabron. Ellos son nuevos por aquí."

Arturo frowned deeply. "Eso las excusa?"

Emmanuel gave Arturo a light, chastising bump on the head. "Let it go. Un idiota es un idiota."

I frowned, capable of guessing what they'd said, and not especially happy about it. I decided not to stir the hornet's nest anew, though.

"Well," I said, turning to Jack. "Uh, where do we go begging?"

"There's a couple of places," he muttered, before turning to address everyone. "Alright, listen up. We'll have to move out in two-man teams. Somebody has to show the newbies around a couple of the spots. Anyone up?"

The woman from before nodded, stepping forward. "I could take… Harriet, was it? I'm Lynn." She offered a hand to Harriet.

Harriet extended her own hand and took Lynn's. "Pleased to meet you. Did you know I'm half Irish?"

"So I suppose Robert's with me," Jack grunted. "Alright. Move out, and make sure not to overlap too many spots."

And like that, we left.

I didn't know, back then, that I'd return here much later, a changed man.

Last edited: Nov 8, 2022

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Birdsie

Nov 8, 2022

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Nov 9, 2022

#65

Jack and I trundled off down the streets of the Docks, walking past mazes of broken chainlink, processions of shattered windows, and patches of yellowed grasses sprouting in the cracks of the sidewalk. Once we'd moved a reasonable distance away from the old seaside factory, I decided to ask him for instruction on what exactly we'd be doing.

"So, how does this work?"

"Usually, you go out somewhere, wear a hat, then put it upside down and wriggle it so that people give you coins," Jack said calmly as we walked.

"I don't have a hat."

"You have a slipper," he said, looking down at my feet.

"Oh fuck off."

"Hm, yes, but you aren't wrong. Tell you what, we'll look around for a tin can from a dumpster along the way. Those work absolute wonders for the pity points, especially if there's a handful of coins in there and they rattle just right," he said. There was thoughtful slyness in that statement, as though he were to wink at me.

"It makes the pity glands swell, huh?" I was getting progressively more tired of people pitying and laughing at me. It felt like that was all human beings did nowadays.

Jack raised an eyebrow. He must've noticed my annoyance. "Do you want to make money?"

I rolled my eyes. "Yes, daaad."

He took the joke in stride and went with it. "Good, son. Now-" He clasped his hands together with a smile on his face. "-let's go make some fucking money."

As promised, we shuffled around through a couple of metal trash bins and communal dumpsters on the way there, some of them in alleyways, and more than a couple of them in public neighborhoods. I felt a flush of shame on my cheeks when I noticed several young children staring at us from across the street, riding on their bikes, pointing fingers and whispering. They didn't even seem old enough to fully comprehend the purpose of our actions - they were rather simply mystified that someone would be taking things out of the trash, rather than putting them in. I avoided eye contact with them.

Once we found a decent can - smelling of dog food - and rinsed the inside with an equally scavenged toothbrush, we moved on, a couple of neighborhoods south and west, closer to downtown. The shape of the streets was different here.

The city didn't smell like the excrement of the God of Shit, for one, and there were a lot more grocery stores, and more services; the buildings themselves were grandly constructed and architecturally complex; larger and taller, made from sturdier and modern materials, with sets of framed windows. There were several parks scattered around, with people in them, and it didn't seem like the pedestrians were constantly afraid to cross the street. The difference between the Docks and their rotten industrial surroundings was remarkable, so much so that I needed a second to let my conscious stream of thoughts reboot. This district looked so eminently normal and acceptable that I could barely comprehend its existence.

"Look sharp, Robert," Jack advised me. He patted me between the shoulder blades, in an encouraging and simultaneously paternalistic manner. "Take your pity dial and crank it to eleven. Most people don't care about bettering society or helping others, they care about making themselves feel good by doing kind shit. So cater to that."

"Cater?" I asked, surprised by the usage of that word. "So, what you're saying is, we're providing a service? Letting people feel like they're doing good deeds?"

"Yes, and they are. It's indeed a good deed to prevent a bunch of people from getting beaten half to death by Asian gangs. Even if they don't know that."

"Right. So, uh, how's it work?" I asked him again, not feeling confident. "Do you, like, take a position across from me, or do we go around and ask people, or what?"

"If you go around bothering people, they'll call the cops on you." He stopped for a second, thinking. "Actually, they'll probably call the pigs on us anyway."

"Right."

"See that corner, by the church?" He pointed with his chin. I looked across, and I saw a residential neighborhood: rows of tanned bricks and white-framed window tenements, constructed maybe half a century ago and renovated several times since then. Almost near the end of the street, where it turned down east and met an intersection, there was a church, or maybe a cathedral, extremely old and large, with a tall bell tower and a protruding metal cross at its peak. There was a cobbled wall surrounding the church's yard, shaped almost like a bent, squashed pentagon as it ran parallel to the surrounding streets, and there was an open and well-visible metal gate on the side closest to us.

It looked empty right now, but I could've been wrong.

"Go and sit down in front of that," he said, and instructed me carefully, "Christians pay well, especially near a church. It makes them feel constantly watched by God, and reminds them of what's right and important when they can't do otherwise. Every dollar is a complete guarantee of their soul going to Heaven, so you bet your ass they'll pay you with a bonus. It's one of the better gigs."

"What's God?"

Jack put a hand to his face. "Oh dear baby Jesus."

"I'm kidding," I told him easily. "I'm only getting in character. Aren't homeless people uneducated? What's a Jesus anyway? He anything like God, sir?"

"Yeah. They're the same person, actually." Jack snorted as we approached the church.

"Jesus and God?"

"Yes," he said. "You see, God created the world, and then created us. Then some bad stuff happened, and humanity was branded as evil. So God reincarnated himself into his own son, Jesus, and killed himself to redeem mankind. That's what the Bible says happened."

"That's complicated as fuck. Also sounds like a scam."

"Yeah. But you'll pretend to love it if you want to get the extra money." He patted me on the shoulder, almost apologetically, then sent me off.

I sat down in front of the church, on the cold bricks near its wrought iron gate. My tin can was cold in my hand, and growing colder every minute as I sat there. My slippers were becoming warm and humid with increasingly hot sweat. Every part of me itched, and I wanted to scratch as bad as I could - sitting down, without anyone to talk to, without anywhere to walk to, made me realize that more than anything could've. I wanted a shower, and new clothes.

I wanted, I thought, more than anything; to not have to beg, to have a normal and happy life, and not be so miserable all the damn time. I hoped I could get there eventually, and I channeled that determination as I waited. The can in my hand felt like certainty shaped into metal; I could almost see its structure without looking, feeling the confidence brimming in its tubular shape. I breathed in deeply, and almost gagged at my own smell.

A couple of minutes went by, and I saw a woman in a black dress moving by, with an expensive leather purse around her shoulder. She was wearing sunglasses and a hat, and seemed kind of absentminded, stuck in thought, to the point where she didn't even notice me out of the corner of her vision. I rattled my can towards her.

"Ah? Oh, hello," the woman said, noticing me with the sound. She approached me - with an immediate smell-induced cringe that she attempted to conceal - and fished out a gleaming five-dollar coin from her purse, dropping it in my tin can. "No drugs or alcohol, please."

"I don't even know where to get that, ma'am," I told her frankly, politely, downplaying my apparent age a little. "I'm amnesiac. I barely know how money works. Jack told me I have to gather money to survive, though. It's for food…?" My final sentence was a little confused.

Wordlessly, she reached into her purse and rummaged around for a couple of seconds. She then gave me another twenty dollars. "God bless you," she said, as she left.

Deep inside, I felt a dual emotion, acting on opposite polarities: a dichotomy strong enough to tear an elephant in half. I was simultaneously burning with absolute shame that I'd had to make such white lies in order to earn money, and simultaneously proud and smug that I'd managed such a convincing act.

I technically didn't even lie, though, since every statement I made, absent of any context, was complete truth. I didn't have any clue where to procure drugs or alcohol, and I was amnesiac, and I didn't understand the economy.

And like Jack said, she'd now return home feeling much better about herself. She'd probably remember this small encounter for at least several weeks, and use it as a reminder for herself, that she wasn't evil, and that she was much better than your average person that'd have bypassed me without a second thought. There was some cold comfort to that mode of thought; to considering my actions a service, a sort of advanced acting job. If I lied to myself strongly enough, I could almost believe it.

But, in the end, my thoughts dutifully returned to their origin, to the cold and ugly truth. In reality, I was and I would remain, a homeless bum, as hobo as they come.

Another quarter of an hour passed, with almost no movement from pedestrians. Around ten or so people in total moved by me in that amount of time, and only half of them stopped for longer than a second. Most of them noticed me ahead of time as they approached, and foraged around their pockets for a bit of spare change, which they dropped into my rattling can without a second thought, and without even stopping. A fifteen-year-old student with a Hello Kitty backpack was a little kinder, and she gave me an entire dollar.

It felt wretched, sickening even, having to accept money from school children.

Altogether, the encounter with the woman must've twisted my expectations. I'd had a sort of early confidence, or optimism that not an hour would pass, and I'd have a hundred dollars. Now I understood that was a plain fluke, a bit of fortune that added up to my favor.

Most people didn't even bother to give me the cents, even when they might've been better off without the unnecessary weight.

Still, I didn't bother or speak to anyone, unless first spoken to. Avoiding giving people reasons to call the police on me, for disturbing the community. I wondered how illegal our type of vagrancy actually was. If the police did arrive, would they confiscate our money?

Over an hour passed as I asked for money, rattling my can like a small tin bell when I decided to do a check of my profits. I pulled the coins out of the tin can, one by one, and started counting. A minute later, I was done, and deeply disappointed.

$33.05, altogether, with that last dollar almost entirely composed of pennies, and most of the money outside of the $20 bill in the form of single-dollar coins, quarters, and dimes.

It was a decent amount, either way, regardless of my relative disappointment. Once you subtracted away the costs of the cheapest food and bottled water I could manage to purchase, that was at least some five percent of the protection money to the ABB paid off.

Jack approached me not long after, counting his own earnings with frustration in his eyes. He was smoking a cigarette, already having gone down almost halfway to the filter.

"A cigarette?" I asked him, surprised.

"I bummed it off a drunk-looking fella," he explained, then looked at me. "How much?"

"Thirty," I told him smugly.

"Holy fuckdoodles, kid." He whistled, pulling the cigarette out, and clearly impressed. "If you keep that up, you'll drive us out of a job."

"Yeah. From your reaction, I'm guessing you don't have as much?"

"Barely ten bucks," he admitted.

"We need a better spot," I told him and then started reasoning out a course of action, letting my conscious thoughts stream out as speech, with only minimal filter. It felt natural; good to brainstorm in this way. "Maybe there are some wealthy people living around here, sure, but there isn't enough foot traffic. It'd be better to do this in a commercial zone, one with a lot of movement and action. Is there anywhere remotely like that in the Bay?"

"The Boardwalk," he grunted the word out forcefully like it was an imprecation against a hated politician. "But you don't wanna go there, it's a bad idea. There's a lot of people, but there's also security, making sure folks like us don't run around spooking the tourists. "

I snorted. "Who are you more afraid of? A couple of dudes with nightsticks and shitty uniforms, or the evil Asian mob ruled by a dragon lord?"

The idea of parahumans, and crime organizations led by them, was a fresh one in my mind, like a wound yet to scab over. There was a sense of familiarity to everything else in existence; I knew the words 'minivan,' and 'tree,' and both their technical definitions and common day-to-day meanings. Thinking about either of them, I could easily picture a bunch of names, images, and odd, sourceless examples. I knew there were birch trees, and if I saw one, I could tell you it was one; I could draw you one, as well.

Not so with parahumans. The word felt completely alien on my tongue, distant to my vocal cords like I'd never had much cause to speak it before. It was foreign to my subconscious mind, drawing few associations. I could name several presidents of the United States, especially those from the Cold War era, and even a couple of British Prime Ministers from a similar period. I knew who Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler were, and I could tell you why they were evil people in some amount of detail.

Prior to participating in casual conversation, or eavesdropping on conversations around me, I couldn't have named even a single parahuman. I'd originally not been certain whether or not people were talking about real-life, or fictional comic book characters. Even the likes of Eidolon, or the Endbringers, had been completely unknown to me.

It was more than a little unbelievable that such magical people existed, even now, but I'd accepted it was fact, the same as everyone else.

It was, however, suspicious. An errant thought made me wonder, whether a parahuman might've had something to do with my absent memories.

"Alright," Jack eventually said, finishing his cigarette. He crushed it against the pavement of the sidewalk, the sole of his shoe putting out the last embers. "We'll do it your way."

The Boardwalk was a fair distance away, running parallel to the shoreline, so much so that we considered whether or not it'd be worth getting on a municipal city bus.

In the end, Jack told me there was no need. The evening was still a decent chunk of time away by his estimation. Neither of us possessed watches or phones, though.

The Boardwalk was a completely different kind of place.

The city district we'd initially scouted and operated in, next to the church, was primarily a residential area. It was composed principally of small, cloistered blocks of old tenements, sticking closely together, with neighborhood groceries and similar convenience stores. There had been a degree of clear elegance and intelligent design to it, the aftershock of an invisible hand belonging to some past urban planner guiding the development of the area.

All of that impression was here, magnified a hundredfold. It was almost like every step of the Boardwalk was planned out, carefully arranged, and doted upon. There were boutiques and clothing stores, colored like a field of summer flowers; pedestrian tracks, and bike paths separated by railings. Multilevel steps of concrete, lead to the boardwalk proper, or a wide concrete walkway closer to the stores themselves. There were open-air restaurants with seats under umbrellas and shaded booths inside. There were standing binoculars that you could slot a coin into, to watch the shoreline, or the distant and captivating energy shield surrounding the local Protectorate Headquarters.

The horizon was almost mystical with promises, spun clouds drifting across the sky, above the endless crescent of waters ahead, the soft blue sky illuminated by a brilliant jewel sun. The shore curved, like an arch splayed against the waters, such that standing in the center, you could see every part of the city's shoreline, in an experience that bordered the phantasmagorical, shaking me into a daze.

If you looked to the left, you could see one of the old ferry buildings, and the Docks themselves, with ancient and ruined piers and jetties; I almost thought I could see a couple of familiar buildings, including one that wasn't too far away from the place our community sheltered in. There was a port, even further, made of concrete, with stacked and emptied containers, and old rusted wrecks of ships; a rusted red metal bridge standing over an urban drainage system, and lengths of empty, barren train tracks.

If you looked to the right, you saw a venerable urban forest of high-rise buildings made of solid steel and reflective glass panes; skyscrapers with prominent antennae glowing scarlet at their peaks; Art Deco buildings that bedazzled the mind with their beautiful and thought-out shapes and curves, like the architectural equivalent of a charming and seductive woman. Deeper on, there were more tenements, blocks, and districts like the one I visited.

It dazzled me, stunned me; disabled my brain function in a way not even nausea and vomiting could. I was captivated by the strength and beauty I saw; the sheer, crushing, all-achieving totality of the human capital and its force; the results of its focus and precision.

I'd lived in an oyster my entire time here, and what I saw now was a pearl of civilization.

"Kid, are you good?" Jack patted me on my back, to return my attention back to the task at hand.

"I… Yeah," I said. "Admiring the sights."

"Not much to admire," Jack muttered, almost bitterly. "Shithole, like any other…"

I disagreed, although I didn't say it.

After a minute to admire the landscape, Jack marked out the spot he'd claim, and then suggested me where I should do my own work - next to a small donut shop, with enough spare foot traffic to earn money, but giving myself enough distance to not attract the owners.

I was crushed within moments of kneeling down and rattling my can. The people in these parts were different. Most of them didn't bother to conceal their visceral disgust, and others treated me with complete indifference. It reminded me of the receptionist and doctor I'd met at the hospital. One of them despised me, the other didn't care about me.

Before, when I asked for money in front of the church, the passersby would at least offer me a curt apology, saying they didn't have any change or didn't bring their wallets. Sometimes, I could tell they were lying, but they at least had the fundamental humanity to interact with me; to speak, and to recognize I was a person in need.

Here, there was none of that. I was less than an animal to most of the people who passed by me. A stray cat would at least get an 'aw,' but here, I rarely merited a second look from anyone, and when I did, it was usually one of dismissive revulsion, like I was a piece of trash they wanted to be cleaned up, but couldn't be arsed to pick up themselves.

After several minutes, I'd mostly lost any hope of getting money here. The people were arrogant assholes from the looks of it.

I noticed three, decently fashionably dressed girls approaching me with expensive purses in their arms. They looked to be about freshman age. One of them, standing in the middle; an attractive redhead, holding a milkshake in one hand, a phone in the other, looked at me with some unclear emotion that didn't seem purely negative. Another, African-American was casually conversing with a mousy, petite girl. They both snapped and noticed me seconds after the redhead. Their walking pace slowed down.

The redhead stopped in front of me. She leaned forward so she was more or less at eye level with me. "Hi. What's your name?"

"Robert," I answered casually, giving a little shrug.

"I'm Emma," she said, not bothering to extend a hand. She took out her wallet, and pulled out a five-dollar bill, and put it in my can. There was surprisingly little disgust in her action. I could almost believe she didn't feel contempt for me.

"Panhandling on the Boardwalk is a bad idea," the athletic one said, one arm folded around her chest. "The enforcers are gonna chase you off."

"Don't have much choice," I told her earnestly. For some ineffable reason, I found myself opening up to them a little - maybe because they were surprisingly frank and honest with me, or maybe because the change in attitude was refreshing around here - and said, "I live on ABB turf. The landlords aren't playing nice if I don't pay nice."

She frowned. "That's fucked up. Where is this happening? The Docks?"

"Down north," I said, a little confused. "Why?"

"Don't worry about it." She whispered something to Emma, and Emma replied with something of her own. They watched me for a second, in silence, and I sat a little stiffer at their attention, curious what they were discussing. Did they plan on reporting me?

Emma offered me a broad smile, dropped in another dollar bill from her still-open wallet, and gave me a little, jaunty wave.

They departed immediately afterward and when I looked in my can, I was shocked to see a beautiful, precious fifty-dollar bill, just sitting there.

Immediately, arms and neck burning with shock, I looked around like I was Satan trying to sneak into Heaven, and pocketed the bill, and most of the other earnings. As I looked up to thank the girls, I saw they were already some twenty meters down the Boardwalk.

"Oh, one last thing!" Emma's friend called out, turning and walking backward to keep up with her friends. There was a studying look in her eyes. "Get your ass up and leave. Enforcers are en route. Someone's already tattled on you."

She pointed behind herself with a thumb, and I saw a number of men - at least three of them - all dressed in a black uniform, with short pants, leather belts, sturdy boots, and dark caps. They were further down, but approaching me, on the lookout. It was clear they were looking for someone, and that someone was myself.

I stood up and bolted down the concrete walkway, as fast as my legs could take me. I could hear the sounds of surprised pedestrians they were now running after me.

Maybe the adrenaline of a real threat approaching helped, or maybe it was the harsh determination to not lose all the money I'd earned, but I found myself running extremely quickly, the stiff sea breeze practically tearing through my hair, pushing my hurting legs to move in increasingly larger and faster strides, like scissors operated by a piston connected to an industrial generator. I didn't lose the enforcers, but as I looked back over my shoulder, I saw they were barely half as fast as me. I decided to try to lose them and started moving between the buildings, weaving across alleyways.

To my frustration, I could hear the sounds of them following me: one of them on my tail, the others splitting up to cut me off, running in parallel. After a minute of dashing, hiding behind a dumpster, and then running again, I was clear - outside of their zone of influence, where they thought I was still hiding. I could feel my heart hammering.

I crossed an alleyway between a flower store and a small souvenir shop and made it across to a small service plaza, constructed on a metal breakwater.

Here, Jack was sitting cross-legged next to a small arrangement of benches, and an oak tree surrounded set in a granite planter. He was amassing coins in his beanie, shaking it and smiling at people, offering thanks and little waves to anyone who pitched in. He didn't notice me, because I was approaching from his left, at the edge of his vision, and had to run across the plaza before I was in casual yelling distance.

"Jack, we have to run!"

Jack stood up even before I spoke, reading my stance and the hurry in my tread. He approached me quickly. "What the hell happened?"

"Enforcers," I said breathlessly, stopping for a second.

The word itself barely left my mouth, when a man in uniform came rushing out from seemingly nowhere, and attempted to grab my shoulder. "Hold there-"

I pushed him away in shock and sudden fear. My tin can dropped to the floor, spilling its coins, and several bills. Shocked, I bent over to pick as many of them up as I could, focusing on the bills and larger denominations. Several of them had fallen down through the cracks, and others scattered around the place, too far away to bother. The pedestrians slowed down movement, observing the development of events in curiosity.

In less than a second, while I was still bent over and picking up coins, the uniformed enforcer came for me again. He lunged and delivered a punch to my cheek - one that surprised me because I'd expected him to attempt to restrain me instead. It made an almost hollow sound as it connected. That side of my face bloomed with pain and dullness, as I lost balance and tripped, falling on my back. Jack was standing there, not moving, not doing anything.

"J-Ja-" I tried speaking, but another enforcer came from behind me.

He delivered a kick to my side, and I could literally feel the edge of his boot scratching my ribs. He caught my shoulder, pulled me back, and clutched my arm with another hand painfully tight. I could barely move in the position I was in, and the way he was pulling on me exposed my stomach, shirt rising uncomfortably, tight against my back and spine. The other stepped over closer, putting one foot between my own, the other to the side of me, to restrict motion even further. There was no more escape, no way out.

He leaned down and punched me in the chin. I could hear something like a crack, or a pop. The force sent my vision swimming to the side. My teeth scored against the inside of my cheek, abrading some flesh. Fresh blood welled on my tongue, tasting of iron and salt.

I could see Jack walking off into the distance, as my eyesight recovered. They'd been so focused on me, they completely dismissed him.

And he was leaving me.

Last edited: Dec 3, 2022

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Birdsie

Nov 9, 2022

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Nov 10, 2022

#81

I was immersed in an ocean of aches and blossoming pain, vision whirling and swimming like the contents of a cracked egg.

There were fireworks exploding behind my eyes, detonations of blood-red warning that burned like a piece of heated steel. There was cold fluid spilled on my face and shirt, a mixture of sweat and blood on a tortured martyr's body. They'd dragged me away from the plaza, to a more private and secluded location, and then continued working me over like I was a cut of meat roasted over a campfire. until I was crunchy and well done on all sides. All I could feel in my legs and arms was the lightning and roasting flame.

It happened so incredibly fast, in retrospect. Schools of bruises and compound fractures accumulating across my entire body in mere seconds.

Not a minute, and I was lying there, in a daze - concussed, thoughts a disordered mess. I couldn't remember my name anymore. I was returned into that primordial darkness in everyone's brain, into the factory new state of an infant mind. I couldn't even remember where I was and where I'd been, everything working on base associations.

My eyes were opened wide like doors into the unknown, staring emptily at the exit of the alleyway, blood pooling and sliding down my forehead, around my eyes.

There was a field around me, adhering to my skin, like someone surrounded me in plastic and used a vacuum to suck out the air, encasing me within it tightly. The field had been there for some time, so weak and feeble, so distant I couldn't feel its comforting presence. It fluxed now, ebbed and throbbed, desiring to act: to reach out and change the world. It wasn't a natural feeling of any kind, not merely a hallucination of my frayed and hurting nerves. It was some kind of real, ephemeral power that awoke in me.

"He's so fucking pathetic," said the man, who'd kicked me in the stomach only five seconds prior. He reached into my pockets with me unable to react, too drunk on my own thoughts, and pulled out my hard-earned money.

In some half a nanosecond or maybe less, my field reacted.

It sped across his arm, its existence so out of phase with our reality that he didn't even shiver in response.

It reached into his arm, and through it - like cosmic radiation particles through the crust of the planet - until I could feel its existence unfolding across every part of him up to the shoulder. It was like a schematic, a blueprint of his arm existing as a model solely in my mind's eye, translated from what data the weird-ass magical field absorbed.

The sensation was maddening, crazed, tormented; streams of information like a constant assault on my brain, drumming into me every single femtosecond with every possible recorded update; every microtension in every string of muscle, every nanovibration in his bone structure and their spread pattern, the exact contour of his movement trajectory. The information filled me and dominated the parts that were supposed to think, to take sapient action, drowning out consciousness in an inescapable noise of data. His arm, alone, was a salt mine; a wellspring of details and factors that I could've studied for a hundred years, and still not known anything.

This, alone, overwhelmed me.

But the field didn't stop at the shoulder. It reached further, updating, stacking on more data, expanding upon facts in accordance with my desires, or fluxing with new updates on important facts and events within his system, until I could feel the steady beat of his heart, the reassuring warmth of his flesh, the movement of his diaphragm. The data coiled on itself like an insidious serpent, finding new ways to rearrange and present itself, to show me abstract vectors of information.

I could almost see them, and browse through them, like a fucked-up catalogue.

There were accurate-down-to-seconds histograms, recording the blood pressure spikes in his body since his mother gave birth to him. There were biochemical density maps telling me the exact levels of cortisol in his brain, and comparing his own testosterone to mine. There were raw data studies of his musculoskeletal strength and its estimated capabilities, and pie charts detailing the exact amounts of chemical compounds making up every category of cells in his body. There were infinite tree diagrams, massive bar graphs, and exploded-view drawings of particular organs and tissues within those organs.

For every data system that assailed me, I could see a smorgasbord of different variants and an almost endless amount of alternate input-output interpretations. It'd have taken a savant several lifetimes to graze through a single one of the diagrams, and that wasn't to mention the abstract extensions thereof.

For example, with minor focus, I could see a mostly abstract timeline with several lines running across, each one corresponding to emotions such as anger, happiness, and sadness, and observe the frequency and intensity with which he'd experienced them over the entire thirty-one years of his fucking life.

I stemmed the flow of information, like a bleeding man attempting to staunch a wound, in favor of attempting to deal with my real wounds. It happened at speed of thought, data streams rejected and disabled, until everything I saw was obscure and gross generalizations of his body structure. Even they were made so familiar to me, like the back of my hand; I knew so much about them, it was almost like I'd been granted a form of omnipresence and omniscience limited to his body. I was fairly certain I knew more about him than he knew, at least in those couple of moments.

I was the ligaments, the cartilage, the musculature; the humerus, ulna, and radius bones; the carpal and metacarpal bones, the scapula, and half of the clavicle.

There was greed in his phalanges, clutching onto my money, the fat and muscle in his fingers displaced by the force.

A delicate machine of such intricate beauty, ruled by such a flawed, tiny mind.

I could feel the arteries within him. I focused on those arteries, and ran down their length, studying the fluid within them, the small disks of crimson, iron-rich life, teeming with oxygen stolen from the atmosphere. I could feel the frail walls of the arteries, the basement membrane, and tunica intima, moving and throbbing with the pressure of his blood. I moved in closer, into the membrane, and I saw a complex, knotted matrix of fibers, and those fibers were made of fibrils. In the fibrils was a lengthy molecular chain of glycoproteins, collagen, and laminin; it unfolded in my awareness, stars of matter connected by electron branches.

I could've pierced even further, explored more of him, or deeper into him. I didn't have to do so, and I didn't bother.

There were five settings in me, five different ways in which my field could alter and refine matter that entered its range. I didn't have fine control over the process, aside from selecting the setting I wanted. There were other settings that I sensed, deep down, locked away to me for now. It didn't matter, though, because the first setting was enough to murder him in an instant. it was a setting that simply destroyed the matter I selected; rendered it non-operational, for whatever relative definition of 'operational' the matter in question held. It could melt the batteries in a TV remote, or crack the screen of a laptop, or snap a length of metal rebar in half.

It'd be easy to focus on that arterial wall and twist an important section.

In the space between nanoseconds, I could have the field rearrange the composition of the matrix; the membrane, the arterial walls. It'd punch a puncture into them, one large enough that he'd assuredly die, with not even the faintest hope of successfully taming the bleeding.

It'd be an incredibly efficient and brutal death. He'd bleed, externally and intensely. It'd leak out of him like the air out of a popped balloon, abandoning him to oblivion. He'd pass out in moments, lose consciousness.

And eventually, he'd die.

I didn't do any of that.

"You're a dead man, living by my power," I told him, a cold fact, in a sheathing whisper. It wasn't entirely conscious, because my conscious mind was poring over the abundant streams of data wafting off the man. His name was Derick. "There's nothing you can do, even. I can kill you by accident."

"Leave him there, he's delirious," another enforcer said. He spat on me - and I saw the billions of bacteria in that wad of spit, felt the absence of nuclei in them - and moved to deliver a kick to my ribs. As he did, the moment of contact extruded my field across his body. It flashed through him, a scan of lightning speed, leaving behind an impression of his body, its contents, its structure, and even fine particulars such as his genome. There were so many imperfections, so many refinements I could've made; so many ways I could've killed him, or rendered him into a superbeing, or even saved him from death.

He'd die from cancer in several months; a developing tumor in his stomach. I didn't even have anything to do with that.

"Cancer," I told him, once again a cold whisper, like an oil cloth running over steel, "in your stomach. If you get chemo now, you might survive."

They whispered some meaningless, trivial bullshit about dinner to each other. Hairless monkeys with no clue of how frighteningly small they were; cockroaches in clothing attempting to scratch the pinky toe of the cosmos.

They moved to walk away from me, leaving me, covered in blood, my pants wet.

After a minute of lying there, in the dirt, a fly landed on my face.

Gathering resolve, I swatted the insect away and began to stand.

My feet shook, quivered with pain, anger, and the sadness of my pitiful state, and I stumbled. I landed face-first in a pile of rotting garbage, choking on its smell. I rolled out of it, trailing candy wrappers and used paper, stumbling and holding onto red brick for balance.

My chest heaved with exertion; drunkenly, I emerged on the street, and surveilled it.

They were nowhere in sight, and they'd dragged me a distance away from the Boardwalk.

I could remember the start of the fight, back in the plaza. I'd attempted fighting them at first, or at least I attempted to get away. Then one of them kicked me in the head, and I lost the will to continue, almost blacked out: everything starting there and concluding now was a reel of torn tape, contents obscured. I could make some educated guesses, such as them dragging me away, but not much else. Somewhere in the middle, I could feel my field surrounding me, although it took some tries until I could use it.

It reacted to my desires, even now, coiling around me like a protective shield, and then extending a couple of millimeters away from my skin. It couldn't move that much further without active focus and effort; it needed matter to anchor to, and solid matter worked best. The air surrounding me was in a fluid state, its molecules shifting and moving; my field, like points of dust in the wind, quivered alongside the wind's motions, an invisible trailing flag. The data on the movement made me sway physically.

I stumbled back home, or at least in its direction. The field adhering to my skin extended into the pavement underneath me; a constant scan of my surroundings, and the earth. It studied the concrete structure, the pouring methods, and the uneven ratios of cement, air, water, sand, and gravel. There were so many flaws in the way they constructed this place's streets it instantly drove me nuts, like an experienced pianist forced to behold the guttural ululations of a three-year-old with a toy piano smashing random keys. Fuck subatomic structures - the errors here were macromolecular in scope, and that wasn't to mention the construction method itself.

My hand caught onto a street light, which I gripped for balance. Immediately, the field adhering to my hand reached out and filled the entire light pole in less than an eye blink. It reached through the metal casing, the wires inside, and into the fluorescent lamp on top itself. I studied the construction for a second, curious, then moved on.

Once I became accustomed to the data pings, to limiting its constant outpour to an acceptable microscopic trickle of laconic details, it wasn't as overwhelming. It didn't set my thoughts ablaze into an actinic madness with every extension, only illuminated them brightly.

I still wasn't entirely used to it, though. With every footstep, the field would extend meters deep and wide into the pavement and earth, and it'd make me quiver with the revelations; the exact count of dead insects, the bacteria resting on every surface, even the literal dogshit hiding in the cracks.

My brain veered, outside of my control, focusing on the molecules of said dogshit, and the field studied its composition, its history. Instantly, facts and details were relayed to me about it: the shit was a particularly dry shit, containing only sixty-eight percent water by mass, with synthetic and organic elements for the rest: it was left behind by a small dog whose diet consisted primarily of dry kibble and who was frequently physically abused. Another eyeblink of focus told me the dog was a Pomeranian.

I stumbled on a crack in the pavement, corrected my footing, and stopped walking for a second. There was something wrong with my head. I was hallucinating proprioception of the sidewalk and street lamps, hallucinating that one of the enforcers had cancer, and now I was hallucinating chemical science bullshit. Or was I?

I could remember now that my name was Robert. Before all of this, I'd introduced myself to those ABB members as Robert, but now I could remember that had actually been my name. I couldn't remember anything else, but I was certain of this: rock-solid sure that I was Robert.

"Goddamn it," I said, my speech uneven and stunned. I found that my tongue was almost swollen in my mouth. I pressed a hand to the back of my head.

There was a split on the back, bleeding, wide enough it'd almost definitely require some stitches or a lot of bandages. My hand came away from the wound covered in warm blood, with hints of darkness. If I didn't have brain damage before, now I definitely had something like it. My thoughts were unclear, muddied; corrupted almost.

I found myself feeling a lot of meaningless anger and frustration, not directed at Jack or the enforcers, not even at myself, but coming from some unclear place, and swimming in some unclear direction. Anger for anger's sake. It was overwhelming in a way of its own, corroding away every thought I had not coming from the field, and there was a kind of meta element of frustration to it; not knowing what I was even angry about, which in turn made me even angrier.

I attempted to breathe for a second, to calm down. My lungs felt bruised and abused, stuttering as they contracted and swelled.

"Look at you, stumbling home, you little fucking drunk."

A voice behind me. The air quivered like a bobbing finger, the amplitudes and frequencies of the sonic emissions fed to me by the field. It took a second to realize that I was surrounded by several men, most of them in hoodies and others in tank tops. I looked around myself.

They weren't Asian, although some of them had tattoos.

Not ABB. So Empire, then?

"Who're you?" I slurred.

"None of your fucking business, you disgusting fuck," he said, quickly approaching. His friends started jeering and taunting me, with phrases so generically insulting they all blended together into a kind of unintelligible melange. It would've made me uneasy, but I was already beaten almost to death. How much worse could they work me over?

I remembered there was a cigarette in my pocket. One hand felt around there, and I found the cigarette was still there. I remembered what the shelter manager said to me, when she'd given me the cigarette. If I let them have a smoke on my account and laugh at me for a while, show them some proper respect, they might let me go.

And then I remembered what else happened to me.

I remembered shaking a metal can and pleading for the slightest amount of money, relying on the kindness of random strangers; I remembered losing everything and every step of my progress because of the coldhearted evil of some other strangers. I'd been a powerless leaf, bobbing in the wind, in accordance with the dictates of society and the origins of that wind, possessing no mass or means of propulsion of my own. Everything I'd done so far was done at the behest of others or relied on the kindness of others.

There was nothing yet I'd done for myself, out of my own will, and not relying on anyone but myself to see it done. My thoughts burned with vengeful anger, spite and vindication like black tar. Homeless people sticking together? Strength in numbers? I remembered Jack leaving me alone, to once again be pushed around by circumstance.

I realized that was a fucking joke. There was no such thing as strength in numbers.

There was only strength in what you could do with your own two hands.

"You want my cigarette?" I asked him, letting my hand go of the street light, with a sudden outpouring of psychotic laughter. "Well, you're not getting it, buddy!"

"I don't want your shit, you junkie prick-"

I bumrushed him. He reached into his pocket and started taking out a switchblade, which he promptly flipped out. Before he could do anything with it, I punched him in the cheek, and as my fist made contact, the field poured into his skull. I focused it on a small patch of bone and arteries relatively close to where my fist made its full impact.

I chose the first, lowest setting - the setting that destroyed, the setting that rendered non-operational, the setting that ripped - and I refined him.

He screamed immediately, like a cry of bloody murder, as he fell down to the ground and clutched his face. A thick, dark mixture of blood, tears, fluid, and even sweat poured out from his right eye, as I whirled around to face the others.

I spread my arms to them, thumped them against my bruised chest, and screamed, "Come on, motherfuckers! Which one of you is feeling lucky?! Who wants to die first?!"

They rushed me, in something like a uniform movement. They'd clearly practiced this: beating the shit out of singular, weaker targets.

Alas, sadly for them, I wasn't a singular, weaker target.

As soon as one of them made contact with the side of me, I extended my entire field into him, focused on a section of the skeleton in the torso, and crushed several of his ribs, his clavicles, and parts of his scapulae into a fine bone meal. He dropped with a shocked, soundless scream, like a wingless fly.

I couldn't affect multiple targets all at once, though, unless my field was extended into all of them simultaneously. I was tackled to the ground, with two angered skinheads holding down my arms, and two others keeping me held down. I refined parts of them one by one, relishing their idiotic decision to maintain direct body contact. I focused on their skeletons and the surrounding musculature, so as to not kill them; crushing their bones into powder, burning holes in their muscles, and mangling their ligaments beyond any hope of fixing, even surgically. They all dropped in agonized alarm, rapidly letting go of me as their bodies rebelled due to sudden influx of critical damage.

I was on the ground with them for a couple of those moments, though. Despite my newfound power, I was still bruised all over, my bones creaking with horrific exertion. I turned to my side, propping myself up with knees and hands, and began to crawl.

"Oh, fuck, oh fuck! He's a cape, he's a cape!" The closest of the men, lying on the ground, screamed in a growing horror, attempting to back away from me as I slowly crawled in his direction.

I smiled at him through all the blood on my face.

He screamed with renewed strength - likely shitting his pants in the process - into the dark night, his voice staggering with fear, tears of terror streaming down his face, "Shit, heeelp! Fuu-hu-hu-huuuck!" He was sobbing.

"A cape?" I laughed at him, standing up on drunken feet, and beginning to find amusement in the entire situation. My skull felt bloated and hot like I was an overheated cyborg with steam leaking out of me. I continued to laugh, voice almost shrill with amusement, my throat dried out. "Or maybe you're just a fucking pussy?"

I heard a distant, mocking laugh coming from above me. I approached the closest Empire member, caught onto the lapels of his unzipped leather jacket, and started pummeling him in the face. No field, no refinements, no superpowers or settings. It was nothing more than good, old-fashioned knuckles fed to his jaw, forehead, and cheeks, one after another, punctuated by grunts of pain, moans, and pleas of mercy. I worked over him tirelessly and industriously, even as I lost breath, like a blacksmith at a forge.

Observing my actions, quivering with fear, moaning and whimpering, a single one of the men - a trail of blood moving down from his cut, burst lip, and pooling on his chin, told me, sotto voce, "Come on man, please, let him go..."

I looked at him, showing teeth in a bloodless grin. My blood-covered knuckles momentarily stopped pummeling the poor bastard under me as I stared him down. "You want what he's having?!" I shouted, each syllable accented by another couple of punches, delivered to the nose with an orchestra of moans and cracks.

He shrank in fear, shaking his head vigorously. His voice was shrill and singing with fear, like a nail on a chalkboard, hurried to let the words out, "Punch away, man, fuck him up! Please, man..."

I was done shortly after, in only a couple of blows. The poor, sad bastard who'd had the misfortune of being selected for direct retribution was fucked, his face swollen like a bruised potato. Several parts of his face were black and and oddly rigid; others softly purple and tender to my touch. His eyes were swollen shut, like coin slots, and he was missing a tooth. My knuckles were bruised and covered in cuts. I wish I could tell you I'd done it to set an example, but I didn't. It was all done solely to take out my anger.

"Alright," I said, breathing out in exhaustion, my lungs pumping oxygen with something almost like frustration, as I stood above the wrecked man. I picked up the switchblade, dropped by the first of the men I'd defeated.

I addressed the others, most of them attempting to crawl away from me or stand up - with mixed results.

"Listen up, each and every single last one of you fuckers. Wallets and phones out. Fork them over and I promise I won't do you anything permanent. I'm expecting to find at least some good three hundred dollars in total, but you're lucky I'm in a good mood tonight."

They complied, almost with an active panic to their movements, and what little manual dexterity they had left in their hands and digits.

A veritable cornucopia of dark and brown wallets, and several phones, clattered to the asphalt next to me. I nodded in satisfaction and began picking up the spoils. One of them picked up and started dragging the man I'd hurt, looking at me like I was a wild beast, a second away from pouncing on him and ripping his throat out.

"Right, you lot can go. No twitter to anyone or next time I meet you, I'll be even less pleasant." I decided on something else. I picked one of them, pointing with the switchblade. "Actually, you there."

I nodded to one of the men, who stopped like I was pointing a gun at him.

"Do you have a lighter?"

His voice wavered, as he nodded and slammed a hand into his pocket, desperately searching. He was the same one whom I'd asked if he wanted the same order of knuckle sandwich and fist fries. I chuckled at the thought. "Fuck, man, yes - take it, take it!" He extended a cheap, plastic lighter.

I casually took it from him, and he quickly turned around and ran after the others. The rest of them already packed up their shit and were sprinting for the proverbial hills.

"My cigarette," I muttered greedily, fishing it out of my pocket. "Nobody else's."

I placed the cigarette in between my lips and felt the certainty and assuredness of its structure. My field reached in and told me how much poison it contained, but I didn't give a single, solitary fuck. I put my bruised, bloodied, shaking hands together and clicked the flimsy lighter, and lit the cigarette's tip until it blazed orange.

And then I breathed in. The intake of dark, tarlike smoke felt was something I knew I'd never forget for the rest of my days. A core memory of my new life. It was like the warmth of victory itself coming to sing in my lungs; like the halcyon glory of being a conqueror returning home with all of his exalted armies.

The cigarette itself didn't matter as a possession. It hadn't been worth fighting over, objectively, and that wasn't why I'd fought them. It wasn't because I cared about the cigarette, or about them beating the shit out of me either. I'd already been seriously hurt over and over in a dozen different ways over the past couple of days; I'd already experienced the depths of mental and physical pain that humanity could offer to anyone stupid enough to seek it. It wasn't about any of that.

It was the fact that I was still the cigarette's owner, able to smoke it, despite this fucked city's collective desires to the contrary. I was the master of my own fate, and my own cigarettes. Nobody could wantonly declare me a beating target and steal my money now. I was the one who did that to others. I was the tyrant of the Bay, and fuck the world.

As the smoke coursed in my lungs and mouth, I experienced a coughing fit. I didn't spit out the cigarette, simply taking it out, and letting my respiratory system relax. Then, I continued smoking. I earned this fucking cigarette.

I continued to smoke as I stumbled back, puffing out clouds of ashen toxin. And every puff felt like sublime bliss, like an ecstatic ascension to godhood. My skull thrummed again, not with any heat and pressure, but with cold satisfaction and shots of livid dopamine.

Around thirty minutes later, once the streets were completely dark - past midnight, I thought - I reached the warehouse of the homeless community. Jack was standing in front of the warehouse, leaning with his arms folded. I waved to him as I approached, covered from foot to face in a tapestry of blood.

"Robert, what the fuck… How…" He stared at me for a couple of seconds, then saw my cigarette. "A cigarette?"

"I didn't bum it off anyone, if you have to ask," I explained to him, then reached into my pocket. I shoved over three hundred dollars into his hand, in bills of ten and several twenties. He looked down, then back up at me, in shock. "Go buy yourself some new balls."

I walked past him, inside, half-stumbling.

Last edited: Nov 10, 2022

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Nov 10, 2022

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Threadmarks Reboot 1.x (Interlude; Phineas)

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Nov 11, 2022

#139

"Man, your van is such an old piece of shit, no offense," Calvin said, as soon as they departed the confines of the small roadside diner.

It was about lunch break, so they'd decided to have a short meal, somewhat out of a desire to celebrate a successful deal in New York. This meal had been a little quieter and more low-spirited than normal, almost subdued, perhaps fraught with retrospective thoughts of the deal itself, and the client. Now, it seemed, a bit of Calvin's energy had returned.

Calvin removed a hand from his pocket, waving it and forcefully clenching his fingers, as though attempting to desperately express the emotions of helplessness and exasperation he felt. "It's like... Just..." He couldn't find the words, clearly. "Every time I look at it, I..."

"No, I understand." Phineas nodded amicably, as he reached for the ring of car keys. Personally, he felt the accusation was a little unfounded, even a little unfair. However, that meant the van was performing its circumscribed role adequately. "It's an older Renault Trafic. Junk it may be, it still does its job and performs admirably."

"Right," Calvin smirked, raising an eyebrow. "Just like your crafts, huh?"

"Oh yes." He nodded with deep, overly dramatic, sage agreement. "My oh-so-splendid 'technology,' which does not include any technology or electronic components in its make-up, as you observed yourself."

"I'm sure you're applying some clever tricks, a bit of workshop legerdemain. A rub against the white here, a touch to the handle there, make the paper hyperconductive..."

"Hyperconductive paper?" he asked disbelievingly.

Phineas raised an eyebrow almost to his hairline, now knowing that Calvin was making an ass of himself on purpose. He sighed a little.

A skeptic of all supernatural matters, in particular of demons, spirits, fairies, and to a degree, even parahumans, Calvin Takahashi, male, twenty-two, made for the world's most perfect tinkering assistant. Phineas hired Calvin as a sort of part-secretary and part-assistant a couple of weeks ago, paid him most generously for someone with so little education and no prior experience, and didn't regret the decision in the slightest.

It was a little painful to hold a conversation with him, though. His unscientific mind couldn't accept certain truths at face value, and there was no reasonable way to convince or sway him in the short-term. He barely even believed or accepted that parahumans were an element of reality, rather than some impolite scheme perpetrated by the world governments and shadow cabals, and they were as close to a fact as you could get on Earth Bet.

He, at least, believed in and accepted the existence of Endbringers. Although, it seemed, more out of political correctness and a desire to not incite the wrath of anyone with strong feelings on the matter, in much the same way an atheist avoided saying that everyone who believed in God was an idiot. Phineas would take what little he could, though.

They entered the Renault Trafic. Its endearing air freshener shook for a fraction of a second as they slammed the doors closed. It was a small piece, styled almost on the basis of a quaint town sign. It said, in bold white cursive letters, 'I'm driving A-Way,' with a pastoral image of a winding cobbled road leading into an eternal sunlit horizon, surrounded by meadows of colorful flowers and serpent-inhabited tufts of tallgrass.

It was a couple of seconds' work to get the stubborn engine running. It made a choked sound that shook the interior of the van, the chassis and suspension vibrating with the force of its trembling start. Its pistons started with a roar, almost bestial, and low pitched like a bear's snoring. The exhaust pipe popped once, loudly, due to improper combustion.

"Like I said, an old piece of shit," Calvin said.

"If you wished to rescind the request of me not being offended..." Phineas offered a warning frown, to which Calvin grinned and leaned away.

Phineas made sure the lights were on, and then drove out of the parking lot, onto the roads of the rural Maine countryside.

They waited for several other vehicles to pass, even as a practiced movement of the middle finger flipped on the turn signal to indicate he planned on turning to the right. Phineas tapped a finger on the steering wheel impatiently, eyes on the road, and hoping that Calvin wasn't planning on making too much needless conversation. There was no easy or delicate way to silence him, once he started with the incessant stream of questions and comments.

"Have you seriously never had any run-ins with the gangs?"

"No. I can't say I've had the pleasure," he fibbed.

"Of course." Calvin nodded, as though agreeing. "It doesn't change the fact you might get in trouble for selling your produce. In New York, it's only a little different."

"As I've already informed you I'm not a tinker and not a parahuman," he said. "And I only sell to the clients I trust. Much as I do trust you not to ever tattle on me."

"Mhm."

The conversation stopped there, for several minutes. It restarted a minute past noon, once they were several miles outside of Brockton Bay. They drove on the I-95, west of the city, in an extraordinarily attenuated drip of ordered traffic. There was no particular hurry in their driving, no particular impetus to return home; a feeling apparently shared by the other drivers around them. Phineas kept watching the road, attentive nonetheless.

"I meant to ask you something, before the deal," Calvin said. Phineas made an indication of listening, ear craned. "I know you make some paper talismans with, like, protective powers, and you make some resilient fabrics for people. Do you make anything else, though? And why not sell to capes? It'd make better money."

"I don't sell to any of the Brockton Bay locals. And that goes double for parahumans," Phineas answered in simple words. "It draws too much heat and unwanted attention. And I'm not after the money, it's only a small perk that lets me continue working in relative comfort."

Had I wanted money, I could have as much of it as I wished, he thought, glancing nervously in the rear-view mirror. There was a dark jacket on the back seat, splayed over its back. He could see into both of the sleeves from where he sat, and the dark velvet material seemed particularly light-absorbent at that moment. The inner pocket held a pristine business card, the name of the company written in a golden, cursive font on a dark background.

Calvin frowned. "Then, who do you sell to?"

"As I said, only to a pool of verified and trusted clients," he answered unhelpfully. Then, he added, "To people that I know personally."

"Hm, is that really such a large circle that you can make a living on it?"

"Yes."

There was a momentary, thoughtful pause. "Would you sell to me?"

"Maybe." Phineas cast a side glance at Calvin. He was looking out the side window, observing the countryside, bored and distracted. He could see the young man's reflection in the glass, eyes staring back at Phineas. "I'd probably have to knock the price out of your salary, though, and you'd pay in installments. It'd pretty much be a permanent lowering of your income. Are you sure you're willing to commit to something like that for a minor trinket?"

"Hardly a minor trinket, if you can do such amazing things with it," Calvin argued in response, even though he'd never seen the effects of the talismans. He seemed to believe they were amazing on the basis that people were completely willing to pay so much money for them on a semi-regular basis.

"Trinkets, amazing as they might be, aren't amazing on their own. The amazement comes from whoever uses them," Phineas replied, turning the wheel a little, to maintain course on the snaking road. They crossed a short, narrow bridge over a stream, and then continued driving. "An item can be stolen. True strength lies in oneself."

Calvin scoffed. "Easy for you to say."

"Well, I am a little older than you, and I work myself ragged to create what I do," Phineas said - a mild understatement, he was almost two decades Calvin's senior. "You'll find the strength in you eventually. And no matter what, you'll always be welcome as my assistant, no matter how many dozens of times you ask me the same set of naive questions."

"Come on, now." Calvin rolled his eyes, in a display of cheek. "I haven't asked you the same questions a dozen times. That's more than a little unfair, Phin."

"Hm, of course not. I'm exaggerating needlessly."

Their repetitive conversation ended there, and Phineas sighed in deep satisfaction, happy to have this part of the day behind him.

As expected, Calvin forgot he'd wanted to purchase an artifact. There was no mention or figure of such a thing made even once by the time they reached the suburban and dilapidated outskirts of Brockton Bay, particularly its Old Industrial district. Ancient machinery in ancient buildings not once touched since the eighties; surrounded by zones of residence, old and charmingly small one-story houses with picket fences, and dark brown or black rooftops. It was north of Captain's Hill, the sort of place where stereotypically poor people lived. A good amount of the residences were on sale, and more than a couple of them were getting torn down, to be replaced with newer designs, or even with commercial zones. Phineas hadn't lived in Brockton Bay long enough to have many thoughts about these changes.

"So, are you gonna drive me back, or...?"

On every road trip, Calvin tended to fall into the same, identical mental patterns and ask the same, identical questions as before, unless distracted by something highly significant that happened earlier in the day. Unfortunately, the client in New York wasn't remarkable enough to distract him in such a manner, so he didn't recall their previous outings with any degree of clarity. It was an odd, and somewhat irritating quirk of their relationship, mediated by need. Phineas needed a mundane helper in this world, but didn't entirely trust the younger man not to out him, so he needed to maintain a spell to scrub portions of his memory, and prevent them from correctly forming.

After every day of work, he'd return back home with a giant wad of cash - giant enough to not have the incentive to investigate too deep on his own - and only the vaguest idea of what he'd been doing the entire day.

"Yes, in a moment. I'll take you back home." He reached into his pocket and handed Calvin almost two thousand dollars, held together by a modest rubber band. "Here's your earnings for the day, by the way."

Calvin accepted and pocketed the money.

They stopped by Calvin's house, a suburban home in the center of the Bay, the heart of its residential district - west of the Docks - and dropped him off. Then, Phineas drove into the Docks, slow and thoughtful, and stopped in a parking lot next to an empty plaza with grocery and clothing stores - an Asian ghetto, almost.

He counted the remaining money and started delineating the money into stacks meant for different expenditures. A good half-thousand with some change for his own week-to-week expenses, another six thousand for his own upcoming research, and a little over two thousand for Jack's people and their needs. The remaining money was only several hundred dollars in total, and he'd hold onto that for now, allow it to accumulate alongside the rest of his savings - in case of sudden and unexpected needs. He exited the van, made sure it was locked down and started moving down the street.

He entered the Docks, watching the streets.

Many an amateur were often distracted by their own growing power, so focused on the spiritual world, on its wonders and its visions, they forgot the importance of their own physical shell and surroundings. It wasn't normally that much of a problem, but in a city like this, where a hundred dangers lurked in every corner, some of them hidden and waiting for a perfect victim, one's guard needed to be up constantly: even in the middle of the day.

At least, in the Docks, where the dragon slept.

He purchased a drink for himself in a convenience store on the way to the seaside factory, and a snack bar, then ate them as he walked. He needed the energy, in preparation for another day of work. He'd last spoken to Crow over a month ago, and they didn't exactly agree on where the drop itself was happening. It was somewhere in Brockton Bay, on Earth Bet, but predictions, prophecies, and acts of brutal haruspicy performed on cattle and sacrificial lambs only went so far in actually determining - or helping determine - rigid fact.

He crossed the street. There were dips in the street, bumps of uneven concrete, and water accumulated in them, into small and shallow puddles. He approached the puddles and he observed his own reflection, and saw a man with dark eyes, dark hair, and dark skin - more dark than he should've been, even with his deeply black skin.

He was a practitioner of magic, a 'wizard,' as the vernacular went. He'd accepted forces of shadow, and spirits of darkness into himself a time ago. Now, in certain downtimes, in calm and quiet places, he'd see the darkness in his own reflection, sometimes quivering off of him animatedly like an inverted flame. And by staring into his own eyes in the reflection, deeper than should've been, he'd perceive a darkness that was almost primordial. And by whispering to that darkness, he could ask it favors.

He asked a favor of his reflection in the puddle, whispering words that held no particular meaning in any language. He then stepped back and waited a couple of seconds.

"Oh, hi there Phineas. I didn't notice you," Lynn said, leaning on a wall, as though she'd been standing there for several minutes and simply hadn't noticed him. There was a cigarette in her mouth, which she then pulled out, to exhale. "How's Narcissus?"

"Lynn." He nodded amicably, ignoring the jab. "How's everyone doing?"

"We've got… a situation." Lynn took another drag of her cigarette, longer, more nervous and tense.

"A man covered in blood entered your flock, and offered you money," he said.

Lynn raised an eyebrow. "...Huh? Is this one of your… paper tricks?"

"Just something I heard in a cartoon." A random guess, a brain fart he forced out of his mouth, but his random guesses were often more accurate than standard assumptions of reasonable probability would dictate.

"Well, that's uh…" She looked off to the side. "That's exactly what happened. Not quite in the same order, but… yeah. He's asleep, right now, up in the offices."

He nodded. Then, he handed over the money he'd normally give to Jack, which she took and put into a small bag slung on her shoulder. "Hm. And what happened, that he came back to you covered in blood?"

"Jack won't tell us. Says the kid will tell us when he's ready."

"He'd tell me," Phineas responded. His suspicions started to rise.

Lynn nodded. "He's inside."

They moved swiftly into the seaside factory - the factory that, until he'd spoken to his reflection in the puddle - certainly didn't stand in that spot on the street. The street that was now completely different, with different buildings, and a different fork and intersection pattern. The puddles weren't even there anymore, gone in between eyeblinks, when he'd been paying more attention to the conversation than his surroundings.

There was an uproar inside, people discussing and chattering loudly about someone or something called Robert. A young redheaded woman he didn't recognize stood behind the railing on the upper floor, staring down at the situation with a gobsmacked expression. He waited for a moment, as people noticed his and Lynn's entry.

Here, more than anywhere, he needed to be careful; normal. He detested the need to hide, to conceal his talents, but he needed to downplay his nature. The people here needed to believe that, as exceptional as he was, that exceptional nature was strictly within human limits. The same didn't apply to Lynn, Jack, or to Arturo; to individuals he trusted implicitly. But most of the people here didn't have implicit trust.

"Phineas, you need to kick him out!" Sofia, an older woman he'd spoken to several times, pleaded, approaching him and gently clutching his hands in her own wrinkled ones. She was a reasonable person, most of the time, although she was prone to paranoia, to fearing for herself and her own life. He suspected that without his aid, this may have developed into a more serious condition. "The young man is dangerous!"

"I can see there's been a disagreement of some kind," he said confidently and soothingly, facing the crowd. "Can anyone explain what happened in a calm fashion?"

The response to his request was quite the opposite of calm and fashionable. At least five different people all approached Phineas simultaneously from different flanks and started bombarding him with a cascade of words and sentences, most of which barely made sense even in connection to the rest. Each one offered a different retelling of the same story, with an amount of liberal interpretation that resembled that of the Arthurian Mythos.

In the estimation of Clara, this Robert person was a dangerous serial killer, a 'murderhobo,' a new member of the Nine, who habitually slaughtered women and stole their purses, buying alcohol from the money harvested in this grim fashion. In Nathan's retelling, he was simply an idiot who picked one too many fights, realized he had some talent, and started going around picking scurries to steal money from the people he'd beaten up. Matthew claimed he was a parahuman with supernatural healing abilities, capable of recovering from a gunshot over the course of a single night. Someone, dubiously, claimed he'd defeated an entire procession of gangsters in nothing but a pair of pink, fluffy slippers - that one seemed particularly foolish.

In the end, there was no one who could tell him if not for the main character of all these stories. Their 'Jack o' Lantern.'

"Alright, calm down," Phineas said, waving a hand to get the people's attention and stop the word-shelling directed at him. "Where's Jack, and where's this Robert?"

Lynn pointed to the office area. "Both of them are upstairs."

"Alright. I'll go have a word."

There were mixed responses to that statement. He ignored them and moved upstairs, expectant. He already knew what he'd find up there based on the descriptions, and on his own knowledge. The Reassembled. He didn't know what to actually expect though, in terms of an individual. The testimonies painted an ugly image.

Jack's sullen face immediately brightened, in the moment Phineas rose from the stairs. Their eyes met, and Phineas saw a sundry of emotions in his old-time buddy's expression. "Oh, Phinny, I'm glad you're here."

"Indeed. Something happened, I take it?"

"There's trouble in the air, yeah."

"I can smell it."

"Yeah, he's in there by himself. I'll let him tell it."

Last edited: Nov 11, 2022

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Birdsie

Nov 11, 2022

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Threadmarks Anomaly 2.1

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Nov 11, 2022

#147

After I came back into the seaside factory, I'd been forcefully dragged to sit down on a stack of pallets by a concerned Harriet and Lynn.

They bandaged my head and disinfected my assorted open wounds, focusing on the opening at the back of my head. I'd apparently been worse than I suspected: poking around the different parts of my body, I had at least a cracked rib, and I also had compound fractures on my left arm's ulna. There were so many, countless bruises all over my body, in places I couldn't reach or see, that I allegedly looked almost like a cheetah, and Lynn claimed the compounding rupturing of arteries should've caused massive internal bleeding. I didn't realize this when going back, but I saw a little worse out of my left eye, and with very good cause because it was swelling shut. Someone I didn't recognize had brought some bagged ice for it.

Although I didn't have that many open wounds, aside from the one on the back of my head, it should've been enough to knock me out. Despite that, maybe because of shock, or because of some other factor, I wasn't unconscious yet. That, more than a happy fact, was a cause for worry.

In summary, I wasn't doing so well.

I was doing so not well, in fact, that it'd have been a decent cause to wheel me to the hospital as fast as possible, assuming we could have me admitted and not be set to square one through the hospital bill.

Lynn had pushed a painkiller into my mouth: 75mg of acetylsalicylic acid. I'd covertly refined it as it sat on my tongue, my field set on the ultimate improvement-oriented setting.

The change was immediate, taking not even a second. It displaced some protons and neutrons and placed them elsewhere, creating isotopes and different compounds with collegial effects. It created a substance that I was certain, based on what the field itself was telling me, shouldn't have been anything even approaching chemically stable: it should've broken down and leaked away some of its electrons within seconds, but the field placed the adjacent compounds in such a manner they stabilized each other. It shouldn't have been possible, save for something created by nanomachines with extreme precision. Other molecular structures were twisted and rearranged into more elegant and fast-acting isomers, easier to break down chemically.

The refinement's end result was a smaller, more compressed pill with a different shade of color; a light bluish and gray. It was a little more radioactive than depleted uranium, although not radioactive enough to be hazardous to a human. I swallowed it.

The substance kicked in almost immediately, within ten seconds of me swallowing it, and with a sedating and calming effect so strong I almost passed out on the spot the moment it did, every muscle and thought relaxing all at once. I could physically feel my heart slow down a couple of beats per minute, and my skin ceased feeling its prickling sensation within seconds more of that until I was numb and cool. The effect was strong.

I managed to retain consciousness long enough for Emmanuel to come back with a change of pants: black drawstring trousers, and some new clean socks for me to wear. It was a minor help, since I was dirty all over, covered in blood, and my legs were stained by the smell of piss. There was no easy way to clean up, other than a bucket of water and a washcloth, which someone brought to me, followed by a curtain so I could do so in something resembling privacy. By the time I was done, the bucket was almost red-black with collected gore and dirt, and the cloth was useless.

When I was cleaned, Lynn came back and started to bandage the rest of me, and then watched me with consternation, as though clueless as to how else she could help me. As I was putting on my new shirt, she also stared at my mysterious tattoos, seeming to find them about as odd and curious as I'd found them when I came to life in this godforsaken city. I was too out of it to ask her about it, focused on clothing myself.

Then, once I was moderately clean and covered from head to toe in bandages, they requested an explanation of what happened - including Jack, who stared at me like I was an escaped convict.

I didn't tell them much. I had no particular desire to, and also because the sedative kicked in with a second wave of brain-nullifying signals at that moment. I explained that some Boardwalk enforcers dragged me away, Jack left me on my own, and then I offered a curt summary of the rest of the events. I didn't exactly remember the words I used, but a part of them went something like, 'I was assaulted, and I counter-assaulted my assaulters harder than they assaulted me.' Probably more slurred than that, and with less sense and more breaks in between the words.

And then, I went upstairs to cries of impropriety and shock - somehow managing to walk on my own and not trip over the steps, and miraculously without passing out midway into my pilgrimage - and then I slammed down into my mattress and lost consciousness immediately.

In the morning, I awoke with a start, feeling a new and better man.

The enhanced painkiller I'd consumed had done its mystical work, coursing through my system across the night, and helping repair vast patches of me. The ubiquitous bruising that I'd suffered from had almost entirely disappeared overnight; the biggest bashing wounds I'd suffered were now little more than yellowish, tender shadows on my skin. The cuts on my knuckles were still present but healed more than a single night of bedrest should've accomplished like I was healing thrice as fast as I should. The back of my head was a single, giant crimson and crunchy scab, though.

"I'm not letting you out of my sight again. We separate for one single minute, and this is what happens," Harriet said from her own bed.

"An entire day, actually."

"Shut up, it's hyperbole!" she exclaimed punching me in the forearm in a way she must've thought was playful.

The punch, as weak and slow as it might've been, catalyzed something in me. I remembered the entire last evening's worth of memories, in a flashback lasting a split second. For that split second, Robert went to sleep, and a monster whose only concern was survival came to life. In the exact moment of contact between fist and forearm, my entire field reached into her body. It took a Herculean effort of will and self-control to not succumb to pure animal instinct and murder her on the spot, making her explode into a red mess of spilled entrails and steaming gore.

A second later, once it was over, I was left sweating and hyperventilating, eyes widened and staring at my knees. Harriet was leaning away from me in slight horror, not aware of how close she came to dying and more concerned with how the punch might've brought some bad memories back.

A terrible anger came over me - in equal parts at her, for doing such an idiotic thing; and myself, for even allowing such an idiotic thing to have the potential of happening. I should've told her not to touch me, or not to make any sudden movements near me, but I didn't. The anger took me over, suddenly and wholly, like a black cloud of hell's worst wrath. I resisted the psychological urge to smack the fuck out of her.

I decided to warn her instead.

"Punch me again and I'll flip the fuck out. I've been nice to you because you gave me slippers, but that's going to end if you keep beating me up for no reason. I am not in the mood for it. Do you fucking understand?"

She shrunk a little. "I... I'm sorry… "

I breathed in, and then out - a single, heaving breath. My calm started to return, frayed nerves tingling into restfulness.

"That's a start." I laid back down on my mattress. The feelings of residual paranoia and shock started to wane, and my heart slowed down. And then, with frankness in my voice, spreading my arms, I said, "I'm sorry too, for snapping at you. Can you let me rest now? I have a big day ahead of me."

Harriet nodded and stood up from her own mattress. She moved out of the small circumscribed space, outlined as our impromptu bedroom. "I'll be outside. Holler if you need me. I won't be far."

And so I rested. And by way of opportunity, in being alone, I practiced feeling around with my field, and with its different settings. I didn't change anything, not even inside the structure of the walls where I might've plausibly gotten away with doing so clandestinely. I only drew in some data on my surroundings and the matter that composed them, and experimented with different modalities of processing said data. The field - or, the input zone, as I was starting to call it, in the privacy of my own brain - behaved almost like a sort of liquid.

Whenever I wanted to affect something with it, the input zone reached out into the object in question and attempted to 'fill' it with itself. This would happen almost instantaneously on any solids, in less than an eyeblink; the speed of thought itself. In any liquids and gases, it was much slower, and it seemed to be somewhat dictated by density: it took me a full minute of concentration to reach out even a yard away from my heart into empty space. And the further I reached, the slower the progress became: after three minutes, it wasn't even a yard and a half away.

Any usage of the zone to produce an output caused it to disappear, and then reappear around me - not instantly, and not with any definable stable cooldown, but varying each time. It seemed to depend on a number of factors, and at least one of them was my concentration. If I focused, it reappeared almost instantly, as fast as it filled out a solid. If I didn't, it took a couple of seconds: the longest it'd taken was around fifteen. It was difficult to test, though, because measuring the seconds by definition required at least a little bit of concentration, which meant it'd happen faster.

At least for now, I'd surmise the input zone was an element of me that I'd have access to whenever I needed it. Assuming I wasn't, like, intoxicated or stunned, or something. Since the zone reacted almost on its own to dangers - as seen with Harriet's complete stupidity - it was useful in that manner.

I heard a knock on wood, next to me. "Hello. May I come in?"

I looked and saw a man in his early forties or late thirties. He was remarkably handsome and well-dressed, with a heart-shaped face, short-clipped beard, and fringed-up hair. His clothing consisted of a suit jacket, a dark button-up dress shirt, and dark pants; a couple of accessories, too, including a metal watch. It was a cut above what you'd expect from someone homeless, more like some office worker dressed in business casual. He was tall, over six feet, broad-shouldered, and moved with authoritative confidence. He didn't belong in here, among the bums and freaks.

"Go ahead."

"Yes, I do believe I shall," he said. The statement had the impression of a frown to it, although his face didn't change.

"Hold on," I muttered, then asked, "Are you Phineas?"

"The one and only."

"I suppose you came here to let me know I should pack my shit?"

"Do you mind telling me what happened before going ahead and jumping to conclusions about my magnanimous intentions?" He observed me curiously as he leaned against a wall, one beyond the space of the air bricks that delineated my 'bedroom.' There was some amount of impatience in his posture, although he didn't seem to hold the impression of someone who'd start pummeling me out of nowhere with deadly intent. I remained calm and alert. Jack hadn't seemed like the person to abandon me to a terrible fate, either.

"I was beaten half to death. I stood up and started walking over here. I was surrounded by a lot of people who wanted to beat the other half into me," I recounted, and with a tone of finality, said, "I decided to do the same to them, and I was better at it."

"Alright. I think you're telling me the truth," Phineas said. He approached me, standing only a couple of steps away from the mattress, and extending his hand - clad in a dark glove, extended for a shake. "My name, as you know, is Phineas. What's yours?"

"Robert." I didn't shake his hand. I wasn't in the mood for reaching out and making friends.

His hand retracted slowly. He took a step back. "I knew someone named Robert, too."

"Mhm. Right."

"More talkative than you, though," he commented.

"Mhm," I hummed disinterestedly.

"Is that your superpower, perchance?" he asked, perking up. "Humming at me? Until I bore and die?"

"What superpower?" I asked him innocently. "Is that what they're saying downstairs? Making crazy theories about how I'm the impending apocalypse? Or that I'm an evil ax-crazy murdering psychopath?"

He didn't even bother to deny any of my allegations, but I could see a degree of suspicion in his eyes, like flickering embers. "Are you going to tell me you'd bested several men in physical combat? Scrawny and skinny as you are, against them, with the benefit of a diet and better training on their side?"

"Maybe I know some Kung Fu," I said.

"As I understand it, the local mobsters are familiar with Knife Fu." His eyes didn't leave my face. It was like he was divining secret details out of my facial structure, and it creeped me out a little. There was an oddity to him - like he didn't entirely fit into the puzzle of the world. "And it's superior by far."

I reached into my pants and pulled out the switchblade I stole. "And so am I."

"That's not yours." I expected him to frown, even though he didn't. His face was studious, carefully neutral.

"No, obviously. If I could afford to buy switchblades, I probably wouldn't be here."

"You can get a switchblade like that for thirty dollars."

"Allow me to specify: if I could afford to buy switchblades, I probably wouldn't be here lying covered in bandages." I lowered the knife I'd claimed. It felt reassuring and extraordinarily comforting in my grip. Like I could destroy worlds and slay dragons with it, were I to put my mind to it.

He nodded in acknowledgment. "A good man is a man who knows the value of specificity."

"Are you some kind of, I don't know, like..." I vacillated for a second, thinking over the situation, smacking my lips, "Professional injured people-botherer? Is that what you do for a living?"

Phineas folded his arms. They were surprisingly muscular, now that I paid attention to them. It was clear he worked out regularly and was in good physical condition. He definitely wasn't one of the homeless people here and was definitely much stronger than me. "No, I am looking out for the community of people I claimed as my own. And right now, they are scared of you, and they want answers. Which means I will have to get my answers. Now, I've been nice and friendly to you for now. I'll keep it that way, so long as you don't get too smart with me."

"If I'm scaring them so much, I can leave first thing in the morning."

"It's already morning."

I didn't have an answer to that.

Phineas' expression darkened. "And you would be dead by week's end."

I raised an eyebrow at him, skeptical. He didn't know me, or what I'd experienced. He was assuming that I was some kind of idiot that couldn't take proper care of himself, that I'd die on my own. It filled me with a dark, grueling emotion that reminded me of how I felt yesterday before the Empire's members found me in the street. I suppressed the feelings. "I doubt it. People dumber than me have survived worse situations and made it out okay."

"People dumber than you don't have superpowers. Superpowers that make them eager to go looking for dangerous situations to get themselves into, I might add. I don't think you're stupid, but I do think you are blind to what such powers can do to a man. I know about things like that. I know much."

"Right." I didn't know how to make a counter-argument to that, so I didn't. He was starting to play on my nerves in the worst way possible, and I'd rather leave than be interrogated. "Look, whatever. Just give me five minutes and I'll pack my shit and leave."

"You don't have to. I want the truth, so I can tell them there's nothing to worry about," Phineas said.

"I have a right to my own privacy," I told him. "If they're not happy with that..."

"I want the truth. They will not get the full picture."

There, in that statement, was a hidden threat. He didn't care much about telling them. He'd answer them anyway, and make a story to make them feel safe, regardless of what I told him. Phineas wanted to know the answer for himself, and I could feel there'd be consequences for staying silent. I recalled what they'd said about him: he dealt in 'stuff,' and whatever that 'stuff,' was, it probably involved crime. He could've been a mafia boss of some kind. Even if I could defeat the men he sent after me, I didn't want to be on the run for my entire life. I decided to comply, and see where he went with it.

"I am a parahuman," I admitted to him, with some amount of audible frustration. "I used my superpowers to win the fight against several Empire men, and then I robbed them and let them run away screaming into the night. In my defense, they fucking deserved to be robbed. They wanted to rob me first, or kill me for the fun of the deed, I'm not sure. I defeated all of them in seconds with my power, effortlessly, and spared them afterwards."

"A lie," Phineas half-accused, half-stated. "You-"

I was tired of this man and this man's bullshit, so I decided to clear the doubt. A section of the blank drywall next to me exploded outwards, in his direction - not with enough force to be dangerous in any perceivable fashion, not even with enough force to paint his shoes with powdered concrete. It was more like it splintered apart due to sudden pressure, bits of concrete and powder raining out like extremely low-velocity shrapnel. It was about half as loud as a champagne bottle opening, and it had no clear cause. I was the one who'd done it: a simple refinement.

"What was that?" Phineas asked, directing his attention to me, and not at the wall. He looked modestly spooked, although not as much as I expected.

"A parahuman ability."

"I cannot dispel the feeling you are lying," he said, right to my face, like he was informing me of the weather forecast of the day - and not accusing me of being a liar. "Or... telling half-truths."

I threw my hands up into the air like I was giving up on trying to repair a broken computer in utter exasperation. If I didn't have a super-effective painkiller running through my system and making the sensation of pain a near-impossibility, the motion would've probably caused me to scream.

"Fine." He turned around in a single step and moved for the exit of my bedroom area. "I'll tell the others everything is fine and alright. Make sure I don't have to eat my own words."

I wasn't sure, exactly, what the fuck he wanted or expected from me. He said that last, particular sentence like I was being hired on as his personal apprentice, and he didn't want me to embarrass him in front of a council of old and serious people; like I had something to prove to him and others. I didn't, though, and I didn't plan on it. As soon as I was up, I was planning on taking what little stuff I owned, thanking the good and amiable people for their medical aid, and then leaving, hopefully, to move on to greener pastures.

As he was moving downstairs, I decided that I should get up. The painkiller from yesterday was still in my system, its hyperpotent chemicals as active as ever, blocking transmissions of pain and even body aches. It'd be at least several hours before it started losing steam. Then, I'd be essentially disabled, a mannequin or puppet with no strings, suffering and sweating and begging for the pain to end. I needed to act before then, to accomplish whatever I felt I needed to do. Or, find another painkiller and refine it - Lynn probably had some.

I threw off the modest blanket I'd been provided with, stuffed the chipped switchblade back into my pants, and sat on the ground for a second in thought, considering what I should do after this. I hadn't been entirely certain of my plans when I passed out yesterday, although, in the spaces between people coming in to bother me, I'd hatched an inkling of a design. I was planning on returning to the Boardwalk. It was still the middle of the work week, so there were decent odds the enforcers I'd had the doubtless pleasure of meeting were still somewhere around there.

I remembered their faces and appearances as crystal-clear as the color of the sky. The input zone made a full scan of their bodies and imprinted that scan on me like a handprint in cement. I'd be able to pick them out in different clothing, even in a huge and busy crowd that rippled with the movement of civilians. The memory of their faces, leering at me and kicking me down, filled me with a rage so deep I started shaking, feeling heat gathering in every part of me. I could feel a lone tear form in my eye, as I remembered the indignation of lying in the trash, on the verge of collapse.

I breathed out for a second and cried out quietly.

Then, angered beyond words that I'd done so, that I'd allowed this bullshit to get to me, I wiped the damned tears away with my sleeve. They boiled and vaporized immediately, on a complete impulse refinement, and my zone caught the vaporized steam and broke it down further, causing a short, loud pop of combusting gasses, with a flash of light almost like a firecracker. I winced and looked to see that nobody was coming.

I'd need a mask or a helmet, to conceal my face. Something that I could wear as a disguise and protection if I was ambushed or attacked from a distance. I'd move around the city, see what I could find, and make some preparations.

And then I'd find them, no matter where they escaped or hid, and once I did, I'd be merciless. I'd show them how it felt to be me, lying in that dark alleyway, swallowing punches with my face, and absorbing kicks with my chest. I'd show them how a brain concussion felt when your ears rang with a dull tone. I'd show them an entirely new, protoconscious dimension of suffering and pleading. I'd dutifully teach them to sing a song of tormented howls and chattering teeth, and I'd make them sing and play for me until their instruments fucking snapped.

I'd already gotten a decent amount of practice on that Empire bastard's face yesterday, although I'd need to do far more than that. Him, I went easy on; he was spared the worst of it because I wanted to sleep off the night's events.

For the motherfuckers, there'd be no mercy; I'd expend my full efforts to learn and master all of the ways to completely break a human being without killing it, to better accommodate their special needs. Luckily, my power could help me learn them extremely fast.

As the resentful chain of thoughts developed, I felt an emotion of pure, blissful release like the nicotine high I experienced yesterday. My hands started to shake, with something like shock-inducing glee. Every part of me felt light, as porous and clear as a cloud. The mere thought of revenge on those bastards was like a controlled substance, like a waterfall of methamphetamine in my hypothalamus. I wondered whether that was normal: something that 'normal' human beings could feel under correct circumstances or something that was caused by my brain damage or parahuman power.

It certainly didn't feel natural. If faith could be said to be a feeling of some deep personal connection and mutually reciprocal love with God, then whatever I felt was the opposite of faith. Not an absence, in the manner of not having that connection and love - but its opposite. And I relished in it.

A sudden weariness filled me, sobering me up a little. If I wanted revenge for what happened to me, then I'd need to actually perform the intermediate steps to acquiring it. I stood up from the mattress and started packing up.

I didn't own much: what I'd kept from the homeless shelter and a couple of knick-knacks.

Downstairs, the situation had developed into some kind of advanced economic and philosophical debate on the merits of keeping me around. Harriet was downstairs now - to my annoyance, definitely out of the shouting range she'd promised to be in. She was staying uncharacteristically silent in the face of the heated conversation and letting Arturo and Phineas plead my case to the entire group. Jack was standing in the back, smoking a cigarette and looking exceptionally dour-faced. I'd told him something mean last night, I didn't remember what, and it seemed to stick with him.

I didn't mind the debate, stepping down and moving alongside the wall. I was about to exit, when Harriet and Arturo spotted me moving towards the door, carry bag slipped over one shoulder.

"Hey, where are you going?" Arturo called out, running over in my direction with Harriet in tow. The commotion interrupted the active debate. Phineas looked back at me, lips pursed in thought. "Stay with us, cabron."

"No." I turned around, so I could face him. "Unless you're putting me under arrest, I'm going to leave."

"Leave?" Harriet asked as if confused by the word.

"Yes. Is that so strange?" I asked, then looked across the room - the withered crone and the blonde-bob woman, clearly on the opposite side of the argument to keep me around, were staring widely at me. "It's clear you don't want me here, and I don't want to be here either."

"Hold on, now." Phineas stepped closer in my direction. "That's not been decided yet."

"Oh wow, fuck me." I couldn't believe this. My arms went above my head, as though directing a prayer to the Heavens, and then snapped back down. I'd turned around several times in sheer confusion, before facing Phineas with shock on my face. I emphasized some words in a particular way that felt right to me, that felt right to the affront I felt. "Are you high on crack? I faced down several of the ABB's worst fuckboy goons for your commune and tried to talk them down from violence. Then I went begging with your friend despite not owing anyone here a single buck, and I got my ass handed to me and left for the dead - nobody even bothered coming to look for my fucking corpse. And then I come here, bearing all the money you need to not get Molotov'd, and there are still doubts as to whether I should be welcome here or not? Fuck off. Please."

There was a moment of silence. It sounded and looked almost like several people were ready to jump into an active argument with me, but the presence of Phineas, the man in charge, kept them more civil.

"Listen, I can see I've overstayed my welcome here a long time ago," I said, finding that, after my outburst, I was calm enough to speak rationally and in a level, aloof manner. "I'm leaving and not coming back. You can take care of yourselves, so you do you. I'll walk my own path."

He stared at me for a second. "You are making a severe mistake, and a rash decision besides. Do you want to be on your own?"

"Yeah, sorry. Being a part of a group hasn't worked for me so far." I stared at Jack with enmity flashing in my eyes. He shied away from me like I was about to kill him with laser vision. "I think I'm better on my own. I suppose Harriet can come along if she wants-"

"-I want-" She attempted to cut in with something. I simply ignored her, and she didn't speak past two words.

"-but I don't think giving parts of myself to people who don't care is the right move for me."

"Parts of yourself, hm?" There was something droll about Phineas' question. If he were smoking a cigarette himself, as Jack was, I imagine he would've chosen that moment to tap it. "Jack made several mistakes - mistakes I've explained to him. He agreed to take you to the Boardwalk when you insisted, and did not correctly explain the level of danger you were in. He did not remain in the area to check in on you but escaped for fear of his own life. I do not believe, rationally, that choosing not to fight can be held against him. The rest was indeed poor decision-making."

"No shit," I spat.

"I'm not holding you prisoner, Robert." He approached me, closer and closer until he stood barely a foot away. He reached into his pocket and extended an old flip phone. "If you change your mind, call me. Or simply find a way back here."

I accepted the phone. I didn't plan on calling him, but I wasn't going to refuse a free phone. Who'd say no to that, under my circumstances?

I cast a look across the room, reading its mood. There was definitely a strong divide, and it was clear to me now, that I'd been a little blinded earlier during my outburst, as I raged on and shouted at them. Not everyone here was set against me staying, and Jack looked on the verge of melting away in shame at his actions. Others seemed to be reconsidering their stances after what I'd said - or, rather, shouted - seconds ago. There was no clear-cut and undivided resolution or determination here in regards to me.

The people here weren't necessarily evil. Actually, scratch that - they probably weren't evil whatsoever, to any degree. They were simply afraid. They'd most likely been harassed and beaten many times - almost like I'd been - and they didn't want it to happen again. Once bitten and twice shy.

There was nothing evil or bad about being afraid, or even to being somewhat paranoid when extremely bad or shitty things happened to you. It was simply the order of things, much like how water froze when it became very cold, or items fell back down when thrown because of gravity. I couldn't change these people's behaviors any more than I could change myself. God knows, I understood full well that any sane, well-adjusted person would take a single look at my plan of brutal vengeance against the enforcers and feel deep concern for my psychological well-being.

No, they weren't evil people. The actual evil people, the members of the different gangs, and the accursed, damned bastards who'd almost killed me, were somewhere out there, casually going about their day like nothing was wrong. They'd slept the night away in the comfort of a home, after eating a nice warm dinner, and they'd eaten breakfast and gone to work like nothing was wrong. How was it fair, that I was here, in my state, and they could simply live a happy and thoughtless life, never once looking back with any level of regard for what they'd done to me?

Anger and hurt were sitting at my core, dominating every thought, directing me like a corpse walking the desert. They wouldn't leave me, and wouldn't let me live a calm life until I made sure justice and revenge had their way. Everything else - involving the people here, or not - would come after.

"I'll think about it," I said, blankly, placidly, not showing any of my inner turmoil.

"That's all I ask," Phineas replied.

I lowered my head. "Goodbye."

Then, I turned around to face away from the room and the uneasy people in it, adjusted my carrier bag on my shoulder a little, and put the gifted phone in one of my pockets. I opened the door to leave. Nobody stopped me, so I went through.

As I'd learned to expect, and still to my supreme annoyance, Harriet followed me out before the door even closed on its own, without bothering to check inside for any of her things. I was about to inform her I didn't want her to follow me, and if she insisted on it, she should at least go back inside and grab her things, and I'd wait a couple of minutes for her - when she spoke first.

"So you're parahuman," she said, a couple of steps down the street.

"Did Phineas tell you?"

"No. I saw your tattoo." I narrowed my brows - what did a shitty tattoo have to do with me being a parahuman? There was no connection. "Actually, you don't look like one of them."

Did parahumans have some specific physical traits? Did they all spontaneously grow weird tattoos across their bodies? It'd be the first time I heard anything like that. "A parahuman?"

"No, a mutant cape. There are mutant capes who appear in different places with no memories, with tattoos on their bodies," she told me in a slow, explanatory tone. "Like the one you have."

"Which one?" I asked, blinking and rolling my sleeve up.

"The one that looks kind of like an omega symbol." She pointed at it, and I flattened my sleeve again.

I nodded, drawing in that information. "If so, what's the other tattoo for?"

"No idea."

A mutant cape, though? I closed my eyes, and reached into myself with the input zone, studying my own biology. It seemed like such an obvious thing, didn't it? Developing a superpower to look into matter in touching range seemed like something that'd immediately bring the idea of studying your own body for things of interest. A complete no-brainer for anyone who took even a second to consider the facts and possibilities.

I somehow hadn't even thought about it, between the course of last night's events and this hectic morning.

So, I reached in and studied myself.

What I found was... well... to call it, 'a little concerning,' would be to call the Big Bang, 'an explosion.'

Last edited: Jan 9, 2023

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Birdsie

Nov 11, 2022

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Nov 12, 2022

#174

I stared a thousand yards ahead, the sidewalk rendered into a meaningless background to my disorientation and listlessness.

Around me was an infinite space, a universe of space, time, energy, and matter, and I was a pinprick of irrelevance splayed on its fabric, like dendrites on a pane of glass, or a meaningless insect caught in a fractal web.

"What in the fuck am I?"

I did not make any sense. I did not make any fucking sense. Where do I even begin to make sense of it?

"Robert?" Harriet stopped walking, sensing my disturbance.

Assuming I had-

"Robert?" Harriet made contact with me, at the shoulder. A comforting, worried hand.

"Do you want to go inside and get your things?" I asked her with a voice as cold as arctic waters, my thoughts occupied with my discovery. It needed some deliberation to cope with. "I'll wait for you here."

"...Are you alright?"

"Yeah. I'm alright and I'll wait for you here." I breathed in; a deep, thorough inhalation through my nose. "I... need a minute to myself. A couple of minutes, actually. Learning that you're a mutant cape is pretty heavy."

She didn't say anything for a moment, then nodded in acquiescence. The request and its nature were obvious enough, although she didn't look happy about them. She was worried about me and worried about what I might've learned, but I believed with my heart that she knew better than to push me on this, especially after what happened not even an hour earlier. She hesitated for a second, lingering like a wraith in a haunted house.

"Alright. I'll be right back."

Her hand slipped away from my shoulder, and she walked back inside the factory, with long and dejected steps.

The moment she was out of hearing range, and out of sight, I sprinted down the street like a marathon runner hoping to warn his city of an invading army, racing as fast as I could. In one minute, I was a couple of blocks away from the factory, when I decided that I needed a better hiding place in case someone went out looking for me, or bothered me. It took almost half a minute to climb over a chainlink fence, into a small yard sitting between dilapidated apartments. Here, I sat down on the concrete parking space, in the sunless shadows of the highest apartment buildings, behind an old dark blue Honda Civic that someone parked there. Out of the sight and out of hearing range of society.

And then I had a nervous breakdown.

It lasted several minutes and saw me interchangeably hyperventilating from stress, vomiting out clumps of yesterday's meager sandwich breakfast from stress, crying and laughing simultaneously - from stress as one might've guessed - and almost passing out from sheer, existential fear.

I'd believed - foolishly - not even several hours ago, that I'd reached something close to a pinnacle of human suffering. That, no matter what I heard or saw, or what happened to me, from now on, there was simply nothing more that could really hurt me. I'd believed that having experienced the full spectrum of traumatic experiences: hunger, thirst, exhaustion, cold, disease, wounding, loss of memory, betrayal, fear - that I'd be immune to more of it.

Maybe I hadn't been wrong, though, since what I experienced wasn't trauma in the classical sense. It was something sidereal and analogous, like a distant cousin. It was simultaneously above and beyond any of the categories of what I experienced before this point.

I must've heard of H.P. Lovecraft at some point in my previous life. I believe I might have even been a fan or follower since his esteemed works and his particular brand of cosmic horror were the first to come to mind as I coped with the experience of looking into myself.

The things I'd seen inside me were not meant for the eyes of rational, sapient beings. The discoveries I'd been forced to comprehend were so fundamentally incongruous and incompatible with my poor, meager cognition that, over the panic attack, my brain sealed the details of the memories away, as if to protect itself with the desperation matching a man clinging on to a cliff to avoid falling off into the black abyss below. My arms were shaking like electric toothbrushes connected to an industrial-scale power generator.

I'll tell you the surface details of what I learned.

I was definitely not a human. That much I was absolutely, fully certain about.

I was also definitely not a mutant cape: a human 'mutant' implied that I started with something like a human baseline, and then subsequently mutated into something a little different, although still with a human blueprint or foundation at its core.

A part of the horror was in appearances, in the cordial illusion.

I was the perfect, distilled illusion of a human actor: I looked human, I smelled human, and I behaved human. I bled red like a human, and I needed to eat stuff like a human. I had the hormones of a human, and I even found some human traits physically attractive, and I'd become aroused if sufficiently exposed to such attractiveness. I'd be willing to bet everything I owned, and everything I might ever own, that if a trained surgeon cut me open, splayed out my organs on a metal table, and rooted around in my abdomen, he'd conclude: yeah, that's pretty human alright.

This wasn't actually the case, though. I had as much in common with humans as they had with rocks or the sun. The different chromosome count in my cells was something of its own, but nevermind that: compared to everything else in me, it was only the tip of the fucking iceberg, the icing on the cake, the cherry on top of the cupcake. It wasn't even a piece of the meat or the bone: it was the dry, tasteless skin.

There was nothing about my organism that made any semblance of actual fucking sense. To even start explaining, it was first important to consider a normal human's composition.

A standard human being in good health possessed something called DNA - or deoxyribonucleic acid. It consisted of no more than four nucleotide bases: adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine. These nucleic acids, interwoven into a double helix structure where every acid had a counterpart, formed a segmented chain of nucleotide triplets, or codons. The codons specified the amino acids to be added next during protein biosynthesis. There were proteins that could activate, enhance, or veto specific, defined features in an organism.

Now, the ways in which I was different.

I contained twenty nucleotide bases, including deaminated versions of the standard set, such as xanthine, inosine, and several other purines. These chemical polynucleotide chains formed a complex and intricate sextuple helix coiled around a structure made of pure, solid nonsensoleum. One of the chains looked to be completely inactive and did nothing - all of the others were constantly interacting with the nonsensoleum structure in a confounding variety of ways, aside from also fulfilling their normal function of providing an instructional reference for biosynthetic processes.

The nonsensoleum structure itself was something that I couldn't understand. It wasn't even made of baryonic matter, and the interactions I observed between it and the surrounding chemicals deserved an essay at least a thousand pages long. It occupied multiple quantum states and didn't possess mass, yet seemed to interact normally and copacetically with electrons. It acted as a counterpart for the polynucleotides and remotely altered the chemical structures of all the chains every couple of minutes in a way that - at least to me - seemed to have no sensible rhyme or reason.

It also maintained stability in certain chemicals that should've been unstable, and manufactured its own ribosome equivalents to 'read' parts of the chains. For what reason, I couldn't tell, because to my input zone, the entire structure read as a single item: it wasn't 'composed' of particles. It was, almost like a Bose-Einstein condensate, an undivided existence of its own. I wasn't capable of reading its particular make-up, only deducing what definitely wasn't based on readings of surrounding matter. Also, in all cells undergoing division or mutation, it returned the codons to full integrity with something that I could only describe as voodoo magic, and I was fairly certain this made me some fashion of biologically immortal.

Most perplexingly, in places where its structure didn't interact with the polynucleotide chains, its surface was covered in colonies of pseudo-particle arrangements that interlocked and spun in constant perpetual motion, reminiscent of sprockets and gears. They didn't seem to have a purpose at first look, but when I focused on them, they consumed my thoughts and drew me into a trance: activating mind-states, visions, and auditory hallucinations of vast ocean-sized machinery, endless blueprint worlds, dreams of innovation, and deeper things that my mind immediately locked away to preserve my own crumbling sanity. I saw records of destruction and creation, systems constantly reassembled-

I snapped out of the trance. I breathed in shakily.

There were other aspects to me, ones that didn't make a lot of sense - disconcerting, although not necessarily as much as the structure. Every atom in my body produced a constant emanation - something that I may have called radiation were it a wave or a particle - that apparently did nothing except decay and replenish itself. I attempted to refine a small handful of earth and pebbles, but the emanation seemed unrelated, as nothing about it changed. Occasionally - once every couple of seconds - and seemingly unrelated to the emanation, some of my body's axons would realign with other neurons, and sometimes send out signals to no neurons whatsoever, with the signals apparently consumed by the blank void. There was no genetic reason for this, no structural or mechanical explanation. They simply did that, and it didn't seem to affect my thinking. I blamed the structure.

There were more things to read into; interactions with systems parallel to physics and mathematics that I couldn't even start to explain intelligently, and many of which I didn't understand myself whatsoever. I could've explored, theorized, and thought about the ways in which I didn't make a crumb of sense for several hours, at least, because every discovery and look sent me further down a spiral of more discoveries that were mystifying in their own ways. A constant trial of reaching deeper into the lake, and discovering even further depths. I hadn't reached even the body of the iceberg.

And somehow, despite all of this, I looked, behaved, and felt human.

So I decided to stop because I was scared of what I might find.

I couldn't ever tell anyone of any of this. If the fact leaked that I was some kind of... God, what the fuck was I, even? Some kind of seventh-dimensional alien? A fucked-up reality-bending cyborg, since I contained nanosprockets? They'd cut me open and preserve the nuclei of my cells to study for centuries to come - at least, that's what I would've done if I was an immoral government scientist. How did my input zone even work? Was there some machine out there in the universe, reading my every thought and sending back perception signals? For all I knew, I spat in the face of entropy.

I stood and decided to return and look for Harriet. As I went, I brushed my hand against the wall of a tenement. Looking around to make sure that no one could see, I refined a piece of concrete, shaping the input zone in a specific manner, and carving out a mask for myself. I stored it in my bag.

Harriet was standing in front of the factory, looking around in concern. Her eyes found me a second after, and she ran up to me.

"Robert! You got me worried."

"I was..." Having an existential crisis. I shrugged. "Taking a walk."

"Alright, well... Please don't do that," she asked me, eyebrows furrowed as she inched closer to me. I'd uncharitably compared her in my mind to a human rat in our first meeting, and now she reminded me of a mouse displeased about having a slice of cheese almost stolen away, now holding onto it with some amount of defensive, reactive greed. "I've stopped punching you, so you shouldn't worry me that you'll leave."

I shook my head, completely unamused with her unerring 'faith' in our 'partnership.' I started walking down the street, aiming south, but with no particular destination.

I didn't intend on doing any begging anymore. I was planning something like a stake-out, in particular, on finding the enforcers who beat me down and tracking them down to their domiciles, so I could pay them a visit once I was prepared. I'd take back what they took from me, and then some.

However, as I walked and developed strategies in my head, my thoughts inevitably and disloyally strayed from the goal at hand. They were enveloped by incessant consideration of the structure, and what I'd observed with the zone. Already, the mere nanoscale discoveries, such as the gears on the structures, risked driving me insane. They caused visions and dreamlike states, trances lasting seconds that I could break out of with relative ease. However, what if I dug even deeper? What if I'd already dug deeper - too deep - and the end result was missing memories?

I hadn't ever felt, as much as I now could, the input zone during my initial week in Brockton Bay. Had I done something to temporarily disable it, that only extreme trauma could've enabled once again?

"What are you thinking about?" Harriet asked me.

"Revenge," I lied.

She blinked. "Huh?"

"Revenge, on the men who almost killed me."

"Are you really not gonna let this go?"

"Fuck no." I considered her for a second, then said, "And if you don't approve, then I recommend you go back. I'm planning to let it get as heavy as it was with me, only I'll be the one dishing out the beatdown, this time."

"I'm coming along with you. I don't approve, but I have to. I need to make sure you don't do something stupid, Rob," she only said, kind of drawn. She'd stuffed her hands into her pockets and was looking down, with none of her usual cheer. I slowed down my tread, and so did she.

Harriet continued speaking, and her voice continued becoming smaller, and weaker. "Robert, I don't want you to screw up your life before it's even started. I've seen that happen before. You don't want to kill anyone, do you?"

I thought about the question for a second. There was a deep temptation in me, to follow down that path. It'd be so simple and clean to do it, wouldn't it? Stand over either of them and use my power to deliver that final and irreversible measure. It'd be equally simple to cover up the evidence: simply break it down into simpler and simpler base chemicals and structures, until the leftovers poofed into a cloud of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and a residual pile of carbon and calcium. However, as strong as the temptation was, I knew it was too excessive.

And besides, the biggest satisfaction was in making them both understand the exact depth of their mistake and leaving them to live out the rest of their lives with the consequences. It wouldn't exactly be a good punishment if it ended within moments, would it?

"No," I said. "Probably not. Although I am beating their shit in and hospitalizing them, at minimum."

"Alright, I'll take what I can get." Harriet shied away from me a little. Was she scared?

Sooner than I expected, we reached the surroundings of the Boardwalk. Not the Boardwalk itself, but the city districts adjacent to it. Here, pedestrians walked the streets - avoiding the both of us, due to our appearance - and cars drove past with some amount of regularity. The calm everyday life of Brockton Bay, the reminder of how normal people existed, sharply contrasted with my discovery that I wasn't exactly human. I was afraid of myself and thought back on my plans for the day: to deliver retribution to the enforcers who'd beaten me like a dog: Derick and Elliott.

"You don't have to be there as I do it, you know?"

"It's... I know, but it's so... fricked up, Robert." She stopped walking and looked at me with deep, wide eyes. "I mean, you're casually bringing up premeditated assault in front of me - telling me you're going to do it. And it's not, like, to stop a murder. It's for revenge. What am I supposed to do? I won't and couldn't report you, even if I wanted to. I do believe they might deserve something like that, some kind of punishment if they hurt you so bad, but I don't know if you're doing it for the right reasons. I'm scared that..."

She didn't finish the sentence.

She didn't have to, though, because I'd heard enough. There was a common thread in everything she'd said to me, earlier today, and right now, and I was as much of an idiot for not studying my own body, as I was for not noticing that thread. She could see that I was headed in a direction she didn't like - in a direction that even I, from a third-person perspective, could appreciate was kind of fucked up - and she simply went with it. Because, in her own idiotic way, she cared about me, and didn't want me to do something dumb. It was perplexing to me that a person like this could exist, even more than the structure: she'd met me around a week ago, and now wanted to make sure I didn't kill myself or do anything dumb. That was anomalous.

Should I not go through with it? For her sake? Would I be a terrible friend if I did?

I'd never asked Harriet to follow me around the city. Rather the opposite. This unnatural, malignant friendship of ours - one that I initially despised - kind of bloomed from being in similar circumstances over a period of time. Natural propinquity, rather than a deep personal connection. And yet, it had the potential: she cared about me, and I found that when I seriously thought about it, I cared about her in turn. If I knew she was in trouble, I'd go to reasonable, and somewhat unreasonable lengths, to bail her out. I knew the name of her childhood dog because she'd told me.

So, even though I didn't ask for it, she was my friend.

I let out a deep sigh.

It was a mistake to come back for her - not because our friendship was a mistake, but rather because she was now agonizing about coming with me. I could either quit and leave the bastards unpunished, or I could go on with it, and be a terrible fucking friend.

And then I realized something - the actual reason I was doing this. The actual, true reason I wanted revenge so bad on the enforcers.

"I don't want to be homeless."

She perked up, with sudden interest at the non-sequitur.

I continued, "Even before yesterday, before I learned that I have powers, I had... call it ambition."

"Ambition?" she asked. "To do what?"

"I hoped that Jack's community might help raise our standard of living. To offer breathing room, so I could work, or maybe even study. We're still young people, you and I, despite our circumstances, so there's a lot that can be done. I don't intend, and I never did intend, to live out the rest of my life in this miserable dump. I would've fought and done what I could to drill my way out. And if I could, I'd do everything in my power to lift you out as well. And Jack, and the others too - even though maybe they don't deserve it after fucking me over like that."

"I don't think-" she attempted to cut in. I raised a hand, stopping her.

"Now? Now that I have powers? I feel I have an obligation to do something even more than that," I relayed to her, looking around to make sure no one heard me reveal that. There weren't a lot of people around us: a small perk to being a smelly hobo, I supposed.

I faced Harriet again, speaking with a fire in my voice, "This fucking city... I've not even lived here a month, and I've already seen what it does to people. I've seen scared orphaned children in the shelter, and you did too. Jack and the others are afraid of their own shadows, because of the ABB stepping on their toes. The ABB is afraid even of its own leader. And the members of the gangs - no matter which ones - themselves are afraid of becoming miserable and lowly like us, so they decide to sign in for the paycheck. Everyone here is afraid of something, and it's making them worse."

"I don't want to be afraid," I said, emphasizing the sentence by spreading my arms and speaking it an octave louder. I lowered my arms. "I don't want not to be homeless: that's not enough. I want to live out the fullest goddamn life imaginable. I want to own a penthouse and be a fucking king, because I know it's something I can accomplish. I want you there with me when I do it. Actually, I want as many people there as I can drag with me, forcefully or not. Do you know why?"

She was enraptured, eyes wide and listening to my every word, hanging onto them like a divine message. She was captivated by my speech and shook her head when I asked the question. Not even with her talkative tendencies did she intercede at this point in the monologue.

"Because doing that spits on everything this city stands for," I said, with complete resolution in my entire being. Deep down, in my cells, the structure started to vibrate and produce heat, resonating with everything I was saying like a mirror of my being. "I'm gonna burn this city down to the ground for even daring the attempt to bring me down first. There won't even be fucking ashes left when I'm done. Nobody will ever remember living like this. Once I'm done, the name 'Brockton Bay,' is going to have a different definition in the dictionary."

I looked towards the Boardwalk, its people moving in streams, completely unaware of my words.

"I'm not taking revenge on Boardwalk enforcers for the sake of satisfaction - although, yeah, admittedly it's gonna be satisfying." I turned and I looked at Harriet. "I'm doing it because they owe me, and I'm not letting that go. They're the first brick in the stairway to Heaven."

I am not afraid of what I can't understand anymore.

"Are you with me, Harriet?" I asked her.

"Fuck yeah!" she shouted to the world, drawing the looks of several people. She pumped her fist in the air, jumping giddily. I cringed as she continued to whoop. "Let's maim some fucking people! Burn the city down! Hell yeah!"

"Harriet- Harriet, calm down." She continued to make similar declarations for almost a minute, before I decided to cut my losses, slipped a hand over her mouth, and dragged her away so she could calm down.

Last edited: Nov 12, 2022

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Birdsie

Nov 12, 2022

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Nov 13, 2022

#203

I'd made the rookie mistake of losing myself in the magic the Boardwalk presented, in the false promises wrapped in illusive ambrosia.

I'd relied on Jack to provide me direction and advice, and the rest of me drank in the surroundings and allowed itself to be crushed, as I slowly lost faith in the bystanders. Now, I was a little more observant, far more alert, and came with the benefit of some actual experience and hardened caution, so I understood the nature of the Boardwalk a little better.

It was the sort of place where you went, either on your own, with a couple of friends, or even with your family: to buy some clothes or other assorted trinkets. Maybe you'd stop at a cozy little restaurant with a scenic view of the sea, or a small themed bar on your way out, have a bite and conversation and place an order for some fresh donuts or takeout. Then you'd move along, or go deeper into the city, away from the shore. If you were a tourist, you'd go to the beach instead, or linger and explore what the rest of it had to offer, purchase some souvenirs or sunglasses at one of the stalls.

The one common theme here was constant motion: doing stuff, and moving, doing stuff, and moving. It was like a constant cycle, almost like the constant revolution of red blood cells through the complex tunnels of the circulatory system. The Boardwalk was the femoral artery of Brockton Bay, with every shop and store on the Boardwalk as yet another cell to which the erythrocytic customers delivered their greenback paper oxygen.

I'd stood out when I came here to mooch yesterday because I was a loitering vagrant - in the biological metaphor, I'd been a bacterium avariciously stealing from the body's oxygen supply - but now that I studied the patterns that people stuck to, I thought I'd be able to blend in here at least a little, even with my overall state, unseemly clothing and reeking of sweat and dirt.

Assuming I needed to. Because for now, I'd rather keep my distance and study the place some more.

"I was only trying to make you feel embarrassed, you know?" Harriet asked me, standing on the sidelines as I watched the Boardwalk through my brand-new binoculars. "Everything you said - about spitting on the city and its wishes, and that other stuff - was pretty naive, Rob. I mean, how can you even spit on a city? Do you like, spit on every square meter of it? On the geographic center? On some abstract idea of the city? But if so, how do you determine where to actually spit for the spit to land right? It doesn't make any sense, Rob."

"Yes, Harriet," I said appeasingly, moving to observe another part of the shore. The angle wasn't perfect. It'd have been nice to have the perspective of that Protectorate base in the middle of the Bay since it'd let me scan the entire length horizontally. "I'm perfectly aware I'm an idiot."

"Did you even mean any of that?"

I sighed a little. "Maybe. Who knows?"

I'd made a set of binoculars, although they were imperfect to start with. Actually, they'd been kind of shitty, at least compared to normal binoculars to start with. It began with a simple thought: a stake-out conducted at long range was much safer.

There was also the influence of my companion. Because Harriet, in classic Harriet fashion, kept pestering me to show off my power. So I, in classic Robert fashion, decided to cave in.

Once you put your mind to it and took a second to think about what you needed, the city streets were stunningly abundant in raw materials to make into better items. There were convenient, readily harvestable elements almost everywhere you looked.

I'd used the zone and disassembled some pieces of a rusted metal railing close to the shore, hollowed them out so I basically had two pipes, and then I welded them together with a single linking rebar. Then I cut out some glass circles from a cracked window, put them on both ends, and did a bunch of cyclic refinements on different parts until it resembled binoculars in operation and concept. It was amazing how easy the zone made extracting bits of stuff without any tools. It was instantaneous and convenient.

There were five settings the zone could refine inputs on: a setting that destroyed, a setting that disassembled or degraded an object, a setting that exchanged an object for something else, a setting that improved an object, and a setting that did things beyond my comprehension with the goal of improving an object even more than simple rearrangements of matter could. The standard improvement setting also carried the benefit of combining loose elements into single objects, if used on more than one input, so that's how I made the individual parts into actual binoculars.

The end result of that entire process - lasting about three minutes of work and some creative brainstorming - was somewhat unwieldy and heavier than binoculars should've been. It resembled, as one might expect, shitty pipes stuck together with some sliced glass in them, more than binoculars. The lenses were the hardest part to refine correctly: they weren't zoomed in as much as I wanted them to be, with blurred and stretched edges, almost like I was looking at my targets through the bottom of an empty bottle.

I'd enhanced the entire, cohesive product once more, hoping the output wouldn't spit out something completely unusable. It didn't - it made actual binoculars, and they worked fabulously well. It also made for decent practice with my power and for my lateral thinking.

The observation part of the stake-out, afterward, was boring and drawn out. It amounted to standing in place and watching the shore for movement to no effect. Maybe they hadn't come to work yet? Some people had afternoon shifts when the movement started picking up.

I'll admit that as the stake-out continued, I had some second thoughts about my plan, which pretty much amounted to tracking down and beating up two dudes. What Harried said earlier hadn't stuck to me properly, because of two reasons: One, I was an idiot, and two, I'd been stuck in a ruinous haze of existential dread and pitch-black animalistic hatred during our conversation. Now, several hours of boring and uneventful people-watching mellowed my rampant emotional state, and it was more than enough to reconsider what she said.

It also put things more into perspective, not in terms of the plan itself, but rather my habits as an individual.

Namely, I should really sit down on my ass and consider things twice or even thrice before taking action. I'd rushed in without a clear idea of how to get from point A to point Z, and now I'd been rushing in again with minimal preparation, still blinded by some residual fury carried over from yesterday.

Maybe I should actually put this entire thing off for another day?

I'd heard a passing remark, corroborated by Harriet, that capes who tended to not do anything for at least a couple of months after obtaining their abilities had better survival rates. Not only because patience was a decent trait to have in most situations, but also because they could observe the cape scene from afar with the benefits of working themselves into the 'mood' of proper operation, and training for the work from a position of safety. For a power like mine, where I could make superpowered equipment en masse, it applied almost to a double degree.

As long as I didn't do anything stupid to out myself or my existence, I'd be square in the gold zone.

Only, that ship kind of sailed with those Empire men, didn't it?

I consoled myself with the thought that at least I hadn't wasted my anonymity on beating up random bad guys at night for no reason like some impatient vigilantes did. It was a legitimate act of self-defense, and I'd likely be in a much worse state had I not done most of what I'd done.

The only mistake, in retrospect, was not stealing their shoes. The damned slippers were beginning to chafe on my feet. I did almost everything in them for several days, and it was becoming a chore to even acknowledge their existence.

"Take over," I told Harriet, handing her the binoculars. "I want to work on the mask and costume for a couple of minutes."

"I... don't even know who I'm looking for, Rob." She complied nonetheless, leaning across the railing and peering through the binoculars.

"Men in uniform, dark hats... As for specific features, they both have blue eyes; one of them is blonde, and the other has dark brown hair. Taller than me, and in surprisingly good physical condition." I reached into the slippers with my zone, and considered them for a fraction of a second. "They move around with the casual ambiance and nonchalance of a Schutzstaffel officer wearing a Nazi armband to a Bar Mitzvah. Can't be missed, trust me."

"Mhm. Are they Empire, do you think?"

I considered the question for all of a single thought, completely rejected it as an idiotic extrapolation of what I said and as having no basis, then reconsidered for a moment, and re-invited the innocent question back into my brain, to sit down and have a cup of tea.

Come to think of it, wasn't it kind of odd that random Empire members found me walking around in the street and decided to approach me? So many of them, looking for a fight, a couple of them carrying concealed weapons? Despite being covered from head to toe in blood, they assumed I was a defenseless hobo drunkard, and not, like, concussed and in need of serious medical help. They wouldn't have a reason to harm me: at worst, rob me, was I not homeless. Every system of logical reasoning under the sun told me it wasn't in their interests to even interact with me.

Had Derick and Elliot called them in, possibly to finish me off?

I shook my head with a resounding, mental 'no.' I shouldn't jump to conclusions, not at this stage. It'd only stoke my rage even further, and lead to avoidable mistakes. I needed to consider things from a calm, rational perspective - regardless of their involvement, I'd find out the truth eventually. I could make a decision on where to go from there when I came to that particular fork in the road.

I started brainstorming a costume and imagining what I wanted the end result to be like. I didn't know what kind of disguise to aim for. Honestly, I didn't even feel all that comfortable with the very concept of a costume. The idea seemed kind of childish and ridiculous, like something an immature teenager overdosed on comic books would do, despite the awareness that actual people did this, and some of them were even respected or feared.

I decided to start from the bottom and work my way up.

The first item I analyzed was the pair of slippers I had been given by Harriet. They were my companion on the streets, the one annoying constant that followed me since yesterday. No self-respecting parahuman should ever wear something like this in a combat scenario, and I couldn't imagine it going well for me. It'd be nice to exchange them for something a little better.

I began by putting the slippers on the middle setting: the exchange setting. I refined them.

There was a momentary flash, like a pink blur of motion, around them, as matter repositioned itself at the speed of light. The end result was pink boots around my feet, covered in a slender fuzz, almost like a weasel's fur. They weren't perfectly fitted, and the insulation warmed my feet to an outright uncomfortable degree. They were also somewhat thin, with no hard reinforcement. It was hard to imagine they'd survive even one day of movement.

I refined the pink boots, on the scalar improvement setting - the normal one, that improved things by actually making them better, rather than completely exaggerating function to an outright supernatural degree.

They didn't come out as I expected. Instead of fur-coated boots, I now had something that resembled pink-and-black Yeezy boots, the sole of them making me almost half an inch taller. They were unspeakably disgusting: a lace-and-leather crime against fashion. They were the sort of boots you could dip into strong acid and they'd still be fine to wear. I didn't see how this was an improvement, aside from better structural integrity.

"Hey, Harriet?" I said, looking over in her direction. She was still dutifully looking through the binoculars, but her overall stance, one hand on her cheek and sighing almost once every couple of seconds, suggested she was violently bored with it.

She didn't look away from the shore. Points for dedication. "Yes?"

"I've got boots that are more or less fine enough as they are," I said - a small fib since the boots were a crime against sensible footwear. "Should I risk it and turn them into super boots? My power's somewhat random and there's a risk it'll give something unworkable, or maybe even a little hazardous."

Harriet shrugged with only one shoulder. "Sure, I've got another pair of slippers anyway if you want to try again."

Once more, a refinement. This time, I didn't hold back and used the highest, most powerful setting.

The Yeezy boots became a little thicker across their entire width and sprouted sets of ridges set with enamel spikes, on the underside - like football shoes - and on the side of the soles. I leaned down and ran a finger over one of the spikes: hard and sharp, probably nasty enough to pop a car tire. As I took a tentative step forward, I found they left behind small pinpricks in the concrete. Their style, disappointingly, didn't change: they were still Yeezys.

Despite the destructive effect on the environment, they were supremely comfortable and effortless to move around in, adhering exactly to match the shape of my feet, and stepping on the asphalt with a kind of fixative and intuitive stability. They were almost like a second layer of tough flesh and skin.

"I now have spiked Yeezy boots," I reported. The minus is that a tracker won't be necessary to find me, with all the holes I poke into everything.

"That's cool. So, what do they do?" She didn't look at me, for which I was glad. It meant she'd laugh at me later, rather than now. "Other than being spiked. Do they let you fly like Hermes?"

"They're... uh, boots." I reached into them with my zone and started picking them apart for information. There was something... odd about them, a sign of the same abnormal radiation that emanated from me constantly. It weaved invisibly outwards into the air, and to a degree, into the rest of me. in retrospect, maybe I should've removed them prior to experimenting. "They also emit probably harmless radiation of some kind."

"Cool." She continued not looking at me. "Make me some of those, so I can be your Nazi-beating buddy. Also, I think I saw them: the targets, I mean."

"Did you?" I moved over to stand next to her, extending a hand to receive the binoculars.

Harriet obligingly handed me the binoculars. Just as I looked through them and searched around the Boardwalk, I felt Harriet's eyes burning into my feet. She burst out laughing, like a horse connected to a car battery.

"What the fuck are those!?" she asked me, through fits of overwhelming laughter.

"Shut up, Red."

"Fuck you, Rob, those are ridiculous!" she managed to say. I didn't look at her, but I got the distinct impression she was crying from laughter. "You look like you came out of the Punkest Planets of the Heavy Metal Universe! Like the Dark Lord Sauron decided to make shoes for his ten-year-old daughter!"

She laughed even harder, drowning out even the noise of the cars driving and honking on the boulevard road some ways down.

"You're the Glam Rock Adidas Overlord!"

I smacked my lips distastefully.

I decided to focus on the stake-out, and ignore the mocking laughter. The motherfuckers, Derick and Elliott, were sitting at a small bar in uniform, apparently on lunch break, tastefully enjoying coffee as they discussed something.

"I haven't even considered how I want to handle this," I told Harriet thoughtfully, as she recovered from the fit of laughter. "Do you think I should, like, hold off and see where they wander off to after work? If they're actually connected to the Empire, this could end up providing valuable data."

Data I could make use of, maybe, although for now, I couldn't imagine exactly how. Information was how you won battles, though, and I thought it'd be safer to stray on the side of caution. My power was decently strong, and had a lot of versatility and potential, but I wasn't bulletproof for now.

Somewhere, in the deepest recesses of my mind, I heard a voice, almost like a cousin echo of my own thoughts.

It was the spiked boots, whispering to me. They are Nazis. Slaughter them, slaughter them all. Neo-Nazis are the enemy. They growled into my mind like wild animals, dripping with venom and unspeakable malice, I thirst for white supremacist flesh...

"I think I've figured out what the boots do," I said, lowering the binoculars.

She almost burst out laughing again as she replied, "Aside from having My Little Pony metal punk Satanic spikes, you mean?"

"I can hear them whispering in my brain," I told her, completely serious. "They claim the enforcers are Empire-affiliated and want me to go after them."

"Oh God!" Harriet exclaimed. She burst out into uncontrollable laughter again and fell to the ground, rolling around and bellowing like a maniac, holding her stomach with both hands. "They're evil, possessed spiked boots! This is gre-he-he-eaat! Your power's great!"

"I'll turn you into an evil, possessed spike boot if you don't shut up!"

Harriet flipped me the double bird, still laughing. "Make me!"

I leaned down in an act of sudden spite, touched both my hands to her own shoes, and maliciously refined them - on the highest setting, hoping it'd create something animate and irritating.

Harriet immediately squealed in fright and began to thrash around, as the shoes on her feet turned into live, slime-covered toadfish, clamping down on her, stretched out almost cartoonishly up to her calves. "Turn it back, turn it back!" she squeaked. "My God, it's disgusting, I can feel them licking!"

"That's what you get. Hm, they're on the move," I said, as I stood and continued the stake-out, binoculars to eyes. "Anyway, for the next costume part, I think I need to figure out something armored for my torso and legs. What do you think?"

Harriet screamed in a mixture of disgust and panic, managing to slip off one of the poor animals on her feet and flinging a deformed, deflated toadfish over the railing, into the waters of the Bay. Another went sailing past my shoulder a moment later.

"Fuck you, Rob! Now I don't have any shoes and my feet smell like fish guts!" she yelled.

I smiled at her with the highest form of schadenfreude and cruelty dancing like flames in my eyes.

"Well, you still have some pink slippers, don't you?"

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Nov 14, 2022

#216

Afterward, Harriet was extremely upset that I'd turned her only decent shoes into potentially mutated and dangerous toadfish, now loosed on the Bay.

She went down to the beach, a couple of hundred paces away, to wash off the fetid aquatic ooze in the clear seawater.

Then, she primly informed me, she'd return to the shelter and return with fresh slippers - which she fully expected me to make into workable shoes, otherwise, she'd never forgive me for the detestable crimes I committed. There were certain implications that she'd do something horrible to make me regret my choices.

In retrospect, maliciously depriving her of the only footwear she possessed for simply laughing at me might not have been the best idea.

There was also the matter of the toadfish themselves. All products of the highest, ultimate setting shared the same aberrant emanations as the ones I gave off. I was a little worried they might also be telepathic, or supernatural in some manner - however before I could study them more, they swam far out of range.

Judging by the disturbing manner in which my Yeezys now occasionally whispered deep into my mind, in echoing and reverberating tones, with salivating requests for me to move out and delve into the shadows to hunt down as many Empire men as I could, it seemed fair to surmise the setting could produce highly dangerous magic objects, and even beings. There was no clear mechanism that logically explained the spiked boots' telepathic abilities or apparent sentience. It meant the emanations themselves were the origin of the effect, and since I couldn't read or predict them, it meant these emanations were potentially dangerous: I'd need to constrain my activities somewhat.

"I really don't get you, boots," I said, looking down, away from the binoculars for a second, and clicking their heels together.

Strangle, they said in unison, like a snake's whisper.

At least they were more comfortable than slippers. And the demonic whispers were quiet and subtle enough that I could ignore them, like, ninety percent of the time.

I wondered, in the privacy of my mind, what'd happen if I refined them once more - either on the standard improvement setting, or the supernatural improvement setting. Could I actually do recursive upgrading like that, or would the enhancements plateau at some point? If not, what'd the result be?

I decided not to push my luck. They could already whisper into my mind. I had workable combat boots now: extremely comfortable and stable to walk around in, and outfitted with spikes that I suspected could punch through metal under the right circumstances. They were also decently tough and structurally reinforced in all the right places, yet airy enough that I could probably wear them in the summer. They were almost perfect if you ignored the tackiness.

I improved the rest of my clothing, intent on seeing what happened. I did it twice for each article, on the standard improvement setting.

The first application to my trousers rendered them into form-fitting pants, more breathable and less prone to falling down to reveal my ass. It also cleaned off residual stains, removed pervasive hints of unsavory odor, and shifted the cheap polyester into sturdier isomeric arrangements, making the pants almost ridiculously tear-resistant.

The second one added a fibrous dark belt, sturdy enough that I wouldn't be able to cut through with my switchblade, and several loops for it. The drawstrings were removed entirely, and their material apparently recycled for the belt. They shifted one shade closer toward the professional and formal, rather than casual.

After that, I improved my shirt. On the first refinement, its sleeves became a little longer and covered more skin, and the material quality improved drastically. On the second refinement, it changed colors to a darker shade - from anchor gray to lead gray - and improved the material once more, rendering the fibers into a stiff and resilient pattern. Also, it added a skull emblem to the chest, which I thought was a little cool. It still wasn't much to talk about, though.

Blood, my black-and-pink Yeezys whispered into my mind. Feed... us... blood...

"Shut the fuck." The binoculars went up, to once more track my targets, across the Boardwalk. "I'm doing a stake-out."

It seemed like Elliott had wandered off somewhere. Derick was patrolling the Boardwalk. Nothing interesting was happening.

"God, I wish I had a phone or something. This is so fucking boring," I whispered. I'd spent so many tiresome hours now on nothing but staring at these two irritating fuckwads drinking coffee and giving mean looks to people who looked too poor to be shopping there.

A couple of minutes later, something interesting finally happened. Coming in from above, about on the level of the mid-rise buildings, and on a vector from the middle of the Bay, an armored man swooped over the Boardwalk, waving to the amazed people below. In one hand, he clutched a spear made of white lightning, and in the other, a disk shield that arced with sparks in a round, static field. His boots were blazing, encased in fulminant distortion - a foot bling that could rival my own. It was one of the local heroes based on the excited response of the crowd, moving like a storm of hopping crickets to get a closer look.

I hummed as I noticed Derick reach into his pocket and start texting someone.

Normally, I'd be willing to attribute that simply to letting a friend or interested family member know that said hero was in the area and maybe snapping a few photos. That wasn't what Derick did, though.

He sent a message to someone, looked to the sky again, then looked at the response message and walked into the alleyway behind a local tattoo parlor.

"What are you bastards up to?"

A point in favor of the Empire hypothesis, perhaps? Letting the bosses and dealers in the area know?

In any case, even if I wanted to step in before and do something, it'd be calamitous to even think about it now, with a Protectorate hero patrolling in the area. I couldn't offer any solid evidence of crime against either of the men; I didn't have credible eyewitnesses, and my wounds could've originated anywhere. Oh, and let's not forget that I was a smelly, untrustworthy hobo, and they were hardworking, normal men. If I started wailing on them with a pipe, I'd be apprehended as a psychotic vigilante off his meds.

I sighed, lowering the binoculars. Choices, choices.

Isn't the choice obvious? my Yeezys whispered, voices singing like a chittering of a billion spiders in a dark pit. Kill. Murder. Death.

I wondered what exact degree of the refinement process I could control.

A baseless hunch, supported by most of the refinements I'd performed so far, suggested to me that I was capable of influencing, or at least guiding the process, to a minor degree. It probably wouldn't result in anything lethal or deadly unless I wanted it to, and vice versa.

I decided to combine the plastic lighter and the switchblade into a single combat item, and then refine parts of them strategically.

It started out with the combination: of lighter and switchblade, on the improvement setting. The output was an almost identical switchblade, the hilt of which now possessed a small button that started up a trickle of flames to heat the blade when pressed. It was neither efficient, fast, nor elegant. I decided to start off by upgrading parts of this, making the materials themselves more efficient: compressed, tougher, and slicker. The design advanced, gaining complexity, but I soon found a limit to how much better I could make individual elements of it, without making the whole thing useless. If I wanted a better weapon, I'd have to add more parts on my own.

Since I didn't have convenient scrap on hand, it'd require a lot of material exchanges anything I found in the environment;, from unusable trash to better components.

I added in some loose metal, lengthening the blade to something more like a long dagger. I refined the surrounding metal from the railings and tin waste into unrusted springs and screws and then added a more complex folding mechanism, and rendered the blade into several, individual plates that'd slide out of each other like a telescope. The heating element was improved even further; hydrocarbons rendered into crude oils, and crude oils refined into hard polymers. Those polymers were integrated with parts of the design, as shielding plates, or small mechanisms. Once I had a complete image of a product, I refined it one last time, on the supernatural setting.

And there I had it, a flaming sword that'd deactivate and fold itself into a convenient, pocket-sized form with the press of a button; thick and shining radiantly with the unidentified aural emanations. I folded the sword before anyone saw me wielding such an odd weapon, then continued my stake-out for an hour.

Harriet came back, soon after, and she still looked pissed off. I obediently turned her slippers into shoes, and she took a walk in them, making circles around me.

"Is there any hero in the local Protectorate with a glowing spear and boots? A fellow in armor?"

"You mean Dauntless?" She frowned at me. "Yeah. And it's not a spear, it's an Arclance."

I hummed in approval.

If I ever fought him, we'd make a dynamite light show together: fire and lightning clashing against each other.

Of course, the mere idea that I'd be capable of matching an expert melee fighter - or, at least, I assumed Dauntless was one - in his own field was a preposterous one. If Dauntless and I ever fought, I wager I'd end up knocked down and on my ass almost immediately; maybe unconscious or something worse. Either I'd have to rely on my zone and its ability to deal almost instant damage in combat, or I'd have to start training swordsmanship. And honestly, the idea seemed kind of stupid - as long as my field was active, I was essentially never unarmed, at least at close range.

"He was here?" she asked.

"A while ago, yeah."

"Damn, I can't believe I missed him!" She cursed quietly. "It's your damn fault, Slip."

"Come on, will you ever stop being angry?" I sighed, reached into my pocket, and handed Harriet the fire sword. "Here, as my apology - don't poke your eyes out with it."

"Woah." The sword was heavy and compressed when deactivated, so her arm sagged from the surprising weight a little as she accepted it. She turned it over a couple of times, beginning to frown. "How do you turn it on? Is this, like, a sword?"

"Point the crossguard away from yourself, and press the button."

She did as I instructed: there was a click, and a sliding of metal, and then ignition. I sensed heat running on my back, like the comforting warmth of a blacksmith's forge in winter, and I heard a shriek from her. A moment later, she laughed out in amazement, and I could hear the wavering of the flames, as she swung it around experimentally a couple of times. I clenched my asscheeks a little as some of the flame washed over my back, hot enough it almost stung. "Holy shit, it's so cool! How did you make this?"

"A lighter, a switchblade, and a lot of effort." I frowned in her direction. "Can you move away a little? And maybe do this indoors, later?"

"Oh come on, Rob, you can't just give me a fiery sword and ask me not to play with it."

"I'm not asking that you not play with it," I said. "I'm asking that you play with it at some point later, once we're not in the great outdoors, with no cover."

"You're a little paranoid." She chuckled, but complied anyway, pressing the button. The blade immediately snapped back and put itself out, with such force and speed it knocked itself out of her grasp. Harriet's hands danced in a flurry of motion, attempting to catch it, and nearly failing. She clutched it tight, a relieved expression on her face. I was also relieved - if it had gone sailing over into the water below, I would not be the one to leap in after it. "Fwoo, shit. Almost dropped it."

"Yeah," I muttered. "I noticed."

"Alright, I think now's our time to go in," I reported to her, stowing the binoculars away in my bag. I proceeded to explain my idea, "I've seen them both enter the back side of a small tattoo parlor, not long after Dauntless flew over. I suspect your blind hypothesis about Empire membership may have been correct."

Harriet whooped, a winning grin spreading on her face.

"In any case," I said, "I'll make us some masks on the way there, alter your outfit a little. Then we'll make our way in and counter-rob them."

She frowned. "Counter-rob? Hold on, listen... I'm not..."

"They stole from me," I reminded her, letting a bit of poison seep out into my voice. "Stole and beat me, bringing me to the state you saw me in yesterday. Right now, I'm only functional because there's a nearly magical painkiller coursing in my veins. And I don't even want to beat them anymore - I only want to steal back what's mine."

She didn't seem to like the idea a lot - she continued to frown, even as she acquiesced with a nod. "Alright, Rob, we'll do it your way."

"And don't call me Rob, as we do this," I instructed, refining some masks out of concrete and wood. They ended up slim and drawn out, a little on the creepy and weird side, almost like theater masks: one was laughing with an open and smiling mouth, and one was crying with small discolorations to mark the tears. I took the sad mask and handed Harriet the joyful one. "Call me R, and I'll call you H, assuming we even need to refer to each other. Better not say anything, except 'hand over the money,' or something like that. The blade is going to draw some attention, so you'll be intimidating them, and I'll negotiate and yell at them."

"Got it," she said, a little nervous.

"If you want to leave, you still can. I know you wanted to be a part of this-"

"I wanted to keep you from doing something like this," she countered. She took a slow, hesitant step back. "Now I feel like I'm getting swept up in some insane plan of yours. I mean, seriously, why are we robbing Boardwalk security?"

"Because I'm not going to rob a bank," I said, as plainly as I could. "It's not about the money, even though I do want to earn money. I think I could easily manage to do that legitimately, with my power. They stole money from me, and I want that money returned to me."

"Is a couple of bucks really that important? That we'd commit a crime over it?"

I hesitated for a second because I knew she was making a good point.

Again, I was rushing in without really considering things - the potential ramifications of my actions. If the enforcers decided to report this to the police afterwards, I'd be in even deeper water than I already was after working over the Empire men. What's more, if they really were a part of the Empire, then I'd already be a known quantity that assaulted several of their members. They probably knew what I looked like, at least in a vague and general way. So maybe they were preparing to ambush me. Even I couldn't survive being shot, at least not with my current equipment.

I'd considered most of these ideas before, although not to such depth. I'd been getting too eager to rush in there, to claim what I was owed, and to tell myself the consideration time was over, and there was nothing but action now.

Night approached; the sun was setting across the buildings. If I didn't act now, I could act later, or I could act tomorrow. However, I couldn't undo an action already taken. There was no reason to hurry, even if I decided that I wanted revenge. The hope of vengeance could patiently bide its time, like a shark circling prey.

The idea comforted me as almost no other had before - I didn't have to let these complete losers define me; I was a parahuman now. Even my shoes whispered something aligned to that, a sort of ill-defined sense of agreement, saying that I had the power to end lives whenever I wished. Although, they were seemingly for it more because of an abstract sense of satisfaction that an enemy was already defeated and awaiting execution, more than anything revolving around concern for my well-being and status.

"Alright," I said, nodding and stowing the masks back into my bag.

"Alright?" she asked in slight confusion.

"Alright," I repeated agreeably. "I think you make a fair point, and I'm convinced, so let's put this attempted robbery off - for now at least, if not entirely. There are other things I can do to earn money, and it'd be stupid to rush in this early without a solid plan and preparation anyway. A single day of ardent people-watching isn't enough, I think."

She snorted, folding her arms. "You don't say, Rob. Are you gonna come back with me, to the seaside shelter?"

I considered that for a moment, and found myself annoyingly gravitating to the idea. There weren't a lot of other places I could go and not be kicked out, or shivved in the ribs as I slept for that matter. The shelter I was already familiar with was still probably overcrowded, and I didn't want to go anywhere on Empire turf.

"Yeah," I told Harriet with a nod. "I think I've cooled enough to talk to Phineas again, too. Let's go back."

Harriet gave me a downright sunlit smile. I smiled back, and we started our return journey.

280

Birdsie

Nov 14, 2022

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Nov 16, 2022

#234

As we returned, I started to feel a sense of grogginess, and muted pain - mostly centered around my legs and chest. The painkiller was beginning to wear off, and the pain was starting to come into me, like a wave of nuclear flame toasting my being.

"I think I'll be fine even if they don't want me back," I said to Harriet, as we walked back to the seaside warehouse.

The city was almost beautiful at sunset. The streets were dark, almost ominous as shadows wrapped around them. The buildings downtown were like sky-reaching pillars of luminescence, reflecting the light of the distant sun. And the sun itself was already set over the far-off Badger Hills, a molten radiance shining over the peaks like a rain of falling orange-bleach streams. To the east, I could see its nightly counterpart ascending to welcome me: a dome of stars, their natural and grandiose splendor somewhat ruined by light pollution.

"I suppose," Harriet muttered. She turned to me and gave me a light bump on the shoulder, affectionate in nature. It surprised me a little nonetheless, and not in a good way. "I'm coming with you no matter what."

"You need to stop punching me," I said, feeling the slightest amount of sudden and inexplicable rage, but showing not even a flicker.

"Sorry." She retracted her hand quickly, even though it was no longer in contact with me. "Superpower stuff?"

"No. I don't think I like people touching me."

Although, admittedly, there was an element of confusion about having so much information thrust into my field. I was starting to become accustomed to the sensation, and the vertigo of such novelty and clarity with every step I took, but I couldn't say it was on the level of 'pleasant,' yet.

"Do you, uhm…" She looked at the ground as she walked, placing her feet one in front of the other as if she was tight roping. "Would you make an exception for hugs?"

"If I am forewarned of them," I said, eyeing her with suspicion.

"Okay." She stopped walking and looked at me. I stopped walking as well. "Can I hug you?"

"Sure."

She smiled, and came closer to me, wrapping a single arm around me and pressing her head against my chest. It was at moments like these that I realized how much shorter than me she was. My chin would only touch the top of her head if I leaned down a little.

I reciprocated, deciding that I shouldn't overthink it.

So we stood there, hobo and hoboette, in each other's arms. Among the distant streets, I heard the movement of cars and bikes, passing through Lord's Street and other arterial roads. Honks, traffic, and movement; seagulls and other birds, flapping their wings and screeching into the evening.

The warehouse came into sight a couple of minutes later, moments after the sun went totally down and cast the city into darkness, making it hard to see anywhere where there wasn't a source of light. The sky was covered by night clouds, which didn't allow the faintest bit of angled moonlight to pierce through to shine on the city. It made the atmosphere almost feel a little ominous, like something terrible was going to happen.

"Hello, Robert, Harriet," Lynn said as we approached the warehouse's entrance. She was smoking a cigarette, approaching the finish line, and she put it out with her boot as we came closer. There was a somber smile on her face, at the sight of our return. "How are you, dears? I didn't think you'd… come back, after what happened. I'm glad you did. New clothes?" She eyed me curiously for a second.

"I decided I want to bum some cigarettes off of Jack before I leave." Harriet looked at me like she wanted to slam me with her elbow, but realized that's not such a good idea. I raised a hand, to the both of them. "I'm kidding."

"About Jack…" Lynn cringed a bit, looking off to the side.

I sighed, looking to the side.

"He's been meaning to talk to you, but then… you left. He's upset," she said, sighing deeply. She clutched the bridge of her nose as she sighed. "Really upset. He's been drinking again, all on his own."

Harriet looked at me again.

"What?" I reacted with a bit of surprise. "You want me to talk to him? Isn't Phineas around?"

Lynn shrugged. "Phineas left. It's up to you. It's not really your fault he's like this, though."

I didn't like the idea of talking to Jack. He was an adult, he was capable of making his own choices, and maybe his circumstances were tough, but drinking was his own will. I decided that I could try, though, and find out what he has to say, more for my own sake than his.

Worst case scenario, he'd turn out to be a belligerent bastard and I'd calm him down.

I nodded and sighed, preparing myself mentally for what was to come. "Where is he?"

"We sent him outside to sober up. He was being loud, and the peeps were trying to sleep." It seemed like she was feeling guilty over having to do that - sending him away to the outside. I could almost see her perspective on it since he'd been wounded recently. It'd suck to have to do that to a friend of yours, especially one going through some tough times. "He's on the other side of the warehouse, sitting somewhere. Can't miss him."

"Alright, I'm going. Harriet, stay with Lynn and go inside."

"But-"

"No buts, Red, go in. It's cold," I said, pointing at the door with my thumb.

Harriet nodded and acquiesced, then quietly chuckled. "Hehe, butts."

I mentally picked myself up and began walking down the street. A minuscule coal of frustration warmed itself over in my stomach. He was the one who left me for dead, and he had the iron-clad balls to be the one looking for alcohol to get drunk, and getting all sad and depressed over nothing? It left me feeling unreasonably powerless and angry in a way I couldn't fathom: he should've been able to move on and do better with it.

He was sitting on a crate, with two empty wine bottles next to him laid on their side, looking towards the sea. He looked sad, and somehow he appeared even more homeless than usual. It was a pathetic sight, to see an old man in such a sorry state.

I found myself not feeling angry anymore. It wasn't worth it.

And so, I called out to him. "Hey, Jack."

Jack's head turned towards me as if on a swivel.

"R-Robert!" he slurred. He hopped off the crate and started to shamble toward me like an ungainly zombie. He was a pathetic mess, covered in sweat, reeking of booze; excited like a puppy to see me.

He tried making his way over to me, but his feet weren't moving properly. His legs were shaking and wobbling unsteadily, like a deer dressed in high heels. He was swaying and stumbling all over the place, and at one point, he tripped over one of the half-filled glass bottles and fell to the ground, like a sack of potatoes, with a disturbingly similar sound. The contents of the bottle spilled, a frothing concoction of alcohol forming a puddle and seeping into the bottom hem of his pants. It disturbed me enough to make me take a step away.

Jack chuckled, picking himself up from the ground. Not entirely, but just enough to be able to look at me, with open and bloodied eyes.

He looked so… sad. It was difficult to encapsulate the sheer pathetic quality of the impression he gave off; it was almost artistic, in a sad and tragic kind of way. Like he was a spiritual manifestation of everything wrong about this part of the city.

"H-How's your… how's your everything, kid? You've got some new rags on ya."

"How's your... head?" I asked him testingly, remembering the brick he'd received.

"Oh, it's… fine," he said softly, adjusting his seating and setting down cross-legged. There was a puddle of beer, still, around him. Some of it had seeped into the concrete, but he was getting even messier without noticing it.

"You can't be drinking," I told him, as firm as a parent. "Not to this degree."

"It's-" He burped, interrupting his own statement. "-Fiiiine. I'm fine. See? I'm super cool. I'm alright."

"You're a wreck," I said, as I attempted to conceal the faint disgust that I felt at that moment. Disgust and some fear - could I have ended up like this, years down the line? I didn't think I'd have to, now that I was a parahuman, but it was a disturbing thing to imagine, even as a hypothetical. "Jack, you barely even remember how to walk. You tripped over a bottle of beer for crying out loud."

"Just my bones being weak, hurting," Jack said, huffing and waving me off. He was still slurring, hiccuping every few words and breaths. "I'm old, and I have... uh, osteoporosis. Yeah, they… have holes in them. Doc said I'm lucky I'm not stuck on one of those cool-ass… ass rides."

"A mobility scooter?"

He shook his head and let himself fall back, back laid on the ground. "Nah, like, the ones you push with your hands."

I nodded. Then, I came up to him and took his arm, doing my best to force him up. "Come on, let's get you up."

Surreptitiously, I reached into him with my zone, and performed an experimental refinement, attempting to reduce the alcohol level in his blood, which I found a little concerning. I went molecule by molecule at first and then did larger amounts, once I learned the process was mostly safe. My intention was to avoid risking the formation of harmful gas bubbles, as those could be especially lethal, but I managed to work through them in such a manner that didn't increase the pressure on him. I was as careful as I could be nonetheless, making sure to never refine anything big enough to be lethal at once, like a slow-acting filtration system. Most of the beer simply broke down into small clumps of organic matter and other harmless stuff, easily digestible or simply filtered out by the other parts of his body's systems.

I was relieved that I could do this, although I continued to act in slow and cautious increments. He continued to be drunk in the meantime.

"Nah, it's too hot in there…" He brushed me off again, not willing to stand up from the concrete pavement. "I'll sweat and stink even more, and we're all stinky enough as it is. You know, without showers…"

"I can get rid of your stink," I said and did so: reducing the bacteria feeding off of his sweat into unfettered water, enzymes, nutrients, and wastes, and then even further into components of those; and then reducing the compounds dirtying the rest of him into loose atoms. The smell of an old, drunken hobo abated in moments, almost completely disappeared, although with small, lingering traces on the deepest whiffs. Then I went back to carefully destroying the alcohol in him, breaking it down. "Get up."

"Oh, man…" Jack sighed and burped almost at the same time, taking my other hand to aid himself in standing to his feet. He made a drawn-out groan, both out of pain and out of exertion. "Fuck, my head hurts. It's like... it's pulsating."

"I made you not drunk anymore," I said. "And not smell so bad."

The realization of it hit him like a truck. "...Fuck, you have superpowers."

"Yes, I've had them since yesterday. And you have osteoporosis," I said, as I finished cleaning the last of the alcohol out of his system. I let go of his arm. "Had I known you physically can't help me without being snapped like a twig, I wouldn't have been so angry at you."

"I should've helped you anyway, or insisted more we can't go to the Boardwalk." He went silent for a second. "You… you Triggered."

"Triggered?" I asked him. "You mean, like when something bad happens and you develop a superpower?"

"Yeah."

"Can't be." I looked around for a second, only to make sure nobody was listening in, out of paranoia. Then I said, "Harriet said I'm a... mutant cape or something. I have a tattoo on my arm. It'd mean I already had powers before, only that I didn't remember using them, or how to use them."

I showed him the tattoo.

"God," Jack uttered, sighing. "Explains the amnesia."

"Look, Jack, as someone whose memory only tapes back a single week, I can tell you that life is too short for spending it on trivial bullshit." I offered him some advice, which felt strange, as he was my senior by some thirty years. "Stop drinking, clean up, and let yourself heal."

Jack gave me a single nod. "I, uh… I had stopped. Then the whole Boardwalk business happened, and I… I felt so damned guilty. I relapsed. I'd been clean for a few months."

I frowned at the bottles. At least they could be sold back, we'd probably squeeze out a couple of cents for each one.

"I'll make sure you don't relapse again. Let's..." My eyes wandered, intent on leading us towards the entrance of the factory when I saw them.

Down the main industrial boulevard, stalking through the night, laughing, chattering, drinking, smoking cigarettes, and swaggering as though they owned the entire city - an entire group of ABB men, and even several women. There were too many of them to count accurately with a single look, at least fifteen or thereabouts - one for every two people inside the factory. Each of them had their face concealed: sunglasses, bandanas, large caps, and masks. They were potentially expecting to have to use violence.

And their leader was the most concealed. A man in a dark bodysuit, a combination of fitted cloth and spandex. Across his chest was a leather bandoleer, holding a selection of knives and short blades. On his face, there was a demonic red mask, with two green stripes on either side of the mouth, holding a fanged, leering, ear-to-ear grin. He was the calmest and most self-controlled out of the bunch, advancing with confident steps, hands at his sides.

"ABB!" I yelled, rushing into the factory. "Everyone hide!"

A general panic settled in the warehouse's main room. Many of the homeless ran for cover, or into one of the smaller side rooms. Everyone who looked out of one of the windows recognized who they were dealing with, although I didn't. I looked out the door frame, tentatively, to measure how much time we had to prepare. The demon-masked figure scanned the building, breathing slowly, and seemed to notice me in the doorframe. I stepped back.

One of the homeless men stared at me, wide-eyed. He'd been in the middle of eating pre-packaged pork noodles out of a small bowl, and he discarded it - steaming, to the floor - even as he ran for the back room, where several more of the homeless congregated.

I stood in the middle of the main room, contrary to them. Jack stood with me, side by side.

"You don't have to be here," he said, with small, tired, and scared breaths passing through his lips. An unfamiliar accent slipped into his voice, thick, almost Southern, but not quite. "You don't have to draw attention to yourself, kid. Just run away and hide. You've done more than enough, telling me what you told me, coming to talk to me. There's enough of them thugs they're gonna get violent... And that man, Oni Lee-"

Oni Lee? I recognized the name and remembered the moveset, although that wasn't important. I interrupted Jack.

"Has a tight leash on them," I told him. "As long as we're upright, respectful, cooperational, and don't make any sudden moves, none of us are going to be hurt. Just don't beg them for a reprieve, no matter what they demand. If they demand the sun, we need to give it to them."

"Robert, the Azn Bad Boys isn't the Yakuza," Jack told me, shaking his head vigorously, as though relating an important news report. He looked me in the eyes, as though pleading with me to be reasonable. "They don't have honor. They make most of their money off of selling heroin to teenagers and prostituting the same teenagers for sex slavery. They won't hesitate to slit a couple of throats to make an example out of us."

"Then don't let that happen," I said, and then - hearing footsteps and jeers across the door, some twenty meters out - with a swallow of hesitation, "And if it does happen, if it does get violent, get behind me and run. I don't know if I can kill fifteen people, villain included, but I'll do my best."

"You're too good for us, Robert." He clasped my shoulder. "You're a good kid."

The door opened and in stepped a man familiar to me: Shiro Aoki. His expression was concealed by a red-painted face mask, but I could recognize the tattoos, the tread style. He didn't speak, didn't dare step out of line. Now that he'd entered, it was business mode.

"Good evening, we're here for a reason," Oni Lee said, moving in behind him. His voice was airy, composed, and eerily quiet for someone making a declaration. It sliced through the tension in the air like one of his knives. He didn't have any weapons drawn, but he still looked deeply intimidating. I had no doubt in his skill, simply from his manner of tread and his general behavior. He commanded one of his subordinates, "Explain."

"We're making some new demands, bums," the man declared, as calm as one could be, with Oni Lee staring into his back. "There's a new player in town, one working for the boss, and we're gathering up the funds to make a nice, pretty starting salary for her to work with. From now on, staying here will cost you no less than five thousand dollars a week. Another hundred and fifty for every new member you add to your junkpile in that time."

Five thousand?

"Five thousand?" I asked, remembering what I'd told Jack, and disregarding my own instructions. "There's only, like, thirty of us, we're all homeless, and finding work out in the city is the opposite of easy. That's more like something we'd make in a month. How do you expect us to achieve that?"

"I expect you to do whatever Lung tells you to do," Oni Lee replied. There was not even a hint of hostility in his voice, no hint of assertion. He was already confident he was above me, and that everyone was aware of it. "Or else, I shall do what he told me to do."

I considered the situation. I was a parahuman, although I was a complete newbie, and even then, I wasn't certain I could defeat another parahuman, especially not one supported by a small platoon of armed thugs. Moreover, Oni Lee was a mobile assassin kind of cape. I'd heard that he was able to teleport. It was probably the weakest match-up for me: someone that could simply escape out of touching range and then harass me from a distance.

I was about to admit defeat and surrender, raise my hands, and tell him that we'd figure something out and get the money as promised.

I was interrupted.

There was a sound, like creaking metal, and then an empty-sounding woosh. Not even a tenth of a second after, one of the lights that illuminated the room exploded, sparks of loose electricity and heat scattering everywhere as it went out. Some of the homeless standing nearest to it cried out in surprise and fright; most of them scattering like spiders from under a rock that had been lifted, others sinking in deeper into their hiding spots.

Jack turned momentarily in the direction of the now-broken light, and then looked at me, surprise and unspoken questions appearing in his eyes. I made a helpless gesture - it hadn't been me.

"What the fuck is happening?" Shiro asked while Oni Lee scanned the room in a calm and assessing manner, having moved back a couple of steps and drawn a knife. He looked on the edge, although not even close to scared.

Another sound - the same one, with the exact same timing and pitch - and the light directly over me and Jack went out. I stepped back, reaching out with my arm to drag Jack backward as well, away from the fragments of glass.

"The fuck are you doing? Stop pushing, we're not running!" someone yelled behind us. There was panic in the dark parts of the room, and some amount of pushing over the hiding spots. The people were confused, even more than us, about what exactly was happening. They weren't in a position to see what caused the blackout - not that I was entirely sure of it either.

The only remaining source of light now hanging was the one over the ABB men and Oni Lee, casting them into a cone of illumination. The villain had moved strategically away from it, closer to the door, standing in the twilight.

Oni Lee said something in Japanese to his men. They snapped out of the dominating trance of fear and confusion, and started drawing weapons and looking around the darkness: four of them had different firearms, although only pistols.

"The luck I have," a feminine voice said, from somewhere above me, to the side. I could barely make her individual words out, even in the relative silence. "Honestly, you follow one scared little bum for a couple of nights, and the things you find out, the things you see..."

Another sound, and then one of the ABB men with a firearm was screaming loudly in pain, falling down to his knees and crying. He dropped his gun, to caress his bloodied hand, which now had a crossbow bolt sticking through the wrist. The others reacted immediately and started firing in several directions the bolt might've come from. The person that fired it off had already repositioned and wasn't anywhere they shot at, to begin with.

"It's fucking marvelous," she said, abruptly standing right behind me. Her voice was like silk made of darkness, overflowing with sadistic delight. I looked back and I saw only the faint outline of a grayed-out human skull, wafting and gliding with kernels of sandlike darkness. She looked at me, centrally.

"Shadow Stalker!" Jack gasped quietly in surprise.

"Hey there, striker boy," she said, not minding Jack. "Do you mind helping me out? I'll put the last of the lights out, and you go in from the left, close and violent. I'll take the right side, and Oni Lee."

"Got you. Let's do it," I retorted back, quietly. "But if I get the shot, I'm taking Lee."

She seemed almost pleased to hear that response. "That's the spirit."

She raised a hand and fired a crossbow bolt immediately. Rather than putting out the bulb, it severed the cord holding the entire thing aloft. It dropped onto the head of a man - another careless gunman - who'd stepped in and crouched to help the bleeding one staunch his wound. It also cast the room into darkness, as one might expect, with yells in Japanese and colorful words in English blooming in the shadows.

In the darkness, we had the advantage. I couldn't be seen, or even identified as a cape; and she could apparently match targets in the dark fine enough on her own. I moved in, feeling the whispering flicker of wind as Shadow Stalker leaped to the right of me, taking that side as she'd said.

It was time for payback against the motherfuckers.

Last edited: Nov 16, 2022

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Nov 16, 2022

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Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Nov 18, 2022

#251

My hand immediately hooked onto a shirt, and my zone flashed through a man's body.

In half a second, I knew the exact brand and composition of the aftershave he used, the sweatshop conditions his clothes were crafted in, and minute details about his health that'd have taken an entire battery of medical tests to learn. Assuming optimal conditions, and no development of sudden disease, the heart in his chest would beat an estimated one-point-eight billion times, before critical failure was almost inevitable. A billion worthless details jumped out at me, becoming increasingly irrelevant as they streamed in.

He dropped to the floor, arm nerves struck with electric shock and damaged almost beyond repair to make him worthless in any kind of fine manipulation, and parts of his bone structure pulverized into collagen and calcium shards and chips. He'd be able to barely flee under the effects of sudden, crashing adrenaline, but wouldn't make an effective soldier anymore. He barely even screamed, letting out a sound that was more like an empty gasp, and stumbling to the side, falling over and crawling away on his back.

The ID in his wallet said his name was Ikuri Mikayoshi. I disregarded the useless information and moved on.

A man standing within three feet of me; I reached out and latched onto his shoulder. He dropped as the previous one had, and started crawling away immediately afterwards, screaming and trying to draw attention to me. He didn't have an ID, or even a wallet, on him.

Across the room, I heard other people dropping, grunting in exertion, and screaming out. The sounds of an active struggle. It seemed that Shadow Stalker was acting almost as fast as me, dropping ABB men one by one, only pausing to dodge blows with the aid of her power. I couldn't see Oni Lee anywhere in the darkness, even as a vague figure.

I dropped another man in the same manner, when a man unexpectedly approached me from behind and punched me in the back of the head. The moment of contact was enough to feel into his body, almost deep enough to sense the stomach, but I couldn't react fast enough to select targets and refine, as I stumbled forward, vision swimming.

I looked back, and felt the back of my head with a hand. It felt as though my head wound reopened under the bandages, although I couldn't be certain. I checked with the zone, and found that several arterioles, venules, and capillaries crumbled from the blow like subdermal tissue paper. There was blood staining my bandage now, skin ragged and torn.

I swayed on my feet, and reached out with a shaking hand.

He swung a long object of some kind, rather than punching, this time.

Its reach surprised me, and only for a quarter of a second could I tell he'd used a baseball bat, as it made contact with the side of my arm, causing me to wince and nearly howl out a curse in pain. I moved in the direction of the swing, and then decided I needed to stop playing around and take him out.

I didn't give him another chance. As he recovered from the blow, I rushed at him, hand extended in front of me.

A moment of contact between my hand and his chest was enough to extend into him and disable him like the others. As he crumpled to the floor, I caught one last scan of his pockets: the wallet, and the ID held within declared him as Shiro Aoki. Damn bastard.

I allowed him to escape, following the rest of his buddies.

I breathed out, crouching down for a second to stabilize and center myself. I found that I couldn't remain even crouching, and fell down to the floor, supported by my knees and elbows. My vision swam around crazily, viewing only smears and blurs of ill-defined darkness, like I was looking through a portal to a dimension of closet monsters and children's nightmares. The chaos of the sounds, footsteps, and thrashing around me only increased the sense of uncontrolled vertigo.

I was a parahuman, damn it - a cape. Wasn't I supposed to be better than this? Better than almost losing a fight to a random criminal with a baseball bat?

I reached into myself, into the destroyed areas, and clotted my own blood. It formed scabs within a second; worthless, leaking erythrocytes transmuted into platelets in a flash of heat. The slightest degree of clarity returned to me, although my brain still reeled from the punch.

For a second, the chaos stabilized, and I felt enough strength return to me - like a booster shot of wild, motivating adrenaline - that I could act.

I stood and scanned the room, to see that most of the fighting abated. I looked more carefully, in the direction of the exit, and I saw a dance of shadows.

Shadow Stalker, leaping and whirling to avoid attacks, entering her shadow state to allow blades to harmlessly pass through her, and occasionally countering with her own combat knife. And Oni Lee, teleporting around so fast he seemed to leave behind afterimages lasting a couple of moments each, slashing and chasing her down everywhere she went.

Or were they actual clones? I had no damn idea how Oni Lee's power worked.

It seemed, on closer and more careful examination, that he was duplicating himself, with the clones massing around Shadow Stalker to cut off escape options. They weren't doing a particularly good job, or maybe she was simply that skilled at avoiding them. None of them were looking at me, and probably wouldn't notice me anyway, skulking around in the dark.

I rushed for one of them, and slammed a fist into him. Only to find that OnI Lee wasn't a human. As soon as I refined several parts of his body, with intent to disable as many crucial body parts as I could, the affected parts transformed into masses of lumpy and brittle solid carbon. He barely chanced a look back, cautious, before dissolving into carbon ash.

Another Oni Lee, holding that one within field of view, noticed me and rushed me, holding a tanto knife. I backpedaled away, until he also dissolved into ash.

They were on a timer, it seemed. The impact I'd made was seemingly irrelevant to the duplicates' collapse, only accelerating the process.

None of their bodily structure made any kind of goddamn sense to me, even with a second to think about it - organic polypeptides one second, and base carbon the next.

I decided not to worry about that for now. I didn't make sense either. My genome was partially a clockwork machine of turning gears and machine parts that somehow didn't kill me, and yet I existed, an affront to science and God in my own way, so I must've been doing something right. It was all unscientific parahuman bullshit.

An Oni Lee looked at me, and then a copy of him formed within footsteps. On blind reflex, I ducked low, and dodged a sword swing. Seizing the advantage, I immediately punched him in the groin, and refined several parts of him: causing internal bleeding, fracturing the most important bones, chopping small sections of his internal organs to cause shock, and shredding a number of nerves.

Unlike the carbon ash clones, he screamed like a man doused in acid as he stumbled back, on the verge of falling. He looked wildly around before he could completely drop, and then another, equally injured Oni Lee appeared close to the exit door, slamming against and holding onto a wall for balance. The one in front of me continued falling and hit the floor with a dull sound, dissolving into ash within two seconds.

Shadow Stalker, occupied with fighting another two duplicate Oni Lees was also watching my situation out of the corner of her eye. As the Oni Lee escaped for the door, she disengaged her targets, sliding to the center of the room in something almost like a gliding shadow commando roll, and emerged with the crossbow aimed for his center of mass.

There was a thwang sound as she fired. The Oni Lee approaching the open door, holding a single hand across his chest, where I'd powdered several ribs, recoiled away from the handle, right on time to not receive a sharpened bolt through the side. He cast a look at Shadow Stalker, drew a knife, and threw it. She phased to avoid being hit, and he collapsed into ash, apparently having peeked outside for long enough to escape.

"Damn it!"

"Aren't you going after him?" I asked, wheezing a little as I moved over to lean against a concrete column.

"No point, I've already tried before," she told me. There was a small hint of a growl to her voice, like she'd expected something of the sort might happen, but she hoped it wouldn't. I was somewhat familiar with the feeling. "He's much faster than me. Besides, I don't have to follow him, when he'll come back on his own. Probably with Lung in tow."

"Shit," I said, realizing the truth of her words suddenly.

The ABB wouldn't accept this course of events. They'd come back here in full force, to assert their authority, and to make sure no more Shadow Stalker incidents occurred. Looking around the room, I saw the ABB men were missing, probably having escaped while I was in a daze. They'd report there was another cape here, one that wasn't Shadow Stalker.

"You're right. I need to-"

"Yo, Robert, is that you?" Harriet's voice asked, approaching us. She was next to Emmanuel, wielding an old, somewhat battered phone in his hand, its flashlight turned on to provide a bleached cone of illumination, and several people behind her.

"Yeah. And-"

I looked back, to see that Shadow Stalker had already disappeared. My statement died on my lips. Did she really just pull that thing you only see in comic books and movies on me, the one where the feckless character looks away for a second, and the hero's already gone?

"Kid, are we good?" Jack asked, looking around the dark room. He didn't have a flashlight of his own, so his vision was limited.

"We are. The ABB's escaped."

"Rob saves our asses, as usual," Harriet said, sounding impressed, and seemingly even a little relieved. "How did you do that, by the way? The light-breaking thing, casting the room into shadows? It was impressive as heck."

I looked at Jack, and he looked back at me, with a yielding expression. He understood what I was planning on saying, and why.

"I enhanced the electromagnetic field around me, and sent it reeling in the direction of the lightbulbs, until the excess voltage popped them. Sorry about that. I can fix them up in a bit."

"I'm only glad those bastards are gone," someone said.

"Wait, did the kid defeat Oni Lee?" another asked.

"Wasn't there someone else in the fight?"

"No, I think that was just Lee."

"Yo, can I have your attention for a second?" Emmanuel said, waving a hand to gather everyone's attention. "Regardless of our lucky break, the ABB fuckers won't take this lying down. I think we need to move and we'd best do that by tomorrow night. It's either that, or we're fortifying this place down and stomping our feet, and I don't think that shit's gonna cut it. Not against the likes of Lung and his posse."

"Em's right," Arturo said huskily out of the darkened congregation. "Shit's fucked."

"I'll have a look outside, make sure none of them plan on returning," I informed the group, loud enough that at least two-thirds of the room could hear me. There were some vaguely assenting responses, comments of surprise that I'd returned, and some nods. There was nothing even remotely negative or skeptical of me, which I found surprising.

I walked outside, into the fresh air, and immediately scanned the rooftops. There was no Oni Lee, and no sign of the ABB men. I must've been knocked out for a good second.

"Damn..."

And the painkiller from yesterday almost completely wore off. I could feel the pain striking at my being like a blacksmith's hammer.

I used my zone to feel around my body, and I saw my system reacting to the pain, muscles contorting, nerves flashing with signals. A slow immersion into a cauldron of fiery pain, developing into an experience, like an entire outing into the city, where one must sample all its glories: the galleries, the cinemas, the food courts. Except instead of viewing pleasant stuff, you were inflicting pain on yourself with a variety of implements. The human body was an excellent device of self-torture.

Not that I was human. Only a decent approximation.

"Looking for me?" I heard Shadow Stalker's voice above me.

I looked up, and saw her casually sitting on a ledge, perched on the concrete rooftop of the closed-down visitors' entrance. She was astonishingly nonchalant, leg swinging back and forth in a relaxed manner, like a metronome - as though she'd not fought a supervillain and his team of lackeys only a couple of minutes ago. Her mask, a frowning metal face, made it difficult to discern her expression, but she appeared to be watching me curiously.

"You're nimble," I commented starkly. "Like a cat."

"I do some running, and I exercise," she commented, almost humble in tone. "My power handles the rest, makes me lighter. I can basically climb anything."

"Right. No chance you've got any cigs on you?"

"I don't smoke that shit, and you shouldn't either," she scoffed. Then, her shoulders slackened a fraction, and the soft trace of hostility faded. "Impressive, how you handled yourself down there. Not a week as a cape, and you're already making overtures. Probably the wrong kind of overtures. Still, not bad."

"Right. So you were there when I fought the Empire bastards. You mentioned following me around, come to think of it."

"That's right."

"I can't help but think about why Shadow Stalker, an esteemed heroine, might find me particularly interesting in any way, shape, or form."

She chuckled coldly. She stood, almost entirely with the strength of a single leg - in a single, graceful motion. The cape, or perhaps cloak, on her back unfurled in an almost picturesque manner, drawn against the pale moonlight peeking through the clouds, such that she was a figure of pure darkness surrounded by a luminescent halo of silver.

"I suppose that's up to you to find out, isn't it?" She was deeply amused and pleased with me, like a relaxed and contented dog with a new chew toy. "I'd tell you to keep my appearance here on the hush-hush, but it's not like the homeless go talking to cops that often, and you seem to have already gone with a cover-up. Good."

"We've met before," I said. "You're that girl that warned me about the Boardwalk enforcers."

"Yeah, a fat lot of good that did," she added, then cocked her head to the side, "although, I suppose you triggering is kind of a plus, in its own way."

"Thanks for the help, anyway," I said, disregarding the statement about trigger events. "I wouldn't have stood a chance without you getting the lights."

"Heh, no problem. I tip my hat to you, one wicked badass to another."

Badass? That seemed like a bit of an overestimation. I couldn't hide the small flush on my cheeks, so I looked down instead.

"Come on, don't say you aren't." She leaped down, transitioning into shadow for a second to soften the landing - ostensibly to be on level with me. "You faced down Oni fucking Lee, a guy that even hardened capes are afraid of, and you did that almost without a second thought. You talked big game when I told you which side to go for, and then you backed up your words. And that's not to mention the Empire pricks you took down.

"Shit was beautiful to watch, like a form of poetry. You're a lot like me, I think. When the world tries to go down on you, you rise to meet it head on," she continued. "You don't back down. You're tough and you don't take punches without retaliating."

I opened my mouth to speak, and I was going to deny her words, maybe even laugh her off and tell her she was flagrantly incorrect. The more I thought about it, though, the more I could see the image she was painting. I managed to emerge a strict rationalist in most circumstances, especially when I had time to think, but in the heat of the moment, when the entire world started to descend on me, I became something ruled by primal anger and defensive instinct. And when that instinct controlled me, I didn't surrender - even when, maybe, it'd be a better choice for me to do so.

"In any case, I gotta run. I'll be patrolling around here, keeping an eye out. I hope you realize this isn't the last of the ABB's visits to you?"

"No. I know that."

"Good."

And without anything else, she took off, running down into an alleyway and flickering into her shadow state, to cross through a chainlink fence without even pausing.

What now?

I put my hands in my pockets and breathed out, allowing the leftover adrenaline to flush out of my body. The pain was still there, like a background process in the computer that was my brain, hogging most of the processing power to keep sending me a, 'Fuck you, I'm hurt and it's your damn fault,' signal.

I took my hands out of my pockets, moving back in the warehouse.

The people were recollecting themselves, doing some tidying up after the fight, using crank flashlights to situate themselves and talking - some were crying or huddling up to deal with the experience of witnessing a cape fight. Pussies, the lot of them.

"Hey, Robert?" Emmanuel called out, as I was walking back in. "Could you fix the lights?"

"Hm?" My head turned in his direction. I nodded and said, "Yeah, sure."

They were pretty beaten up, crossbow bolt remnants aside, and they seemed to have barely functioned even before Shadow Stalker committed vandalism on them. They were covered in iron oxide, dented, scratched, and the copper wiring inside was beginning to wear out, too. If I weren't the very definition of a magical handyman, I'd have written them off.

I put them through a first stage of refinement. There was no more rust, the paint had been restored to pristine condition. The lightbulbs were replaced with fresh and better models, more efficient in energy utilization and producing fractionally more luminescence, in a shade that would aggravate the corneas less.

I felt tempted to refine them again, on the uppermost setting, to produce something of staggering and unsurpassed quality. I didn't, though, because these people needed a safe, reliable light that they could use without it demanding a sacrifice to the sun gods.

I turned back to Emmanuel and gave him a thumbs up. "Done."

"Thank you. And, uh, thank you for the help back there, man."

He smiled at me softly, and went back to helping some other people with stuff they'd displaced earlier and had to locate. Probably toiletries or something similar.

"Rooobbieeee!" Harriet called out from afar. She was sitting on the railing of the catwalk, precariously close to falling over and into the sweet embrace of death. She was frantically waving her arms and legs at me like a complete idiot to get my attention. "Come up here!"

"No one's gonna give me any peace, are they?"

I ascended upstairs, and saw her pat a spot next to her, urging me to sit next to her.

"No," I said, looking at her like she was a gremlin offering me bile-covered cotton candy. "I've had too many potentially fatal head injuries this week. I'm not risking another, thanks."

"Fine." She stood up, clambered over the railing, and moved towards me. I'd almost reached out, on instinct, to catch her wrist in case she tipped over. She didn't. "How are you doing?"

"My everything hurts like shit," I reported, with my usual brand of good cheer. "If Lynn has a decent painkiller lying around, I wouldn't say no... or even a shitty cigarette, really. Just something to distract me. I suppose I could use my own power on myself, but I'm not sure how smart or viable that is. If I explode someone else on accident, I can probably fix them. If I explode myself, nobody's gonna fix me."

"You make a fair point," Harriet said, shrugging. "I've got some Tylenol in my bag. Want to go get it?"

I nodded.

Deep down, somewhere in my heart of hearts, I knew that I'd end up cripplingly addicted to both acetaminophen and nicotine before the month was even over, but it was a long-term sacrifice I was willing to put up with for immediate gratification.

She chuckled and took me under arm. I observed the motion with skepticism and caution, but permitted it. The sleeping quarters were more or less the same as we'd left them, earlier in the morning. It was almost nearing midnight now, according to my best guesstimate.

She reached for her paper bag and took out a whole box of Tylenol. I stared at it, attempting to conceal my attraction. Sweet manna from heaven.

"Gimme." I reached out with a hand, but she brought the box away from me.

"Ah, ah ah! What's the magic word, Rob?" she said with a coy smile, wiggling the box in front of my eyes. Just far enough that I wouldn't be able to snatch them out of her hands.

I squinted my eyes into a glare. "Now."

She grinned even more, as if pleased by the conflict, putting the box behind her back. "Oooh, you scare me… Who's being a bratty little boy?"

"You're clearly forgetting what happened to your shoes. I can do the same to pants, you know?" I looked down at them appraisingly.

I felt something hit me in the face. I looked down into my arms, which caught onto the object, and it was the box of Tylenol. When I looked up, Harriet was nowhere in sight.

"Beautiful," I said triumphantly, and immediately picked out a pill, which I refined on the highest setting.

It developed a mouth and eyes, and sing-sang at me, in the voice of an eight-year-old child overdosed on sugar, "Who wants a sedative!?"

"What the fuuuck…" Harriet said hushedly, from behind me. "Is that alive?"

"I don't know. But I know it's safe for consumption." I placed the sentient pill in my mouth. It screamed in childlike glee, or perhaps in belated and horrified realization of its imminent demise, as I swallowed. The effects kicked in like a bull, within a second, and I felt the pains and aches in my body disappearing into nothingness, replaced by a sweet, muted void.

"I think the little guy is, like, fighting your pains with a sword in Plato's world of ideas."

"Sure." Assuming that complete and near-immediate dissolution in stomach acid allowed you to ascend into the Realm of Forms. "Let's go with that."

I looked at the box of Tylenol, and said, "Heck it. Might as well do the rest of it."

I refined the whole box on the same, highest setting.

It became a small plastic can, containing forty-seven red pills. They were fragrant with the anomalous emissions, but seemed to be - physically - nothing more than normal pills. Odd.

"Hey, give me one of those."

"No." I held the container away from her. "I don't know what they do yet."

"All the more reason to test it on me," Harriet said, patting me on the back softly. "I know you want me dead after all. Admit it. Deep down, you crave for my demise."

"Harriet, no - seriously. As far as I know, this might be some pills that burn the disease out of you by literally setting you on fire until you die. Are you forgetting the fact that seconds ago, we beheld a sentient pill-child, and my boots occasionally whisper to me with demands to murderize the local white supremacists? The highest setting is not to be fucked with."

"But you fucked with my slippers," she said flatly.

"True. Worth it."

She nodded in approval. "True. Totally worth it."

Shrugging, I decided to stash the pills away for later use.

Last edited: Jan 10, 2023

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Nov 18, 2022

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Threadmarks Anomaly 2.7

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Nov 20, 2022

#276

"Good morning, Robert! Good morning, morning, mooorning!"

Harriet stood, bent over me like a sagging palm tree. Her animated eyes - dull green like forest moss - were staring into mine, from a little over an inch's distance. The world's most intense staring contest to start the day off. They were cheerfully accompanied by the world's singularly most annoying, exasperating, aggravating shit-eating grin, contrasting with my own look of confusion, disappointment, and bubbling, slowly surfacing anger.

There was a moment of surrealist dissociation, an instant in which, in spite of recognizing and remembering her as clearly as one remembered they had fingers on their hand, I didn't believe she could be a real, existing entity. She was something chthonic, an eldritch goddess out of the depths of an unexplored and uncharted nebula, staring me right in the face and using her psionic talents to provoke every nerve in me to explode with wrath.

I didn't move an inch, as still as a crocodile facing prey, not having the requisite space to do so.

Any movement upward would smack our foreheads in a clash, or result in an accidental kiss. Any motion to the side would knock Harriet over, and as a result, cause her to fall down and crush me. Any shimmying away was impractical: it'd take too much time and effort, and risk a different kind of fall.

I decided to be as polite as I could.

"Can you please fuck off?"

Harriet scowled and folded her arms, leaning even closer, almost butting our noses. A couple of crimson locks brushed against my eyes, causing sudden irritation, and several others almost fell into my disbelieving mouth. "Magic word!"

"Fish-pants."

"They already smell like fish," she countered, wicked smile enlarging and acquiring something of a shark-like quality. "Do your worst."

"Is this some kind of new harassment strategy?" I looked around to find no one within earshot, or even reasonable shouting range. She'd carefully scouted the terrain to ensure maximum advantage in the action. I was on my own, a solo agent working against the evil tyrantess. "Get me to say what you want me to say, until I'm an obedient, brainwashed cape slave? Don't you know cape slavery was outlawed in the United States?"

"Come on, Robert, I'm not that stupid. Capes appearing is way after slavery was outlawed." She pounced and literally sat down on my chest, knocking the wind out of me. I reached into her, explored the arterioles across her body in an instant, and seeped into the myofibril structures, a deep awareness of proteins and molecular chains unfolding like an umbrella. It passed in a fraction of a moment, as I sprang back out, rich with new and unwelcome knowledge. "Checkmate, atheist."

"I'm not an atheist. I'm a painter."

Harriet frowned with evident confusion, head cocked to the side. "Hm?"

"Yeah, I'm about to paint some bruises on your face."

And there began combat, wrestling on the mattress.

I attempted to push and resist, she attempted to push and throw. Our struggle was intense. She deployed an underhanded move, flattened and solid palm stabbing into my vulnerable side, into the exposed ribs, causing me to scream like a girl and instinctively bend away from the attack.

I retaliated. Both of my hands on her own, I chomped down on her wrist, careful not to do so hard enough to break the skin.

She squeaked and rolled to the side, finally launching off of me, laughing at the same time. She reflexively wriggled the bitten hand, and I could see the bite mark, but she was too occupied laughing at the fact I'd decided to utilize such a desperate move.

I stood from the bed, put on my shoes as fast as I could - fresh blood in your mouth, they whispered - and tied the laces, then ran downstairs at top speed. Harriet chased after me, a cheetah after its prey, and I ended up taking cover behind a calm, coffee-drinking Lynn. She, Arturo, Emmanuel, Dave, and Kumi were in the process of eating breakfast. Their experience was about to be lamentably spoiled.

"She's beating me up and bullying me," I complained dryly, pointing a finger at the staircase.

"Robert, you are a man about thrice her size. Any 'beating' you are receiving is consensual," Lynn said, not even bothering to look up from her newspaper. She took an outstandingly calm, unperturbed sip of coffee, drawing out the slurping for a couple of seconds. She paid me next to no mind as Harriet made it downstairs, and stood with her fists balled up.

"That's sexist," I claimed. "That a man can't be raped."

"Honey, did you rape this boy?" she asked.

"No!" Harriet yelled.

"Case closed."

"Haha!" Harriet's grin returned in full force. "In your face, loser!"

"Yo," Emmanuel eyeballed the interaction from across the table, pausing his task of eating a bacon sandwich, "literally the American justice system?"

"Now, to pay for the damages," Lynn started, looking over in my direction. There was a hint of a playful smirk on the woman's face. "Since you falsely accused a poor, innocent woman and ruined her chances at success in life, we must ruin yours in return."

"Hey, this is getting too real, though," Emmanuel muttered.

Harriet and I decided to drop our legal feud and have breakfast. I ate a very modest and humble meal to start with: a plum jam and butter sandwich and some coffee. Then Lynn forced some toast and sliced bacon on my plate, to Harriet's envy, commenting that I needed as many proteins as I could take in, after everything that's happened to me. She was probably referring to the multiple head injuries, cuts, and bruises I'd suffered.

I was monitoring my own biological processes and vital signs constantly, more out of absentminded habit than any real concern, and knew for a fact that eating more protein wasn't as necessary as she believed, at least in my case. The diet of superpowered medication I consumed was already doing more than its fair share to patch me up. The only thing I needed was vitamins, but the concern wasn't so pressing I needed to be scared.

I decided not to argue with her, and simply enjoy the pleasure of eating decent food.

There was an undercurrent of worry to the breakfast - apparently, some people went missing last night, and didn't come back yet. The working theory was they'd run out the moment the lights went out, and didn't come back under the belief that everyone here was dead or worse. I'd only slept a couple of hours because it was a matter of consensus that a decision on our current situation had to be reached as fast as possible.

"Alright, listen up, people!" Arturo shouted once breakfast was finished, clapping loud a few times to attract everyone's attention. 'Everyone,' in this context, wasn't a lot. Aside from the people I knew by name, there were around ten other people. "We need to vote! Gather 'round."

A debate started immediately, on the merits of leaving or hunkering down. The latter was a universal no-shot according to basically everyone. Maybe under ordinary circumstances, it would've been possible to pay off the ABB and afford its new ridiculous tax. However, now that ship has sailed, as we'd had a direct hand in wounding and shaming Oni Lee, and a villain like Lung wasn't about to allow an insult of that scale to go unanswered.

The only realistic prospect was to pack whatever else we could carry and then migrate somewhere a little more safe.

After a hot minute of talking, Jack walked in and joined in the debate.

"Can't we fortify the place?"

"Fortify? Fortify how?" Emmanuel scoffed. "In a single afternoon, man? Using what material, what tools?"

"I know the kid's made himself some new clothes." He nodded at me.

Emmanuel looked at me for a second, lips pursed. "Yeah, I mean, he fixed the lights, but-"

"Actually," I butted in, "That's not such a bad idea. My power - it works kind of like transmutation; I can make things worse, or I can make them better. I can make the walls of the building tougher, make the doors sturdier and impossible to open from the outside and repair the windows. I can improve everyone's clothing, and make improvised weapons into actual ones. The process is instantaneous: I can do several days, maybe even weeks, of work in seconds, and I can achieve results better than skilled engineering teams. I'll turn this place into Fort Knox's bigger, meaner cousin."

"It's still a bad idea," he argued, looking around for support. "There's nobody here to save us. The ABB-"

"Can suck my cock," I said. "I handled Oni Lee, and I can handle Lung. Whoever else the ABB has, I can handle their asses as well. The rest of you simply have to focus on not dying in the meantime. I can prepare you for that, and I can prepare myself for the fight."

There was some discomfort, before the same old woman who'd been sternly against me yesterday morning said, "It's worth trying."

"Right," Arturo said. "If the plan doesn't pan out, we can still run for it."

"Show of hands?" Jack asked, raising his own.

An organized queue formed within a minute, everyone streaming in with a personal belonging, or article of clothing. I improved them, sometimes recursively, and sometimes on the highest setting. The focus of the initial refinements was on outfitting everyone with a uniform and safe level of protection, so clothing was made as fireproof, durable, and expanded in coverage as I could, with additional padding of stiff, layered cloth everywhere I could manage. As the end result, everyone had a set of clothing that was more comfortable, warmer, and heavier, capable of acting as medium-grade body armor, yet no different in appearance than normal clothing.

After that came the good stuff: weapons and tools. Here, I went a little crazier, and I learned some things about the way my power worked.

For instance, I made a crowbar that could grow a set of dark wings, and the flapping of the wings produced enough stable lift and force to carry a single person reliably, as long as they didn't let go of it.

It took me a while to understand the hidden meaning here. The crowbar was made into a literal 'crow' bar. The damned thing turned into a pun of itself.

There were sundry other items I created during the spree of refinements; an entire laundry list of impossible and dangerous weapons. It'd take almost half a day to list them, and their contents: everyone's possessions were made into something different and more powerful. A mildly toxic capsaicin grenade out of a bottle of pepper spray and weedkiller, sunglasses that allowed the wearer to look through walls, an especially powerful blend of marijuana and modified tobacco and organic compounds that'd instantly knock out anyone who smoked it, and more.

Most of them could be weaponized, and others utilized for effective self-defense.

There was a hand mirror that made you hallucinate hands closing in on your throat and strangling you, making you actually choke in real life. I was forced to smash it because the effect persisted even once I seized it from Harriet, and that stopped it. After that, I decided not to use the highest setting anymore, barring exigent circumstances. It seemed to make particularly creepy and untrustworthy shit, almost as a rule of thumb.

Then, I did the same to the factory. I repaired its shattered windows and rendered them bulletproof, restructured its walls, and made the mixture of concrete and rebar into a bunker-strength material capable of withstanding firepower well in excess of what a tank gun could produce. The appearance of the factory's interior changed as I went: carvings appeared on the walls, in artistic and somewhat psychedelic pseudo-religious imagery, displaying me doing all of this. I focused on the most important aspects, though.

And then, all that was left was arming me, so I could fight the ABB's capes effectively.

I didn't need a melee weapon. The strength of my power was a powerful weapon of its own, as long as I was in melee range.

Instead, I made an assembly of loose wood, enhanced rubber bands, small bits of steel and scattered rebar, and some other assorted junk, and I created a mechanically powered crossbow, similar to Shadow Stalker's, recycling some of her bolts and using them as a pattern blueprint to craft more of them. It was capable of folding itself, much like Harriet's sword, and had enough power by the end of the refinement process that its bolts would punch through a plate of solid steel. Despite my earlier resolution to limit the usage of the highest setting, I combined several of the spare bolts with water, heated metal, atmospheric oxygen, and powdered concrete, on the highest setting - to create elemental bolts.

And naturally, I made a proper costume. Aside from a ranged option in case my foes were keeping their distance, I also needed to be able to take a good hit and not die immediately. So, the costume included steel and metals that I filed off from zippers, rings, and other metal items as its primary components. It resulted in a form-fitting suit of armor, with an underlayer of chain - exactly like a medieval knight, except colorless, with no tabard.

And then I enhanced the fuck out of it, several times, as much as I could without fearing it'd explode around my body. It wasn't even your normal, everyday iron-carbon steel by the end of it; rather, some kind of superheavy poly-alloy structure, containing nickel, cobalt, iron, carbon, and several other molecules. It anomalously weighed almost nothing to me, feeling like I was wearing styrofoam, although Harriet couldn't even lift the helmet. It resembled exceptionally well-polished metal with a light, almost iridescent cyan gloss.

"Well, now all you need is a cape name," Harriet said, as I tested the armor, stretching and throwing ghost punches.

A small funfact. Force was the mass of an object times its acceleration. The armor weighed next to zero for me, so I could propel every part of it with childish ease, experiencing almost no inertia. Its interactions with every other object were natural - exactly what you'd expect from a normal object.

It meant I could throw extremely strong and fast punches, condensing the approximate mass and speed of a racing motorbike into every movement. It felt exhilarating to have that kind of strength.

"I'll think about it, once I've clapped Lung."

"Hm, you're homeless, aren't you?"

"There's no way I'm calling myself, 'Hobocape.' Forget it, Harriet."

"Awh." She chuckled. "Well, I tried."

"Admirable effort."

298

Birdsie

Nov 20, 2022

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Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Nov 22, 2022

#312

I'd removed my helmet and started a cycle of aimless wandering around the reinforced compound, improving people's favorite furniture and random, assorted items - careful not to overdo it.

Already prepared adequately for the inevitable street siege, we were now simply waiting for the opposing army to arrive. The improvements I made now, doing the rounds and asking if people needed anything, were purely a quality of life matter, rather than survival. I had to admit, as much as I wanted vengeance on the pricks that beat me up, and I wanted to show the ABB that I wasn't going to be a defenseless little bitch, there was a certain chest-filling satisfaction to this, as well: aiding poor bastards in need, showing them a hopeful ray of light in a dark dump.

For a second there, I'd felt dangerously close to being a superhero.

I decided to find Jack and speak with him. Maybe I'd broach the awful topic of his relapse into drinking, if he were on his own; show him that I had his back. He'd been hauntingly distant and introspective since yesterday's fight when I forcefully sobered him up.

He seemed to be sitting on a bench in a secluded corner, opposite of Arturo. Neither of them was really saying or doing anything, just sitting awkwardly and staring off into nowhere. It was the look of nervous people, thinking of an unnerving future. I sat down next to Arturo.

"The preparations are finished," I told Jack.

He nodded, immediately - almost in reaction - pulling out a luscious cigarette from his jacket's interior pocket. I stared at it; a goblin reaver armed with a ferociously jagged dagger sighting an innocent merchant on the road.

"Hey," I asked, attempting to conceal my urge, my sheer want, as Jack noticed the sudden focus, "Do you have more of those?"

He looked at me for a second, as though unsure what to say, then wordlessly pulled out a second cigarette from his pocket and offered it to me. I accepted, but I didn't smoke it immediately.

I beheld the delicate luxury of the cigarette. A simple thin rod of white paper, filled with succulent tobacco, accompanied by a smooth orange filter, and a small red brand mark. It was filled with an entire school of poisons and toxins, so many carcinogens and deadly agents you could stuff the ingredients into a bomb, launch it, and call it a war crime. Approximately a single gram of weight; it'd be child's play to crush into a powder even without my strengthening gauntlets. It enticed me, like a seductive, undressed goddess of calamity, beckoning me over with a playful finger.

How could I say no to this? I had to smoke the shit out of it.

A short refinement of the air surrounding the tip produced an intense, vibrative oxygen reaction, and the tobacco began to smolder with a trail of gray and blue smoke. The harsh taste of alkaloid was ecstatic, a bliss that I'd almost forgotten, and started craving without realizing. The first inhalation was tarlike, a cascade of dark smoke entering my lungs, suffusing the bronchi, fermenting in the bronchioles like an evil syrup. I breathed out, and the smoke left me quivering with numb delight, almost orgasmically.

I didn't even have to improve it. It was already as close to a perfect experience as it could get, exactly and specifically the way it came out of the pack. The cancer was worth it.

Jack was staring at me with sparkling confoundment in his eyes, as though he'd observed something thoroughly strange, and decided not to mention it out loud, lest he becomes unfortuitously wrapped up in it.

"Hm?" I prodded him.

"I was gonna ask you for a light," he confessed. "But if that's what your shit does to smoking cigarettes, I'm not sure I want to anymore."

"Yeah, man, you looked like you were having a bit of a good time, you know? Eyes rolled up and that..." Arturo commented. "You shouldn't do drugs if you can help it, holmes. I had a tough time with cocaine while out on the streets. My brother, Benji, used to run a gang."

"He did?" I reacted with mild surprise.

The Hispanic community of Brockton Bay didn't seem especially large, at least compared to Asians and the Black community, and I didn't imagine they received anywhere near as much hatred, either. The idea of disenfranchised Hispanics forming their own gang didn't occur to me.

Granted, little of the sort occurred to me before I'd arrived here and started the abusive process of intimate familiarization with the damned fucking place. Crime in Brockton Bay was through the roof, at least according to my standards. That offered, on second thought, an interesting glimpse into the kind of person I might've been in the past. Wherever I originally came from, assuming I wasn't just born in a test tube, had less crime than this.

"Yeah. Didn't end well." He looked down, frowning pensively.

"Oh." I didn't know how to react - showing too much contrition, or too little, was a careful balancing act. I didn't care how people, in the plural sense, perceived me, but I saw no reason to act callous to a friend. "I'm sorry."

"Oh, no. He's fine, he's alive. I used to write him letters, a couple of years ago." He noticed my somber response and chuckled. "He's in prison, though, doing seven years - it'd be four years left, now. He's lucky it was his first offense, and nobody overdosed on the cocaine."

"So, how did you pick up smoking?" I asked Jack, retreating a couple of steps, back to the original topic of substances.

"Back in 'Nam," he muttered. "A buddy of mine in the same platoon introduced me to the vice. A lot of people did it back then. It helped you mellow."

I took in another drag of the cigarette, and the smoke almost seemed to ache and tickle my throat as it moved down; a vibrant carousel of dismal tastes, almost slipping into phenolic broadband at times, and more often remaining within the spectrum of the lovely, caustic mouthgagging bitterness it should've been. I exhaled a plume of smoke, feeling relaxed, shoulders practically sagging on their own, outside my power to control.

"Yeah. That it does."

"I think it's having too much of an effect on you," Jack commented, perspicacious and unusually open with it. "You're hanging loose, kid."

"Nah. I'm good, trust me. It's only the satisfaction of having my own cigarette."

He stared at me, and leaned away, like I was some bizarre, alien creature.

"Anyway, you were in Vietnam?"

"No storytelling," he said. "I'm not in the mood for it."

"That's cool." I nodded. "Everyone has a story, except me."

I finished the cigarette off and found its calming effect weaker and less enjoyable with every puff - even so, every inhalation continued to be a cascade of pleasure and peace until the very end. I crushed the butt against the table.

It brought to mind the fact that I didn't really know anything about Harriet's backstory. I looked over to see her drawing something in a notebook, sketching, biting on the pen, and thinking. She had a whole buffet of talents: acrobatics, street-smarts, drawing, getting on my nerves...

A phone rang in my pocket. My hand searched around and managed to slip past the hauberk and into the pocket. I pulled it out with haste, staring, in the realization that I had a phone this entire time and never thought to use it. A movement of the thumb and I picked up.

"Hello?"

"It's Phineas."

"Oh, hey." There was an almost pregnant discontinuation, where neither of us had any idea of what to say to the other. "So, why are you calling me?"

"I'd like to meet with you, and explain some things."

"Cool. No problem with that. Come over."

Jack looked at me for a moment, eyes lidded. "Is that Phinny?"

"I cannot. I am engaged in other business," Phineas replied. "It's you who must come to me, and fast."

"No can do, bud. I realize you're not exceptionally communicative with the people here, or very observant, so I'll spell it out for you: we're under fucking siege by the ABB," I relayed to him, feeling a small, bitter satisfaction. "I'm here waiting for Lung and his posse to arrive, anywhere from now to several hours or even days down the line, so we can have a decisive skirmish. If I leave, it's too much risk."

"Give someone your armor, and your weapons, and come here," Phineas grunted out with a level of thinly crusted annoyance. "I do not have time to play games with you."

"How do you know I'm wearing armor?" I looked around the table, asking, "I didn't tell him I'm wearing armor before, did I?"

"If you wish to find out, then come to 650 Donbury Street. Within the hour."

The bastard had the temerity to end the call there. I stuffed the phone in my pocket, where it'd be secure, and considered the new information.

"Phineas want something from you?" Jack asked, unconcerned by my increasingly worried appearance.

"I dunno," I answered. "He wants me to go and meet with him, at some place nearby."

"Huh. That's odd. You told him about the ABB, so why would he be so insistent?"

"Again, I dunno. It kind of gives me bad vibes."

"Eh, Phinny wouldn't hurt a fly. And he's rather smart, too," Jack answered, waving a hand dismissively. "It's nearby?"

"An hour off at most."

He looked at Arturo. "What do you think?"

"I don't feel safe with that," Arturo replied. "But if that's what we gotta do, then that's what we gotta do."

"I don't think we gotta do shit," I countered. "Other than sitting here, I mean. Whatever important stuff Phineas has to tell me, he can tell me later. If you're worried about him not providing money anymore, well, I can get you plenty on my own."

They looked at one another. There was something unspoken in that gaze: a secret they shared, and wouldn't reveal to me. Or, at least, it gave that sort of impression.

"I don't know," Arturo told me. "Maybe you should go see him."

"You're acting a little suspicious," I accused, backing away from them.

Arturo and Jack looked at one another, once again, and the latter shrugged in a pronounced and helpless manner. He looked at me. "Listen, Robert, Phineas is... well, he's unique, in a lot of ways. Kind of like you. He claims not to be a cape, and he's never lied to me on any other occasion, so I'm not sure whether I believe him or not - but I did see him do some weird shit, in my own time, even though I've only known him for a year now."

"Really?" I asked, now cast into thought. "You seemed much closer than that."

"You make friends real quick when you're in desperate need," he said, before looking over at Harriet, sitting in her corner, and then over to me once more. He seemed to do that solely to punctuate the statement. "It don't matter who the people are. It matters they're with you."

"Yeah, and I'm telling you, if Phineas has something to say to you, it's probably a good thing to hear him out, at least," Arturo added. "It's good to be skeptical, holmes, but you can trust me on that, if nothing else. Phineas bailed me out of a lot of trouble."

"Fuck, I don't know." I looked around the room. Everyone was worried, with people occasionally looking towards me, as if to desperately reassure themselves my presence was a continued feature of life. "Should I really leave, though, while Lung's out to get us?"

"We can hold down the fort, kid," Jack said, leaning forward and putting a hand on my shoulder. He looked at me, with resolute eyes. "I'm not gonna run out on you anymore. No matter what shit goes down. And your gadgets ought to help a lot."

"Yeah..." I pondered the situation for a moment, recalled the address Phineas wanted me to go to, and decided I'd do it. "Yeah, alright. I'll go and talk to Harriet, first, though."

"Talk to me about what?" Harriet asked, standing a foot behind me and blinking innocently. I winced the slightest bit, as she shook her head, approached, and passed me her notepad. "Nevermind that, Rob, look at some of the drawings I made!"

I accepted the papers and started looking through them. There were a lot of... what I could only call amateur concept art sketches - a single quality level above the stuff you'd doodle on the margins of your notebook in school when you were bored and inattentive. They were drawn with pens, crayons, and pencils. It was clear that a lot of effort went into them. Most of the drawings revolved around me, apparently, dressed in various knightly get-ups.

"Cool," I said. Then I looked at her and decided it'd be wisest to rip the band-aid off, fast and clean. "Phineas called me. I need to leave for a couple of hours. You're staying here to help out - I'll leave you some weapons."

I expected an immediate outbreak of heated argument, a whining cry of childish impudence, or even the beginning of an active combat engagement. Completely shattering those expectations, Harriet simply nodded at me.

"Alright," she replied like a reasonable person. "Anything else?"

"Yeah. Cool costume designs by the way," I said, with a sarcastic edge. "Maybe instead of using crayons and pens next time, I'll get you a tablet?"

There was a moment of sanguine, vincular contact between our brightened eyes - condensed, sacred happiness; sterling human connection; and devotional innocence, like the purest, most virtuous hearts of little seraphs sitting on clouds and giving themselves to celestial piety.

Smiling with such angelic innocence, we spoke to each other.

"Jackass."

"Bitch."

Chuckling, I removed my armor, and Harriet aided me in undoing a couple of the straps, extremely careful not to stick her fingers into any crevices, or for any of the plates to fall down on her. For me, it'd mean a prick at worst - for her, it could mean a broken bone.

In a minute, I was free of my metal entombment, and I set out.

Jack nodded and waved me a jaunty goodbye. "Be safe out there."

"I should be telling you that, old man."

We smiled at each other with a little bit of poison, and I left.

As I walked, I took a breath of brisk spring air and thought deeply about the situation we were in.

The fight that happened yesterday was fucked on more levels than I imagined, but at the same time, the implications were worse. Deep, rooted and terrifying to consider. How on Earth did nobody think to call the authorities? Contact someone for help? Ask for the aid of the literal superhero demigods walking our same streets? Why did no one apparently trust them, preferring to rely on unstable vigilantes, violent gangs, and tyrannical patrons for safety and help?

Did those in power not give a shit about us, the bottom of the pyramid? Or were they completely powerless, helpless, unable to change the status quo? Or worse yet, were they controlled by the same individuals perpetrating violence and terror?

Whatever the case, it was clear that I could only rely on myself to provide for anything. I was afraid that leaving to speak with Phineas could be a mistake. What was so important, keeping him away, that I needed to make my way over immediately?

I arrived at Donbury Street, in the messy heartland of the Docks, only a block away from the junkyard I'd woken in. My eyes watered because of the smell: it was as if a punch to the liver and a kick to the kidney were delivered at the same time. The fragrance of putrid, toxic garbage filled my nose, almost causing me to gag. The buildings around the street were terrible, broken down and decrepit, almost threatening to fall apart at any moment. It was almost comical, like an outright flanderization of comic book economic downfall proportions, how utterly condemned everything around me was.

There was an old Seven-Eleven with its windows broken down and its cracked doors boarded up. There were people in dark jackets and hoodies, standing outside and around it, muttering to each other, smoking cheap cigarettes and drinking shitty booze, and warming themselves with barrel fires. I'd been a hobo in Brockton Bay for a bit over a week now, and this pack of suspicious ass people was the most hobo thing I'd seen yet.

There was a parking lot, surrounded by old, dilapidated buildings. In the center of the parking lot was a dark-blue van, with tinted windows and some scratches near the wheels, with its back doors opened. Phineas was standing right outside of it with a cheap, light blue bucket at his feet.

Inside the bucket, I saw a couple of cut-up, eviscerated fish specimens that looked familiar to me. They were dead, unmoving, with eyes on their severed fish heads gaping open. The toadfish I'd created, caught and turned into something almost bordering organic slurry.

"Hey," Phineas greeted me, with all the warmth and homeliness of a sack of potatoes abandoned in a Siberian gulag.

"You caught my fishes, I see," I said, leaning over to look into the bucket.

"Cleaned your royal mess up, yes," he told me, sounding distinctly and strongly displeased. Looking at him, I could see a cruel, fickle annoyance in his eye, that he quickly suppressed. "Did you have any idea these can breed and survive in any water environment?"

I folded my arms. "They're just fish, aren't they? More work for fishermen."

"I suppose we'll never find out." He looked into the bucket with cold, focused eyes. "They were releasing enough vital-force that I had to put them down. As far as I know, they might've been capable of evolving into dinosaurs."

I raised an eyebrow at that statement. It was confirmation enough that Phineas was not an ordinary man. "Vital-force?"

"Yeah. Or Aspect Radiation, or EVE. Call it whatever you want." He looked me in the eyes and relaxed against the back of the van. "There are as many fascinating names for it as there are cultures and languages. I heard some schmucks wanted to call it Merlin Radiation."

He seemed profoundly nonchalant about saying this.

"Oh, so that's what I'm emanating. The same radiation that oozes from the fish." I looked into the bucket, and reached out, to find none of the radiation there. "Oozed."

"Correct, Robert," he told me, with a smirk appearing on his face, for maybe the first time in the entire conversation. "You're special, kind of like me, but in a different way."

"How are you… special?"

"Do you ever read any books?" he asked, with an element of sly rhetoric. He didn't care about the answer, he was merely using it as a springboard to set up the actual point. "There's always this mysterious character that comes in out of nowhere at inopportune moments and tells the protagonists to do shit, and then doesn't explain why, causing problems for everyone. You know that guy?"

"Yeah. That you?"

"Quite the opposite. I'll be telling you the whole truth and hoping for the best."

I waited a moment. He looked at me and then began.

"I'm a member of an organization called the Serpent's Hand - I'll skip the self-righteous, self-aggrandizing spiel about the eternal fight against darkness and ignorance. I'm also a wizard, and the vehicle behind me is an interdimensional portal leading to another world. A Way, we call it."

"A wizard?" I asked, attempting to hold back laughter.

"Yes."

"Like a spellcaster?" The smile on my face broadened. "Subtle and quick to anger?"

"Quick, yes," he answered with a clipped tone. "If you pursue this line of derisive questioning - not so subtle."

I snorted. "Okay, fine."

"Don't believe me?" he asked.

"Oh, I believe in you, don't worry. I believe you're definitely some cape who escaped out of the looney bin and is now bankrolling a bunch of homeless people on probably stolen dollars because something isn't right upstairs. It's fucking weird."

"Alright then. How about I show you?"

"Show me ho-"

And the van, seemingly roaring to life on its own, ignited the engine and drove several meters backward with surprising speed, throwing us into the back. Normally, that'd mean Phineas and I ended up lying on its floor, me on top of him, but instead, we continued to fly, and the insides of the van dilated. I was as small as an ant in a microwave, tunneling into a cone of bent space. In the seconds before darkness claimed everything, I could hear Phineas telling me something, as we moved across what felt like hundreds of kilometers, which in reality were only inches.

"I'll show you the real world. In and out, twenty minute wand."

"Fuuuu-"

Everything went black and silent.

Last edited: Nov 24, 2022

244

Birdsie

Nov 22, 2022

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Nov 24, 2022

#331

There was no balance in the darkness, no awareness of direction, nothing like equilibrium. I found myself hurtling, tumbling, and gyrating at ridiculous speeds like a bullet shot out of a van-sized barrel. A wall closed in on the side, and I clipped against it, sending me to the opposite side, hitting another wall and losing some velocity. Every impact hurt, rattling me down to the bone, scraping against unprotected skin to leave painful scratches and welts.

After several seconds of falling down uncontrollably, I made painful and sudden contact with a surface - covered in sludge and muddy water. It broke the velocity with a wet slap, although only a little, and I ended up hitting the stone floor with enough impact force that I cried out in stunning pain.

The molecular remnants of the painkiller from yesterday still rolled through my veins, a hyperefficient problem fixer in my bloodstream, dulling nervous responses, and making the body less sensitive to pressure and pain. However, a lot of time has passed since then, and its effects weren't as acute as before. There was a dull ache, spreading all over me, like nanomachines eating through a defenseless building.

The impact reminded me, almost in a flash, of the many, terrible bruises accumulated over the last couple of days.

I stood, as fast as I could.

As soon as I found Phineas, he was a dead man. If I'd happened to fall at a slightly bad angle, my spine would've bent into the sort of line you'd expect to see on a trigonometric function graph. At a bare minimum, I was decking the fucker in the nose.

I was in some kind of catacomb, a dark tunnel made of stone and cobbles. The floor itself was covered in a dumpy layer of silt and gravel, with several more inches of muddled water over that. Everything was dreadfully dark, and there was little illumination in the corridor, save for a couple of burning candles further down the tunnel, visible only as crescent flickers reflecting on the damp wall and the water. I studied the contents of the water and the structure itself, and found that everything was completely suffused in... what did Phineas call it? Aspect Radiation? EVE?

Aside from Aspect Radiation, it looked normal. A tunnel dug into some mountain, or perhaps simply into a cave system. The stone composing the corridors was almost entirely igneous, with basalt and andesite as the core elements. There were bits of residual sand, limestone powder, and interesting bits of pumice and sulfur that indicated this area might've been volcanically active in the past, if not still.

It seemed to be locally constructed, too. The contents of the crust and soil outside of the tunnel matched the resources it was crafted from. Although, you'd most likely need a whole lot of manpower and time to make something like this.

I looked behind me. There was only an endless darkness, as deep as starless midnight, stretching out into the distance until I could see neither walls, a ceiling, a floor, or anything. If there was anything concrete and interesting down that way, I definitely couldn't see it, and if there was anything of the sort outside the range of my field's radius, I definitely couldn't feel it. It didn't seem an appealing path as a result.

I looked forward instead, to see the candles flickering in the far-off corners of the tunnel path, set on minor indentations in the cobblestone. At the end of the corridor, a hundred meters off, there was a distant door, seemingly made from lacquered wood with steel rails.

I looked back, into the fathomless darkness once more, with some hesitation.

Better towards the source of light, right?

I started walking forward, in the direction of the door, feeling annoyed by the moisture sunk into my clothes. I started to dissipate the excess water and mud particulates, disassembling or simply destroying molecules as needed. Over the course of seconds, I became cleaner and drier, at least above the ankles. As I did, I called out with distaste, "Phineas? Where the fuck are you? Hello?"

Annoyed even more by the lack of response, I continued onward with a sigh, intent on seeing where the mysterious door led.

It opened, in a smooth motion, before I could reach it.

And the thing standing in the doorframe? I stoically endured its presence, but let me tell you, its sudden appearance was probably a valid reason to shit yourself.

It resembled a male human, at least stylistically: a sizable torso, two arms, two legs, and a smooth, bald head. It was elegantly dressed, in a bespoke three-piece suit the color of charcoal black, with a unicolor scarlet-red tie. That's about where the similarities to a human end.

Its skin was a dark, unblemished grey. Its face was sagging with an unhealthy, disturbing excess of sad wrinkles like something had contorted its cheekbones, forehead, and chin to give the impression of unspeakable tragedy. Instead of a mouth and lips, there was only a withered patch of mottled, scarred skin - like its mouth had been covered with flesh, and it then attempted to desperately claw back an opening into the esophagus. Its eyes had no real pupils, no irises that I could discern, only a miserable curve, and uniform radiant crimson sclerae staring straight into my soul.

It didn't have a left hand, or at least the fingers on its left hand. Instead, there were four short rods of steel, ending in four short chains that linked together into a single chain, which ultimately held a small brass lantern. Caged inside the lantern was a wax candle, with a surprisingly bright flame.

I fell back a step, alarmed by the sight, and then continued to backtrack for several moments, the sounds of water splashing with every step in the dark hallway. The creature made no indication of wanting to chase me. It didn't even approach, so eventually, I stopped at what I felt was a safe distance.

"What the fuck?" I asked, then, in a quiet murmur.

It stared at me, for several long moments.

Then, it slowly raised its right hand - the one with actual fingers on it - and put its index finger in front of where the mouth was supposed to be. A shushing mannerism, a short circuitous finger wag, and then a slash motion.

Did it just... non-verbally tell me to shut the fuck up?

I was in shellshock for a moment.

Could this be one of the mutant capes, horrifically disfigured and possessing no memories, like Harriet mentioned? No, there was no fucking way. This approximation of a candle-holding ash demon couldn't possibly be human, right?

"Hello...?" I asked, after a while. "Are you... friendly?"

Given the absence of a mouth, probably not going to eat me, at least.

It didn't answer the question. Instead, it made a waving, insistent gesture. Beckoning me to accompany it, it swiftly turned away and walked back into the room it opened the door from. For a little over a couple of seconds, I hesitated and stood in place, as anyone rational would in my situation.

Then I looked back, and I noticed the darkness covering the opposite end of the tunnel seemed to be suspiciously much closer than before, and thicker to boot, almost mystically impenetrable. There seemed to be something abyssal and sentiently malevolent about that particular darkness, making every hair on my back stand on end, like it'd swallow me whole if I dared set foot into it. Every animal instinct told me I'd be lost forever if I went down into it.

There didn't seem to be much of a choice. Either I could follow the monster - that mercifully hadn't killed me yet or shown any overt aggression - or I'd stumble around in the darkness for all eternity, acquiring more bruises as I collided with random and unexpected walls.

A no-brainer, despite the creepy thing's appearance.

I followed it directly into the room it came from. A small, dark chamber reminiscent of a church's nave. There were several pews padded with red cushions scattered about, some of them in a state of disrepair, or outright shattered into boards and chipped splinters.

Instead of an altar, at the end of the nave, there was a wrought iron door leading to somewhere else; deeper into the cathedral, or catacombs, or whatever this place was. The door had an interesting esoteric design on it, though. An oval eye of providence clasped within a pencil-thin hexagram. The null spaces between the hexagram's lines were filled with a notation of primeval runes and ancient sigils.

To my surprise, the creature in the dark suit hadn't walked off into some treacherous depths I couldn't hope to traverse on my own. It stood patiently at the side of the chamber, and when I entered, it motioned, once more, for me to follow.

I approached, hesitantly. The mysterious, lantern-handed creature turned around and pressed its fingered hand against a division of the wall, several stone bricks pushed inward like a button. There was a click somewhere beyond the wall, heavy and metallic.

Then, after a moment, an empty bookshelf slid aside on a sprocket rail, revealing a dark corridor with several unlit torches.

...I was starting to hate this place.

However, the creature didn't seem to mind in the slightest. It simply walked around me, as calm and smooth as someone passing by another person in a crowd, and then led the way inside, illuminating it with its lantern hand. As before, an easy choice to make: it was either follow or stay in this chapel.

It turned out to be another ramrod-straight corridor, and it was almost unbearably long. I wasn't certain how much time I traversed it alongside the strange creature. Some fifteen or twenty minutes in, I was bored with the aimless wandering, and the novelty and fear of the creature's appearance mostly dissipated. I felt confident and brave enough to attempt a hopeful conversation once again.

"So," I started, "Do you have a name? I'm, uh... Rob."

It arrested its motion in a single and incredibly precise footfall, so suddenly I almost accidentally bumped into its back.

It abruptly turned around to face me in a single, fast turn on its heel. Its crimson eyes stared into my own, voiceless and silent.

Then, once again raising its right hand, it shushed me with an index finger. The motion was even more insistent than before, almost like it wanted to smack the idea of silence into me, but wasn't yet driven or uncivil enough to engage in such violent behavior. It didn't really need that to get the point across. Its motions seriously punctuated that it really, really did not like it when I spoke out loud, though, and that was enough for me to shut up.

Deciding that apologizing verbally would be the crowning height of idiocy, I nodded with a slightly contrite expression.

Once more, I was surprised, as the mysterious creature nodded back - with a definite sense of emotion, like a triumph and satisfaction. As if happy that the message finally went across.

I blinked in puzzlement, as it promptly turned around and continued to lead me onward, now with something almost like a chipper self-satisfaction to its step. I considered, once more, whether I should follow, or return back to where I'd come from. There wasn't really anything to return to, though, aside from some catacombs and an old church.

Since this thing hasn't already brutally murdered me or attempted to grievously harm me, it probably isn't an evil demon. I considered its appearance for a moment. I'll revisit that opinion if it tries anything, but for now, following it seems to be my best shot.

Soon, the secret passage, at last, reached its terminus: an alcove, with a chessboard on a table, and wood-carved, Bergère-style chairs.

The hallway the alcove was a part of was also exceptionally well-lit and visible, compared to everything else I'd seen, with medieval sconces that burned with an ethereal, cobalt flame. There was something enchanting and unreal about the place. The architecture was a little different than the preceding rooms, with a much higher ceiling, and wooden support beams carved with curlicue indentations and animalistic symbols. There was a lattice of similar wooden beams near the ceiling, holding protuberances with carved animal statues on them, mostly cats and coiling vipers.

There were a number of silver-framed oil paintings hung on the walls, displaying abstract or outright schizophrenic scenes.

I looked over them, and one caught my eye in particular.

It was a painting of a Baroque-decorated room. In the middle was a conference table with an extraordinarily long parchment on it. Around it stood an assembly of alabaster-skinned, cleft-foreheaded aliens with bulbous black eyes and quadripartite jaws, dressed in ridiculously yellow tailcoats, elaborate tophats, silk-white cravats, and minor frippery, some of them also sporting canes studded with jewels and noble metals.

An individual that I was fairly certain was supposed to be Thomas Jefferson was signing sections of the parchment with his own name, while the aliens fretted over it as if correcting or explaining parts of it. The painting was almost as surreal as this entire place.

My guide had moved on without me, casually ambling down the hallway. Attempting not to linger for too long on the admittedly interesting furniture and decorations, I followed after them.

We ambled through multiple, confusingly arranged forks in the halls, and through small interstice chambers that contained some more furniture, signs of occultism, and odd clockwork machines that appeared to have no real purpose. The creature wasn't confused about where it was leading me in the slightest. It seemed to know the path with the kind of confident familiarity you reserved for someone walking around in their own home.

It didn't take long - barely even a minute - to reach an egress. The creature invited me through a small door with a hand motion, and I complied, walking through and finding myself consumed by sheer vertigo.

I stood on the second-level balcony overlooking an insanely large room. The most insanely large, colossal, and impossible room that I'd ever seen and ever would see.

There was no ceiling above, only an illusory facsimile of an evening sky, in amaranthine and deep blue hues, dappled with as many stars as men in a crowd; nebulae of every color of the rainbow spread out like stains of dyed ink; supernovae unfolding like blossoming spring flowers. That wasn't to mention the rest of the room. The dominating feature of the room was shelves. Shelves as tall and complex as skyscrapers, with accompanying elements to make accessing them easier. Complex systems of ladders, unsupported catwalks, elaborate bridges, curving stairwells, unlocked elevators, reading parlors, seating arrangements, children's swings with pulleys, and loose ropes.

There were other things, too. There were entire sub-levels with reading parlors, couches, and coffee tables on them. There were small countertop bars that served drinks and snacks. There were ziggurats of shelves with central staircases leading to desks manned by odd, wormlike creatures eternally stamping tomes and making chittering noises. There were passages and doors into other sections of the room; small arches, moon gates. There was a protuberance in a clearing between shelves, with a door that logically should've led to nowhere, as there was no space for a room behind it.

I watched in stupefaction, as silent as a mouse in church during mass, as an old, feather-bearded man dressed in a star-spangled wizard's robe and hat, with several books nonchalantly tucked under his armpit, casually opened the door and stepped through it, disappearing.

That wasn't the end of it.

Armies - for there was no other word - armies, of inhuman beings, most of them possessing at least six arms, bowed legs, and squat bodies, climbed around the shelves and environmental features of the room, like a hard-working colony of spiders; constantly taking and replacing books and tomes, carrying books from place to place in some kind of logical system that I couldn't comprehend, like ants ferrying sugar and useful resources.

There were patrons, also - people reading books, lounging and relaxing, speaking to one another in non-reading zones, approaching the rubber-stamping worm monsters and conversing with them at a whisper's volume, or asking the shelf-spiders for books, or even being calmly led around the confusing layout of the place by creatures that looked similar, if not remarkably identical, to the lantern-handed humanoid that guided me here.

Not every patron was human, at least not in the standard perception of humanity. Some of them were nearly as inhuman and remarkable as the terrifying librarian that led me here. There was a reptilian woman with a royal purple cloak draped over her shoulders, a dour-faced man with glacier-white hair and six, red eyes; a naked human skeleton with no ligaments waltzing around and casually browsing the stacks.

It was the world's biggest, most magnificent, most strange library.

"If I ever find Phineas here, I'll be demanding some answers, alright..." I muttered.

Given the sheer, mind-numbing size of this place, 'finding Phineas' might be an entire quest, one on the scale of years, rather than a dalliance of a couple of hours.

There was an unexpected explosion of scintillating purple smoke near me. I stepped back, already ennervated by the discoveries and sights. All instincts, the fight-or-flight response; everything in my body was primed for combat; adrenaline pumping, every nerve prepared for an intense fight.

A fair-skinned, Asian-American woman stepped out of the smoke. She was almost two feet shorter than me, young enough that I considered her to hover around my own indiscernible age of 'young adult,' with a combed bob of raven-dark hair. She perfunctorily corrected her rimless, round glasses and scowled up at me for a second, eyes squinted a touch. Her expression promptly relaxed.

"Are you Robert?"

"Yesss...?" I answered suspiciously, leaning away from her inspection. "Why? Who are you?"

She smiled, then. A deep, relieved and contented smile. As if satisfied with the discovery of my presence in the room. "Call me Little Sister. Or LS for short. And take my hand."

She extended an open, welcoming palm. I didn't take it.

"Are you planning on hurting me?"

"No," she said immediately, almost bewildered that I asked it, and lowered her hand slightly. More out of confusion than offense. "No, why would I? Even if I wanted to, it'd be against the Library's rules."

"Oh yeah, because library rules are well-known and reputed for reliably stopping people from committing acts of murder."

"Well, I'm not planning on becoming a Docent and patrolling the stacks for eternity," she said, casually nodding her chin to the creature that led me here, and was now observing our interaction without any clear expression. So that was called a Docent? "It's what they do to you if you break a rule."

"Fuck," I cursed in amazement and dread. I looked at the Docent, then at Little Sister again. "Really?"

"Into a Docent most commonly, or into a Page or Archivist. Sometimes into something else, depending on what the Library needs, or what breach of trust you've committed. Hurting another patron is a serious offense. Are you taking my hand or not?"

I looked back at 'Little Sister,' eyed her hand for a second with suspicion, then accepted. I was a stranger in a strange land - if she wanted to kill me, she'd have plenty of opportunities to do so later while I was still stumbling around like a clueless duckling. I figure I might as well get it over with.

Almost immediately as our hands made contact, I noticed that my input zone couldn't reach even a single femtometer into her body, as though the outermost atom of her epidermis was a solid, impenetrable wall for all intents and purposes. I couldn't even tell whether there was Aspect Radiation on her, although I suspected the answer was likely yes, given there was Aspect Radiation on literally fucking everything around here.

"Swell," she said. "Now, I am about to cast a spell of spatial transference. Since you're a novice at... all of this, I should warn you, the sensation of teleporting is extremely unpleasant and nauseating. Steel yourself and try not to vomit. Although there's no shame if you do."

My expression must've curdled visibly because her friendly smile acquired an edged quality. She snorted in schadenfreude, deriving some amusement from my displeasure. Nonetheless, I steeled myself and breathed in deeply.

"Ready?" she asked.

"Ready."

We teleported the moment the word left my mouth.

The shape of the Library bent as though reflected in a funhouse mirror. It snapped into a row of wobbling vertical lines flashing past my eyes at speed of thought, and the overall image straightened into a phantasmagorical, meaningless array of curving lights, whizzing past at impossible speeds, while Little Sister stood and continued holding onto me like a domain of stability; an anchor in a storm of chaos. I felt a sensation like I was being forcefully squeezed through a tight, long steel tube, as both I and Little Sister compressed into nothing, even though I could still feel her hand.

And then everything unfolded, all of that happening in reverse, and spitting us back into a different part of the Library. A small reading room, filled with a variety of strange people, most of them occupying their own business and not minding our appearance.

It wasn't as bad as I expected, honestly. Perhaps because I already had an impressive level of acquired proficiency in holding back vomit, I miraculously managed not to throw up all over the floor.

There was also Phineas, who saw me and Little Sister arriving from the cloud of purple dust and broke off an ongoing, heated conversation with a middle-aged woman in a halter dress. He approached me.

"Welcome to the Wanderer's Library," he said, smiling like nothing was wrong. "You should've walked into the deep darkness in that first corridor. That was me providing you a shortcut here."

There was a moment - a flash, a split-second - during which every muscle in my body tensed, for the specific duration of a single movement, taking the requisite movements that'd lead to me stepping into the range of Phineas and clocking him in the face at full strength.

Then I remembered that I'd be turned into a Docent, so instead, I transitioned smoothly into laying a firm hand on his shoulder. He blinked at me, as I moved closer, mouth next to his ear.

I spoke, with as much venom as I could muster.

"Fuck. You."

"A wonderful new beginning," Little Sister murmured behind me.

Last edited: Jan 10, 2023

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Birdsie

Nov 24, 2022

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Nov 27, 2022

#341

After a while of standing like that and letting the venom dribble out, I stood away from Phineas, and started to take stock of the room I was in.

It was a nice room, well-decorated and atmospheric, a vintage home parlor of sorts. There were dark wood and gray marble floors covered in small, decorative, knitted rugs, lending it an air of coziness, yet without entirely dissipating the feeling of being in a ginormous library. There were massive bookcases surrounding me on every side instead of walls: books of all imaginable sizes and types standing on them.

Although thick tomes with brown leather covers were predominant, there were also leering grimoires with twisted faces instead of covers, more traditional hardback books, and even some science magazines.

There was a homey tan-brick fireplace, the kind you'd expect to find in an uphill mansion somewhere in Montana, in one of those secluded parts of America where nothing exists. Sawmilled, short-cut logs piled next to it, with a poker and an assembly of other metal tools I couldn't name in a wrought iron basket. There were several red velvet armchairs in a loose half-circle around it, several people sitting in them, muttering, and reading books. None of them were bothered by our sudden appearance or the conversation that began.

One of them - my eyes focusing on him out of sheer surreality - was a deerman, or perhaps in this context, a buckman. Covered from head to toe in a coat of spotless, reddish-brown fur, with rather impressive antlers on top of his head. Despite the fur, he was dressed in a plain sweater, jeans, and sneakers, and seemed to have feet and hands instead of hooves. He was reading a book apparently called the Vampirotron.

Its cover said, 'a fang-to-fang comparison of classic bloodsuckers and the new breeds of your favorite neckbiters!'

There were also the people currently not sitting around or reading anything. The ones paying attention to me and Little Sister, and our entrance. Other members of the Serpent's Hand, the organization that Phineas mentioned he was a part of?

I didn't know what to make of them. One of them was the woman in her early fifties, dressed in a dark blue halter dress, and observing me with deep skepticism, like I was an investment portfolio inherited into the hands of a new money lottery winner sixteen-year-old with a taste for expensive sports cars. I looked around the room, and realized that 'deep skepticism' was the predominant reaction here; almost the default state regarding me, in fact.

Abruptly, in a state of twilight consciousness, I was reminded of the shelter and the way the homeless people looked at me. This was worse somehow, and I wasn't sure why.

"I don't understand," Phineas said, looking at me with furrowed eyebrows.

His clueless expression pissed me off viscerally, in a way I couldn't arrange into meaningful words. Like the feeling of cleaning your porch the entire afternoon, only for snowfall to start early this year, and render your efforts null.

"It's rather simple," another person said, cutting in before I could yell at him. "He said, 'fuck you.' That, Phineas, is an indication of hostility and dislike. He doesn't like you."

The individual in question didn't look much older than me. A weathered man in his early twenties, with a developing dark beard that'd probably look impressive and grandiose if given another couple of months to be cultivated, and thick circles of raccoon-like sleep deprivation around his eyes. He was dressed in a business casual suit jacket and a dark sweater and wore full-frame glasses. He almost reminded me of a young college professor.

"He's pretty much got it," I said, before looking at Phineas. "So, from you kidnapping me here, I assume you want something from me?"

Once again, the man I didn't know the name of cut in.

He laughed in response to my words, in a doubting and acrimonious tone. Showing as much contempt for me as possible, as if I were an insult in humanoid form, and he were vigorously insulting me back. Suddenly, I understood he wasn't a friend, and that his annoying habit of entering other people's conversations would earn him a punch from me, some day in the distant future. At least when I wasn't here in Docent-land.

"Pray tell, why would a respectable and enlightened organization such as the Serpent's Hand need a... a..." He struggled with words for a second, heating with frustration and indefinition, before he suddenly burst, with the accumulated miasma, "A Jailor's toy with a damaged endowment, stuck in a perpetual cycle of self-confusion at its sole fact of existence?! Please, Phineas, your social experiment has become a laughable fiasco - a damn circus of clowns, and it's only become steadily worse the more time we've wasted on it. There is no, and never has been, any utility in contacting this fool."

He addressed Little Sister and the room's inhabitants at large. I wasn't sure what I could even say in my own defense. Most of his complaints didn't make sense to me. "May we kick him out already? Jailors and their lackeys don't belong in the Wanderer's Library."

"Rude," an avian-man said, seemingly in my defense. His body was somewhat twisted out of the 'human standard,' with digitigrade feet, a hunched back, and a beak in place of a mouth. His eyes were small, beady orbs. He was covered in dark, combed, ravenlike feathers, and spoke with an audible, subsonic hum to his voice, like a gurgling distortion. "Incredibly so, Gotyard. If you have nothing nice to say, do not say anything."

"Shut it, Wandsman. No one asked you for your opinion." Gotyard scoffed, clicked his tongue, and folded his arms. "All you birds do is snoop around where no one wants you."

A sound of a sigh came from behind me.

I looked to see that Little Sister came forward a couple of steps. She corrected her spectacles and treated Gotyard with a smile that promised hardcore violence. "It'd be for the best, GK, if you took your own advice and shut up. Tell me, who are you to speak out?"

"I'm-"

"A complete novice," she cut in, the same as he'd done to almost everyone else, "A baby suckling on the Hand's teat. Almost none of your magic is your own, and despite my recommendation list, you've barely made any substantial progress. A year ago, on this same exact day, you were an unimportant student of... entomology, was it? And you were struggling to even pay rent. Now, you're struggling to cast spells, or do anything useful."

She moved closer to him, and spoke in a low, dangerous whisper, "That Onyx saw a shadow of potential in you, made you a charity case, took you in as his apprentice, and inducted you into the Hand, and then into our inner circle, was his decision. Were it mine, I would not have done so." She said that last sentence almost as a warning, with a hint of palpable danger. Even I felt unnerved, and the castigation wasn't directed at me.

"Now, I shall honor Onyx's sacred memory, and not kick you out," she said. "I ask that you honor it as well, and not embarrass yourself or his increasingly withering legacy any further."

Gotyard looked - I didn't have a word for it, really. He looked empty and shamed. He looked as though he were a chicken's egg, and Little Sister had pricked open a hole in him with a needle, then made an identical hole on the other side, and blew into one of them until the inside was completely devoid of substance. His skin looked a shade whiter.

After a second, he numbly turned away, and sat down in a chair in the corner of the room, rubbing at his face and staring into his own hands.

"I do apologize for his quackishness," Little Sister told me with a coy smile, putting a hand on my arm in a comforting manner. "Difficult upbringing. Phineas, private room in five minutes or so? A clear space to explain things. I trust you know which one."

He nodded, then stepped into a chair's shadow and melted into pure darkness in front of my eyes, leaving me reeling mentally. I wasn't yet even a little used to how apparently everyone around here was a parahuman and defied simple logic in highly convoluted ways.

"Sixth? Do you wish to come with and take your report?"

She looked at the ravenlike man, who'd spoken in my defense. He looked at me, in turn, and seemed curious, before dismissively saying, "No. I don't believe there's much of a point. I'd love to do so later, though, if our friend is willing. Once he's had time to think."

"Of course." She looked at me questioningly.

"Sure?" I ventured.

"There is much risk in me asking questions anyhow. Even in his current state. As much as I disagree with Gotyard's tone..."

"Oh, so even you think I'm a worthless incompetent, or too dangerous to be left alive?" I asked, suddenly feeling stupid that I'd believed for even a short moment this 'Sixth' might be on my side. I should've known, or should've predicted it wouldn't be as simple as that. Either they'd hate me or find a reason to hate me as soon as they could.

He winced away from me. "Oh no. Please don't misunderstand. I'm only... I, well, I was referring to your... employers. Or former employers, as it were."

"Employers?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. Now that I hadn't known about. And couldn't have realistically predicted. "What employers?"

"It'll all be explained," Little Sister said. Then, as if on second thought, she amended, "Well, in parts."

"Parts?"

"Installments," she said, once more correctively. "Robert, please do understand that, while you're rather young by most people's standards, your life's had a history of events complex and rich enough that you could write a series of novels about them. And that's not accounting for small minutiae. I promise we'll do our best to fill you in, but we'll start with things of real import. Once you've stewed over some information, you'll come by again."

For a second, I was skeptical.

However, Little Sister - unlike a lot of people - hadn't done anything to betray me and she wasn't a liar. She even stepped in to help me, when I didn't know how I could defend myself. That had to count for something so I decided that I'd trust her words, at least provisionally.

"Alright. Fine."

"I apologize for my behavior. I should've been more clear about my own words with a new entrant," the Wandsman creature said, approaching me. He extended a hand, covered in feathers and a fleshlike growth that seemed almost like a vestigial or not fully developed wing. "I'm afraid that, for reasons of my own employment, I'm not at complete freedom to reveal my name. Please, call me the Sixth Wandsman of Cross - or Sixth."

I shook it and received a fast but surprisingly imprecise scan of his biology and innards. He was, as you might expect, chock-full of Aspect Radiation, and it seemed parts of his biology were infused with it to such an extent it disrupted some of my deeper scans, such as parts of his atomic composition. This was distinct from Little Sister's effect: she blocked me out entirely. He was simply irradiated, to the point where the metaphorical lens flare of his being didn't let me read him without violent brain seizures.

"I'm Robert. Nice to meet you, Sixth."

He offered a nod to me, then to Little Sister, and walked off to speak with a small group of people standing in the corner. 'People,' relative to this place. One of them was a giant rat - not a ratman, but a normal rat - on a wheelchair, its brain exposed with some kind of electric apparatus covered in wires attached to it, sitting around its open skull like a crown. There was also that woman in the halter dress that gave me odd looks earlier.

Little Sister, in the meantime, addressed me.

"Do you mind if we teleport again? It'll be faster."

I debated. I still had to return to the seaside factory, and the sooner the better. "Is it far?"

Her lips pursed. "Around ten minutes by foot."

"Screw it." I offered her my hand. "Teleport."

I believed I was ready for the sensation, and to my surprise, it wasn't as confounding as the first time around. It still shook the very foundations of my reality and filled me with nausea and vertigo, but the sense of readiness made the experience more tolerable, like being somewhat tired in the middle of the day, but still being able to sleep despite the sun.

We arrived in a small, dark private study room. This one, alongside plentiful bookcases, had actual walls made of wooden paneling and faded bleach-yellow and mint-green wallpaper. There was a desk, and several chairs arranged, with Phineas already sitting in one of them.

"Alright. Robert, I think we owe you an explanation," Phineas said.

"No fucking shit. I'm still angry you threw me in here out of nowhere."

"Hold on," Little Sister interrupted us. "I didn't want to say anything in there, to not make a fuss. Phineas, you threw him into a fucking Way?"

"A little dramatic," he said, "But it worked. I didn't think he'd agree to follow otherwise. He was already skeptical about magic. Are you still skeptical about magic?" He looked at me.

"No," I stated deadpan.

"I'd thought so."

"Nothing here makes a lick of sense," I told them, looking to Little Sister for an explanation. She offered me a cordial, puzzled eyeblink. "Seriously, what is this fucking place?"

"Sit down first," Little Sister offered me. "This shall be, I imagine, a long and tedious conversation." She waved a hand as casually as someone warding off a fart's smell, and a chair slid across the floor, seemingly on its own, surrounded by an invisible sheen of Aspect Radiation. It slid exactly until it was a foot behind me.

I sat down, and they started explaining.

"Currently, you're in the Wanderer's Library," Phineas said.

"Right." I turned back to him. "I'm asking you what is the Wanderer's Library?'"

"A Nexus," Little Sister cut in. "The biggest and the most far-reaching, in fact. And before you ask, a Nexus is an old colloquialism used to refer to any location abundant in supernatural events, individuals, or unnatural energies. Often, with a stable population, although not always. The Library is special in those regards. Unique even by Nexus standards."

Phineas continued, "All worlds - even hypothetical and fictional ones - have a minimum of one Way leading into the Wanderer's Library, sometimes more. The vehicle we utilized was one of them. This, as I'm sure you can infer, also means the Library is among the largest multiversal travel hubs in existence. Everything ultimately leads to it, and with effort and research, it can lead you anywhere."

"It's also the most enormous source of knowledge in existence," Little Sister added, sitting down in one of the chairs, and primly placing her hands on her knees. "I'm sure you've seen how many books it contained. The Wanderer's Library is effectively infinite in size. It contains all information to have ever existed, on any topic, and in any imaginable and unimaginable genre. Reprintings, variants, and different editions, too. Often with ubiquitous copies of each. There are Lovecraft stories written as cosmic comedies, rather than cosmic horror, for instance. Or Lovecraft stories, but the rituals and spells in them actually work..."

She trailed off a little, allowing the implications to hang in the air.

"It contains books that don't exist anymore or never even have to begin with," Phineas said, looking me straight in the eyes. "Books that don't exist yet. It even has things that aren't books, but still serve a function as sources of knowledge. Movies, disks, cassettes, audio..."

"Yes. Things like that," Little Sister said, raising a hand because she read into me and understood that I absorbed the point. "We, the Serpent's Hand, use the Wanderer's Library as our headquarters, with the permission of its Chief Librarian. It's a symbiotic relationship, as the Hand's ancestral role is the spreading of useful knowledge and magic and careful safeguarding of that which is unfathomably dangerous. Wandsmen, like Sixth, serve in a similar capacity, although in a more journalistic fashion. We're allied with them."

"There's some overlap," Phineas admitted.

"And what about the Jailors? The ones that Gotyard mentioned?"

He'd called me a lackey of the Jailors. I didn't like the implications of someone called the Jailors having that kind of control over me. Were they responsible for the memory loss, and the sudden and rude awakening in Brockton Bay?

There was something odd about all of this, that I couldn't entirely fathom.

"The Jailors are... a delicate matter," Phineas admitted. "I don't want to explain things to you partially. It's a little difficult to give you the full picture without you developing bad biases along the way. No matter what I say, it'll seem like they are an evil organization."

"In a manner of speaking, they are," Little Sister muttered.

"That's unfair to them, Alison, and you know it."

"Alison?"

"My actual name is Alison Chao," she answered, with a small smile. "Little Sister is my codename among the Serpents. I'm also known as Black Queen to everyone else."

"I see. It's nice to know your real name."

She changed expressions to one that looked a tad sourer.

"As for your question... They call themselves the SCP Foundation. On the surface, they resemble us. The motto's in the name: 'Secure, Contain, Protect.' They desperately wish to protect and preserve the Veil, and they'll use any means to ensure its maintenance."

"The Veil?"

"A consensus on what's normal and what's not. According to them, the everyday of your usual salaryman doesn't have any free space for magical worlds, dragons, aliens, and wizards. So, even though you've done nothing wrong, if you were uncovered by the Foundation, they'd lock you in a cell, designate you an SCP item, and never release you. Because you're different enough by their standards that it matters. Because you stand out."

"Fuck," I swore. The mere idea of a lifetime imprisonment... simply for daring to be parahuman - not that being a parahuman was a choice. "Damn, that's terrible. And there are people locked up like that?"

"Yes. Still, the Foundation is not as bad as the Bookburners," said Phineas. "That's our term for the Global Occult Coalition, or Gocks, in more informal speech. Whereas the Foundation will imprison you, at least it'll provide you with food and care for you in an adequate fashion, treat you with something resembling modest but humane conditions. The Gocks will immediately destroy you instead. No mercy, no questions."

"Unless, hypocritically enough, you're useful to them. For example, if you're a magician, they'll attempt to recruit you," Alison said.

"And if you're not, they'll cut you open and use you as inspiration to make new armor and weapons to destroy all others like you."

"Oh, not that the Foundation isn't without hypocrisies of its own, of course. There's plenty of hypocrisy to go around, believe me," Alison said with a chuckle. "Some of their own senior staff are 'anomalies,' yet they aren't jailed due to apparent usefulness. They create and use such 'anomalous' objects to contain others. They wantonly utilize rituals and magic as convenient, barely even bothering to comprehend what makes them work."

"What a load of bullshit," Phineas said.

"I notice you've been using anomalous in vocal quotation marks, though," I mentioned. "So you disagree that magic is anomalous?"

"Evidently it's not," she said, in a tone that was almost offended I'd even asked. "If magic wasn't supposed to be a part of our reality, I wouldn't be able to use it and teach its use to others. They see a force they cannot entirely comprehend, deem it a logical impossibility, and ignorantly lock it away. A caveman's mindset. Yes, I do agree that dangerous monsters have to be locked away, but not everything that commands higher powers needs to be."

"Wait, so these SPCs-"

"SCPs," she corrected me. "SPCs are a completely different thing."

"-I used to be one of them?"

"And then they amnesticized you. They removed your memories, scrubbed you clear of anything resembling identity and a past," Phineas said, frowning deeply as he sat back into his armchair. "Normally, they do that to civilians who'd seen too much, who needed to forget to maintain the Veil. I suppose you were different. The world you woke up on - Earth Bet - has been deemed its own SCP recently. They're containing it however they can."

"However, we aren't certain why they decided to throw you and several others onto it," Alison said. "A cheaper form of containment, perhaps? A world can serve as its own, bigger cell. And I suppose on a world of superhumans, you'd no longer be entirely anomalous. I could see their logic, although I'm confused. I don't believe the Jailors would make such a bold and firm decision, especially with someone whose ability is as useful as your own."

"Hold on. Several others? There are others like me? Anomalies on Earth Bet?"

"Oh yes. Although we're still in the process of tracking them down," she said, looking at Phineas. "You were something of an incredibly lucky break."

"I suspect the others have scattered by now," Phineas said.

This was... a damn lot to think about.

So I was an SCP, or at least, used to be. I'd been contained by something called the SCP Foundation since they believed my abilities should remain a secret. And then, at some point, they discovered Earth Bet and dumped me in Brockton Bay after deleting my memories - presumably, so I couldn't tattle on them to any superpowered governments.

I could see the outline of reasoning, here; a silhouette of sense, an ember of logic.

But there was definitely something off about it, something that didn't add up.

Looking at Phineas and Alison, I could see a similar form of contemplation in their eyes. They didn't know the answer, I was certain: they were as confused about this as I was. They merely decided to take a chance to gather as many anomalies the Foundation tossed out as possible.

"Alright," I said. "I suppose that answers... most of my questions. I'm not sure if I believe you on the details, but what you've said makes sense, and I don't have any real cause to disbelieve you. So, what now?"

"Now?" Alison smirked in a playful manner, one that I wasn't sure I liked. "Now, as one of its informal leaders, I'd like to invite you to become a member of the Serpent's Hand."

I frowned. "And what would that entail?"

"Oh, not much," she assured me. "Most Serpents are independent agents, in any case, only collaborating or working together on important matters. We don't use power hierarchies, especially inflexibly rigid ones. It's more of a declaration of ethos. Do you agree with us? That the Jailors and Bookburners are wrong? That knowledge and supernatural power should be free, available to everyone if they are pure of intent in using it?"

It didn't take me long to answer. "Yeah. Yeah, I do think so."

"Then you're one of us," Alison declared. "We'll help you if you ever require it, and in turn, we hope that you'll help us if we ever need you in turn. For the common goal."

I nodded. "For the common goal."

She offered me a bright smile. Uncharacteristically adorable on her.

"Now, come with me." She stood from her chair. "I'll send you back."

I realized something at that moment. "Actually, speaking of that - and speaking of helping one another."

She blinked in puzzlement, stopping. "Hm?"

"I could use yours in dealing with a problem I have," I stated, trying not to sound too weak, or too pathetic. "I hate to call in a favor the moment you hand it out, but I don't have many options. I happened to already be in deep shit when Phineas took me here, and I suspect sitting around for so long has only made it worse."

"Right." Phineas soured as if remembering that he'd stepped in dogshit. "You mentioned the ABB. In that case, it'd be best for both of us-"

"No, you stay here, Phineas. I'll go with Robert," Alison said in calm, nonchalant tones, waving him off in a casual manner. "I need you to wait here for Jude and his people."

Phineas stood. "Alison, you don't know-"

She sighed, so loudly and strongly that he was interrupted.

"I am Alison Chao," she said, without turning. "I am the Black Queen, the Queen Blackbird, the Lone Serpent, the Extrauniversal Woman, one of the Sisters Foremost. And I am Endless. I have looked down upon Gods and destroyed their cults. I have acted in banishing the Madmen from the Wanderer's Library. I am in particular the one Alison who challenged the Grandmother of the Nalka, and so much more."

She turned and offered him a bright, innocent smile. "So I think I can handle a single man that sometimes turns into a drake and his coterie of Asian gun-toting drug addicts."

"How did you-"

"Come on. Let's go, Robert." She already left, hands stuffed in her pockets, a wicked grin emblazoned upon her face.

Frowning, and knowing that I'd be lost without guidance, I cast one helpless look at Phineas, then raced after Alison.

226

Birdsie

Nov 27, 2022

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Threadmarks Anomaly 2.x (Interlude: Harriet)

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Dec 3, 2022

#363

November 10th, 2010

With a deep and practiced sigh, Harriet bit into an off-brand muffin, smearing dark chocolate all over her mouth. She chewed.

There was a thickness and crumbiness to its texture. The individual, unchewed fragments clumped together into tattered, messy scraps that absorbed the moisture from her mouth, leaving everything feeling arid and unsatisfying. The flavor profile was decent overall, but also exactly as cheap as you'd expect. There was no real satisfaction, no substance. The American dream condensed into the form of a dessert pastry: false promises and checksums to cover terrible disappointment.

Same as almost everything was now. No substance, no flavor. The same, uniform stillness, from morning to evening, even as she had to struggle to pay rent and cover basic amenities. The drudgery of the free and unfettered life she'd picked for herself.

It could've been worse. She could've been stuck in one place with no way to leave.

"Happy birthday to you…" she sing-sang. "Happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Harriet…"

She looked up for a moment, then took out one matchstick from the box and struck it alight.

Above, the skyline of Brockton Bay promised only days of rain and cold, in the form of an icy cloud front. Another year of failures, sadness, and loneliness. People fighting in the streets and killing each other over stupid reasons and tribalistic impulses.

Sometimes, she'd retreat into the depths of her own mind and imagine the world as an idealized form: a better world, a world of candy and unicorns and bazookas shooting rainbows. A psychotic world for children, not adults.

"Happy birthday to me," she finished the song lamely.

She planted the matchstick into the remnants of the chocolate muffin, waited for a couple of seconds out of a sense of drama, and then blew it out with pursed lips, frowning at the momentary scent of sulfur.

Wishes are dumb. They never come true.

She removed the matchstick with an errant flick, then finished eating the muffin.

Unsatisfying. A lie covered in chocolate and frosting. But still, it could fill that void in the stomach well enough on its own.

August 4th, 2003

"Harriet," the headmistress said as Harriet entered her office. The woman had a parched smile on her face. Content, satisfied - false, a facade meant to make her feel better.

"I have good news."

She hated each of these visits. She hated every second of them, from the moment she was called in, to the moment where she left. They always developed in a cycle: a promise of betterment, a ray of false hope, and then a near-realization of that hope. And then she'd end up here, once again, in the next couple of months - slightly more wearied by the process than before, thinking it can't possibly get even worse, only to be proven wrong. There'd been at least five such visits that she could remember.

The headmistress, Mrs. Misaki - an older Japanese lady - wasn't much different, even though she hid it. She wanted Harriet to have a nice home. Even though Harriet would've liked to think otherwise, to find a culprit for all her anger and frustrations, Mrs. Misaki cared, and she cared in a true and honest way, and the constant failures were getting to her as well. It was difficult to blame her, and not having anyone to blame made the charade even worse - a slog with no relief.

It could've been worse. She could've been stuck in one place with no way to leave, no assurance that it'd ever get better. Abusive foster parents that'd take their frustrations out on her, and no one to ever believe her when she showed the bruises. But Mrs. Misaki did believe her, and she made sure that Harriet would never be stuck.

"Do you?" Harriet asked, rolling her eyes, "Do you really, though?"

Mrs. Misaki steepled her hands on the desk, unimpressed.

She raised an eyebrow and took out a sheet of paper from a stack next to her laptop. "As a matter of fact... I do, young lady."

Harriet eyed the paper. "Wow. Paper. I am saved."

Ignoring Harriet's brattiness, Mrs. Misaki went on. "A promising, generous married couple has decided to adopt you."

"Like every other time some random idiots came by, thought I looked cute with my adorable red hair and freckles, and decided to adopt a child they couldn't handle?" she folded her arms to her stomach, rubbing her forearms with her hands, her eyes searching for something to lock onto. "Half of them drank, you know? I told you, didn't I?"

"I can't promise it'll go well," Mrs. Misaki said somberly, leaning forward in her seat just a little bit. There was a small hint of deep hurt in her eyes, one that even Harriet could notice so evidently. "I can promise that I'll always be here to help if things go wrong. Were I fifteen years younger, able to afford it, I'd have adopted you for myself."

There was a moment of silence, uneasy, tense.

It'd be easy to lash out, to say that Harriet didn't believe her. That wasn't exactly true, though. In a better universe, it might've been real.

"Okay," Harriet eventually mumbled out. Her cheeks became a shade redder. "Thank you."

"Alright, would you like to see them?"

"You have a file over there. Can I read that instead?"

"It's your papers, dear."

She giggled. "I know. I like looking at my picture. I made a stupid face on purpose."

"Oh, Harriet," Mrs. Misaki sighed, standing and rubbing the young girl's head. "Come this way. I'm hoping things will get better for you from now on."

She died not even a full year after saying that, a couple of weeks before Christmas. Gastrointestinal cancer, advanced and metastasized once they'd discovered it. Mrs. Misaki didn't bother fighting it and torturing herself, and in hindsight, Harriet didn't blame her. The orphanage closed down not too long, and there was nowhere to return to.

Whether she liked it or not, she was stuck.

Brockton Bay

May 30th, 2008

"Harriet!" There was a call from downstairs. "Breakfast's ready! You'll miss the bus!"

Harriet immediately bounded downstairs in a hurry to eat something, pants drawn somewhere halfway up her thighs as she stomped down like an ungainly elephant. She was buckling her belt with one hand and adjusting the uniform's tie with the other, struggling to do both of them at the same time, and as a result, struggling to do either one.

"Goddamn it-"

"Language!" Mom exclaimed, accusatory in tone.

"Sorry!" Harriet replied. She finally reached the kitchen, in a state that resembled orderliness. Every piece of cloth on her was wrinkled, but she looked presentable enough, or so she thought. "What's for breakfast?"

"I made you pancakes, dear," Mom said, placing a couple of piping hot pancakes on a clean plate. She opened a nearby bottle and poured down a stream of delicious maple syrup on them, encasing them completely in the alluring amber fluid. "Eat them while they're still warm and hurry up, or you'll be late to college."

"Attendance isn't mandatory in my course, ma," Harriet said, grabbing the plate from the counter, then a fork and knife from a small basket. She immediately dug in.

The feeling of a home-cooked breakfast was unbeatable. The pancakes themselves were airy and soft in the best of ways, easy to chew but at the same time supple and full of substance. The syrup itself added a touch of sickening sweetness, the kind of sweetness that made your cheeks tense up in excessive delight, but more than palatable and with a full texture that was soft and smooth, a more liquid form of honey. The entire meal was like a magician had taken silk and velvet and given them form as edible components.

After a moment of awkward silence, Mom spoke up, sipping her coffee. "What are you going to be doing today?"

"At college?" Harriet asked. After an affirmative 'hmm,' she continued, in a contemplative tone, "Well, mostly psychology, and then I'm going to the gym for training. We've got regionals coming up soon, remember?"

"Oh, yeah. Your dad'll come pick you up and drive you there," Mom said. She put the mug down in the sink and put some water in it from the tap. "Is that alright with you?"

"Yeah. Thanks, mom."

"No problem, sweetie."

Brockton Bay

April 12th, 2009

Harriet's room was trashed, everything in disarray, in chaos. The drawers had been violently pulled out of their slides and thrown to the ground, the closet doors completely torn off their hinges. All the posters, paintings, and photographs, all ripped to shreds. It was a miracle the window hadn't been cracked apart or shattered into fragments, its remnants over the floor. The only remaining element, perhaps, was the bed. Its covers were off, the sheets in ruin, but the mattress was stable enough to sit down on.

Downstairs was pure hell. Screaming and yelling at maximum volume, loud and unfiltered arguing. Hurtful words, sharp like knives, flung around carelessly, shot like bolts from a tense crossbow string by an idiot child with no awareness of the damage they were causing. Infants with bazookas.

"Have you any idea how disappointed we are?!" Harriet's adoptive dad shouted, pointing his callous finger at her. She shrunk at that gesture. "To find out our daughter is a fucking junkie?!"

"I'm not," she said, gritting her teeth.

"Then what the fuck is that?" Dad asked, taking a medium-sized bag full of white powder. Cocaine.

"Do I look like a fucking junkie to you?!" she screamed back, finally letting it out. There was a sinking feeling in her stomach, immediately the moment she said it. She didn't feel remorse for long. Her right cheek became a sphere of stinging pain. There was a ringing in her ear, and tears streaming down on her face, coming unbidden.

"No one does until they're choking on their own vomit in some fucking crackhouse somewhere," Thomas said.

"Thomas!" Mom yelled, holding back hiccups and sobs as her face was streaked by tears. She grabbed on his arm and pulled him away from Harriet, still clutching at her face, wordlessly, incredulous, unable to process this. "She's our daughter!"

"No! She isn't!" Thomas shouted, shaking his wife off of himself.

"I told you. It's not mine…" Harriet said, looking away from her parents.

The cocaine they'd found in her room wasn't hers. It was Adam's, her step-brother's. She confronted him about it and took it away from him, because she found out he was dealing. She was planning to speak with him again before telling their parents. Adam was faster, though. He went running to their parents and must've told them something.

Knowing him, probably something like, 'Mom, Dad, Harriet is doing coke in her room!'

"Again with this bullshit?! Adam is sixteen!" Thomas exclaimed roughly, planting a finger in Harriet's collarbone, making her stumble back. "No, you aren't our fucking daughter. Had you been raised properly, you wouldn't have grown to be such a dirty fucking liar! We found you in that shithole of an orphanage and took you home out of fucking pity! Do you understand me, girl?"

Something broke in her chest. Like glass shattered with a hammer.

There was a moment when he was distracted. She pushed him, and then moved past him, and started running downstairs. Wordless, in a panic, the walls of the house collapsed in on her, leaving her alone in a dark world. Minutes later, the world returned, after she'd sprinted down across Brockton Bay, almost to the harbor.

I can't do this anymore.

Her mom called, a couple of times. Several family members texted her. She answered them, that she'd not be coming back.

March 25th, 2011

Where the hell did you go, Robert?

The switchsword, its edge coated in a dangerously bright flame, moved in an arc, and for the first time ever, she cut off a man's hand. He screamed, dropping the weapon, wound cauterized as though made by a lightsaber. There was no time for shock, no moment to spare for a reaction or even remorse.

It was either move or die. She couldn't afford fear.

She reached into her pocket and tossed out a small vial of white powder. The glass of the vial, fragile and brittle, cracked and shattered on impact with the man's chest, releasing the powder over his entire body and the surrounding area. It combusted after a second, and exploded across the man's face and body, making him scream.

Something hard, large, and uncomfortably hot, slammed into her side and threw her across the floor. As soon as she was done rolling, she touched a hand to her midriff and found blood. It leaked out of her, through pencil-thin slashes in the hoodie.

Her eyes narrowed and reoriented, realizing what happened, right as Lung came in and tried to stomp on her.

He was a terrifying beast to behold, especially up close, approaching in your direction. A hulking giant of a man, covered with platinum and silver scales, claws sprouting on his fingers, hair starting to disappear, eyes wearing away into hateful draconic orbs. There were heatwaves coursing around him, almost like an aura of distorted air, hands flaming like torches. It was one of those heated claws that had cut through her clothing and into her skin.

She backed away several feet, raised her flaming sword, and - at the last possible second, before he could back off - stabbed it, deep into his scales, into the area of the groin. He moaned in deep pain, but was unimpeded, using his other foot to kick at her. The sword didn't come out, didn't clatter. She held onto it, desperate, like a critical lynchpin, like a drowning woman holding onto a buoy in the middle of a tempest, even after another blow to the shoulder that felt like someone smashed a bookcase into her.

He kicked once more, harder - hard enough to knock the wind out of her - and shouted, with a distorted, doglike voice, speaking in rough syllables, "Get au-off me, be-etch!"

She removed the sword - producing another yell from Lung - and kicked away at his knee for some additional leverage.

He launched a stream of fire from one hand, uncontrolled and chaotic, and she ducked and allowed her clothing to absorb most of the heat. Bless Robert for his inventions and the idea to fireproof and insulate everything they wore.

The flames distracted her, though, and caused her to look away. She didn't entirely notice as Lung approached from the side, within a single step. A raking punch to the side of the head knocked her to the floor, seeing darkness and stars. Above, she could make out his silhouette, the heat radiating off of him like being exposed to a hateful sun.

There was conversation around her, in Chinese and Japanese, that she could barely make out. Not half a minute later, someone rough and big forced her to stand, holding onto her shoulder, making her move to her feet.

"Up, damn you," the man barked, shoving her roughly forward.

She stumbled, and almost fell over, but caught onto a pillar. Harriet steadied herself, thoughts swimming.

"Move it," the man behind her said again, shoving her forward once more. Unbalanced, she caught herself and grit her teeth as she continued onward.

They made her move out front, and step into a neat row alongside the others, with men dressed in ABB colors watching over everyone. Jack was bleeding profusely from an open gash on his arm, covering the wound, and applying pressure to it. No one was in a position to offer him any kind of aid, not that the bastard thugs would allow it.

Standing next to the ranks of men, Lung was playing around with the switchsword.

Crap.

"A tinker's toy," the dragon muttered, in a humanlike voice, pressing the switch that made the blade collapse and fold neatly into its hilt. A lot more time than she anticipated must've passed, since he looked a degree more human-like, as though he'd reverted back from his transformation. He wasn't quite as freakishly tall and inhumanly muscled as before, his cheeks and forehead covered in leaf-thin silver scales, but almost completely devoid of them otherwise. "Who among you made it?"

"He'll be here soon," Harriet said. "Then he'll kick your ass."

"Harriet," Jack barked at her quietly, teeth gritted.

"Confident, are you?" Lung asked. "Is he your friend?"

"Yeah, motherfucker, he's my best friend."

"Good. Then he'll work hard to keep you out of the whorehouse."

She scowled at the bastard. There was a moment of insane temptation, as she felt the thick mixture of saliva and blood pooling around in her mouth. A temptation to step forward and spit at him, splattering her blood all over that smug fucking face...

But it was a terrible idea, for more than one reason.

"It's clear he cares about each of you, in some way," Lung continued in a thoughtful manner. "If he cared to leave you such items and fortify this place, defend it, he'll be easy to control. Hm, take half of them away. Just in case he decides to be a hero and attempt rescue."

Someone, an ABB man, screamed in Chinese close to the door.

Lung, momentarily distracted, shouted something back.

The man shouted back, louder and more insistent.

With a deep, tremulous sigh of disappointment and apparent exasperation, Lung began to stride in his direction. His journey, however, was unfinished.

Around half the building's facade caved in. It was complete pandemonium for a second, ash and debris flying in, the scant few people outside screaming, and shrapnel and pieces of concrete raining down like rain. Almost none of the heavier pieces reached them, where they were standing in a row, although Jack cursed as some bits of concrete bounced off of his face with a ricochet. There was darkness and an indefinite loud noise, then a crescendo of gunshots and screams, and then sudden and terrifying stillness. A silence deep and invigorating enough to pierce the thoughts of a dead man.

From among his entire coterie of armed men, Lung was the only one left standing upright, although he was covered in countless scratches and small wounds, producing flame bright enough to illuminate the now darkened room. Scales were layering over him, his spine growing thicker and becoming enameled in organic, platinum lamellar.

A woman in a black dress and leather gloves, with a white coat over the dress, stood in the rubble, amongst pieces of ruin, with loose dark hair and an elegant mask of polished, lacquered black wood, carved with bronze sigils. There was a small crown shape adorning the crown of the mask. Its eye slots were completely, entirely dark.

She snapped her fingers, so loud it carried across the room like a single, clear note of sound. A length of rebar pulled itself out of the debris, reoriented itself along its center of mass, then fired like a bullet, right into Lung's stomach. He screamed out, grit his teeth, and pulled the rebar out. His wound started closing within moments, blood scabbing and covered with fresh skin and flesh, growing additional scales over itself, almost reactively.

"It's a shame," she stated. "None of the good tricks will work here."

"Is everyone alright?" Robert interrupted, approaching them, dressed in his crafted suit of armor. He looked at Jack once and touched the man's shoulder, and suddenly, Jack breathed and sputtered out some unknown dark liquid. His wound seemed more clotted, as though healed forward by an hour, no longer in dire need of medical aid. The man started flexing his fingers in amazement, while Robert's gaze wandered around the assembled homeless people. "Harriet?"

"I'm fine," she said. There was a multitude of questions pressing itself to the forefront of her mind, already on the tip of her tongue. She couldn't say any of them.

"Who the fugh are youu?" Lung asked, voice unclear, although not because of the transformation - even though he shouted out the question. He clutched his dislocated jaw, moved, and aligned it with a thick snap.

"Who am I? You, Lung, may call me Black Queen," the woman introduced herself. "Tonight, I am here in my capacity as a problem-solver. But explanations are wasted on the likes of you. I am here to solve my companion's problem."

She said something - a short, curt phrase in another language, "Mo'tha, l'kis, akh-tun!"

Several gigantic masses of accumulated debris started moving all at once, animated by an unseen and otherworldly force. Piles of reinforced concrete and bent steel moved, clumped altogether into impromptu boulders and masses, and slammed into Lung from different directions. His fire intensified all of a sudden, and the pile moved and displaced as he became larger, struggling against the crushing force. The strange woman continued, making hand motions, controlling the stone, pressing it down on him.

One of the questions that Harriet wanted to ask came out on its own.

"Robert?" Harriet asked. "Who the fuck is that?"

"Some cape. Nevermind that," Jack said, looking for the exit. There was no door anymore. The woman's power had completely broken down the front of the building, leaving behind a hole so large it looked as though someone had tossed an airplane through it. "We need to get out of here. At the rate they're going, the building might go down."

"That's right. Move it!" Robert barked.

They started moving in a stuttering line, around the edges of the building, close to its pillars and load-bearing walls, to make sure nothing collapsed on top of them. The building, even as reinforced as Robert had made it, was already wobbling, parts of it chipping off. Robert held closer to the inner edge of the circle, as though on overwatch, in case Lung or anything else closed in on them. Harriet stopped for a second, seeing the closed switchblade lying on the floor, from where Lung must've lost it.

She looked at Lung, standing in the center of the room, a ten-foot-tall monstrosity in the shape of a dragon, a hateful snout filled with teeth, and sharp talons cleaving apart masses of animate rubble, with the buds of wings starting to grow on his back. He was covered in an aurora of flame bright and hot enough to make her eyes feel dry when she looked in his direction. He was also wrestling with and struggling against a minivan-sized, animate spider made of concrete and steel, the woman in the black dress and mask - Black Queen - effortlessly balancing on its abdomen, seemingly commanding it to attack.

"Robert!" Harriet shouted, picking up the folded switchblade and tossing it in his direction. He looked over and caught it, then nodded.

She began running after the rest of the group, and looked back once, to see Robert sprinting towards Lung. She didn't get to see the resolution of that fight, as Jack pulled her to move to safety.

213

Birdsie

Dec 3, 2022

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Threadmarks Network 3.1

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Dec 5, 2022

#372

The Way leading home proved to be a simple walk down into a cellar. Alison and I came out of the same old van that Phineas made back into me. It stood abandoned in the middle of an emptied parking lot, well out of the reach of the dim street light.

I admired its external concealment, the form of a simple vehicle - amazed that I'd walked into an unexceptional box of steel and came out in an interdimensional library. There was no apparent, discernible mechanism behind the effect. There was no marking, no internal symbolism, not even a runic tracing on the chassis, to mark the van as something special. It was a common, average Renault Trafic, not standing out in any way.

My navel-gazing didn't find companions. Immediately as we came out, and with a deep sense of purpose, Alison strode in the direction of the street, not even looking back to see that I'd lingered for a moment.

"Hold on." I ran after her and caught her arm to stop her.

"Hm?"

"I think... you'll need a costume."

"Superhero world. Of course." She looked around for a couple of seconds as if an extraterrestrial haberdashery might choose that moment to helpfully appear out of thin air. She clicked her tongue. "I wish I had some time to craft something appropriate. Do you mind looking away for a second?"

Confused, I complied with the request.

"You can look now."

"It wasn't even a second..." I trailed off, looking back.

She was dressed in a completely different outfit, like a complete wardrobe swap, like she'd taken off every article of clothing and replaced it with something else in a literal eye's blink. A knee-length dress, darker than her previous outfit, and elbow-length aristocratic gloves; a loose, open-front white coat thrown over that, and boots with an elevated heel and pantyhose. It created a monochrome palette.

And a mask, made of lacquered wood, as black as motor oil and nearly as polished and lustrous. Its surface was covered in different sigils - equal parts lines of decoration and runic alphabet inscriptions - made out of a metal that either was or resembled bronze. There was a design along its top, above the brows, that resembled half a crown, with spiking protrusions from the bronze-like metal.

"Ta-da," she said very dryly. "Black Queen."

"I won't even question how you did that so fast."

"It's better that you don't." She pulled out a small piece of chalkboard and drew a shape on the asphalt, a circle with some lines coming off of it, and then a couple of shapes that I didn't recognize. Then, she wrote an 'R,' in the middle of the shape. It immediately started glowing, a dull off-white color that seemed to dig into my skull and irritate my eyesight. "Which direction to your friends in danger?"

"Are they?"

"Your friends, or in danger?" she asked, head-turning.

"The latter obviously. Nobody there is a friend of mine except maybe Harriet."

"They are soon going to be in danger," she clarified. "It's best that we hurry up."

I blinked in worry. Mostly about Harriet, and... well, I liked Jack. He'd done me a wrong but had valid reasons for doing it, and at least had the decency to own up to it. And I suppose the rest of them were decent people as well, attempting to make a living in this shithole of a city. Even though I hadn't known anyone in the group for that long, I hardly wished for them to die. Most of those people were in the same situation I was, not long ago.

"East," I said. "Can you teleport us?"

"Not as easily outside the Library." She shook her head. "Metaphysics here are different. Damn Library makes things convenient."

"Then how do we get there?"

"Jumping."

"Jumping? Are you going to jump us to our destination across the rooftops or something?"

"Yes, stand still. And don't panic."

"Fuck," I swore, terrified by the concept of falling from such a height. "Are you for real?"

She didn't pick me up, so much as stood behind me and braced a flat hand against my spine, the other clutching onto my shoulder with a vicelike grip.

There was something that felt rather astonishingly safe, in a lot of ways, about skin contact with her.

Normally, whenever I touched something - even something as small and irrelevant as a cardboard box - the field drowned me with stimulus, providing the tiniest minutiae on every irrelevant element of every irrelevant thing I came into contact with.

Every second I lived and breathed, I perceived the vectors of the air, calculated its exact pressure metrics, approximated its direction and origin, accounted for Brownian motion of particle structures, studied its heat index, Haines index, and K-index, and from that, drew complex charts of weather analysis that I attempted to tune out. It was sickening; even though it was no longer overwhelming, even though I learned to ignore the details.

Every second, my feet scanned the earth. The zone pierced deep into the concrete, and into the humus, topsoil, eluviation layer, subsoil, parent material, and even the bedrock. A cross-section of its contents filled my mind, in diagrams and charts. I saw the earthworms, the decaying floral organisms, and small animals, deceased years ago. I studied the composition of every particle of mud and excrement in mind-blanking quantities.

I didn't remark on any of this. It happened every second, every living moment, even as I slept and ate, and so it had become - with a surprising, unusual swiftness - perhaps the most unremarkable aspect of my daily experience.

Alison was remarkable, in that I couldn't analyze her in such a manner. I couldn't tell even a hint of what she had for breakfast yesterday. I had no idea what manner of fabric her clothing was made out of. I wasn't forced to behold the colonies of bacteria and viruses living within her bloodstream. She was an oasis of perfection and simplicity in a world that screamed with all its flaws at me, right into my ears, until everything else felt almost dull.

Every time I touched her, and detected nothing, it was the strangest feeling in the world. A simultaneous feeling of liberation and wrongness.

Imagine knowing the precise, exact location and length of every floorboard in your house, and the arrangement of every piece of furniture, so much so that you can walk through from the bedroom to the kitchen with your eyes closed. Then, when you attempt to do this, eyes closed and believing faithfully in the indomitability of the shape of a house you've lived in for decades, your foot sinks into nothingness where there should've been stable flooring, on the first step, letting you fall into an endless void.

Only, the void isn't necessarily a scary thing on its own. It's also freedom. A release from knowing this much about your house, or at least one of its rooms. A reassurance that you'd never have to clutter your mind with that knowledge.

I didn't mind her touching me, as a result, not even as suddenly as that.

She flexed her legs in a slow, protracted motion, and there was a sudden force that propelled us upward and forward, like a marble from a slingshot. Across Brockton Bay we arced, over a residential block, crossing what must've been at least a hundred meters in only a couple of seconds.

I didn't panic, although the sudden weightlessness and subsequent lurching sensation in my stomach as we started falling were uncomfortable and worrying. If something were to stop our motion, the subsequent fall would probably be sufficiently high to have a decent fatality chance. There was also the constant, nagging reminder that I didn't have a mask on. One errant photograph by an enterprising bird-watcher and I was fucked forever.

The landing was much softer than I expected, though, cushioned by a whispered spell, "Aetos," that formed a second-long instance of condensed wind under our feet, almost like a protective lens. It didn't even strain my legs, pushing with enough force to cancel out the fall velocity that we smoothly slid into a stand. No more force and effort than taking a step forward, maybe even less.

"That was a little intense," I commented soon after we landed.

"It's about to get even more intense," she said. "It was a test leap, to make sure you wouldn't panic. Now we'll do a proper one."

"Are you sure we can't teleport?" I asked in a hurry.

She leaped instead of answering my question, perhaps for the best. The speed was around twice that of the previous jump, dizzying to experience as entire buildings flashed past; as was its distance and height. If there were random pedestrians, minding their own business, happening to look above or even out their window at the correct angle, they would've spotted a hint of a large, black silhouette whizzing past at pants-shittingly fast speeds.

Soon, we landed in a similar manner as before, almost within spitting distance of Brockton Bay's harbor area. The air here was recognizable: different and familiar. Brisk, smoky, and creamy, full of subtle salinity and pollution.

"Shit," I cursed in reactive relief, stepping forward as soon as we landed. Alison released me, crouching down and studying a couple of people in front of the seaside factory with a lot of inerest.

"Duck," she said.

"What?"

"Or they'll see you. Duck." She reached out with a hand and brought me down lower, to a crouch like herself.

"Can I learn to do that?" I asked her, in a moment of remembrance of what happened only a couple of seconds ago. "Jump like that?"

"If you want to break your legs," she murmured.

"And arrest my falls," I added.

"Maybe one day I'll teach you. It's a complicated spell. Spells you can execute without a material cost, an invocation, or a somatic gesture are rare and far between, especially ones as useful as that. It's no time for a lecture though."

I looked down at the factory.

There are many situations where one's inherent talent, or learned skill, is worth as much as a mudbrick sculpted out of wet shit. Situations where the sheer stress pouring in can overwhelm even the most competent, most aloof, and most badass of human beings; make them break down a little, corrode the useful parts of the brain until you're working with a robot whose heat sink and processor are damaged to the point of stuttering like an 80s movie nerd encountering the hottest cheerleader in school and being noticed at last.

It was sort of like that for me, when I saw Lung standing there, gripping onto some woman's arm with one claw, and Jack's with another. He was over seven feet tall, covered from head to toe in silvery scales, arranged like small prolonged hexagons, almost reminiscent of lamellar. His shoulders were a size too broad, with large, clawed hands. Cheap, pockmarked, burned jeans covered his legs. He'd shed some of his dark hair as well.

And in front of the shelter doors stood Arturo, having come out only a second prior. I could hear the conversation, distorted by echo and distance.

"Where is," he spoke, in a deep gravelly voice, barely sounding human, "the cape?"

He started walking towards Lung. "I'm-"

"Stop, or I kill a hostage," he commanded in a tone brokering no disagreement. Arturo stopped walking immediately and raised his hands a little. "I don't know if you are the cape, but I do know his power is deadly at close ranges. If you walk to me - in my direction - again without permission, I won't give you another warning. I'll kill one of your friends. I won't even think about it."

Slowly, during the exchange, Lung continued transforming into a dragon. Segmented scales snapped over his spine, body rippling with concealed musculature as he grew almost half a head taller. His claws seemed longer, a little more curved near the ends, and much thicker.

There was something familiar about that - about Lung. His appearance, his demeanor. The entire arché and telos of his being. Something about his entire being scratched insistently, like a cat with sharpened claws high on catnip and full of wrath; at a blank, smooth spot in my brain, an emptied, liminal space in the memories I possessed, among those missing. It was attempting to connect there, with something I should've recognized.

I could've risked entering the field into my own brain and doing a number of things to tweak my own brain chemistry.

However, I didn't. If there was ever, in the entire history of mankind, an action that deserved to be called idiotic, then messing around with your own brain using a superhuman power that wasn't even fully controllable or tested was probably either it or at least close enough.

Even putting aside the potential danger of creating a feedback loop; my field analyzing my own thoughts in the abstract and revealing my own thoughts to myself in a spiral loop, potentially turning me into a vegetable, there existed a risk that I'd create some terrible change that I couldn't undo. I could alter my own value structures, or fabricate fake memories, or make myself neurologically predisposed to schizophrenia. Any number of things to fuck myself over. It didn't sound like a fun time, so I was firmly against the idea of self-modification; at least for now.

"What are we doing about Lung?" Black Queen asked.

"If we're doing anything, I'll need my armored suit," I said. "Otherwise, they'll be able to remember my face."

"Close your eyes for a second and focus on the roof under you."

I studied the bitumen and roofing felt, the cancer induction, and the imperfect arrangement of matter. The entire structure was prone to breaking down, in around some seventy years, at least without decent maintenance. It chafed to stand on such a piece of shit. I felt an almost irresistible urge to refine the roofing material, in some manner, or at least reshape it, but resisted the compulsion. It probably wasn't the smartest of ideas.

There was a subtle weight on me, and when I opened my eyes, I was dressed in a suit of armor. The same armor that I'd created.

"How?" I asked in disbelief. I could buy that she changed her outfit in a flash, but changing my own without me even feeling it was different.

"Don't question it," she said. "And don't use your ability on it too much. It's your armor - but it's a magical reflection of it, a type of glamour. It feeds primarily on its existence not being challenged, and that's how it continues to exist. So don't think about it, and especially don't question it."

I looked at her costume. "Are your dress and mask also glamours?"

The cloth and wood of them started fraying apart, cracking, and growing thinner. She focused for a second, visibly and with momentous frustration, and they were abruptly reinforced, as though never leaking any substance. "Robert, I told you not to question it."

"Sorry, I'll do my best to take it for granted... Your magic is fucking weird."

I was still getting used to the idea that magic existed, apparently as a secret companion to parahuman powers. This only added to the confusion.

"Back to my question. Lung?"

Down below, Arturo, Jack, and several other people were being held by the ABB men accompanying Lung. Their oversized leader, the dragon himself, was approaching the door to the factory, intent on breaking it down. He seemed almost a little surprised when it wasn't completely blown off its hinges on his first, good kick. It'd take him a little more effort than that. The door was reinforced to handle a damn lot of stress to say the least.

"We're knocking him out if possible, I suppose? Maybe threaten him or something. Kill him?"

"Killing a criminal leader is a bad idea, in my experience," she said. "It forms a power vacuum, which isn't good for anyone. If your goal is to protect that commune of people down there, it'd be smarter to threaten him, make him back off and pass the message to his cronies. Otherwise, whoever then replaces him might continue going after you, and they might be much stupider than Lung, or they might feel they have something to prove."

I nodded. "Alright, so we intimidate him. Just beat him up."

"Unless that proves impossible, in which case we'll-"

There was a sound of breaking metal, as Lung, maintaining the size he'd possessed at the end of his conversation with Arturo, managed to break down the door. Much faster than I expected.

"-simply kill him."

"Alright, got you."

I was surprisingly easygoing about killing a man, even a known gang leader. It felt almost casual to me for some reason. A normal person might've felt some remorse and hesitance - rather idiotic things to feel for a dangerous gang leader who means you harm, obviously, but understandable given most people's upbringing and overall life expectations - but even someone more than a little exceptional, like a trained and obedient soldier, would've felt skittish at the prospect of taking on something like this. A mote of fear, dread, or uncertainty.

Terrifyingly, if anything, I almost felt the opposite of that. I felt like, for the first time since I woke up and started my new life here, I actually knew what the fuck I was doing. No more clueless stumbling around. Just action.

"I think it's about time we go in," I commented, looking down.

"I'll take down the vanguard, and then distract Lung. You're on civilian rescue duty. Get those people out of there and make sure they stay back, then come to support me," she said, looking at me, with a curious expression. "No offense, you're weaker than me."

"None taken," I said. "It's probably true." If she could teleport, move across dimensions, manifest outfits out of nothing, and jump across a city like that, she probably was stronger than me.

Climbing down the building was the easiest thing I'd done since putting on a costume since Alison cast the spell she'd used before, the lens of wind that completely nullified our descent velocity.

As soon as we reached the street level and began to approach, reaching the intersection close to the factory, some thug in ABB colors, smoking a cigarette in front of a parked, featureless van, yelled at us in Chinese.

The man immediately screamed in horrific pain and agony, as Alison slashed her index and middle finger at his neck. A crimson gusher of warm blood spurted out of his throat, as he caught onto it with both hands, attempting to prevent the red liquid from leaking out. He dropped to the earth, creating a shallow pool of candy-red around him, like a blotch of ink around a human silhouette. He seemed to be breathing, although barely, and in shock.

"The fuck?" I asked, looking at her. "Don't kill them!"

"I'm not." She almost seemed between irritated and amused that I'd remarked on it. "He'll barely survive. I have more than enough precision with my spellcraft to decide who lives and dies, Robert. Don't worry about it - worry about your own actions."

"Alright..." I trailed off.

Alison started to look over the front of the building. I approached the man, lying and bleeding on the ground, and touched a hand to his side, analyzing the structure and workings of his body, the internal organs. To my relief, she was telling the truth. She'd bled him almost to the edge of active consciousness and human operation, and the shock of being hurt so much instantly handled the rest of it. He'd be alright after a simple blood transfusion. Still, to make sure he didn't die, I applied some moderate patchwork healing on the wound. Accidentally reinforced his throat muscles, too.

That's when another man, also Chinese and in ABB colors, standing in the doorway, started yelling warnings and commands to the rest of the gangsters inside. Alison stepped forward with a sigh and raised an open hand. There was something, like an invisible pressure, on the exterior of the building. It looked almost like a heatwave, almost like the brick facade was being optically distorted through a pane of glass that twisted things around.

Noticing the effect, the man yelled out several sentences, with more insistence and an escalation of fear. I only understood a couple of words, ones that I thought I'd heard before. One of them definitely meant either, 'cape' or 'parahuman.'

And that's when Alison clenched her fist, and the front of the building exploded inwards.

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Birdsie

Dec 5, 2022

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Dec 8, 2022

#385

Once it started, once the walls of the factory opened and the enemy stood in front of me, I didn't hesitate for even a second.

An ABB gunman looked at me in shock from across the nebulae of falling plaster and dust, pistol rising within moments, and I charged towards him fearlessly. Remnants of the building's foundation collapsed as I leaped through and over the rubble.

He shot once - a deafening crack that beat against the air like a stick on a drum, inflicting tinnitus, shaking me to the core of my being. It startled me, but I was already mid-sprint. The bullet slammed against an armored pauldron and compressed against it, squeezed like a ground olive, but also hitting like a strong, solid punch. There were more gunshots around us, but none of them aimed at me, so I ignored them and continued running.

Despite the burning, dull pain in my shoulder, I reached within arm's range, only moments after a second shot went off, clipping against my helmet and leaving me feeling a little disoriented. It felt almost like receiving a karate blow to the forehead.

A third, panicked shot rang out, clipping my temple; even more well-aimed, almost into the narrow eye-opening.

A single, soft tap against the forehead, and he collapsed to the floor with a scream cut short, tendons and ligaments crushed, pulverized, burned, and cut. He continued to hold onto the weapon, but a scything kick to the temple knocked him out, or at least put him in a state close to it.

I kicked the pistol away, to a corner of the building, cursing at the impact.

A second man had closed in behind me, with a machete. He aimed for a clear chink in my armor, connected by chain mesh rather than armor plating, at the elbow. It struck me with enough force to choke a grunt out of me, but also enabled me to reach out and grab his entire face, hand covering the eyes. He, too, went down, every significant joint crushed; every crucial system needed for movement as disabled as I could make it.

Around the room, the gunfire had petered out, and eventually quieted down.

Most of the ABB men were down, and collapsed on the floor; some of them were bleeding from various body parts, others were scrambling away and dragging their comrades away to safety; one was hunched over in a corner, arms over his head, screaming and begging in an Asian language.

Black Queen stood in the center of the room, her back turned to me, as she confronted Lung.

She'd apparently taken down at least ten or more people on her own, in the same amount of time I dispatched two. The abyssal difference in our level of combat experience was showing, or maybe she was simply that powerful.

"Is everyone alright?" I asked, approaching the people the ABB rounded up, standing at the far side of the entrance.

I looked at Jack and touched his shoulder to deal with an injury on his arm. There was internal bleeding from a punch or a kick, and the open wound on his arm was bleeding profusely. I dealt with them in a second of careful alterations, mending minor parts of his body, reinforcing the correct tissues, and making sure that I didn't overdo it. However, hearing the conversation behind me - between Black Queen and Lung - I didn't have much choice but to hurry, and because of that, I made a slight mistake and ended up overshooting the objective.

There was something concerning about the newfound unevenness of his arterial structure and nerves - it seemed like I'd affected too much tissue at once. Instead of only repairing, I'd created a change, although a small one. At least, it didn't seem the effect was negative. The end result of the change was that his arm would retain oxygen and metabolic energy a little better, and be more responsive, and he'd be slower to bleed out in the future.

There were only so many ways you could improve a broken arterial wall, after all. Limiting the field's overall effect zone still seemed to close to the be the best way of ensuring that I didn't screw anything up.

Jack breathed and sputtered out some blood. His wound had clotted. He started flexing his fingers in amazement, while I looked around at the assembled homeless people, some of them staring at him in disbelief.

"Harriet?"

"I'm fine," she said.

It was clear to me that she wasn't, though. There had at least been a scuffle, lasting only for a couple of brief moments, before we'd entered. She was hurt, and I couldn't tell how much without directly touching her.

I didn't have time to offer any healing, though. As Lung started to heat up in response to a threatening remark, Black Queen cast a spell to animate the rubble from the building, and a fight started in earnest.

Accumulated debris from the half-collapsed upper floor started moving as though its individual specks were a colony of ants, closing in on Lung, encasing him like a sarcophagus of stone. They resolidified and recombined into boulders and then a uniform mass: solid stone, like the eternal basalt of a mountain, rather than scattered gravel. Lung's fire intensified all of a sudden, pouring through the small cracks, and forming something that looked remarkably close to a fractured chrysalis of stone and burning flame.

Black Queen was making hand motions, controlling the stone, pressing it down on him, healing the cracks, and containing the heat. Several sctions of stone were cracking and popping, falling away in showers of fragments, blackening and charring. As soon as they did, a simple, effortful hand gesture lifted them and rejoined them with the mass, although never for long. There was something mesmerizing about the simplicity of her actions.

"Robert?" Harriet asked. "Who the fuck is that?"

"Some cape. Nevermind that," Jack said, before I could, looking around for the exit. "We need to get out of here. At the rate they're going, the building might go down."

"That's right. Move it!" I shouted, making sure my voice reached everyone.

I aided them in evacuating, staying closer - on the inner periphery of the building - to ensure that I could intercept Lung, in case he managed to break away. The building around us was collapsing at an almost accelerated rate. Some of the debris from earlier had damaged its foundation, and now the load-bearing structures were starting to sway. The ambient heat from Lung's flames was the opposite of helpful.

A fist, covered in scales and set aflame, broke through the concrete cocoon.

It scratched on the outside with something almost like desperation, filling the air itself with intense heat and orange hues shining across the darkness of the room, warming me through my armor. He punched at the cocoon and pushed, and the cracks developed, flames enveloping parts of it.

There was a final explosion, as everything blasted out - a pressurized wave of air and heat strong enough it almost reached me. The others were evacuating, already close to the door, as Lung - massive, covered in platinum scales like gleaming metal - let out a surprisingly human howl of rage.

Black Queen was reforming the animated concrete and debris into something else, a construct sprouting jointed legs, and a fanged maw of rebar at the front, creating standing supports for herself as it started to lurch and scythe at Lung's face with its spiderlike limbs.

"Robert!" Harriet shouted, throwing something in my direction. The switchblade, the one I'd created and gifted to her.

I managed to catch it. The throw was fortuitously arced, so its speed wasn't beyond me. I pressed the button and the blade extended, folding out the side and then snapping into length from its individual telescopic segments, before suddenly coming alight with a bright fire.

Harriet moved to escape without further prompt, while I sprinted towards Lung.

I've probably been alive for maybe some twenty years, and yet, I could summarize the complete record of my personal experience as the dour events of the latter half of a single month. An eventful, shitty half of a month, to be sure, but still only half a month.

In a certain way, then, I'd been birthed in that Brockton Bay scrapyard. The current Robert was born there, coming into the world through the medium of vomit and pain, not unlike an actual baby. Anything that remained of whoever lived before then was figments and scraps: melted puffs of memories clinging onto the furthermost corners of my brain, sticking like the remnants of gum that someone had mostly scrubbed away, leaving behind a clean slate for absorption of new experiences. None of those remnants were solid enough to help define whoever I was.

I hadn't lived for long enough to have complex opinions. I couldn't tell you what I thought about Scion, aside from the fact that he was the world's best and most hard-working superhero. Most of my opinions were formed by the opinions of others, and even then, only the surfaces of those opinions. I hadn't studied enough, I hadn't seen enough, and I hadn't experienced enough to make decisive statements about what I thought on various topics.

However - sprinting with a sword of impossible flame, dressed in a suit of illusionary armor, towards an almost twelve-foot dragonoid monster, with a sinuous neck, its body covered in scales, its fingers ending in razor-sharp claws, a mouth full of teeth, and blasting feverishly hot flames everywhere like it had been blessed with the role of being a fraction of the sun, I could definitely opinionate that my life was definitely something ridiculous.

As occupied as Lung was fighting Black Queen, defending himself against her spells and breaking down her concrete spider in piecemeal, he didn't notice my approach from his flank.

I stabbed the sword into Lung's back, the distance almost perfectly matched that I wasn't hurt by the perpetual cloak of flames whirling about him. It sunk almost half a foot deep, through a weakened spot in his coat of scales, and passed right next to the spine. My hands, holding onto the sword's hilt and pressing down on the pommel, started to heat up, the false armor wrapped around them melting away; more like ice cream than molten steel.

And through the sword, my field extended, into his flesh, into his muscles, into his fat, and into the organs; indirectly, not requiring anything like touch. I filtered out the body parts that I didn't want to affect, and then - without a second thought - refined him.

His arms and legs exploded within an instant, spraying a mess of superheated crimson blood and gelatin everywhere. It coated me and my hands, burning like acid, before I dissolved them. Every scale and draconic feature on his body was ruined: dusted, chipped off, atomized, cut apart, busted open, cracked, and more, creating a cyclone of ash-white powder around him. His tendons, ligaments, sections of bone, and more were affected in a similar manner, destroyed to completion - beyond any hopes of ever recovering from it, could he not heal from injuries using his powers.

He instantly fell down to the floor, onto his back - an oversized humanoid torso splattered in gore, showing bare, skinless muscles and parts of the skeleton, with no arms and legs to speak of. I managed to pull the sword out of his back before he sank deeper into it.

The fires started dying out, as he breathed in - more like a paroxysm of a breath. Shock, made into a familiar motion. His entire body's nervous system rebelled in an extreme spasm, as though disbelieving so many parts of it were suddenly missing.

I pointed the sword at his throat and coughed. There wasn't a lot of oxygen in the air here, surrounding him. Just enough to survive and speak, though.

"Surrender."

Behind me, seeing our victory, Black Queen had collapsed the animated concrete spider. The building around us was more like a post-apocalyptic ruin, with only the remnants of walls and furniture, masses of rubble and burning wood, and the remnants of charred vegetation. Absently, still watching Lung, I noticed the dispersion pattern of the debris was extremely unnatural. She must've cast a spell to keep it away from falling on the center, or even on people in general. She came here prepared, every variable bent in her favor - there probably hadn't even been a risk of us losing this fight.

It took a couple of full seconds for Lung to respond coherently, in mumbled, spluttering, bloody words, flowing out of his draconic snout like water from a mountain cove, "I-," he coughed, "Give up. You win."

"Good," Alison said, stepping into the conversation. "Here's what'll happen - we'll let you go, and we'll forget about this event. In fact, we won't even mention anything like this happening to anyone, ever. If you lose any reputation over it, or anyone hears that you or we were involved, it'll be because your own men tattled to someone. In exchange, you'll leave Mekhane and his people alone. You won't receive mercy next time you attack."

Mekhane? I looked at her out of the corner of my eye, questioningly, but didn't say anything. She chose a name for me and a rather strange one at that, and I wondered why. Something in my brain, deep and distant, was familiar with the word.

"F-Fine," Lung bit out the word, breath hitching in the middle. He choked and coughed for a moment, deep and gravely.

Alison noticed. "Oh, what's wrong? Can't breathe properly?"

"It's only natural. Lung has a puncture in his lung," I said, making Alison chuckle. I only realized what I said a moment later, and felt the urge to sigh, which I suppressed. The pun was completely coincidental.

"Good luck to you, then," Alison said, waving back to him jauntily as she began to walk away. "Hopefully, one of your men is going to come back soon. Let this be a lesson to you, dragon - a reign of tyranny is always stopped by a hero with a sword."

I pressed the switch to fold the blade, and then I looked down at Lung for a moment and genuinely contemplated the idea of dragging him away, to a more visible area, so one of his men could pick him up. Then I realized that even if I wanted to do that - which, honestly and truly, on fully thinking out the concept, I really didn't - he was probably too heavy, even limbless. If you stood him upright, legless, he'd still be almost as tall as I was.

He didn't say anything as I walked away. He barely even watched me, and not for lack of trying. Despite his regeneration, it seemed like he'd lost such a large amount of blood it was difficult for him to think clearly, or focus his senses.

My armor started feeling airier, and I realized it was about to disappear, fade away into nothingness. Alison noticed as well, her own costume seeming almost translucent, revealing the real clothing she wore underneath.

I moved across the rubble and debris, picking my way through the stones and collapsed support beams, and I found scattered parts of the real armor, buried under some rocks. I couldn't put them on quick enough to matter, and I had no decent way to carry them around that wouldn't be extremely suspicious in a public space, so instead, I destroyed them completely, making them poof into clouds of fine, white and gray dust, one after the other.

I could make a new, similar suit later as I saw fit. Without the threat of Lung hanging overhead like the Sword of Damocles, probably an even better one. For now, it was important to destroy any crucial evidence of my involvement, and make sure the items I created didn't fall into the wrong hands.

I found some of my other items soon. The anti-Nazi shoes, torn and ruined. I found it difficult to break them, for uncharacteristically sentimental reasons. They'd been a constant companion on my travels, one of the few constants of my sad life here - whether as slippers or as spiked shoes.

I found that I couldn't so callously dismantle one of the few, decent memories I had of this world. So, instead, I used the field and used its third setting, the one that I'd most likely utilized the least so far - capable of exchanging an item for another item of similar nature.

And instead of spiked, pink-black shoes that hated Nazis and white supremacists, I ended up with pink-black gloves that, for some ineffable reason, hated Nazis and Asians. I didn't exactly approve of the latter opinion, but I had no solid way to change it, aside from refining once more and earnestly hoping for the best, which didn't seem like an optimal operational strategy with my power. At best, I could receive gloves that didn't hate anyone. At worst, I could receive the end of the world as we know it. The utility function was clear.

That said, I wondered, somewhere deep down, whether they newfound gloves would eventually pick up a similar hatred for every class and ethnicity of people. If they started hating everyone equally, including me, would they really hate anyone?

...Yeah. Probably.

I continued searching through the ruins and proceeded to destroy everything else that might be used as evidence, especially items that I couldn't carry or take with me easily, or that were too ostentatious and suspicious - my padded, spiked gloves the obvious exception to the latter rule. The ones I could bring along without a problem, such as the anomalous pills that I stuffed in my pockets, I took without a second thought.

I emerged from the ruins dressed in civilian clothing a minute later, not even looking disheveled or bloodied. The ABB men had retreated, apparently driving off in their vans, and leaving their boss behind. Now, whether Lung would be arrested or not was up to his own regeneration and whether someone in this shithole would call the authorities about a collapsed building - as well as how fast the authorities would respond. There was also the possibility the gangsters would come back. Honestly, it seemed like a forty-sixty in Lung's disfavor.

I saw Harriet and Alison speaking to one another, close to the street. The chatter seemed animated. A couple of feet away, Jack was speaking with Lynn, and several other people were arranging their surviving belongings. I couldn't decide which conversation to link up with.

The choice was made for me.

"Hey, R," Alison called me over, nodding and beckoning me over with a hand. I walked over to them, and she continued, "Needless to say, I'm leaving now. Make sure to take care of yourself, and make sure to come over by the Library sometime."

I nodded, then doubled back to our enforcing of demands on Lung. "What's a Mekhane?"

"Mekhane?" Harriet asked, blinking between us.

"That's what she called me to Lung," I replied. "So I suppose that's my cape name, now."

"Oh, don't worry. Just a small in-joke," Alison said, forming a sly smirk. "I'm sure you'll get it once you read some of my tomes, or I'll explain it, once we meet again. It has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? With the Clockworks in you?"

The Clockworks - could she be referring to the microscopic nanostructure of spinning, impossible mechanisms, gears, and cogs inextricably tethered to my inhuman genome? The same one I had a panic attack over? Were the Clockworks my power's source?

"I'll have a lot of questions for you when we meet again," I said.

"I'll make sure to prepare a lot of answers," she replied, before walking down the street with a final wave. "Goodbye, Robert."

I couldn't articulate why, but it'd feel awkward to tell her goodbye, so I didn't.

After some time, and departing the area, things settled somewhat. The atmosphere calmed down as everyone returned to a modicum of quiet contemplation. Several people decided it'd be smart to split and leave, citing this latest incident with the ABB as their final straw. As evidence had shown, as comfortable and cozy as it was to work together as a semi-organized group, it was more effort than it was worth and dangerous to boot.

I didn't want to blame them, and I didn't stop them. They weren't wrong in wanting to leave. In the very short time Harriet and I spent here, I had violent encounters with a number of gang members, got my shit absolutely beaten on two separate occasions, found myself in another dimension, and fought two combat-seasoned supervillains. At least, I kinda won those fights and became friends with an interdimensional wizard. That was a plus.

As everyone - sans the core members of the community, and Harriet and myself - walked off in their own separate directions, Jack walked up to me and Harriet with a sullen expression on his face. He regarded me with the eyes of someone who came bearing a front of bad news.

"Sorry, but I'm with them, kids. I think I'm going to the shelter up in southern Brockton, in the… richer district, on my own," he said. "Lynn and I saw that there are some open spots in the bowery. I'm planning to lean down over there with her, just the two of us. It's safer to be small."

I frowned, more out of surprise than sadness. "No way I could change your mind to stick together, old man?"

"I don't think so, Robert." Jack put his hands in his pockets, looking down at the ground. "Too many people in one place draws attention. And today we learned what kind of attention we earned. Shelters are safer, and failing that, living on your own under the bridge. In a place like Brockton Bay, where all the old and poor folks are desperate, a lot of people in one place is bad news. Either you're organized crime, or you're the victims. No middle ground. At best, you can form a community that's hostile to itself, like what we were close to becoming. Too many people in one place."

I was rather worried, but for different reasons. I hadn't told him this, but Jack's health was somewhat on the decline, and I was afraid he'd relapse into alcoholism on his own. Even if he didn't, his standards of living - and his smoking - were inevitably leading him to an early grave.

And above all, Jack was unmistakably right, but the rules and definitions had changed. I had the power to make them change even more.

It took no thinking, no fighting past hesitation, to make a decision.

"I'm coming with you," I said. "There's something you're not accounting for. You promised that you'd never walk out on me again, and I promised I'd make sure you never relapse. The promise stands, and I'm sure as fuck not breaking it."

"Shit," he cussed in surprise and a hint of amusement. "You're not kidding, are you? You're gonna be my nurse, boy?"

"Nah. Fuck that. I met a nurse once, and she wanted to ward me away like I was a stinkbug," I said. "I am gonna earn as much money as I can, and become a Doctor of Medicine. Just to make sure you don't die."

Harriet smiled, showing sharklike teeth. "I'm coming with you as well, then. I'll help you all out. This place stinks anyway."

"Shit, hermanita," Arturo exclaimed in affront, looking towards Harriet with exasperation. "Come on, I did my best to keep it tidy! It's difficult with so many people around, you know?"

"Figure of speech, Art," Harriet said.

"Right." He looked around, at the three of us, and shrugged. "Do you mind if I tag along then? If you're already going above two, I mean..."

Emmanuel put an arm around Arturo's shoulder. "I call dibs on the top bunk."

"Whoop-whoop! I guess we're a family now!" Harriet declared with a grin.

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," I muttered.

"Too late. Total familial love." She promptly bumped a fist against my shoulder, causing me to wince. "And the middle son's gonna be bringing in the big bucks, baby!"

I sighed.

Hearing a siren in the distance, Jack looked up and said, "Well, I think we should vacate the premises. We can think about funds later. Priority one is finding somewhere to hunker down."

180A couple of streets south of the ferry building, in the downtown areas controlled by the Empire Eighty-Eight, among the broken-down shantytowns with impoverished populations undergoing piecemeal gentrification, there was a storm canal. It bordered Simons Hollow Road and Cherry Camp Road, locations with nothing interesting about them, other than proximity to several grocery stores, and a public high school that I knew little about.

A couple of concrete steps down near the storm canal's middle, under a half-broken railing, and you'd enter an off-limits area, long overgrown with an abundance of moss, scattered pond scum, and uncontrolled wild grass peeking through the cracks.

Here was an abandoned control room, manned potentially as much as decades ago, to operate the water lock.

Now, the equipment - the electronic consoles - were stripped bare, the wiring no longer connected, the water lock forever silent. Instead, there were rusted frames, almost perfectly fitted to contain mattresses or assortments of blankets and soft rags.

This was our new home.

The entirety of the first afternoon and evening were spent on settling in. Almost nothing had survived the collapse of the factory, so we'd gone around the neighborhood, searching the trash and dumpsters for any furnishings to borrow. Then, I repaired and improved them - or broke them down and rebuilt them as needed - creating workable objects in the process.

Soon, everyone - Jack, Lynn, Em, Arturo, Harriet, and I - had a complete set of pillows, blankets, mattresses, and bed frames of their own.

It'd be the first time I owned such a thing. Even in the shelter, there were only bunk beds; in the factory, there were mattresses lying on the floor, like discount futons. An elevated space to call my own, where I could close my eyes, rest, and doze off as I pleased was something novel and appreciable, like a modest luxury, like the ability to smoke cigarettes. Aside from my roommates, it was also more private than ever before.

Now, all I - and the others - needed was work.

And, I'd learned, homeless people drew attention - the wrong kind of attention. They weren't subtle enough to pull off a casual entry into any establishments. Not even I was prepared for that. I was a mostly unwashed hobo, covered in recent, albeit faded, wounding; although at least I was decently clothed, and didn't smell terrible, due to frequently breaking down the chemicals accumulating on my skin responsible for creating unwanted odors.

The same couldn't be said about the rest of the group. No matter where they went, they'd draw looks; the unwanted kind of looks, where people stared at you constantly, and I wasn't much better off. To make matters more complicated, I possessed no ID card, no background, and I looked suspiciously young. No reasonable person would ever legitimately employ me, so I'd have to find something else.

I spent another couple of days preparing. A lot of waste food could be recycled with my power and made into edible meals to supplement our somewhat lackluster diets. A lot of broken and useless items could be made into working and useful ones. I created an exercise bike, more out of boredom than anything, and formed a working shower with an eclectic collection of some pipes, an old heater, a metal corkscrew, discarded showerhead, and some other assorted trash. It worked by turning a hand crank, which in turn powered a manual pump, drawing on available water from the storm canal. The filtration on it was mostly alright, although I made sure to warn everyone not to drink the water, just in case.

On Monday, I stepped on the city bus, hoping that no one was planning on bothering me, and I traveled to the local library.

Something I'd not cared or happened to think about, but that Harriet made sure to bring up the moment I remarked about a lack of decent work, was the existence of computers in public libraries. Aside from being able to surreptitiously take them apart for electronic components, I'd be able to use them to find work and all manner of useful resources.

Once I arrived in the Biceton Free Public Library, an establishment close to the city's edge, I stepped through its open doors with confidence. Now, I was well-washed, clothed, and in a decent overall condition, aside from the scarring drawn on my body, like violent markings on a map of past misdeeds.

More importantly, though, I was no longer stuck in a semi-perpetual state of unnatural, hangover-like zombieness and inability to think straight, and I was fairly certain my post-concussive symptoms had abated almost fully, if not completely. My tendency to be irritated had gone down, and I felt I could think more clearly about things.

So, naturally, I started looking for cheap labor and work postings online.

After thirty minutes, I decided it was a mostly hopeless endeavor.

There wasn't a lot of doable work in the Bay area, or at least not the sort of part-time or odd job that I could pick up easily without any form of identification. Most of the work revolved around being a store clerk, or working as a delivery boy or acting as a low-level menial worker for larger businesses, and even that would require some paperwork. The smaller and more personalized jobs, like a farmhand on some plot of land outside the city, frequently had different logistical issues to them, or didn't pay well relative to effort and time invested, or had other, more esoteric requirements.

I could see, here and there, the sort of jobs that an enterprising, diligent fifteen-year-old wanting to buy a videogame might pick up for a month, then drop once they had what they wanted, but that was about it.

Most of Brockton Bay's economy seemed to revolve around things such as medicine, banking, and technology, and those simply weren't job markets where you could thrust yourself in with no prior experience, training, or studies. The small, unassuming, undemanding jobs, like being a receptionist, were - ironically - all taken up by masses of people in a similar situation to myself, not wanting to be homeless, but not having a lot to contribute to the overall pool of higher educated white-collar workers.

I supposed that contributed to crime as well. Slowly, I could see an image of the city's different factors coming together, almost like a diagram in my head, showing how each individual element of the market and job availability came together to make a place so infested with gangsters and robbers. The few, decently paying menial jobs, ones like being a dockworker or clerk, that weren't taken up, often had a lot of scabs surrounding them. The ones that didn't often had awful strings attached, or paid almost ridiculously poorly; not to a level where you'd be able to maintain a family.

This left a significant chunk of the population that still needed money and necessities, and there were more or less two remaining options left for most of those in that liminal zone: crime - organized or not - or a slow, inevitable descent into homelessness and poverty.

From that population, most of the able-bodied, able-minded people would select a fitting gang to identify with, probably one that conformed with their ethnicity or beliefs, and eventually be indoctrinated through cultural brainwashing hogwash, such as with the Empire, or simply put into place with sheer dread and authority from the psychotic capes above them, such as with the Azn Bad Boys.

The remnant - those individuals either unsuitable for organized crime due to rampant addiction or physical and mental issues, or those unwilling to participate due to a conflicting and headstrong sense of morality - would have no available recourse, and they'd wind up becoming people like Jack or Harriet respectively, out on the street with no real way to move up in the world.

Or, they could potentially wind up like me: a cape that was seemingly headed down a path of no recourse other than robbing people on the street. Deserving criminals, if I could manage some luck...

And yet, ironically, robbing criminals would only, ultimately, contribute to crime even further.

After all, wearing common gang colors isn't a crime you can be charged with; the police might have reasonable suspicion, but not probable cause. As a worst-case scenario, I could break all of a thug's bones, send him off to spend a night or two in jail or a hospital, and they'd promptly realize there's nothing he can be charged with, especially without witnesses or evidence. Then, said thug, now with no wallet and a renewed need for financial resources, would be out on the streets once more, creating even more trouble for civilians than before.

If that were the case, wouldn't I logically be better off becoming one of the criminals and robbing random people? It'd contribute to the problem, but I'd be able to select victims who can at least ostensibly afford getting robbed. Alternatively, I could rob massive megacorporations of their assets, but that ran some increased risks, and how would I even offload the stolen goods of such a robbery? I didn't have any significant contacts.

You have a beautiful voice and face, Rob, Harriet's words from earlier rang in my head, between my ears, like some dark phantom offering a flicker of a way out, You could totally become a fab pop idol!

Right, idiot. And where do I get a manager and advertising for my show? No, rather, in the first place, how do I not get arrested by the FBI, when they discover I'm not an existing citizen? Do I run anonymous cape shows on the Boardwalk, showing off my power?

I perked up at the random idea - more of a brain fart, really. It seemed to hold potential, for the entire span of a second, when I realized that existing laws would probably make that problematic for a great number of reasons. I'd still probably need to register as a legal business entity, in any case.

The Protectorate almost looked promising, on an initial look, at least - a decent salary even as a starting member, the potential of free training, and I could probably manage to find accommodations for my friends. I could definitely pose as one of the amnesiac mutants in order to receive official help and recognition in setting up an identity and solving a swathe of other problems in a single, brilliant move. I could even accept the militaristic oversight, hierarchical structure, and training drills required of me to be a constant member of such an organization.

The problems I'd have would be more personal and existential in nature. There was the risk they'd look into my brain and find out I didn't have one of those funny brain tumors that make superpowers work, and that'd raise a lot of questions. Increased oversight might make the prospect of visiting the Wanderer's Library a fleeting one. Worse, they might do some unscheduled DNA testing and find out I'm really some alien mechanoid fuck wearing a human bodysuit. I could already imagine the accusations of being a synthetic infiltrator bot. Even worse scenario: some idiot without proper inoculation might stare into my nucleotide sequence too long and lose their sense of self, and then I'd definitely be screwed, if not by them coming after me with a fork, then by the organization itself deeming me a dangerous existence that needed to be purged or contained in some jail cell.

Sighing in a profoundly deep and aggravated manner, I decided to take a break from the fruitless task, and looked around the library shelves instead, in search of anything that might catch the eye.

I found a curious book, titled, 'Age of Heroes and Villains: A Recent History of American Parahumanity,' by Peter Gosley in one of the sections.

I reached for it - with an extreme, precise level of care and delicacy, not reaching in too deep, or in any great detail into the book's pages and contents with the Clockworks - and flipped across the chapters, counting the book's length in the roughest possible approximation.

It was almost a fifth of a million words, spread over some three-hundred pages. An afternoon's worth of reading, unless I skimmed irrelevant parts that I was already well-informed on.

Although I could've used the Clockworks to read through all at once, I doubted my long-term memory could retain the contents of the book itself long enough to matter. Even the retention of skills or applicable knowledge was based more on a different set of mental factors.

Someone, although I didn't know who, had once told me: to read is easy, to understand is demanding, to remember is difficult; to internalize is nothing short of a miracle. In order to manage the entire sequence of training, you needed repetition and devotion; casting grooves into your own brain and memory, until the divots were deep enough that nothing conceivable could unchain them, especially not time alone. Even then, fortune and inherent talent were decisive factors in how much content you actually absorbed.

Apparently, that method of learning - and the advice itself - were so effective they survived even a complete memory wipe. Although I'd only come to remember it now.

In short order, I started reading the book and quickly found its contents dry, amateurish, and crude. It didn't have anything interesting to say in the chapters about Scion's appearance, so I decided to skip forward a couple of pages, to the Golden Age of Parahumans, and the appearance and death of Vikare. The author was attempting to draw some kind of desperate moral out of Vikare's fate, some drivel about cape martyrdom. The only real lesson I derived from reading it was that Vikare was something of an idiot to trust a crowd of basketball fans not to club him over the back of the head with bricks.

I already had a lot of experience with people hitting me in the back of the head with blunt objects, so I may have been a little biased.

After that, the Triumvirate, and the creation of the PRT, and speculation about the events of that particular era. The author somewhat diverted from his presentation of historical accounts to describe the change in attitudes towards parahumans during this time, particularly in how much parahuman sciences advanced, and became significantly more popular and respected as a subject. He mentioned some of the theories and commonly accepted discoveries, such as that most capes felt psychological urges to use their powers and were more aggressive on average - which I found a little curious.

The description of the Endbringers was a lot more disturbing than I expected: they weren't individual and powerful villains, but inhuman monsters. Perhaps, more accurately, they were described as localized, sentient natural disasters, with a malevolent will of some kind behind them. I'd already come across the term, and the individual names, when overhearing casual conversations, but I never attributed this kind of seriousness to them. There was a list of locations and years they'd hit and short descriptions of the effects those attacks had. I felt a little sick by the end of it and skipped a page.

After that, the death of Hero, the world's premier tinker - one of the more recent events of note, particularly in America. Because of this event, terms such as 'the Siberian' and 'the Slaughterhouse Nine' came up several times, with some grisly implications behind them, and with the sort of casual tone that indicated the book's author expected you to already know what those were. A short Internet search later, I was feeling even more sick.

This world was on a downward spiral, wasn't it? One disaster after another. Those serial killers had never been caught, and it was improbable they would be. And the Endbringers were, by all accounts, unstoppable juggernauts. The book's author certainly used innocuous wording and made faint promises of hope and betterment, treating the events as sad tragedies of the past, like nothing more of the sort would happen; almost like a form of subliminal messaging, attempting to inspire faith in the reader. It didn't work, not for me, at least.

I'd learned a lot of other useful things, a couple of interesting tidbits, such as the extension of the three-strikes law - something I'd already known about prior - to parahumans, allowing for several prior offenses before serious measures, such as permanent containment, were considered. I learned a little about the external aspects of economic activity as a parahuman, and in particular, how distinctly unappealing and unprofitable it was.

Once I was done with the book, I looked around - making sure that nobody was watching me - and used the exchange setting of the Clockworks, the one that produced similar items, on the book. A random whim, and a desire to see if my power worked on books.

It created a book, one of approximately similar length and word count. It had a plain, unadorned, brown cover, with bold, capital lettering: 'PSA - AGAINST SCHOOL-BULLYING, TEXTING AND DRIVING, & OTHER DELINQUENT BEHAVIORS.' No author.

"I really, really don't get it," I said blankly after a while.

168

Birdsie

Dec 10, 2022

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Dec 12, 2022

#409

"Someone's becoming an avid reader, I see."

It was another boring afternoon like any other; one bereft of any serious work or improvements standing to be made around the 'house,' which is to say, the abandoned room near the storm canal.

Since I had nothing else to do, and since everyone else was off doing their own thing - Harriet selling art and sketches close to the Boardwalk, and the others searching for odd jobs with potentially as little success as me - I'd decided to study more, same as yesterday, and the day before that.

I didn't expect Phineas to accost me in the library, though, and not so suddenly. He'd approached me from a corner of the room out of nowhere, not even registering in my head until he was already within the distance of several footsteps.

"Something like that," I answered, putting the book I'd been reading on the table in front of me. It was called, 'The Black and Red Continent,' and described the increasingly dire situation that Africa, especially its southern half, has been experiencing with the advent of superpowers, namely the expansion of warlord-led microstates and the spread of a sort of advanced, brutal feudal system. The author made allusions to how this could be the future of every country that employed and didn't restrict parahuman activity in certain ways and generally professed rather anti-cape views. It was still an interesting read, not in the least because it showed the cruel reality of things; definitely not a read for small children.

"How did you even find me?" I asked him with a small frown.

"I am an adept magician, Robert, remember?" He let out a sigh, showing a glimmer of irritation. "Do you really think Little Sister is the only Serpent that can locate a man in a city like this? Speaking of, I've brought you something that should be a little useful."

He handed me a strip of paper, inscribed with symbols. They looked like some Asian writing script, with curving and narrow lines that intersected and met in interesting arrangements. I couldn't tell what script it was exactly, although at first glance, it didn't seem to be either Chinese or Japanese. There was a slight, almost oval bias to the symbols, almost like they were put through a fisheye lens. The paper was overflowing with Aspect Radiation, an intense energy that reached out into the surrounding air, and into the body of the person holding it.

I accepted the object, handling it curiously.

"It's a protective charm. Incredibly powerful - as strong as I can make them," he said. "It won't protect you from everything, especially physical threats. However, it can prevent people from finding out who you are, and where to find you; especially through esoteric or interactive means."

"So if I were to go around without a costume...?" I asked, trailing off curiously.

"I'm afraid people would still recognize you. It's not enough to protect your identity. But you won't ever be found by anyone using any of the simple magics or other reality-altering invocations, unless you expressly want them to find you. The charm can make allowances for such individuals. It'll also make it harder for your identity to be revealed through fluke, accident, or deductive analysis. It should make your life easier, at least."

I nodded. That sounded actually useful in a lot of ways, or good to have around at minimum. It decreased the risks of potential misdeeds being traced back to me by a decent margin, and I'd already made a couple of missteps that put me on the city's radar. I'd been keeping up with the local news as they came out, almost psychotically waiting for any new breakthroughs - in particular, I was on the lookout for the ones regarding the factory collapse, although it seemed the event had been attributed to mundane causes, and swept under the rug, quickly forgotten in favor of the upcoming summer golfing events that were deemed more notable and profitable to report on.

I wasn't so sure of that actually being the case, at least under the surface, though, since I'd discovered that Shadow Stalker was a Ward. She'd have reported to her superiors that a cape lived in the warehouse, wouldn't she have? And that'd mean an official investigation.

Regardless, I was more than a little grateful for the charm talisman.

I stuffed the protective charm into my pocket, careful not to crumple it. When I did, I noticed the paper stiffened unnaturally when threatened to bend, so it protected itself against destruction as well. At least to a degree, one which I did not care to test, given the effort that probably went into it.

"Thanks. That about makes up for you throwing me into the Library out of nowhere." He made a sour face but didn't refute my statement. A step in the right direction. "So you returned to help us out?"

"Listen, I realize this'll sound callous, Robert - but I don't really care about the homeless population of Brockton Bay, even people I've met and spoken with several times." I blinked in genuine surprise - I'd pegged him as someone who had a personal investment in our case - but allowed him to keep talking, interested in what the actual causes were. "For me, this is all part of a greater mission. Before I can start helping the homeless out of the goodness of my heart, I need to ensure there'll be a homeless population to worry about."

"I don't understand. Are we at risk?"

"You, specifically? No, I don't think so, but that doesn't change the fact that we Serpents have much bigger forbidden fruit to chew on right now."

"Such as?"

"Do you know how magic works here, more or less reliably?" he asked almost rhetorically

Alison had mentioned that the silent, instantaneous teleportation spell available to her in the Wanderer's Library wasn't available down here, but Phineas did ask 'more or less,' so I nodded instead.

"With opportunity, comes danger," he said. "And now that Ways exist into this world, and the Jailors have started applying a more hands-on approach, the Serpent's Hand decided it'd be smart to do the same. We're attempting to prevent evil entities from encroaching on this world and upsetting its delicate balance, and vice versa. Before there can be enlightenment, there must be security. Even we can see that. Even Meredith sees that."

"Meredith?"

"Irrelevant," he said, raising a hand and waving my question off. "I was referring to the woman I was speaking with when you came along. My point is that what stands as an opportunity for everyone is an opportunity for evil forces, too. The Daevites and Sarkics, to name a few. We're doing our best to prevent that, to prevent its discovery, and to safeguard this world and its natural ecology, but that's a complicated task. Especially since the Foundation has been almost uncharacteristically unsubtle about their access to it."

He was silent for a moment, watching me. He smiled a little. "I found you, at least. That's a step in the right direction."

I nodded in understanding.

"And you wanted to conscript me into that? Into the safeguarding role that you're acting within?" I wasn't entirely opposed to the idea, given that I already owed the Hand a couple of favors. Arguably, I owed the Hand my life. I only hoped that I could earn some cash to pocket along the way.

He blinked. "I admire your self-worth assessment, but no."

I made a move as if to shrug. "Well, I'm pretty sure I could take you out right now. No offense."

"As long as I'm in arm's reach, yes. What happens if I'm further away?" He took a step back, as if to demonstrate.

"I'll shoot you or something, or run after you. Make a gun or throw a brick or something."

"What if you don't have the time to make a gun?" he asked. "I might have one of my own, and I might be a faster runner."

For a second, I was silent, unable to find a satisfactory answer. The scenario looked ludicrous in my head - one man, hand extended, chasing another, who blindly fired back over his shoulder, desperate to not be touched for even a fraction of a second.

Finally, I admitted, "Alright, I can see you have a point, and I can see why I'd have trouble defeating intangible demons."

He chuckled. "Little Sister told me you'd defeated a local bigshot. I'm glad it's not gone to your head completely."

Not sure I could've done that without her help. Lung isn't exactly a pushover. Soon, though, I won't need anyone's help to proceed with my life. I'm nobody's charity case.

"Only a little," I promised comically.

"Are you looking for work? I'd imagine that you might be."

I nodded. "Yeah. There's not a lot that I can do. I've been considering the issue and I think I might have to make an account on PHO and then advertise my services. It's a sour concept - I'll have to reveal how my power works to find work. That might draw a target on my back, too."

"I have some ideas for you, actually, if you don't mind hearing me out." He looked around, as if on the lookout for any opportunistic listeners. I started glancing around too, as a result, but it seemed we were in a secluded portion of the library, and there weren't a lot of people in it, to begin with.

"I definitely don't have anything better than even your worst, so go ahead."

"There's a local mercenary clique, called the Faultline's Crew, that's particularly keen on accepting Case 53s - mutant amnesiacs, that is - like yourself into its roster. They operate out of a club called the Palanquin. If you're willing to make some concessions and be part of a consistent team, you'll be raking in a very sizable paycheck with relatively little risk. The moral sacrifices are relatively minor." He reached into his jacket's pocket, drew out a slip of paper, and jotted down an address with his fingertip, which dribbled ink, before handing it to me. I accepted the paper wordlessly.

I wondered about that, and decided to ask, "So you aren't opposed to me killing people?"

"The sort of people who have cape assassins sent after them probably deserve it," he demurred, in what sounded to be a half-serious, half-humorous manner. "In any case, it's no business of mine what choices you make. I am no saint, and certainly no hero. Yes, I do prefer to create a net positive impact on the world - to improve people's situations, and advance social order - but if I discovered you'd murdered someone for the sake of your friends, or your own position, I would be a hypocrite to raise an objection or even judge you too harshly. At minimum, I trust that you're a reasonable person and won't commit exceptionally evil deeds for no reason, and possess the wisdom to wield a reasonable and discerning moral judgment."

That... was a surprisingly reasonable worldview, I had to admit. Maybe a little too trusting of my morals, though. Even I wasn't certain that I could be called a reasonable and wise person, although I was definitely more discerning ever since the lingering headaches disappeared.

"Still, a mercenary team is a little skeevy, isn't it?"

"I don't see why you say that," he repelled my rhetoric. "A job is a job. Everyone needs to eat something, and you're not yet at the level where you can feed an entire family with food conjured from nowhere. Magic like mine always has costs. And powers like yours always have limits. Do what you can to provide to a level you're satisfied with. Improve the world along the way if you reasonably can. If you do that, I most definitely won't judge you."

Once more, I nodded. "You're different than the man who interrogated me."

"No more reason to give you the angry father spiel," he confessed, cracking a bit of a smile. "Back then, it'd been to test whether or not you actually are what you seem to be."

That caused me to perk up, remembering what Alison called me.

"Speaking of which, do you know what Mekhane is?"

He seemed surprised, now, that I'd mentioned the name. He looked around again, making sure there weren't any eavesdroppers. "The God, or Goddess, of Innovation and Technology, among other spheres. A trickster deity by most available accounts. Worshipped commonly by the Church of the Broken God on some worlds. Iconographically associated with gears and other forms of primordial mechanism. Why do you ask, if I may know?"

"Little Sister said it'd be something of a funny joke if I called myself that." There was still the anomalous tubes in my chromosomes, made of a mechanical matter, its sprockets ever turning. "I can see why now."

"Little Sister can be an eclectic person," Phineas said. "Don't always listen to what she says. Although definitely do pay attention - she's extremely powerful and knowledgeable, in all of her vast incarnations."

"Incarnations?"

"That's a long story, and since it pertains to her, it'd probably be better for her to explain." He was clearly unkeen on the topic - almost immediately, I could tell he didn't plan on saying anything more on it, as though it were a closed case. "Ask when you see her."

"Fine, keep your secrets. I'll have a look at that crew you mentioned."

He nodded and stood from the chair, looking around the library, as if making sure for a second or third time that no one had been eavesdropping on our conversation. "If that doesn't pan out, I have some other contacts in Brockton Bay. These are less savory ones, but worth checking in with, should this not work. I'll visit you in a couple of days, assuming you don't make your own way to the Wanderer's Library in the meantime. Until then, here."

He reached into his pocket and promptly handed me a sizable wad of cash, its bills bound with a rusted red rubber band. There was a definite, reassuring mass to it. It contained almost two thousand dollars, all of them clean as far as I could tell. I flipped through the stack, satisfied at the sound.

"Thanks. This'll help." I looked up to offer a thankful smile, but when I did, I saw that Phineas was already gone - not in a magical way, he'd left through the door, and I could see his back as he turned the corner. I shrugged and went back to reading.

I hated shopping for clothes.

I was stuck in a chamber on the second floor of a dilapidated mall, one that acted like a pressure cooker, containing heat and aridity within itself to create an atmosphere in which you slowly suffocated and became unbearably hot; designed and furnished to contain around ten people, maybe twelve at most. Naturally, this meant almost twenty had decided to jampack themselves in here. They were looking around as if they had severe, incurable, cervical dystonia, shuffling erratically like a swarm of chittering spiders, and moving like they had worms stuck in their ass, and one of those jackets might hide a sponge on a stick.

Now, maybe this wouldn't have been remotely as bad an experience, had this not been maybe the seventh or eighth shop we were trying. I'd lost count after a certain point in time, only able to mentally generalize the torturous process, like a screaming prisoner agonized by his inhumane captors for so long his mind rejected the memories of the horror, attempting to conceal the details into an unidentifiable mess, to better protect itself from insanity.

Harriet simply couldn't be satisfied with normal, fitting clothing. She was searching for clothes that possessed some arcane, ineffable element of conceptualization that was beyond my brain's ability to fathom. It must've related to the artistic side of her, the flair that she applied in her sketches and drawings, and the appreciation she had for color palettes. I didn't share any of that, or share her enjoyment of browsing through pieces of cloth.

Part of that might've been my power. The experience was a little ruined, I supposed, when a single touch identified every article of clothing in a stack and told you its exact size: volume, mass, contents, and mass spectrometry. I could identify the most common - and several obscure - fashion trends in Brockton Bay's populace based on everything and everywhere we'd visited so far, by identifying the clothes that were bought more often against ones that weren't, and seeing the connecting elements. There was a severe oversaturation of fashion and commercial bullshit in my head.

Harriet was staring me down, apparently annoyed by the fact that I was annoyed at being dragged here against my will, against my consent. I fought against being delivered here, although not for long, and not particularly hard. The entire road from one store to another, I'd made sure that she understood how much I disliked the prospect, and how much the continuation of our crusade lowered my estimation of her. It didn't work.

"You do realize that you need clothes, right? And I don't mean ones recycled out of the trash and fixed with a superpower." I looked around, but nobody was listening to our conversation. As normal, we stood in a spot a little further away.

"Really? Are you saying I can't do the same thing Jack does, where I find some in a dumpster and wash them in a river?"

"I dunno. Last I checked, we aren't pilgrims, Rob."

"I dunno," I mimicked her dismissive tone. "Apparently I'm a god or something."

"Fuck, really? Conjure us up some money, then."

"Sure. Get me some green ink and cotton and I'll get to work."

She looked at me. There was her classical brand of madness in that look, a feverish absence of filtration and the knowledge of when to cease and desist. A deep fear seized me from the inside, like the hand of God.

"Harriet, no," I said with full emphasis. "I was kidding. It wouldn't work for a lot of reasons."

She rolled her eyes. "Spoilsport."

Alright. Good. I almost expected her to run off, yelling 'fuck inflation,' or something. The Federal Bureau of Investigation definitely wouldn't have taken that one lying down, though, and double that for the PRT units meant to investigate financial discrepancies involving capes. It was fine to have illegal income, as long as you didn't spend ridiculous amounts, or had some rational way to explain where it came from. So-called money laundering.

Despite my objections, we shopped for clothes, which is to say, Harriet took almost exactly five minutes per section of the store to pick out the correct size and style for me. She'd then order me, against my protests, to immediately try it on, and I'd comply out of a growing sense of futility and annoyance, emerging from the changing room with an irritated look on my face. She'd be unsatisfied and make me try on something else, ad nauseam.

Once she found the appropriate outfit for me and forced me to pay for it, her own turn came to try on clothes. I was conscripted into making encouraging comments and weathering even more castigating glares, and answering nonsensical and childish questions, such as whether a particular pair of pants made her butt look too fat. They did, in fact, do so - but I didn't tell her that, in fear of staying for even longer in this hellish place.

"I am so damn glad we're out of there," I huffed, consigned to the manly role of carrying our purchases, because of course.

At least they weren't that heavy, so I took solace in that. It could've been much worse. There could've been a lot more she decided to purchase with the money that Phineas gave me, and that, on second thought, I should've kept a secret.

"There was some cool stuff at the cash register, though," she remarked. "Like, say, those carnival masks and the stylish sunglasses. Aviators. You would look cool in sunglasses, Rob! Like James Bond."

"James Bond doesn't wear sunglasses."

"The Pierce Brosnan version does..."

"I've literally never seen a single clip, or for that matter, a picture of Pierce Brosnan in sunglasses. The fact that I remember that so starkly is amazing evidence of its own."

"I'll show you one day."

"Mhm. Assuming we're ever rich enough to own a computer."

"Eh, I'm sure it'll be fine. Once we find some cape work, that is."

I quirked an eyebrow. "We? Last time checked I'm the only person here with powers."

"I'm your faithful sidekick, Pretty Dragon Princess Harriet!"

Something in my head, a shadow of a memory, came to life with that sentence. I couldn't understand what though, so instead, I focused on the conversation with Harriet, and replied, "Sorry, Tomboy Dragon Wife, I can't fuck you, I'm too busy waging war on the evil goddess."

"I'm not a tomboy!"

"Well, I've never seen you wear a skirt."

"It's breezy, and I couldn't afford skirts until recently!"

"Hm, fair point," I said. "I suppose homelessness isn't a state considerate of one's particular style or identity."

"No shit, Rob, that's why we're buying clothes!"

"Slowly, I've come around to the idea." I retraced a couple of mental steps. "I can't let you be my sidekick, though, unless you have superpowers of your own. Until then, I'll do the cape work, and you'll be a member of my support squad. The chairperson of my fan club."

"Aw, can't I be your awesome hacker dudette?"

"Can you hack things?"

"No."

"Then what'd be the point?"

"Alright," she conceded, "I'll be your getaway driver."

"So you can drive?"

"Fuck no."

I laughed, she laughed. The laughter lasted for several seconds.

"I appreciate the offer, Harriet. I'll definitely let you know if I need a sidekick, although for now, I think you should focus on your art. I've already got some work lined up for myself."

Last edited: Dec 21, 2022

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Dec 12, 2022

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Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Dec 14, 2022

#423

There was a sort of daily ritual I fell into, over time. A routine, maybe - or that's what I'd have called it, had I not been so adamant on executing it with uttermost precision every day, no matter the conditions. Its unchanging, familiar form soon became a source of stability and motivation in my life.

The day started, not with a filling breakfast or a brisk shower as one might expect, but light exercise: five minutes of calisthenics, then a five-minute run around the neighborhood. I'd come back in time to have a quick bite of breakfast with the others, then I'd have a smoke with Jack, and bum a second one off him for use later in the day.

Then, it was a straight journey to the local library, where I'd avariciously read and browse the net for the remnant of the morning, on the lookout for interesting news, but also learning more about the world in general, filling out gaps in my knowledge of physics and chemistry, which I believed were already broader than standard due to my constant observations of the world using the Clockworks. I'd have another smoke around noontime, outside the library, to relax and rest from constant learning, and take my mind off things.

Then, it varied.

Sometimes, I'd return back home and lend a helping hand with fixing up or improving furniture the others scavenged. Other times, I'd do some minor delivery work that I could handle on foot, which mostly paid in pennies. And naturally, I was doing research on Faultline's Crew, and the nightclub that Phineas mentioned. Although I was eager for some actual work - the kind of work in which my unusual skills got a chance to shine - I sure as hell wasn't planning on blindly leaping headfirst into the complex world of parahuman turf wars, not without a decent primer, or at least an idea of who I'd be speaking with. That sounded like suicide, and I'd already almost committed it when I pissed off Lung.

There was a lot that I learned about Fautline's Crew during that research period. Some of their membership, a lot of past operations. Apparently, Faultline, the eponymous leader, was a well-acclaimed mercenary, one with an excellent overall reputation and a high customer satisfaction rate. She was the professional sort, someone who'd finish the job no matter what. It seemed that she was equally strict, businesslike, and demanding, as she was profitable to work with. It did put a damper on my moods, though, because it meant a possible negotiation - a negotiation that I could lose, if I wasn't prepared.

Learning even more about Faultline, absorbing every piece of trivia I could find on the internet, but also the cape status of Brockton Bay and the surrounding cities, somewhat ruined the schedule I attempted to fall into. I'd started researching her own team and its habits, to have a broader image, and that somehow developed into studying the entire local cape scene; that led to research on the Empire, and that led to Gesselschaft, and that led to European cape groups, and... yeah, I essentially lost track of what I'd been doing. The problem was, the topic was interesting and relevant enough that I couldn't say learning it was a waste of time. I didn't want to stop.

That's when I decided I could probably use a bigger, more salient distraction.

And on Friday, I diverted even more from the schedule and visited the Wanderer's Library.

The Way in - the same beat-up van on a parking lot - stood in the same spot it had last time I'd seen it, probably left there by Phineas for my own convenience. It was a decently easy task to open the Way; its only real requirement was a high velocity on entry. I dashed into the open back, and everything compressed, until I was hurtling through a dark void.

This time, though, I was prepared for the experience of falling down from such a height, surrounded by stone walls. My fall wasn't quite as brutal as a result, as I carefully arrested my momentum on the walls, and came down - forced to crouch to absorb the force - but not even slightly hurt. It annoyed me to know that I'd have to enter this exact manner every time, though. Surely, the others had some secret trick?

I found there was no supernatural darkness behind me, in the hallway catacomb I'd appeared in. Apparently, Phineas wasn't expecting me - or maybe he couldn't maintain that spell constantly, which I found more likely, albeit a little inconvenient.

At least I didn't need a creepy-ass docent to lead me, or anyone else to show me the way. I remembered the path from last time. Aside from the physical distance I needed to cover on foot, it wasn't actually that long. There weren't a lot of crossroads or intersections to lose yourself at, mostly simple turns and straight, easily recognizable paths.

Nonetheless, traveling through the outskirts of the Library, I couldn't help but notice that a couple of slight changes had occurred, since the last time I'd been here. The furniture and decorations were in slightly different places, or even swapped out. Some of the hallways seemed longer, and others shorter.

As I came out on the second-level balcony that overlooked the main room, the same one I'd first entered the Library through what now felt like ages ago, I found that a lot of the shelves and sections had shifted. The rest of the librarians were here - spiderlike creatures, moving around on the shelves, placing and replacing books, skittering around. Down among the stacks, I could see the docents leading clueless wanderers around to their desired sections. There was something mystical about the sight of it all. Something magical and captivating - even if the place was objectively a little freaky and terrifying to my sensibilities.

"Robert. Good to see you," Alison said, reading a book on the same balcony I'd come out on. She checked her watch, then closed the book and looked at me. She looked a little different from before, although not in a way that I could articulate in an understandable way. It's kind of like seeing a distant cousin or relative after three years, and knowing they'd changed, and being able to compare the changes to how they'd looked before in your head, and finding that while the alterations were significant in form, the essence hadn't shifted in the slightest. It was a strange feeling to have, needless to say.

I frowned and decided to bring that up. "Hey, did you do something with your hair?"

She looked at me for a second. She didn't smile, but did offer an almost hesitant nod, after a second. Her voice was curt and prim, "Do you like it?"

I wasn't certain how to answer that question, or what kind of question she was asking me. I decided not to lie, and said, "Honestly, I'm a dimwit, and probably couldn't tell apart a mango from an apple without the Clockworks. I don't see enough of a difference to have a solid opinion. I do think you look nice in general, though. Sorry if that sounds stupid."

"Not at all," she smoothly replied, then continued, "I presume you've come here seeking answers, like you said you would?"

"Actually, I was hoping to distract myself. I was doing some fruitless research back in Brockton, so I thought I'd stop by, like I was supposed to." I watched her for a second, the way she'd stood on the balcony, as if perfectly prepared to receive me. "Did you, like, cast some divination magic that told you I'd be coming here?"

"Something like that." Not a crack of a smile out of her - not even in that coy, mysterious way I'd seen her curve her lips a couple of times.

That's when I realized it - a slow, sinking feeling of wrongness crystallizing into sudden, lucid coherence. "Hold on. You're taller, aren't you? By well over an inch."

The first inkling of amusement showed on her face, cheeks curving with a hum of satisfaction. "Good. Have you noticed anything else?"

She wore different attire, something like an old-style, black duffle coat, with polished golden buttons, and a scarlet red knee-high skirt under that, alongside matching high heels. It looked more professional, and a touch more sultry, than what she'd been wearing before.

"Aside from a different outfit?" I asked rhetorically, although a change of clothes wasn't really that remarkable - and hardly evidence for shenanigans. "I don't think your facial features changed, although now that I think about it, the hairstyle's different. I don't think your bob had that much of a fringe. And the shade of your skin is definitely paler, somehow."

"Excellent." She sounded pleased with my analysis - genuinely and almost frighteningly so. She proffered a hand, fingers splayed. "You've done well, Robert. Exactly as I expected. Let's continue this converation somewhere a little more private."

I accepted, and she teleported us.

I looked around and found I was now in a secluded study, every wall covered in bookshelves and small, rich adornments - wolf pelts as white as the driven snow; gold, elaborately carved candlesticks; and cool-hued paintings done in a variety of antique styles. There were comfortable armchairs, lacquered mahogany wood and carmine red cushioning. There was a fireplace in the corner of the room, more books stacked on the mantelpiece, alongside a collector's piece antique clock, all its hands made of elaborate, curlicue steel with arrowhead ends, and Roman numerals instead of Arabic ones. It was a different, private study from the one I'd met Phineas and Alison in.

At least the teleportation spell was the same one.

Alison walked over to a side of the room, pulling off the duffle coat, and placing it on a hanger. She started making herself a drink, a clear amber fluid, from a crystal decanter. She poured around a thumb and a half into a stout, single rocks glass. She looked at me and asked, "Do you want a drink?"

I considered for a second. "No, thanks."

"It will feel odd to drink alone," she said tonelessly.

"Alright. Fine."

She didn't show a smirk as she poured me some whiskey of my own. Or, I assumed it was whiskey at least. I didn't know a lick about alcohol, although I could naturally tell its exact composition the moment my hand touched the glass as she handed it over.

It was made of some of the same things you'd put into making a loaf of bread. They soaked barley in water until it germinated, and then dried it intensively using a machine for industrial heating. The starch enzymes became a variety of sugars instead, and were then almost completely vanished during the fermentation and distillation that followed, altering the dougy mass of harmless malt into a caustically poisonous, volatile, flammable depressant drug called ethanol. And not only a drug, but a viable source of fuel as well, and a potent chemical solvent. Pure enough, it'd melt unprotected organic tissue, almost like a weak acid, even though its potential of hydrogen value wasn't that much higher than a seven-point-three. Almost thirty years had passed, since the process of its distillation ended. It showed many signs of being kept in an atmospherically sealed and conditioned environment, in an American white oak cask, for most of that time.

It was intensely surreal, sometimes, how almost everything was made of hydrogen, oxygen, and small amounts of carbon. People didn't seem to realize it. At its most basic building level, a human being wasn't really that different from the contents of a cask of whiskey, and neither of them was that much different from a main sequence star. They weren't exactly the same, but a lot of the raw contents were identical. Those three items - a human, a whiskey, and a star - had a lot more in common than, say, a human and a granite rock, which was almost entirely silicon, with small amounts of aluminium, and traces of other materials.

All of that stuff came from the same source, too, but arranged itself so differently. The same thing had such different outcomes. One of those arrangements was drinking another of those arrangements, and thinking about how weird it was that reality worked this way. It was insane to realize - how many whiskeys could you squeeze from a human body if you tried? Around eighteen, from my calculations.

It seemed like an anomaly of its own, that the universe worked like this.

...One of these days, someone would hand me something innocuous, and overanalyzing its structure like this would cause a spiral of thoughts that led to me losing my faith in mankind, or self-determinism, or some other fundamental ideal that I held onto.

I took a sip of the whiskey, relishing its harsh flavor, watching the interactions of alcohol and tastebud happen in real time, as Alison and I went to sit in the armchairs by the coffee table.

She immediately offered me a stack of documents. I looked through them, and found a collection of... hard to tell. They were covered in runes, stamped in the corners, and those runes disrupted the working of my power a little, not letting me see the structure. The runes were a lot more recent, too, implying they were a recent addition. "What's this exactly?"

"Some of the Foundation's data on you. Only the lower security versions, I'm afraid, so you'll see a lot of redactions and blacked-out text."

"Cool. Anything else?"

"Yes." She pushed a small piece of paper in my direction, and then indicated a stack of books, set on a small corner table. "I've set aside a library card for you - and some books to start you off on your education. Well, your mystical education, that is."

"Mystical, huh? Alright, I suppose I can have a look."

Alison and I sat companionably, reading. The first of the books, 'A Guide to Traversing the Ways,' by someone called, K. Pr. Pendercomb, was more like an abbreviated user manual, then followed by an expansive list of appendices, flowcharts, and primitive maps. There were some anecdotes and case studies, attempting to see how much and how far one could slingshot with the Wanderer's Library as a starting point.

The only gripe I had was that the author used a slightly archaic version of the English language that sometimes capitalized random nouns for no apparent rhyme or reason in the middle of a sentence. There was a slight Germanic influence, almost; he wrote 'bin' instead of 'been.' Otherwise, it was fairly dry, although informative reading.

I moved to the next page, one describing the apparent 'esoteric Logics' through which Ways could reveal themselves, asking, "So, any advice for being a cape?"

Alison, still holding the same, half-open book with her thumb hooked amidst its pages, tapped a finger against her chin. "I don't have much experience with superheroism. I was never much of a supe. That said, I can give you some advice that applies universally."

"Oh?" I closed the book I'd been reading and folded my arms, curious as to what she'd tell me. "I'm listening."

"Reputation is a great, albeit insidious, boon." She closed the book with a low clap, not looking at me, and closed her eyes. A little melodramatic, that. "If everyone is afraid of you, then you don't have to prove yourself, and your actions' impact will be greatly magnified. Sometimes, too much. It can become cumbersome, but it's usually worth it."

There was something familiar about that advice. Something eerily, deeply, incongruously familiar, like an old, faded wound that I could still feel. Instead of letting it escape me, as I did with most such nostalgic feelings, I chased the thread of memory down, scraping away at its surface with assiduous effort. I forced myself to remain coherent and sharp. Eventually, words began snapping into position on a reel of recall.

A man or a woman wearing a hat, sitting on a table, and working away at some two-handed device. He or she said to me, "Listen, kid, I'll tell you a thing about reputation and its boons. Reputation is a stealthy fucker - once you've set it into motion, it'll maintain itself. But that kind of reputation takes effort to build up. You want my advice?"

I'd nodded, and replied something in the affirmative.

"Be crazy," the person said, looking directly at me. "Be a crazy motherfucker. If you're chasing after someone, either to kill them, or capture them, or with witnesses, whatever, then do something insane - something no rational, sane person would ever think of, dare to imagine, let alone perform in the situation you're in. Eat sand and weaponize that somehow. Play a ridiculous song on guitar, mocking them with every strum and every word. Collapse a part of a building just to make some point about a vague philosophical ideal you don't even subscribe to. Splash cat urine on them and don't explain it later, or ever. With every person you interact with, diversify your weirdness portfolio: to some, be a silent terminator; to others, a nonsensical whackjob. It's fine to be a professional killer, but I guarantee, this method will have people shitting their pants even more than if you did that."

"How so?" I'd asked.

"Because once you've done enough, the stories of your insanity will spread, and a lot of people will think that's not something you could've done - who the fuck would do things like that? But all the people who've met you and you accosted will insist you did. And then other people will start making shit up about you, and you'll allow it, because it'll build on what's true and real. Before long, you'll be known as a madman, capable of anything, and assuming you don't fuck up in your goals, terrifyingly effective to boot: the mere idea of you being sent after them will become a conceptual threat. Nobody will be certain what your real abilities are, or what you really are, because of some of the tall tales that'll come up. Some will hesitate; others will under or overestimate you. I've killed gods before - the kind of gods who can boil your eyeballs from a kilometer away as divine retribution - because they genuinely hesitated, afraid that I might do something even they couldn't predict, when all I did was shoot 'em."

"Damn," I'd said, and then something to the effect of, 'that's cold,' or 'that's brutal.' Then I said something else, indistinct, that I couldn't recall. Something about the devil, too.

"Yeah," the person agreed, putting down the ukulele. "That's why the Yankees always win, kid. The other team can't stop staring at the pinstripes."

"Robert?" Alison asked me, snapping me out of my thoughts.

"Sorry. I was thinking about something else I'd heard about that. You're right though, that's good advice. Thanks."

She offered a smile then went back to her reading. I went back to mine, the books she'd set out for me - continuing the tome about Ways and operating them correctly.

165

Birdsie

Dec 14, 2022

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Dec 16, 2022

#426

"I don't think I understand any of this."

Alison's eyes flickered to me, away from her book. "Sorry?"

"The containment file," I said, indicating the dry contents of the article with a certain frustration. "I don't understand. Am I the SCP-199 it's referring to? If so, then what's SCP-914? Did they really have me locked up like that as a kid? It doesn't seem right."

She stood from her armchair, walked over to me, and looked over my shoulder. Her eyes read across the document, and soon, I found myself following along in silence, reading its contents for a second time.

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING FILE IS LEVEL 4/199 CLASSIFIED

Item #: SCP-199

Object Class: Keter

Special Containment Procedures: No direct physical interaction with SCP-199 is allowed under any circumstances. All direct physical interaction must be approved with a minimum two-thirds vote from O5-Command, and must only extend to approved testing situations. All personnel are to remain at least five (5) meters away from the containment cell and SCP-199 at all times, except for sanctioned instances of cell maintenance, food delivery and mandated re-evaluation checks.

SCP-199's environment must contain no discrete and physical objects. Should SCP-199 be found in the possession of an item, available security staff must be immediately alerted, and SCP-199 must be treated as exceptionally well-armed and extremely dangerous. In the occurrence of such an event, SCP-199 can normally be pacified with most fast-acting soporifics, or with one of several other approved measures (see Containment Appendix #1). SCP-199 should then be promptly disarmed, and once unconscious, searched for any other contraband, while keeping in mind the safe five (5) meter distance rule, and standing prohibition against direct physical contact.

If needed, a bodily search of SCP-199's person may be conducted via a specially built, remote-controlled robot (see Containment Appendix #2), in keeping with the prohibition against direct physical interaction. Personnel assigned to SCP-199's security detail should be forewarned that SCP-199 has been known to play dead before in order to reach a physical interaction range and apply its anomalous effect to unsuspecting security staff.

SCP-199 is housed in a modified (see Containment Appendix: Cell) primary containment cell (10m x 10m x 7.5m) in the Site-17 Keter Wing. The cell must be suspended with a single, load-bearing strut in the middle of a vacuum chamber, designated as the secondary containment cell. The primary cell has an access hatch, meant for entry and exit, openable through an external valve mechanism, leading into the secondary containment cell.

For purposes of accessing the primary containment cell, a mechanically extendable corridor can be used to connect the security control room and primary containment cell across the vacuum chamber. The corridor must only be extended for the purposes of approved testing or delivering nutrition, and each process of extension must be overseen by at least six (6) Site-17 security personnel assigned to SCP-199.

The vacuum chamber is to contain a delicate system of barometers. Any detected pressure leakage from within the primary cell must be immediately investigated, reported, and repaired. If substantial evidence of an attempted breach is seen, a trained control room operator must immediately alert all Site personnel, including the Site Director, and has the discretion to activate a system of pumps that rapidly deploy a rapid-onset soporific agent into the secondary containment cell. An equipped specialist team (see Containment Appendix #3) must be deployed to investigate and report on the status of SCP-199. If a situation-coded all-clear report fails to reach the control room operator within two (2) minutes, or SCP-199 fails to be pacified within three (3) minutes, the operator must immediately issue an order to execute Procedure 220-Caretaker.

Under absolutely no circumstances is SCP-199 allowed to die. All personnel are discouraged from taking action that could have a potentially fatal result.

"I suppose you must have a lot of questions," Alison said before I could wander down any further across the document, into the Description section. I'd already read it before, and most of the stuff written down there was either redacted or facts about myself I already knew.

"Yeah. What's Keter?"

"Ah, that's a simple one to answer, fortunately. It's a designation the SCP Foundation issues to some of its contained anomalous objects, specifically the ones which are deemed most difficult or costly to contain." She offered me a look of cruel, dry amusement - the kind of ingrained schadenfreude you reserved for the absolute worst of enemies. "As I'm sure you're able to tell, a specially built cell, remotely steered robots, and trained security teams are hellishly expensive to acquire and maintain."

That makes sense, I thought. If I really put my mind to it, I could probably escape any normal prison, and even most of the really good ones. You'd need some concrete oversight to keep me permanently restrained.

"Alright," I said with satisfaction at the new-gained knowledge, "and what's an O5?"

Alison's smirk soured like I'd poured out a couple of droplets of a particularly irritating acid on her skin, and she was barely managing to hold back the wrath of a person long-stripped of notions like patience. "The Overseer Council," she said, in a chill, cold whisper like a cloud of desert dust at night, dripping with hatred in every particle. "The accursed leadership of the SCP Foundation. Sanctimonious hypocrites, puppet manipulators, and thrice-damned bastards. Not even the senior Jailors working for them like or trust them. Never trust an O5, Robert, or you'll end up dead."

She stepped away from me and picked up the whiskey glass, still holding more than an appreciable amount of amber liquid. Alison looked at me contemplatively, swirling its contents, and then downed the drink in a single motion.

Then, she said, "As for the Description section of the document, I can't help you much. I don't know your unredacted surname, or where you grew up. Although I do know the incident the document refers to is a cross-testing attempt, between you and SCP-914. It occurred, as you're surely able to tell, prior to your outlined Special Containment Procedures being implemented, and resulted in your abilities taking on their current form."

I nodded and folded the document, before stowing it securely away in my pocket. In whatever case, I doubted that constantly, maniacally re-reading it was about to miraculously yield new insights. I'd need to sleep on this information and maybe think about finding a more complete version.

"Still," I said, taking a sip of my own whiskey, "it's a little interesting to know that I had a different ability before that incident. Since the document's classified for Class 4 personnel, does that mean only the O5 has a complete version?"

Alison nodded, in blank confirmation. Then, a second after, her expression changed a fraction. There was a process of analysis happening in her eyes, some kind of mathematical or deductive process, weighing the pros and cons of a decision. It worried me a little.

"Robert, can you do me a favor?"

I nodded back hesitantly, looking at Alison. Her cheeks had reddened a little from the warmth of the alcohol. Over the last hour, she'd drank enough whiskey that I supposed she must've been on that precipice, between sobriety and moderate tipsiness.

"Could you start keeping a dream journal?" she asked. Alison was quick to explain in further detail, before the confusion of such an odd question could settle in for me. "Every morning, after you wake up, immediately write down what your dreams were about, in as much detail as you can recall. Or, at least, enough detail that you can recall it better later. That way, even if you forget it, you'll be able to tell me about what happened."

"That's a strange favor to ask."

"Sure," Alison admitted, "But you do owe me a favor or two."

"I suppose I do. Can I ask why?"

"There's a lot you can learn from dream divination, even using indirect methods," she answered, sitting on the armrest of her armchair, facing me. She looked almost a little overly formal in her modest dress. In the overall context of the O5-directed invective outburst not a minute ago, this put me in the mindset of a strict teacher addressing her faithful student. "I'd be able to understand you a little better, and learn things about your power or past. And obviously, I'd share my findings with you."

"Seems like a win-win," I said, smiling winsomely.

I didn't linger much around the Wanderer's Library following that conversation. I finished another chapter of the book on Ways, particularly on determining the particular Knocks of an entrance, and then decided to leave the books in Alison's personal study. There were prohibitions and punishments applicable for anyone who either lost or damaged a book, and I didn't trust myself to be able to keep them safe out there. I'd already irretrievably lost a whole lot of belongings in a building collapse that I had indirectly contributed to causing.

On the morning after, I immediately proceeded to fulfill Alison's favor. The moment my eyes opened, I practically rolled out of bed, took a notebook I'd prepared in advance, and started writing down. I couldn't remember much, especially not in detail. Only a silhouette of a dream, already fading.

'I dreamt that I was an incredibly huge wolf, almost the size of a building, with a crystalline gear stuck in my chest. There was an eclipse in the sky, the moon blackened in front of the sun. I leaped into the sky, out of the atmosphere, and started growing bigger, until my tail's wagging knocked the moon out of orbit. I continued growing, bigger and even more ferocious, approaching the sun. I opened my fanged jaws and devoured the sun, feeling its warmth coursing in my stomach. Its taste was comparable to a superheated pop tart. I could feel my gums bleeding from the heat. Then I woke up.'

As much detail as I could remember, there. For the record, even I considered the fact the sun tasted like a pop tart in my wolf dream very strange, but I decided to be completely honest over being excessively weirded out.

"Whoa, that's a fucked up dream," a passing-by Emmanuel whispered, casually glancing over my shoulder and into the writing. Annoyed at the invasion of privacy, I protectively turned the dream journal away from him.

"There was something before the wolf part," I decided to share anyway. "I can't remember what it was, though."

"Dreams are usually difficult to remember," he commented and nodded at the notebook in my hands. There was a spark of slight, detached admiration in his eyes. "Good idea, keeping a diary."

"I suppose."

I showed the findings to Alison on the same day, deciding that it merited at least a little investigation from a professional. If there were actual patterns to a dream, outside of biochemical signals firing in a worn sequence, I wanted to know about it. She looked a little disturbed.

"Do you remember nothing else?" she asked.

"The more I think about it, the more I believe there must've been a fight, before that concrete part of the dream," I said. "As I hurtled through the void, I was already somewhat wounded, and my fur was matted and covered partially in blood. Also, I'm not really sure, in retrospect, whether I was a full-on giant fucking wolf, or, like a bipedal Hollywood werewolf of some brand. The dream was kind of too fluid for me to make sense of my shape."

She nodded and informed me to keep her posted and appraised of any other particularly interesting dreams.

Then we sat and read books for another hour or so, and I finished the book on Ways, now informed about them almost to a point where I felt confident that I could locate them on my own if I was ever stranded on another, foreign world.

It wasn't normally an easy or fast process, but I had something of a small cheat, in the form of the Clockworks, and its ability to process vast streams of data and formulate them into concrete, readable configurations in nanoseconds. Analyzing an environment, I'd be able to correlate and put together forms of information so microscopic most people wouldn't notice and use that to estimate the likelihood of a Way being in the area. Doing a test on surrounding environments, it wouldn't be strictly impossible to play a hotter-colder game with myself, until I found a Way.

The Knock, though - the method of opening it - was something else. Each Way had a unique one or at least a distinct one. Some of them were simple, such as Phineas' van, which merely required you enter at a decently high speed; to the outright arcane, such as releasing seven virgin doves on a moonlit night under the Way. I wasn't quite as confident in being able to figure them out, at least without outside help, and even if I did, some of them had material requirements that'd be completely beyond a hypothetical stranded me.

For instance, the author spoke in brief of a particular and infamous Way, one whose Knock necessitated the opening of a localized black hole through an esoteric ritual, one completely local to its universe, requiring over a tonne of pure gold as a reagent, and a solar eclipse as a catalyst, to enact.

"I think I'll be going," I said, to which Alison hummed. "I've been putting off research on Faultline's Crew since yesterday."

"Do you want me to teleport you?"

"No need," I answered. "I'll pick some food on the way out. For me and the others."

She nodded and waved me off.

In common parlance and standard definition, all of the Wanderer's Library was something called a Nexus - an area in which the supernatural, unusual and anomalous clumped together, like mayflies attracted to a porch light. Given its infinite or at least near-infinite size, a ginormous, incredible, and deeply esoteric civilization had developed over time. It was like a mutated and convoluted version of evolution, where instead of organisms succeeding due to an inherent ability to procure food and produce offspring, the Library's patrons succeeded due to their ability to follow its rules to a tee.

And nothing else, aside from said rules, was a restriction - up to and including the standard laws of physics.

The biodiversity alone was amazing. Although humans and parahumans were definitely a rather common sight - at least one in four patrons were human, according to my rough visual estimate - none of the other patrons had anything to do with humanity. Some of them were completely alien beings, including actual, stereotypical Gray aliens. There were elemental beings dressed in hazmat suits to ensure they didn't damage the books, and traveling faerie bands giving little side shows among the stacks. There was a cabal of wizard students, studying mystical texts together.

Still, even strange beings needed to eat, so over time, a strange yet luxurious system economy had developed - with such access to magical and supernatural knowledge, basic items such as food were more or less free, practically handed out at their assorted stalls, sometimes in boxes. Sometimes, that food was safe for human consumption, and sometimes, it would combust if left unconsumed for too long. Sometimes, the food didn't exist in Euclidean space, and so you couldn't eat it unless you also existed outside of it. The Wanderer's Library and its patrons were a post-scarcity society, and had taken the experimentation and diversification of services that came with it to a terrifying, new level.

"Hello," I said, approaching a stall in one of the side rooms closest to Alison's study. Aside from the stacks of the library, filled to the brim with endless books on every topic, the Wanderer's Library also had a bunch of side rooms containing bars, restaurants, common rooms, entertainment zones, social spaces, and other things - everything needed to accommodate a population of unlimited variety and needs. "Do you speak English?"

The many-eyed protoplasmic black mass of quivering flesh and tentacles, dextrously wielding a pair of metal tongs in one of its tendrils, blinked at me with most of its eyes. It spoke in a low, guttural tone, "Yes. Me speak English basically, yes."

"Nice. Can I have..." I looked down at the available items. "Like, six or seven of those sausages?"

"Kukumber," it said.

"What?" I looked on in abrupt confusion, and a slight fear that I'd said something wrong.

"Does you want kukumber with that?" It took me around a second and a half to realize what it exactly meant, and what exactly was happening to our dialogue. It meant to say cucumber, but it said the c's as k's, and somehow that information carried over through its speech.

"Oh," I reacted with realization. "No, I don't. Thank you, though."

It didn't quite nod at me, since its bodily arrangement didn't allow that, but it made a gesture with one of its larger tentacles that looked almost analogous, then proceeded to fish out some sausages for me, putting them in foil and pushing them over.

"Thanks. Anything I can do for you?"

"No. Me serve out of charity," it said. "Me master, Greivis the Black Cloud, has abandoned me. Searching, I am, resolution through the religious application of benevolent to other beings, you see. No need I have for favors."

"Good luck with that," I said, before moving away with my food in hand.

In the short time I'd been a patron in the Library, I only made direct interaction with non-human beings a handful of times, mostly when Alison and I were out of her study to put some books away, and usually only sharing an anxious word or two. Once you remembered that, by definition, almost everyone you met was a patron who'd managed to follow the Library rules same as you - rules such as not being violent killing machines - it became a little easier to speak with them. A lot of them were quite friendly, even. Still, that interaction was surprisingly unnerving.

I returned home later that evening to see everyone already there, eating dinner. A winning grin plastered itself on my face as I added a fresh delivery of sausages to the table and joined into the small feast that developed.

"This is surprisingly good," Jack commented, "Where did you buy this again?"

"Magic-land."

He rolled his eyes at me.

"I've had something I wanted to talk with you all about. Your thoughts and input," I continued more generally, addressing everyone in the room before he could press me on it. "I might be able to join up with an incredibly good cape team, assuming they'll accept me."

"The Protectorate?" Lynn asked.

"Faultline's Crew."

"Mercenaries?" Jack reacted with something almost like affront and surprise. His voice was an octave higher than normal. "Kid, do you realize what you're getting yourself into? Capes already don't live safe lives - that goes on almost by default. You're throwing yourself into the meat grinder."

"Then I'll make it jam."

Everyone was somewhat quiet at that declaration. Harriet looked down at her meal.

"Work is work," Emmanuel commented. "If you think this'll help, well..."

Arturo didn't look as if he had much to say. When I looked at him, he shrugged, and said, "Your choice, hermano. I don't think it's safe work, exactly. But shit, what work isn't? Even if you were to sell your widgets instead, it'd draw a lot of heat, and it's not like we've got any backing or protection when that has its consequences. It'd almost be worse that way, in a way. It's dangerous, maybe dubious, but I think you're doing it for the right reasons."

Jack almost looked convinced by Arturo's argument. He looked down at the table ein thought.

"Consider this, then. If I'm accepted into the crew, Faultline might be able to find housing for everyone here. If not for each individual, then at least shared rooms. You can't tell me you aren't tired of sleeping in shitty places like this and using whatever scrap's on hand to survive," I said, and then to back up my point, "Oh, and better yet, I'd earn enough money to support myself and each of you. It means we could get Jack some proper treatment. It means I wouldn't have to do ad hoc engineering with an unsafe parahuman ability so we can have showers regularly."

"Can you tell him something?" an exasperated Lynn asked Harriet who was currently scraping away at an egg with her fork.

Harriet looked at the others and at me; boredly, almost disinterested in the conversation. She puckered her lips and made an exaggerated shrug, then spoke, "I mean, I'd have protested too, but then I'd definitely do it in Rob's place. Or, I'd do it with him, if I had powers."

"I'm not protesting over danger. With Lung annoyed, we've got plenty, and we're managing," Lynn said. She looked at me, into my eyes, with pleading in her own. "I'm protesting over the morality of the damn thing. These are mercenaries, Robert. How do you know they haven't killed people before?"

"According to my research, they haven't," I stated simply, and then, with a touch of spite, "And for the record, I don't remember you being this anti-killing back during the eve of our ABB problems, Lynn. The newspaper says not every gangster made it out. I didn't see you complaining then."

"That was different," she said, leaning away from me, shocked by the vehemence of my response. "It was for survival, for keeping our group alive-"

"And this isn't?" I interrupted, voice an octave higher.

"Well, it's for money, isn't it?!" she shouted.

I stood from my chair, almost knocking it over. "Oh, sorry, do you want to live in a fucking dump all your life!? Do you want Jack to live in a dump? To die out here to fucking tetanus or some other preventable bullshit?"

"Kid, calm down," Jack said. His word snapped me out of my inexplicable bout of rage. Everyone in the room, except Harriet and Emmanuel, was staring at me like I was a wild, dangerous animal. Jack stood up a little and guided me with his hand on my shoulder. "Sit down."

I complied with the movement.

Jack offered me a cigarette out of his box, which I accepted with a slow, almost shaking hand.

"Here's what I'll say," he began, drawing one cigarette and placing it between his lips. He spoke through it, not igniting it yet, and everyone listened attentively. Jack had that quality about himself when he got into the mood. "Whatever Robert decides, he's decided, and it's his decision, and it ain't our place to butt into his decisions. It's nice that he tried to share it with us, and ask for our thoughts, and that shows us that he really cares. He didn't have to do this - he could've gone to the mercs and never told us. Or, heck, he could've never come back here. He didn't have to stick along with us in the first place. If he decides to give any of us money he's earned, well, it's our decision if we want to do anything with that money, or accept it from him."

Jack pulled out a sizable, engraved lime-green lighter from his pocket. One that I'd improved for him.

"Personally, I think doing work for mercenaries, in general, is dangerous and maybe stupid. Even then, I think Robert's strong enough to tough it out, especially if the team is as good as he says it is. He managed to fight off Oni Lee and Lung with only a little help, and that's a decent track record, as far as caping goes. Whether it's a moral or immoral thing to do is a subject for debate, but it's definitely something Robert can recognize. He's got a good head on his shoulders, and he's got a good heart. He did right by everyone he's known as far as I can tell. He got his shoes stolen, and chose not to steal any back because he deemed that unfair. He'll do the right thing if he can. Let's have faith in that, and bench this topic."

There was silence in the room, but soon, an aura of general agreement filled it. Even Lynn seemed to look at me apologetically, muttering something to that effect, as everyone stated their own agreements, including Harriet launching into an excited branding scheme for my new, cooler, darker, and edgier mercenary persona that 'blasts people's brains out with dual wielded pistols,' or something like that. In the meantime, Jack nodded at me, and inclined his head towards the door. We headed outside, and lit up our cigarettes.

"That was a good speech," I commented, taking a drag of my smoke. "It's clear Phineas made you the community leader for a reason."

"I have my moments," Jack admitted with tired eyes. "When I'm not distracted by the pain, it's a little easier to think."

I'd considered curing his osteoporosis, and all of his other afflictions. I wanted to do that, so, so bad. His body was breaking down, little by little, so every day, I had to watch as it progressed: a slow, almost incurable malaise. The compounding of a lifetime of deterioration, self-abuse, and scarring that was starting to not only settle in with its composite weight but also spreading cracks through the rest of his organism. His kidneys were on the precipice of failure. Whenever I had a free moment, I would do some microscopic adjustments and improvements, prolonging the inevitable.

In his current state, though? A single sprint across the neighborhood would be the end of him. A single scuffle with the wrong kind of thug. Maybe even being startled enough. There were non-zero odds that he'd die if I pushed him too hard - as in, literally pushed him with my arm.

I wanted to cure him of all that, so, so bad. It stung all the more because I knew that, theoretically, I could.

Because in practice, there were a lot of potential outcomes that weren't as kind as an old man in perfect physical health.

No matter what I intended, the final result was outside of my control, steered only in the vaguest of manners by the setting of the Clockworks I used at the time. Intention didn't account substantially into the equation of my power's output - or at least not substantially enough to matter. It was relatively safe to destroy an active poison in someone's body since there were only so many ways you could break down a poison into its subcomponents or make it not work. But there were so, so, so, so many fucking damned ways to exchange, improve, or super-improve things it was kind of frightening. I hadn't intended to create a set of telepathic, racist, and anti-racist gloves. They simply came out that way.

What if I intended to fix Jack's osteoporosis, but instead, what came out was a skeleton with a mind of its own, steering and puppeteering his unwilling, conscious body? Then, I could either destroy it, and he'd have no skeleton, or I could disassemble it inside his body, probably killing him.

If I was feeling daring, I could also exchange it for another kind of magical, uncontrollable skeleton with unpredictable results, or I could improve it - which'd probably only make things even worse on an exponential scale.

I could move up on it cell by cell, you say - repair his poor, calcium-deficient bones one tissue at a time. And what if I gave him cancer by accident, and had to destroy the result? And what if I moved on and repeated that multiple times, killing off a number of otherwise workable tissues, and because of a sunk cost fallacy, ended up leaving him with an even worse kind of osteoporosis? What if I turned a part of his bones into a self-replicating nanomachine that worked faster than I could correctly target it and its replicants? What if I made a part of his bone into pure calcium, or some poisonous element, or something else? There were so, so many ways that 'improvement' could be made, on a subjective scale, I couldn't predict it.

I could take the risk, sure - I could take the risk, extend the field into him, activate it, and fix him.

Or just as likely - maybe even more likely - it'd destroy him completely. And I wasn't willing to risk Jack's life like that, not if the risk of death was even one percent. As long as he was still alive and breathing, I could watch over him, and find money and use that money to procure safer alternatives.

"I suppose you do," I said, all of those thoughts passing by in a moment. "Thanks for backing me up."

He chuckled, a little hoarse from the cigarette smoke. "Well, I did tell you that I'd never back out on you again, didn't I?"

"That you did," I said with a smile. "And I plan to keep my own promise, old man."

135

Birdsie

Dec 16, 2022

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Dec 18, 2022

#437

Lord's Street, the largest artery of movement and business in Brockton Bay, spanning the city from north to south. Along its length, there was money and development: wealth and abundance. Even in the north, along the docks, Lord's Street was clean and frequently patrolled by vigilant law officials. It was the city's domain, as absolute as god.

Here, a little ways downtown, where the skyscrapers towered over the city; some of them pristine towers of glass, and others as soulless temples to capitalism, it was different. This was no mere wealth, but a decadence, a slow corruption and decay, as society gave into its darkest impulses and people allowed themselves to forget the light of day.

Above, a static hum of purple neon dominated the skyline, cloaking the firmament with its overbearing presence. Above the neon, though, I saw flickering amber-white lights of apartment residences, shopping malls, and massive offices. I made a sound of faint curiosity as I placed my steel helmet on its gorget.

I wasn't on Lord's Street, exactly. A couple streets off, on Fairmont Avenue.

I'd made a new costume. Articulated plate, covering every inch of my body. A barbuta helmet, its face covered with a black-tinted alkali-aluminosilicate, with a layer of acrylic underneath that. I'd cannibalized pieces of the phone that Phineas gave me and included them in the costume, and now, invisible strands of magic wove off the plating and helmet, reaching into the minds of passerbies, and rendering me less noticeable, unless I desired to be noticed. The armor wasn't as powerful as my previous suit, but it protected better, and covered my body more evenly. It'd allow me to reach into close range more easily.

It was almost a little choking, truth be told - not the easiest to breathe in. At least the weather wasn't completely dogshit for wearing it.

I moved to the side of the rooftop - one that I'd climbed a minute before through its fire escape, to have a smoke on - and looked down.

The Palanquin. A nightclub, unassuming as clubs went. A nice, postmodern style building, covered in neon signs and decked out in colorful, sensual lights, almost like a bird displaying its prominent plumage with intention of attracting as many mates as possible. The club's name was displayed in long neon cursive above its entrance.

There wasn't one, but rather, two, muscled bouncers in dark shirts, standing in front of the door and looking mean, one of them with a clipboard and a list. At least some thirty people were standing in line, waiting to enter inside, many of them in disorganized social groups. At least a quarter of them were underage, and about half of them were already drunk.

I reached out with my field into the building underneath me, looking for handholds and footholds, and widening a couple available cracks. I moved down, almost sliding with the speed I could climb down at, until, within seconds, I was standing in an alleyway on the opposite side of the street. I made my way across, watching the street for any cars, and skipped the line, to approach the bouncers standing in front.

"I'd like to have words with your boss."

One of the bouncers raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

"Don't mean no trouble," I clarified. "Just business. I can wait out here, if need be."

"Just-" He stopped mid-word, and suddenly narrowed his eyes, attention on his earpiece. I could hear a mutter of words through it, muted because of the distance I stood at. After a moment, he side-stepped and allowed me through. "Welcome to the Palanquin."

I nodded, and stepped into the club.

As I made my way through the small entryway, covered in a depth of gloom, hearing the distant beat of hardcore electronic dance music, I was deep in strategic thought, considering the circumstances of being allowed in. Around me, some people holding casual conversation reacted with surprise to an armored knight marching past them steadily.

So... Did I make Faultline curious, or did she already know someone was coming? Since I don't take Phineas for a tattletale, I suppose it must be the former. Hm, if so, that's good. It acts as a small point in my favor. I can play on that curiosity a little more.

A young - clearly underaged - individual, barely even standing upright on his feet, approached me. He was dressed in a purple hoodie, and completely tasteless ripped skinny jeans. That wasn't the part that caught my attention, though. It was his deep, unnaturally orange skin, and short, cobalt hair.

He wrapped an arm around my shoulders, and immediately, I sensed the intensely dissociative and hallucinogenic fluid on his skin, in his sweat, in his blood, in his saliva. It covered every part of him, and existed in his every fluid, permeating him. A single drop could drop me to the floor, rendering me a useless, dribbling wreck. He tapped on my chestpiece several times, in some kind of appreciation, as his long tail wagged behind him.

"Whoaa, super hella knight cool as hell- fuckin-" he burped mid-sentence "-fuckin' badass! Damn, man, you look-"

Something must've clicked in his drunken brain, as suddenly, he turned panicked, and took a step away from me. He almost tripped as a result, but managed to balance himself with his unusually dextrous tail. "Fuck, oh shit... Sorry, I forgot I can't touch people. Drugs in my sweat, you knooow…" he trailed off a little.

I nodded slowly. I'd already decomposed the toxin, in a fit of panic, although it seems like it hadn't pierced my armor in any case. That was a tremendous relief.

"Do you know where I can find Faultline?"

"Right behind you," a stern female voice said. "Newter, you shouldn't be drinking."

He swung a finger at her. "And you shouldn't be such a biiitch!"

A nearby patron, only vaguely interested in the discourse, but who'd overheard the last sentence, recoiled in cringe and exclaimed, "Oooh snap! Lizard's throwing hands."

"Does nobody seriously ever report this place to the authorities?" I asked solemnly.

Newter chuckled, breathing a little unevenly. He was standing with one side against the wall, now - someone would have to carefully decontaminate that wall, or the next person touching it would have a sudden and unexpected trip to Shangri-La - and not entirely balanced. "Of course they do, my man, of course they-" he let out a small burp, "-do... We pay off the cops, man! Got them all BBPD cheek-ass cyan dwarf mothafuckas in the side pocket." He pat his left leg vigorously.

Faultline crossed her arms, letting out a heavy sigh. "Carl, take him upstairs. I'm firing tonight's barman."

A tired, defeated-looking bald man who'd stood on Faultline's side nodded, and moved towards Newter, while putting on thick, black rubber gloves. They had the composition I'd expect of the gloves used for handling hazardous materials. "Come on buddy, let's go…"

"I'm sorry you had to witness that," Faultline said, after Carl and Newter had disappeared out of view, into the crowd. "Newter is… a rambunctious kid."

I offered a hand. "Mekhane."

She accepted it and shook it vigorously. "Interesting name. Pulled it out of some book?"

"Something like that."

"Well, let's go into my office. This music is killing my ears." Faultline didn't wait for me to say yes, and began moving for her office upstairs. I followed wordlessly.

The beat in the club dropped, with a female voice saying, 'Drop it.' Over the crowd of dancing and partying patrons, I could hear a drunken Newter - still being dragged away - echoing the words in a loud, shaky proclamation, followed by several whoops. I closed the door of Faultline's office, muffling the noise from downstairs.

"So, how did you know where to find me?" she questioned immediately.

"I've got my contacts."

"You came onto the scene around a week ago, Mekhane, and most people don't even know your name," Faultline replied, moving around her desk to sit down. She carried herself with a casual level of superiority, like she didn't mind letting an unknown, potentially dangerous cape into her sanctum. She also clearly wasn't buying my bullshit. "Cut the crap."

"I see you're well-informed yourself."

"I might be."

"How about answer for answer?" I proposed, moving to sit down opposite of her. The chair underneath me didn't creak as I expected it to. It was surprisingly well-made, and padded for comfort. "I've got some questions, you've got some questions. Let's make a fair exchange."

"Okay. How did you find this place?"

"A man I've met several weeks ago - I asked him if there was any work available for someone like me, and he offered me your name, and told me I could find you here. I honestly have no idea how he'd know, though. Business partner of yours?"

"I have several." She put a hand on the table in front of us. "You'll have to be specific."

"I suppose you'll be able to ask for specifics on your turn," I mused, and then asked, "It's clear you've already heard of me, in some form or another. What exactly did you hear?"

"You beat Lung and Oni Lee single-handedly and saved a homeless community. Such is word of mouth."

Damn. That was an incredible portfolio someone had made up - almost immediately, I considered the advice on reputation that I'd received. Eventually, it'd develop on its own.

"A little overblown," I commented. "I had some help in both instances, and I didn't fight them both at the same time."

Faultline hummed in agreement. "Good. What is the name of the man who referred you to me?"

"Phineas." I supposed he wouldn't mind.

"No idea who he is."

I made a point of shrugging as clearly as I could through my pauldrons. "That's the name I know him by. I know how to contact him, more or less, so I suppose I can ask about it."

"My group isn't exactly hidden, so this referral isn't a big concern. Your turn."

I considered for a second. Should I stay my hand, and play the game for a little while, or be out with it? I suspected that Faultline was the sort of person who'd appreciate being straightforward, so I decided to ask the question I came here to ask, "Are you hiring?"

She leaned back into her chair. "That depends. Are you worth my time and money?" She didn't answer my question.

"Ask Lung."

Faultline actually laughed out loud, and not in a coy, pretending sort of way. It was the actual humor resulting out of an unexpected response.

"You've got some balls." She waited a moment before her next question. "What's your power?"

"Do you have a pen or pencil on hand? Several, actually?"

"Yes," she said. She took out an entire stack of type B pencils, almost like a bouquet, and handed them to me. I picked one out, and placed the others on the table.

"I have five settings. The first destroys," I calmly said, and then dusted the pencil into burnt, wooden splinters, collapsing onto her desk as a pile of ash. She nodded.

I took another pencil. "The second disassembles." The pencil became a length of hollowed wood, plastic shavings, and a small clump of graphite dust.

Another pencil. "The third exchanges." It became a small, graphite-based pen, which I put down next to the stack.

And last pencil. "The fourth improves." It remained identical, but the graphite dispersion pattern was more efficient, and the pencil itself weighted better. "You can't tell, but it'll now last almost twice as long, and won't be quite a mess to sharpen."

"And the fifth?" she asked.

"That one's dangerous to use."

She inclined her head a little.

"It makes things even better," I explained. "Sometimes, too much better."

"Demonstrate," Faultline said, with a careful tone. "Push comes to shove, you can use the first setting."

Slowly, I reached for another pencil, and held it in the air. I had a bad feeling about this.

As soon as I improved it, the pencil leaped out of my hand, as though possessed by a ghost. It struck a nearby wall, piercing it, half a centimeter deep. It dug itself out after a moment, while Faultline and I stood and began moving towards it. It hovered steadily, a little unevenly.

'STOP,' it wrote on the wall.

I did, and after a second, so did Faultline.

'WHAT AM I?' the pencil wrote.

I looked at Faultline.

"Uh, you're a pencil." Faultline looked back at me in return after responding.

'...OH MY GOD.'

It immediately dropped to the cupboard, as though suddenly losing the will to live.

Faultline looked at me. There was amazement in her tone. "...Do it again."

"What? No," I said firmly. "That's why I don't like to do it. For all I can predict, the next pencil is an evil murder pencil that pierces people's throats."

"Still..." She looked at the pencil, now lying motionless. "Pencil? Hello?"

The pencil didn't move. It seemed lifeless, now, without any animating force. Its consciousness reduced to atoms.

"Well, whatever. That was a little disturbing, seeing a pencil come to life like that. Back to business." She folded her arms to her chest and gave me an appraising nod. "I've seen enough - and your reputation precedes you, Mekhane."

"Does that mean I'm in?"

"We should discuss details."

After watching the pencil for another second, to make sure it wouldn't return to life, we sat back down, and Faultline explained the kind of work I'd be doing if I were to join the team.

"We're mercenaries," she said, "And that means we do all sorts of work. It means, sometimes we might work against the law. Is that a problem for you?"

"I'm not a white hat, no."

She nodded agreeably. "I have executive rights on deciding the jobs we take on, but I consider the opinions and propositions of every member as fairly as I'm able to. If you're doing anything in private, I want to be informed about it, and I have the right to veto it, if I believe it may reflect poorly on the team - either on its integrity or its reputation. Otherwise, you're free to act as you please."

"So if I wanted to open a business?"

"I'd want to know about it beforehand."

I nodded.

"If you choose, you can refuse to accompany the crew on any given job, provided you state a reason you disagree with it, but this means you won't be paid your cut. If you don't tag along on too many jobs, especially on important ones, where your help or particular powers or skills might be needed, I may have to kick you out of the team. The only exception is if you are injured and incapable to operate, in which case I'm exempting you from that and handling all of your expenses until you're back on your feet. Same for any other situation outside of your control that crops up, within reason."

That seemed, if not reasonable, then at least acceptable.

"What if I provide backline support?" I asked. "Make equipment for you, but don't show up?"

"That's different," she said, considering the pencil, lying on the cupboard in the corner of the room, and the words scratched above it on the wall. "And there's no real precedent. It's difficult to put a definitive rating on how much equipment has affected the success of a mission, you understand, so I feel it'd be safer if I paid you per piece."

I nodded. "Only a hypothetical. Provided I'm useful, I have full intention of coming along whenever I can. And I'm willing to make you equipment free of charge."

She looked - and attempted to hide said look - extremely pleased to hear that. I was already in her good graces, it seemed.

"I hate to be that guy, but…"

"Payment."

"Yeah. I have some people I'm taking care of."

She nodded, and seemed to reconsider me for a second, as though viewing me under a different angle. "It depends on the job. Sometimes, it's five figures, and sometimes six. Everyone on the team gets a share of the payment, and I get six shares. Some of that money goes into maintaining our contacts, outfitting the nightclub, or accommodating other, special needs. I also pay out every member of the crew a regular salary out of that money, to provide for expenses during any dry patches where there's no jobs. There's other perks to the job. For instance, I could provide you and your people some lodging, no charge."

I attempted to conceal the sudden excitement I felt. "That'd be nice."

"It would be," she agreed. "And naturally, if there's anything else you'd like out of this - such as investing some of your pay, or acquiring materials for you, I can handle that as well. Some of our crew's other members are Case 53s. They're amnesiac, and, well... you've seen Newter. They don't look the same as other people. One of them is having me put a portion of his pay towards finding out why."

I nodded, and considered what she'd said for a moment. Then, I stared to slowly remove my pauldron and armguard, undoing the straps. After a second, I opened the cloth there as well, through a single seam, and showed her both of my tattoos. "Do they have these?"

Faultline leaned forward. "Only one of them. The 'C' one. What's the other one?"

I didn't want to make omissions or lie, but in this case, I felt that I was forced to.

I couldn't let Faultline know about the Wanderer's Library or the SCP Foundation, at least not this early into our relationship. At worst, I'd come off as completely insane. At best, she'd take my claims seriously, and start looking into a world that even I wasn't entirely sure about. I was here for the paycheck. My own issues were private. I reinforced myself with this idea.

"I don't have much of an idea, honestly. I've been researching it, too. All I know for sure is that I look fairly normal, but I'm amnesiac as well."

"You wouldn't be the first Case 53 to look almost normal. There's a Case 53 whose only mutation is having feathers for hair." She shrugged. "Maybe your mutation is inside?"

That was a cold thought. A reminder that I wasn't a human being, that I wasn't even genetically viable as one. I was so damn close - so damn similar to one.

"...My power lets me see into the things I touch," I commented. "And yes, it is."

Faultline let out a little sigh. "Well, I'd like to invite you tomorrow for a semi-official get-together. To meet the team, and let the team meet you. Masks off, of course."

I nodded. And once again, I reached out to shake her hand. "Seems doable. Name's Robert by the way."

"Melanie," she said. She shook my hand. "Melanie Fitts."

Last edited: Dec 18, 2022

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Birdsie

Dec 18, 2022

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Threadmarks Network 3.8

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Dec 25, 2022

#452

I decided to come to the meetup in what I believed to be, if not exactly amazing, then at least decent and presentable clothing.

I'd scrounged up some of the more fashionable clothes that Harriet forced me to buy and put them on, applied some moderate, targeted, selective refining to make the outfit much less chafing, and combed my dark hair a little, more for the neatness it offered than due to any particular need. It was short, not even half an inch.

I then headed straight for the Palanquin, the sidewalk in front of it now devoid of a line of people. Instead, a lot of pedestrians commuting to and from work moved by in a steady stream. There was also traffic, but downtown wasn't congested enough to slow me down.

There was a bouncer at the front, nonetheless. A different one from the ones I'd seen yesterday. He barely even paid me any mind as I pushed my way inside.

I saw an open, bright interior, one that seemed to exist almost in complete and utter contrast to what I'd observed yesterday. It was kind of like seeing behind the counter at your local McDonald's. Fascinating and scary; a cool learning experience, yet kind of unsettling.

There was no swarm of people dancing around and acting crazy, or drinking in booths, and the lighting conditions were decidedly better, so this made for a unique opportunity to analyze the nightclub's interior, and its architecture.

A lot of disabled neon pipe around some railings, a DJ station complete with a turntable, a lot of screens, colored spotlights, and even a closed-off section with a disco ball. There were lots of oversized stereo speakers standing around everywhere like tribal totems; the immense ones with enormous woofers and black casings.

There was something else that I gravitated towards. A long, exceptionally clean bar with a sensual mahogany counter, its shelves sporting an impressive variety of salacious-looking alcohols, as colorful as a dark rainbow of debauched celebration. My eyes steered towards the bottle of Captain Morgan's spiced gold rum. I'd heard a lot of damn good things about it, although I couldn't really say where exactly.

One could really paint the town red in here. I chuckled to myself quietly.

"Good morning. Aren't you bright and early?" Melanie said to me shortly after I walked in, newspaper and coffee in hand. She was dressed in a casual morning business outfit with a pristine white dress shirt, mask off as she'd promised, black hair done in a short ponytail. I pulled my hands out of my pockets and looked at her.

"I am the kind of employee that puts in that extra dedication," I commented, a little on the dry side. Then, I shrugged and offered the real answer, "I had nothing better to do this morning. Well, aside from the usual of exercise, breakfast, and a morning smoke."

"Exercise and smoking?" she asked, on the edge of curiosity. "Doesn't that cancel out?"

"I could ask the same about being a parahuman and running a public nightclub."

She made a click. "Got a sharp tongue in that mouth of yours."

"It comes with the cape."

"Everyone else is at the back. This way."

The back, apparently, being a staff break room - a sizable, well-lit space, with clean walls, lounging sofas, a kitchenette containing a glass-door fridge with a cornucopia of drinks, and some other furniture. A mumbling and occasionally groaning Newter was lying on one of the sofas, a wrist over his eyes, as though to shield himself from the merciless light.

"Had too much to drink last night?" I asked him smartly.

He mumbled something in response, not entirely conscious. It was a request.

"Sorry?" I leaned in, a little closer, but not close enough to touch.

"Water?" he pleaded.

I looked at Faultline. She'd heard, or perhaps anticipated the request, and was already using the sink to fix him up a cupful.

I then looked at the other inhabitants of the room, who definitely drew an eye to themselves. I'd already heard about most of them, doing my research, and seen the pictures - most of them grainy and taken from a distance, but still displaying enough features to raise a brow.

Maybe that factor, in combination with my frequent visits to the Wanderer's Library, resulted in me not being quite as shocked as someone ordinary would've been. To be perfectly honest, after seeing one of the radially symmetrical sixth dimensional polygons that spoke accented, posh British English, a man called 'Gregor the Snail' was almost kind of blasé for a change. Like a strong step back away from the complete strangeness I was accustomed to.

"Hey there. Robert," I introduced myself, shaking Gregor and Spitfire's hands, then looking at Labyrinth, sitting with her hands on her knees and looking at me with kind of widened eyes. I lowered my hand, because I felt that she probably wasn't going to shake it.

"My name is Gregor," Gregor introduced himself.

"Emily," said Spitfire, and then - looking at Labyrinth - added, "and that's-"

"Elle," Labyrinth said, quiet, but audible. Her eyes looked to Emily and vacilliated for a second, before focusing again. "I'm alright."

I nodded. Melanie soon returned from the kitchenette, stepping past me with a certain weariness, and handed Newter his clear glass of water. The boy accepted it carefully and started drinking, like he was a terribly poisoned man, and the glass contained an antidote.

"And this little drunk," Melanie punctuated, "is Newter."

"Hey, what's up," he choked out a greeting. After a second, he almost defensively added, "I don't normally drink, you know? I like to party, though, and last night-"

"-was your last," Melanie cut in, "At least for a good, good while. I respect your independence, Newter, but you cannot be getting drunk to the point where you touch people by accident. You are in luck that Robert was wearing a suit of armor."

After several seconds, he opened his eyes, heavily, and croaked out, "Look, I'm sorry. Won't do it again. It was a mistake, alright? I went too far."

"You, and the bartender," she muttered after a second, stepping away to sit down between Emily and Elle. I'd already taken a seat next to Gregor.

"Quite a crew you've got going," I commented.

"Now that you're a part of it? Definitely," she replied. "I didn't expect you to come in here this early. I was planning to talk to everyone about a mission we did last week, and then provide some more detail on the meeting, but I suppose this is just as well."

She addressed the room with a clap of the hands. "Everyone, this is Robert," she introduced, pointing at me, "AKA Mekhane, AKA the man who defeated Lung a couple of weeks ago."

There was a sudden silence - not a heavy or tense silence - but a kind of analytical silence, at that statement. As though everyone realized they were sitting in a closed room with a docile lion they had believed to be a house cat, and reassessing their perceptions. I even heard Newter suddenly mustering and rustling behind me.

The only person that was barely affected was Elle, no more perked up than someone whose name had been called out. She was looking at me with dull, curious eyes.

"That's quite a resume," Emily was first to say.

"I didn't defeat him on my own. I had some help."

"From whom, if I may ask?" Gregor asked, sounding interested.

"Black Queen," I said. At their blank looks, I hastily added, "You probably don't know her. She's not very public as a cape, but she is a friend of mine. The ABB was giving me some trouble in the days preceding that fight. I encountered Oni Lee, alongside Shadow Stalker, and we made him run away with serious injuries. Some of the people I was squatting with predicted that Lung would be onto us, so I asked Black Queen for some help."

"Next thing you know, Robert's collapsed a building on the big bad dragon," Melanie added, and after a second, amended: "Well, Robert and this Black Queen."

"You should introduce her sometime," Newter commented from behind me, coughing a little.

"She's not the sort to come to social gatherings. Definitely not the sort to come out in the evening and beat up supervillains, or do mercenary work," I explained. "I can ask, though."

"I'd love to meet her," Melanie commented, "but she's not the reason we're gathered here. The reason is to get to know each other. Robert, like some of you, is also an amnesiac."

She said that so casually - fitted the information into the sentence so smoothly - it was almost like she was talking about the recent weather.

"Oh, really?" Newter perked up, head rising, as though suddenly the strength of his hangover was cut in half. I couldn't tell whether his tone was excitedly curious, or brimming with skepticism, "Do you have the tattoo?"

I raised my sleeve, and showed the SCP Foundation tattoo, and the strange, C-style omega symbol next to it.

"Damn," he reacted. "You have two? What's the second one for?"

"I have no idea," I said. "But now that we've established that I'm winning at tattoos, how about the rest of you?"

"Our food's here," Melanie said all of a sudden, looking at her phone, and then at me. "I ordered some delivery. Can't be arsed to cook on a day like this. I didn't know what you like, so I ordered a couple of things for you, and you can pick out your preference. Play nice, I'll be back in a moment." She stood and went outside the break room.

"So," Newter said, springing to his feet behind me - still clearly in a hungover state, but somewhat bettered by the hydration and sudden excitement over me, "What's your power, big man? I saw that cool armor last night. Some kind of tinker? Or are you a frontline fighter? We've been looking for someone like that for a while. Do you have super-strength?"

"One question at a time, please," I urged, and then answered the ones already asked, one by one, "In order: my power lets me analyze and change things I come into contact with. I am not exactly a tinker, but I can sort of act like one. I suppose, maybe, kind of a frontliner. And no; no super-strength."

He nodded, as though satisfied. "Cool. What kind of changes, though?"

"Depends. The way I think about it, I have a couple of settings. For example, if I had a coffee mug, I could break it, or make it into a small vase, or make it better at being a coffee mug."

"Interesting. Care to give a demonstration?"

Everyone was looking at me eagerly.

I started to suspect that, 'can you give a demonstration of your power,' was going to become a common question in my future, and that disaster would follow every time I caved into the request. Currently, though, I couldn't see a way in which a short demonstration could possibly go wrong. I was in a room full of capes. Even if I summoned Yog-Sothoth by accident, surely, we'd be able to defeat it together.

I picked up Faultline's newspaper, and started tearing some pages out of it. Each one to showcase a different setting. I demonstrated the destruction setting and set the page on fire to a couple of thoughtful hums or widened brows, then dismantled the next page into rough paper and a sad pool of dried, colored inks.

"Huh. That's different," Newter commented.

"Instead of destroying it, you disassembled the newspaper into its disparate component materials," Gregor analyzed correctly within moments. "Interesting."

"So what'd happen if you did that to a phone?" Newter continued.

"It'd separate the casing, screen, wiring, circuitboards, and other minor elements, and separate them into neat piles," I said. "I could then pick one, such as the wiring, and disassemble it into a length of copper and some rubber. And so on, until all I had remaining were substances so homogenous that disassembling them pulls atoms apart."

"Whoa. Dude, that's super fricking cool!" Newter reacted with wide eyes.

"I suspect the 'coolest' part is something we are yet to see," Gregor commented, eyeing the newspaper pages I tore up. "After all, we're only on page two, and Robert's description of the other settings suggests there's at least two more he can show us."

I traded a newspaper page into another one but written differently, and with an altered style. There was a different publisher, and the names under every article were changed. It covered the same events, but with different foci - for example, it focused more on upcoming summer sports events rather than celebrity gossip.

"I wonder if, were you to do it enough times, you could get info that the newspaper themselves don't have," Gregor theorized.

"I could, and I have," I told him. "I've done this on a couple of books. It offered some interesting and sometimes puzzling results."

"Fascinating," Gregor said, offering me a thin smile.

I nodded in faint agreement and picked up the penultimate newspaper page, and enhanced it. It now had more consistent lettering, a luxurious and smooth paper, and enhanced foldability, and its relevant sections had commentary from experts - both fictional and real. The crimes had remarks from Sherlock Holmes and John Watson; the sports had sidenotes from Michael Jordan, and the science section had a humorous reflection from Nikola Tesla.

I observed as everyone gathered around me in curiosity - even Elle - and peered over my shoulders, reading the newspaper and associated comments.

"Huh," Emily sounded out, "did Sherlock Holmes really just solve the Stain murders?"

"That's rad bro," Newter said, careful not to touch anybody.

"And the final one," I muttered, picking up the final piece of newspaper - there was a sense of dreadful finality, a simultaneous relief in knowing this is the last one, and a sense of trepidation in knowing this one had the most potential to go extremely wrong.

A few seconds later, I held a small, thin tablet in my hands. Most of its external structure was made from cellulose isomer fibers arranged into chains of carbon polymers, giving it the feeling of smooth plastic. Inside, the inks had been converted into a primitive computing structure made of conductive atoms, alongside crude transistors. The device was almost overflowing with anomalous energy, all of its electronic components operating more efficiently than they had any right to, and seeming to derive inputs from nowhere.

The final item was digital, with a somewhat dim screen. It had two buttons on its bottom notch - a left arrow and a right arrow. On its top notch was the current date.

The screen itself showed a newspaper talking about today in Brockton Bay - not a page, or a single article, but rather, a full blown daily issue with all possible sections. Sports, crime, science, celebrity gossip, and even things the news wouldn't have any idea about. Crime dealings, robberies in progress, deaths of undocumented immigrants, even trigger events.

Pressing the right arrow made the screen go dark for a moment. In seconds, it lit up again with a newspaper about New York. Same thing as before, same sections, but different city.

A cursory check of the tablet itself, by skimming it and its pages, showed that the tablet could show at least a few major cities from every state in the United States and from the capitals of most other English-speaking countries.

"Uh, explanation please?" Melanie asked, as she was coming back into the room. She was carrying several plastic bags, steam coming from the styrofoam containers within. There was some fresh food inside. "Why are all of you standing huddled around that tablet?"

"Robert just made us a super-newspaper," Newter helpfully remarked. "It gives us the super-news."

"Should we maybe destroy this?" I asked, handing Melanie the tablet. "Remember the pencil. These things can be unpredictable and dangerous sometimes."

She carefully put down the food on the table, and then accepted the tablet from me. The moment I mentioned the pencil, she went a little stern in the face. She looked through the tablet for a couple of moments, then turned towards me. "Do you want me to?"

"Hey, I'm the one asking you, boss." The situation reminded me of something. "It seems kind of safe, though. Maybe we should just stick it in a box somewhere."

"As long as it stays in the box and doesn't kill us," Melanie said, with a weary sigh. She threw the tablet in Newter's direction. He seemed most curious about it, and started browsing.

"A pencil?" Emily asked. "What pencil?"

"Let's not talk about the pencil," Melanie urged.

"Oooh," Newter made a spooky sound. "The pencil incident."

"It is a sentient pencil a few rooms from here," Elle said distantly, looking off at a random spot in the room. She rocked back and forth very gently. "It drew on the wall and fell asleep."

"Speaking of which, you should have someone clean that mess off the wall," I said, touching each of the styrofoam boxes in search of something promising. I found a crispy chicken dish with rice and a modest stir fry, and decided to claim that one. "It looks like something a dementia patient writes on the walls of his padded cell."

I started eating with the utensils on the table, and after a second, everyone started to dig into their own food.

"Newter," Melanie calle out, making Newter's head turn. "Go clean it up."

"But-"

"After yesterday's stunt, there are no buts. Get your ass up and go clean my office."

"...Fine."

The rest of the meeting was unexceptional. It might've been boring, if not for the fact that I was sharing conversation with parahuman mercenaries.

I spoke mostly with Emily and Gregor, about some of the more interesting things I've done since appearing in the world. They, in turn, shared a couple of riveting stories from their mercenary endeavors, with me occasionally requesting more details on particular events that interested me. Gregor seemed to be politely curious about me, although he never asked about more than what it seemed I was willing to share, which I appreciated.

I also learned - or rather, confirmed something that was a part of my research - that a part of the reason why Faultline's Crew drew so little attention was because most of the operations they'd done were out of town, often in adjacent states, sometimes as far as the midwest.

As the evening closed in, I excused myself, and Melanie followed me out. There was a short conversation about the lodging arrangements, and I received a key ring. It had the keys to small penthouse in a building only a block away from the Palanquin, as well as to several other apartments in the same building, for use by me and my friends as I saw fit.

I thanked her once again, and then I left, only a couple of minutes before the club was set to open for the evening.

Instead of immediately commuting home, though, I decided to visit the Wanderer's Library, and invite Alison to meet Faultline and the others, since they'd been interested in a meeting of that kind. It'd also be rather nice to let Phineas know about my success in finding a job.

I didn't look around for a docent, and I didn't even need much help with finding directions, as I was starting to get something of an instinctive feel for the Library. Or, at least, this section of it - I found my own way through the massive stacks and decorated rooms, until I reached Alison's personal study, its door cloistered and almost hidden between a bookshelf and a marble statue of a snake climbing up a fluted column.

One foot inside the study, though, I stopped walking immediately.

"Good evening, Robert," Alison - the one that I knew, the one I'd met in the Library when I originally arrived - said.

"Oh, hey Robbie!" said another, waving at me.

"Well, the cat's out of the bag now," said yet another, the one that I'd studied and drank whiskey with. It explained the differences in appearance.

I raised an eyebrow, and my mouth went open without any control. "...Huh?"

"There's a lot of us! We've been having an argument about letting you know about it, but it's a big secret," a fourth Alison said. "Not one worth keeping now, obviously! Now you're in the know, big boy! And there's more of us for you to love!" She grinned brilliantly, showing off a set of white teeth, reflecting the chandelier's light.

"Oh, by Mekhan, will you all shut up?!" a fifth Alison, this one with cybernetic elements covering her face and replacing some whole sections of her body. She looked at me, and introduced herself, "I am Black Queen Ohm. And those are - in the order you've stared at them - Black Queens Moribund, Excella, Arrivo, and... ugh, Pink."

"That's me!" the fourth, excitable and grinning Alison said, hopping up and waving at me.

"And we're all Black Queen," said Arrivo.

"This is what Phineas meant," I commented in slow realization. "You're all..."

"The same person from different universes," said Excella. "Yep." She popped the 'p.'

"All of us are Alison Chao, or at least some version of her," Ohm continued. "We are the Little Sisters, the Hand behind the Hand, the Black Queen on the board in a cosmic game of chess. And this is a secret trusted only to a select few members of the Serpent's Hand, which you are now expected to keep even under threat of torture and potentially death. Welcome to the real Serpent's nest, Robert. It only gets stranger from here."

Last edited: Dec 26, 2022

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Birdsie

Dec 25, 2022

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Threadmarks Network 3.x (Interlude: Colin)

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Dec 27, 2022

#461

Colin was out on patrol - or rather, on a short break in the middle of a patrol.

He was leaning against his motorbike in a secluded, trashy alleyway between long-condemned commercial buildings, its secure clamp keeping it rooted in place, and drinking coffee he'd picked up five minutes prior, from a flimsy styrofoam cup. And, patient as a hawk on a tree, he waited and listened, either for someone to call in an incident or for an incident to happen reasonably close for him to reach. It was always like that.

And slowly, mounting in his stomach and his arms, was that familiar, aching sensation of his body's incrementally rising tiredness. An entire day of physical exercise and exertion, a slow mental decline; one of calories burnt over doing math and refining designs in his workshop.

Normally, when eating, Colin preferred to simply have whatever was in the cafeteria. However, there was a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant he liked to visit, in northern Brockton, close to what a lot of normal people considered the bad part of town.

The staff there was exceptional at reading the customers, catering to them specifically - or at least to him. They allowed him to remain in his closed-off little world in the corner booth, approaching only to take and deliver his order. Barely an exchange of words, it shouldn't have counted as human interaction.

He always ordered the chili, because they didn't skimp on the meat, and it was filling - decent taste, and with lots of protein to compensate for his lifestyle. There was no wifi, but it was almost better without. It allowed him to take a step back and reassess his designs, think about them on a more objective basis, without the corrupting influence of a worldwide web. He simply sat, ate, and tapped out notes on his phone as ideas came. The experience was relaxing, almost blissful in a way he'd not experienced during any of his other meals.

A break in the middle of a patrol was different. Almost unsanctioned, he'd call in that he was getting coffee, or something of that sort, and then sit around in a secluded location - still focused on work, ready for the call when it came, but also distracting himself. With the coffee, or the small to-go order he'd picked up. Distracting himself from the work, from the existence surrounding it. His entire life, speeding through a tunnel, these moments were ones of the few left that he didn't completely devote to his career of heroism.

Now, he found the distraction - for once - wasn't working. Not correctly, at least.

His thoughts continued to stray back to work, to a specific aspect of it; to imagining himself back in the workshop, much later in the morning, and attempting to continue the work on the metamaterial samples they'd recovered front he collapsed factory. Only to lose steam after ten minutes, and decide to sleep. He'd be forced to wake up, do reports, manage his underlings, and then only have scant hours left - either to do tinkering, which required its own reports or to do the material analysis, which required double the paperwork.

Bureaucracy and its stupid forms frustrated him, sometimes. All the good work that could've been done, if only people didn't need him to dot every 'i,' and cross every 't.'

Colin was called to the scene personally, and his scanner managed to find remnants that indicated a potential tinker. There were a lot of interesting things their survey and assessment team had recovered: remnants of tempered wood and fibrils of cloth, piles of shattered glass and remnants of unanalyzed volatile chemicals, and more.

The metamaterial was remarkable, though. It came in the form of extremely fine white granules, mildly magnetic, sticking together a little too cleanly and sticking to other metallic objects as eagerly. Around ten percent chromium and one-point-five carbon, yet calorimetry and other tests were inconclusive. It didn't behave as it should have in relation to gravitational physics, and terrifyingly enough, his experiments were increasingly starting to suggest that proximity to human beings somehow affected it.

He wondered about its original form. It was clear that everything on the site had been artifacts of destroyed tinker devices - ones destroyed on purpose, and most likely by their creator, to cover up their tracks - and so the powder must've had some complete, original form. An enormous weapon or a suit of armor? The latter could've served as both.

He was in the process - only in his thoughts so far - of drafting a proposition to smelt the remnant powder into a more complete substance, so he could learn more about its properties. More importantly, so he could learn about the practicality of its inclusion in armor for himself and other PRT personnel.

Incorporation of something that made his armor lighter, yet harder-hitting would be invaluable in combat situations. Additional protection and offensive power, as his power armor already rendered him a lower class of Brute. This kind of inclusion would expand his direct combat potential in close quarters to the middle class at least: and that, in turn, would provide even more leverage to utilize the rest of his gadgets. And that wasn't to mention the potential benefit of his armor not being scratched up quite as badly anymore.

He sipped the coffee, then sighed in slight annoyance. His distraction proved hopeless. Always, he returned to the same damn contemplations.

"PRT console to Armsmaster. Come in."

"Armsmaster. 10-4," he replied, quickly downing the rest of his coffee and getting back on the motorbike. He crushed the styrofoam cup and tossed it into a nearby, open dumpster. "What's the situation?"

A single rev of the engine brought its onboard computer out of power-saving. He set the engine to silent mode, and his helmet's system linked with the bike's, charting optimal paths throughout the city, and estimating arrival times to potential endpoints.

"Armsmaster, we've received a reliable tip-off from a verified PRT source. There's an ongoing weapons deal on John Calvin Drive, at the container yard, looks to be Empire related," the console answered. After a second, the man added, "Bulk small arms. Expect the suspects to be equipped. There are at least ten on the scene, with a high likelihood of a parahuman element. We've assigned several support agents and Miss Militia to come your way. If needed, Dauntless is also on call."

Something about the information contained in the report made Armsmaster pause. The entire situation was abnormal to say the least.

Or, perhaps, not the situation itself, but the fact he - or anyone in general - was being called in to deal with it.

If you were the despotic king of your own nation and attempted to counter the criminal element that stole bread for sustenance by introducing the death penalty for stealing food, it'd have the opposite effect. Start cutting off every thief's head, and instead of escaping from the scene of the crime, they'll start fighting back ruthlessly against the policing element, since you're planning on killing them either way.

The only solution to such a dilemma is making basic sustenance more readily available to everyone in your country - solving crime by making all crime statistically less profitable than its equivalent in an upstanding and legal enterprise. An equivalent luxury, but less risk.

As something of an extension of that logic, in an ideal scenario, law enforcement agencies - even ones like the PRT - didn't involve themselves in directly combating organized crime on a nightly basis, or even participating in something as heated as a turf war, unless there was a calculated potential for sizable collateral damage or civilian casualties.

In that case, there'd be no choice but to act with as much suppression in mind as possible.

Of course, if an organization had determined a weakness or a known meeting spot, a mission would be organized to take advantage of that vulnerability - whether in the form of wiretapping any usable devices, planting spies, or even coming in and arresting the relevant actors once decent charges were found to be brought up against them. A lot of people, especially vigilantes and newbie heroes, often forgot that last part.

Even if damnably obvious, you couldn't simply arrest and charge a person for having an inked swastika on their body. Even if you witnessed someone committing assault, it was the word of the victim and yourself against that person: not always a form of conclusive evidence in a court, Armsmaster had found. A defendant in such a matter had to be found guilty beyond all reasonable doubt: two people could definitely band together and lie against someone, so in many cases, doubt could exist about that.

Still. Outright warfare on the gangs often provoked a sharp response or at least forced the criminals to adapt to using more brutal tactics. So, why not look the other way in this case? The Empire was arming itself up, ostensibly to deal a little better with Coil's men downtown. Why attempt to prevent this from happening?

It doesn't matter. It's clear something's changed about our strategy. I'll have to talk with the Director about this, Colin thought with slight annoyance - an annoyance that he'd not been informed, and that he'd not caught onto the occurrence of the change.

A Protectorate team leader not even fully in the know of his own city's standard operating procedure on criminal groups. Damn embarrassing.

"I'll take that support from Dauntless. Call him in," he ordered. Dauntless was something of an inconvenience in the long-term, but overall useful when it came down to it.

And despite Colin's deeply hidden complaints, the man also knew how to properly handle a sticky situation. He wouldn't hesitate like one of the Wards. Especially for drawing away fire.

In five minutes, he'd reached the vicinity of the rally point.

An overlook from a neighboring avenue, next to an old church. There was a dilapidated stretch of road nearby, its street lights almost flickering because of general disrepair. An intersection connected the road with an overpass and another road leading in a different direction. A little open, but decent for a mustering ground in an active situation.

He'd arrived almost at the same time as Dauntless and Miss Militia, altogether with the support unit. There were almost ten of them in total - hardly enough to call a numerical superiority against their foes. Still, they had enough parahuman force to lead the armored and equipped agents to a sure victory in an altercation. They'd need more, though - an entire clean-up effort, and manpower to secure the scene once it was clear.

"Militia, call in the BBPD," he ordered. "Inform them of the situation. I expect we'll need someone to help secure the suspects."

She nodded and walked off.

Sharing credit in law enforcement agencies was always a tough proposition, but Colin didn't care, not in this scenario. He preferred to do this clear, and cooperation was always a decent spin of its own: he'd rather share a portion of the spotlight for an amazing victory than have complete shame cast upon him for enacting a terrible fiasco.

After that, Colin drew a halberd with a scanning array from his bike, and he and Dauntless split away to scout ahead. The deal was happening in a storage yard, its chainlink fence surrounded by piles of silt excavated from dredging operations near the shore. The yard itself was filled with colored containers, once containing heavy cargo and industrial machinery, but now mostly empty, or full of rust and worthless junk.

"I'd like to go into this more prepared," he lamented, even as he started to scan and assess the site from afar. He detected at least five gunmen on the outside, standing overwatch, wielding assault rifles - the sort that paramilitaries used. That meant the other half was somewhere deeper into the site, perhaps already conducting the deal.

They didn't seem to have explosives on hand, at least. If the fire support teams managed to drive up one of the vans to the front, it'd act as decently reliable cover, and as a potential retreat position. The other could stand in readiness for a pursuit.

A pursuit would be hardly the ideal situation, though, especially across the nightly streets of Brockton Bay. It'd be much better to prevent one.

"Are you sure the data from the console is reliable?" Dauntless asked.

"Why wouldn't it be?"

"I'm only asking."

Colin contemplated the question.

"Maybe, but there's no reason to reconsider. We've got orders to stop this proceeding and apprehend the suspects," he answered. "For now, let's just assume what our information source said was true: around ten or so men, with a high likelihood of parahumans."

Dauntless nodded. Then, he remarked, "Not like you at all, to be so trusting."

"I only want the night to be over," Colin sighed.

"Even more not like you, trying to squeeze out of an operation." Dauntless actually sounded worried about him for a second. "Is everything good, Armsmaster?"

"Splendid," Colin bitterly replied. "Focus on your work."

Dauntless seemed to snap back to immediate attention, chastised.

Good. Focus on studying the damn entry zone.

"The police console replied," Miss Militia said, approaching, with a light sniper rifle strapped to her arm, "They'll be here in ten or fifteen."

"A quick response, huh?" Dauntless asked bitterly.

"Just as well. It gives us enough time to clear out the scene," Colin answered. He turned around and started addressing everyone in the group - including the PRT agents, doing the final checks on their ammo and utilities. "Dauntless and I are going to act as the frontmen, drawing away as much fire as possible from the rest of you. Militia, you're laying down suppressive fire. I want grenades, lots of foam, and whatever non-lethal munitions you have that can disable or disperse large groups. If you can get them out of cover, all the better."

She nodded.

"The rest of you, tag whoever you can. This is an Empire deal, so we are set to expect any of theirs, especially in Krieg's cadre."

That was a lot of potential suspects - it only crossed out Hookwolf, Stormtiger, and Cricket. Fenja and Menja were somewhat unlikely, and Kaiser was almost obviously not going to be personally overseeing a deal with this much risk. He'd send in someone he trusted. From experience, Colin felt there'd be at least one villain to deal with - most likely Krieg.

"There's another thing," Colin continued, "I didn't notice any vehicles parked outside. That means they drove everything in. I'd like one team to ready for pursuit, and the other to drive to the front and make some cover with the vehicles we have on hand. If we can take a minute to barricade the major roads, or maybe set down spikes, that'd be perfect. Can you let the BBPD know to do that once they arrive?"

"Will do, sir," replied Hanks, one of the sergeants.

"Let's move in then. Dauntless," Colin said with a nod, putting a leg over his bike and switching its settings. A section of the metal panels on the front moved to angle themselves specifically for frontal bullet deflection, like the glacis plate on a tank. "I'll drive in first, and you after me. Focus on the men standing out front, I'll penetrate deeper in and prevent anyone from escaping or coming in to reinforce. If I need support, I'll call over the radio."

"Understood," Dauntless replied.

"Commence operation." The mouthpiece of Armsmaster's helmet slid over his jaw, and he revved the engine, driving forward and off the hilltop. He was almost completely weightless for a second, carried through the empty air by forward momentum, before slamming against the pavement beneath with a loud noise. It drew the attention of the guards in the front.

Halberd in one hand, still driving, he aimed carefully for one of the chainlinks up front and fired a steel cylinder. It struck between the links, stuck and unmoving, like a pebble lodged in a crack. Another end of the cylinder fired out from the original position with a tether, and wrapped around the arm of one of the gunmen, preventing him from firing. As it reeled in, he smashed into another gangster, collapsing the both of them.

Colin revved his bike's engine once more, as loud as a nightmare, and drove right between another two, clotheslining them by extending his halberd horizontally for a second, and making it easier for Dauntless to handle the remnant. The last one, watching him drive by helplessly, reached for a radio and started reporting the event.

As if that's going to help your friends.

As he drove past the first row of containers, to where the deal was happening, Colin realized the enormity of his mistake. Not one villain, and not two, but several.

He weaved and turned, avoiding a thrust of Menja's spear, and drove behind a container to not die immediately to a sudden hail of concentrated gunfire from a pack of Empire gangsters, including Alabaster. The other villains he'd spotted in the middle of the open space were Fenja, Krieg, and Crusader. And then someone else, a masked man in a white-yellow costume he didn't recognize: an out-of-town villain, potentially from the organization they were buying arms from.

"Armsmaster here," he radioed, "Fenja, Menja, Krieg, Crusader, and Alabaster are on-scene, alongside one unknown parahuman. I repeat, we've got no less than six hostile parahumans."

"Copy that," Dauntless said. "I'm coming in, half a minute behind you."

It was less than ideal. Still, he'd dealt with worse.

Several of Crusader's copy wraiths came out from the container, stepping around him, one of them even floating overhead. Colin immediately ducked and rolled off his bike, incapable of pulling out with it. One of the Crusaders almost caught his foot with a spear, but he evaded the attack narrowly, and gracefully came to a stand, several feet away.

Frowning, he realized both of the enlarged sisters were stepping around, already as tall as a small building and looking down at him. Krieg stood on Fenja's shoulder, holding onto her neck for stability with one hand, and seemed to be grinning down at Colin smugly.

Colin had prepared several contingencies for the Empire's parahumans, and had some them on hand, but he didn't have a working one-size-fits-all solution for almost half the capes in the Empire attacking him simultaneously. This seemed like he'd be forced to attrition himself against them until the rest of the support team came in. More than doable, with some of his suit's new features, as long as he fought defensively.

"You screwed up!" Krieg shouted down. "Did you really think you could get down in here? It doesn't work like that, Armsmaster. Now, you're gonna get fucked. Who wants to go first?"

That's when a thick fog started to coalesce around the ground, flowing in past the containers, and Colin started to fear that he might've missed one more of the capes.

Just my fucking luck. I need that support, stat.

Soon, when it didn't lash out, Colin breathed out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding. It turned out that it was normal fog. He looked at the assembled villains and noticed that its appearance mystified everyone as much as it had worried him. If they didn't set this up, then-

"Criminals! Evil-doers... Evil monsters who lurk in the shadow! For the last time have you dared to show your faces here!"

The mysterious voice was overly loud and superbly dramatic, and superhumanly deep - it drew immediate and total attention to itself, almost defusing the whole situation because of how unexpected it was, and making everyone look around in search of its source. However, it seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.

"I shall not stand for your villainy! It's a most repugnant disease!"

"A stranger?" Krieg cast the question into the air.

They're worried. They don't know this person.

Colin considered this a favorable turn of circumstances. The confusion was to his advantage, so he started looking around, attempting to locate the source of the voice, at the same time as he measured how far away Dauntless was, and which target from the Empire's capes it'd be best to attack.

"Now, prepare to face my wrath!"

"What? Whose fucking wrath? Who the hell is speaking?!" Crusader shouted the question, looking around the corner of the container stack.

"I am... THE SPECTER!"

One of the containers near the top of the stack opened - suddenly, with a sound as loud and rattling as a gunshot - to reveal a black man with a wide-brimmed hat and long, swishing cape. Black, in this context, meaning that he seemed to drink in the very light, a figure of near-perfect darkness.

He held out one hand and leaped down, and the containers surrounding the one he'd stood inside toppled one by one - falling down on Fenja and Menja's heads. Krieg screamed as he was thrown off his mount's shoulder, and down to the earth below. The giantesses weathered the assault with grimaces and grunts of pain and ended up having to step away.

Another of the containers almost crushed Crusader, forcing him to weave and run between them in a sudden panic. One of them did crush Alabaster, who screamed for a second before it slammed down into him with a wet crack and the sound of bending metal.

They shook the earth as they fell - an avalanche of massive steel consuming the Empire's capes.

Colin was speechless. His bike was down there, too. It had probably survived the process of several tons of steel falling down on it, but only barely if so.

"Fucking hell!" Crusader shouted, coming out of the virtual forest of fallen storage containers, surrounded by several of his wraiths, already producing more.

The man who'd called himself THE SPECTER suddenly stepped out from between the containers, and struck one of Crusader's ghosts in the throat - it dissipated - before turning and kicking a ghost into another one, dusting both of them into dissipating ethereal energy. He dashed past them, punching Crusader in the breastplate with enough force to make him fall back, even as he attempted to desperately fend off THE SPECTER with a spear.

As this happened, Fenja and Menja, having observed the development of the situation, picked out Krieg's barely conscious body from the containers. Fenja took him and started running, headed north, while Menja remained and began to step in their direction. She hesitated, and then started running after Fenja, too.

"Fenja's running," Colin radioed in. "Northbound, with Krieg in her arms. Menja's after her. Pursuit team, assume a state of readiness. My bike's inactive and inaccessible right now. Militia, go with them. They'll be needing you. I'm putting you in charge of the pursuit."

"10-4," she radioed back in acknowledgment.

Dauntless reached them in that moment. "What's happening? Armsmaster?"

"The Empire's villains attacked me after I ran into them," Colin answered Dauntless, "And then that man, THE SPECTER- I, what?"

Dauntless stared at him as well. He'd dramatically whispered the name.

"What?" Dauntless questioned breathlessly.

"THE SPECTER?" Armsmaster asked. He covered his own mouth with a flinch - he'd whispered the question dramatically. A mind-influencing effect?

"Yes, I am indeed!" THE SPECTER declared from across the battlefield, throwing a rusted, old bicycle into Crusader's face. The man moaned out in pain as the length of its top tube struck him in the throat and knocked him down to the floor.

He rolled over, attempting to scramble away, but THE SPECTER caught him by the foot, pulled him in closer, and punched him in the back of the head with caveman-like force, enough to knock him out cold. He then looked towards Colin and Dauntless. "I am an ally of justice, THE SPECTER! I have come here to aid you in your time of need!"

"Dauntless, we're under a master effect," Colin instructed the man immediately, raising his halberd in case force was necessary. "No matter what, don't speak his name."

"Whose? THE SPECTER's?" Dauntless asked, and then immediately realized the problem here: "What the fuck?"

"Yes, now don't say it again."

Under normal circumstances, Colin would've ordered Dauntless to move in and secure the rest of the scene: the unknown cape had probably already fled, as had most of the other dealers, but they would've left behind some equipment and merchandise that needed someone to keep an eye on it while the rest of the team advanced. These were not normal circumstances, though. The man in front of them took priority.

"Unidentified parahuman, step towards me!" Colin called out.

"Are you sure that's the right approach?" Dauntless questioned. As he often did, damn the man. Colin didn't need someone questioning his calls in the middle of all this.

"But I have identified myself! I am THE SPECTER!" the man declared, almost poutily. To Colin's surprise, though, he complied and moved forward to meet with them. "I have aided you in apprehending one of these foul devils, now we should chase after the others."

"We're already on that," Dauntless remarked.

"Your name," Colin said immediately. "I assume you are the reason we're whispering it. Is there any way you could stop having us say it so dramatically?"

"I am afraid not," THE SPECTER said, almost sounding contemplative. "It's human nature to fear punishment for wickedness, and so my name is whispered from every sentient lip. Fear not, however, agents of justice! I am on your side. I am the one who comes when aid at hand is needed: he who heeds the clarion calls of the siren justice and her sister fairness; he who ensures the world's stability! I am..."

"THE SPECTER?" Dauntless asked, in yet another clear violation of Colin's order. Colin decided not to push him on this, though, since it was almost inevitable they'd need to refer to the parahuman again at some point, and according to his own testimony, there was no way to stop the dramatic whispering compulsion. "Yeah, we get it."

"Oh? That's good," the man said, suddenly in a much different - far more casual voice - and continued, "Anyway, do you need me for anything else? Because, like, I've had this soccer match I wanted to see later tonight, and you said you had those other guys handled?"

Colin and Dauntless looked at each other. There was an unspoken agreement about which protocol to assume, now. The man clearly wasn't hostile, and that meant he was probably a fresh trigger. Since he'd attacked the Empire that meant - despite conspicuously being hidden in one of the nearby containers - he wasn't on the side of the dealers. And since neither of them had ever heard of someone like THE SPECTER, this must've been his first night out as an independent hero. Protocol was clear on what to do from here.

"Are you a new parahuman?" Dauntless was the first to ask.

"New? Hardly," the man said, still in his casual, non-dramatic voice, surprising them both with his answer. "I've been at it for years."

"For years? I find that difficult to believe, with no offense meant, sir. How come we've never heard of you, THE SPECTER?" Dauntless asked, then tried again: "THE SPECTER. THE SPECTER. Damn it, I can't get rid of THE in THE SPECTER."

The man in front of them chuckled. "'Tis only natural." He placed a single hand on his chin. "As for your objection, I do not know what to tell you. I've served the natural order of things for many a year, now. Ever since the enforcement of law and justice was necessary."

That sounded doubtful in Colin's eye. The PRT surely would've detected a cape as dramatic and noticeable as THE SPECTER operating on US soil, especially when said parahuman compulsively caused those around him to whisper his name. The effect was incredibly grating, Colin was forced to admit. If its purpose was psychological warfare on the criminal element, it would certainly be effective in the long-term.

"Go secure Crusader," Colin told Dauntless. "I'll take things from here."

Dauntless nodded and moved away with a pair of handcuffs.

Colin, then, continued, addressing THE SPECTER, "If you don't mind, I'd like you to come in - or at least stay around - with us for questioning. About what you've been doing here, and-"

"What do you mean?" THE SPECTER asked, seemingly confused.

"You were hiding in a container," Colin clarified.

"Oh, yes. What's strange about that?"

"Why..." Colin, for a second, struggled to formulate a question regarding the subject. It seemed so obvious it was almost incomprehensible to him that someone could be confused by it, "Why were you hiding in a container?"

"To ambush the criminals."

"So you knew there'd be a crime?"

"Oh, of course not. I only arrived when you needed help."

Colin blinked under his helmet. "I don't understand. Are you capable of teleportation? Did you move into the container once I was attacked?"

"That's correct, Armsmaster." A straight answer, at least. Colin could appreciate that, although he was puzzled at the man's repertoire of shown abilities. At minimum, he possessed some kind of personalized photokinesis to make himself look so black, slightly enhanced condition and coordination, an effect that forced people to whisper his name dramatically - and according to his own testimony, also teleportation and perhaps some kind of mild precognition or danger sense. And extreme combat skill, from what Colin had observed of his brief fight with Crusader.

"And how did you know I was in danger?" he continued the questioning.

THE SPECTER actually seemed uncomfortable for a second - the first time Colin noticed such an emotion from him. "I simply did." He dipped back into his low, dramatic voice for the span of one sentence: "It's what I do as THE SPECTER."

His powers don't make any sense. Too many of them. Is he a grab-bag? If so, he would've had someone else he triggered alongside, and I don't know any other parahumans with a similar set of powers.

"Well, if you have such a vast repertoire of powers and skills, then you could be of tremendous help in the future," Colin admitted and spoke a little flatteringly. Although the man did admittedly distract the Empire during a crucial moment, he'd also destabilized the situation and caused some of the Empire's members to run away - but Colin decided not to draw attention to this fact. Better use the carrot than the stick, here, at least for now. "Would you be interested in working together with the Protectorate? We could offer you a position, were you to make some concessions."

"Oh, I appreciate the offer, I really do - however, I am not interested in a job, Armsmaster," THE SPECTER said, waving a hand. He started to slip back towards his dramatic voice, "I do what I do for the satisfaction of seeing justice done; to render aid to the needy, and to prevent evil from spreading its vile roots. I shall come when your need be true... but THE SPECTER works for no one!"

With a dramatic cape flourish, the man disappeared entirely.

Colin backpedaled in shock, and scanned the environment with the implements in his halberd - vibrational sonar, infrared scanner, and several more esoteric systems - and detected nothing suggesting THE SPECTER's continued presence, not even hints of it. He must've teleported away.

"Armsmaster?" Miss Militia only started to approach once she noticed the conversation was over. Dauntless must've shared a word with her about the new cape. "Who was that?"

"That... was THE SPECTER. I take it your pursuit didn't go well?"

She shook her head. Then, stared at him, for the dramatic whisper.

"Well, we've captured Crusader and Alabaster, so I suppose that will have to do," Colin said, and set moving towards the crashed containers. "I'll fish my bike out. I need to drive back and make an immediate report about this. The Director will want to know."

She nodded. "Do you want us to clean up the rest of this?"

"If you could," he muttered, thinking about what happened.

Last edited: Dec 27, 2022

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Birdsie

Dec 27, 2022

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Dec 29, 2022

#473

Darkness swirled around me, almost like diaphanous ribbons of black and violet, interspersed with the crackling fireflies in my eyes.

A neon madness surrounded me, and deafeningly loud music emanated from every wall and stretch of floor, as though the world itself had become an incessant vibration: dull and repetitive.

Incomprehension dawned, like a hammer risen in the hands of a steel god. Something clicked in my mind, a distant memory.

"I should warn you, oh-nine-nine. This procedure will put your body under immense stress."

And then, acceptance. Followed by absolute pain, searingly bright, like a drill piercing an innocent skull, locked in place as the mechanism rotated in deeper and deeper. A thick spurt of warm blood, like hot chocolate on a cold night. A vertigo like dancing in a dimension with no gravity and with no legs.

I felt an unbearable cold.

I came to a moment later, vomiting outside the Palanquin in an alleyway, and feeling an ounce and a half more lucid than before. Immediately, like a man being mugged seizing the pistol from his robber, I dissolved some of the alcohol in my bloodstream, focusing on the brain. It caused a sensation of dizziness, because of the contrast in my body. As the inner ear balanced out, my thoughts started to make sense.

I felt uncomfortably warm.

"Robert, holmes, you cool?" someone asked.

"How much 'id I drink?" I asked in shock, slurring the words a little, and then answered my own question, "Christ 'n a fuckin' pogo stick, how 'e fuck 'm I not dead?"

I was almost, although not quite, over .38% blood alcohol content, enough that I should've been afraid of potential respiratory distress. This was the level where - after one more drink - you fell into a coma. My heart was arrythmiac, beating out of tune. My entire organism was like discordant clockwork, the individual gears refusing to turn at the same time. Nothing made sense. There wasn't even a semblance of order.

I looked back, swaying, and I saw - standing there, in the doorway, of all people - Arturo, looking at me with concern. "How," I breathed out, "in fuck did I get so drunk?"

"Hey, I've no idea," he said. "I only came to pick you up. You texted me half an hour ago, asked to come walk you home, 'cause you were afraid you might not find the way back."

Fuck.

Memories came rushing back to me. It started with a celebration.

I'd completed my first job as a part of Faultline's Crew. A minor one, as far as mercenary work is concerned. A corporate bigshot hired us to perform some corporate espionage and controlled sabotage out in New York. So I'd destroyed some rather expensive computer equipment alongside Faultline, while the others looked through the paper copies of the files and scanned them. I estimated the damages as being around a hundred thousand.

Tonight, we'd returned, and Faultline - Melanie - ordered a celebration.

"I did something I wasn't supposed to," I slurred, as I came towards Arturo. He caught me, and hooked my arm across his back, slowly carrying me forward. "I enhanced alcohol, and I drank it. I shouldn't have done that, 'Turo. I really, really shouldn't've done that."

"Shit." He looked at me with concern. "Will you be alright, cabron? Do you need an ambulance?"

"No. Just lemme sleep it off."

"Are you sure?"

"Brother," I said, pronouncing the word more like, 'bröther,' in my slurred voice. "Listen, if there was a cause for concern, I'd tell you, okay? I'm only panicked 'cuz the hangover's gonna be a real bitch to deal with in the morning... Huh, or can I delete hangovers?"

I didn't - in the moment - have any idea behind the biochemical mechanics of a hangover, or alcohol fatigue in general. I'd never drank this much in a single sitting, as far as I could remember. If I could delete hangovers, it'd definitely be much less of a cause for concern. I'd simply do that and spend my paycheck in peace.

The alcohol in my blood was dissipating, molecule by molecule, into harmless compounds that didn't have such a strongly caustic effect - on either the mind or other tissues. I started to feel my breaths clear. My mind was starting to actually think on a level beyond the shallow surface, digging into the complexities of what a tremendously stupid thing I'd done. I started to feel the shadows of regret, and something almost like curiosity, at the short flashback of memories I was struck with before I completely lost contact with reality.

"Newter egged me on," I commented, remembering the event - it happened not even an hour ago. "To drink more. I'm gonna kill that little twerp."

"Don't do anything irreversible, cabron."

The streets of Brockton were cold and unwelcoming, so late at night. The season was already in early April, yet I could feel chills in the wind, running through me like spikes of ice. I remembered that I had a jacket, which I'd left inside the staff room, lying on the couch. In the moment, I decided it probably wasn't worth it to venture back for it.

I coughed a little, head cleared, and stepped away from Arturo. I burped, releasing some of the uncleared chemicals refluxing and dancing in my stomach. A near-flatulent detonation of gasses consisting primarily of carbon monoxide, some oxygen, and a little miscellaneous content. I decided that's what I'd refer to as alcoholism from now on: miscellaneous content. A beautiful way to mentally avoid responsibility for one's own dumbass actions.

"I'm not actually gonna kill Newter," I told him, as we continued walking.

"I dunno, holmes, you sounded angry."

"Sometimes I do. Especially when I'm drunk. Or concussed."

"Aye, I remember you when you were still walking around in those cute slippers everywhere." He laughed, much to my spiking irritation. I'd hoped that getting a penthouse with an amazing view might present a future where I didn't have to remember, or be reminded, of that particularly depressing episode of my life. "Not so long ago, actually."

I considered his words, and it was accurate. I hadn't really even known Arturo, or the others, for a lot of time. A month or so - a little bit less, even.

And yet, they felt like close family - like cousins, or in Lynn and Jack's case, like my aunt and uncle, who simply happen to live in the same town.

"Mhm. Don't remind me about that whole thing," I said. I'd left some alcohol in my body, enough to feel tipsy, so as to not completely annul the night's efforts. I'll be damned if I drink only to sober myself for no reason as I came back home. "I'm depressed enough as I am."

"Ah, depressed. Over what, Robert? You've got an awesome job, superpowers, and a good house and paycheck. That's a spot better than what you started with."

"True. I'll concede on that."

"Yeah, holmes, you have to approach things holistically - if you view life as a reel of events happening separately, of course you're gonna be down in the dumps," he said, almost like a wiseman lecturing a village youngling. "If you view things holistically, though - as a sum of elements - then you'll see that it ain't so bad."

"A holistic approach makes no sense. The only holism I've ever seen in the world is alcoholism, and that ain't pretty."

"Awh, come out with the jokes."

"I don't know," I admitted. "I think your opinion might work for you, but not for everyone. There are a lot of people who see life in general as depressing, but might look forward to particular events. It varies and depends on the psychology of the subject."

"'Psychology of the subject,'" he mimicked me with a petulant voice. "Such a scientist you are, Rob."

"It's how the world works," I answered him. "You and I, we're anomalies standing on a piece of cosmic driftwood called a planet, itself a cosmic anomaly, of particles choosing to stick together. It floats around a massive ball of combusting gas that'll eventually burn itself out, leaving nothing behind. We won't get to see that, though, since we'll long have disappeared, our names not even remembered. There'll have been enough time for our graves to erode away, for the dust that once composed our bodies to have turned into clumps of earth, from which a plant derived nutrients, only to be eaten by an animal, that'd eventually be eaten by someone else. That's how the world works, Arturo. And it makes me sad and depressed."

At least - that was how this world worked. There was the Wanderer's Library, a place that acted as the multiverse's ultimate hub, and it held the promises of Ways to other places within. Better yet, it contained ancient tomes that had the Knocks to those Ways, and records of where I could travel. The idea made me feel a giddiness in my stomach.

I honestly planned on leaving. Nothing was tying me down to Earth Bet and its shithole metaphysics, except several people - but people were something moveable, and there was nothing really tying down Jack, Lynn, Arturo, Harriet, or Emmanuel here either. I could find some idyllic post-scarcity paradise that'd never end, if I could locate mentions of one in a book somewhere, and then we'd set out on a pilgrimage to reach it. A shining answer.

However, an undertaking like that didn't come free. It'd take effort and time, and I'd probably have to move through intermediary worlds to reach where I wanted. Or else, I'd have to expend effort. For now, I wanted to live here and prepare - acquire some experience with my power, and learn to use magic from the Black Queens. Then I'd collect some books and sit down and get to work. Until then - until everyone was ready to make the journey - I needed to provide for them, and make sure that nothing went wrong.

I looked at Arturo and considered sharing that plan with him, to see what he'd think of living in a paradise, but he replied to my previous sentence before I could.

"Shit, man, you talking like that makes me depressed. Let's cut the topic, alright?" he asked, and then added, "I'm here to support you, but I don't wanna catch whatever it is you have."

I burst out into sudden laughter. "Wait, you think existentialism is a disease?"

"Cabron - fuck, I don't know. All I know is I don't want it."

I continued laughing, unable to contain it. "Wow!"

I decided to comply with his request, though, and didn't bring up the depressing nature of reality again. I changed the topic, instead, to something a little more casual.

"I have my paycheck now," I said. "I think we could afford to send Emmanuel to school with it. Assuming the kid's interested."

Arturo craned an eyebrow at me. "Really? You'd do that for him?"

"Obviously. I wouldn't have brought it up, otherwise."

"Well, that's something to discuss with Em himself, and with Jack. He'll need legal parents. If you show up without good papers, social services might take him away."

"As if I'd let them," I scoffed. "They were so good at their jobs that living with homeless people was a preferable alternative. Fuck Brockton Bay and fuck its social services."

He looked at me with a frown but didn't say anything.

As we walked, I continued to consider what else I could spend my paycheck on. A visit to the cinema, to watch some movies. For some inexplicable reason, I wanted to purchase a guitar and start learning how to play. A part of me felt an urge to donate some of the money to people who needed it - but then, I already was taking care of several people who needed it, and about whom I cared a lot more than randoms I'd never met. Still, a lot of possibilities remained, a lot of them valid enough that I couldn't rule them out.

I didn't really have enough to buy my own car, and that was a shame, since I could really use one. Hm, unless I paid in installments.

Come morning, I knocked on Harriet's door.

"Mhfm, Robert?" she asked me quietly, dressed in pajamas and blearily rubbing at an eye. I was already showered and dressed. "What time is it?"

"Almost ten o'clock," I said. "How about you get dressed and shower? We'll eat out, my treat. Last time, you tortured me with the clothes shopping, so now it's my turn."

She sighed deeply, tremulously, like a collapsing building. "Fine. Just wait ten minutes."

After twenty minutes, she was done showering and dressing. She closed the door, fixed up her ponytail, and looked at me suspiciously. "Didn't you get super drunk last night? Art mentioned something like that. Shouldn't you be in super duper pain right now?"

"I can cure hangovers," I said, having discovered this myself. Alcohol itself was the primary ingredient in a hangover, so its removal - and some cleansing and scrubbing of the systems affected - would fix up the blood sugar level and help stomach emptying. That meant no diarrhea, abdominal pains, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, weakness, and other symptoms.

"Look at miracle man over here," she huffed, then followed me once I started walking. "So, what are we doing today?"

"We'll be picking out a car for me."

She stared at me for a second - perhaps surprised that I possessed such financial security at last - but didn't overly protest. Instead of a complex breakfast, we picked up some fresh bagels at a small-time local bakery and traveled to the vicinity of a local automotive dealership.

Immediately, one of the cars standing on a raised, round steel pedestal in the middle of the dealership - a true beauty out of a fable - jumped out at me. A kitted-out Lamborghini Diablo. I analyzed its specs with the Clockworks, stunned into something that would've been speechlessness, had I also not felt compelled to list its exact capabilities.

"4435 mm length. Wheel base 2650 mm. 100 liter fuel capacity. 5704 cubic centimeters displacement. Six-speed manual transmission. Spark-ignition 4-stroke turbocharged direct injection naturally aspirated 40-valve V-12 engine. 446 feet-pounds of torque. 523 horsepower. Top speed 320 kilometers per hour. Zero to one hundred kilometers per hour in four-point-eight seconds."

"It's so fucking perfect. To think..." I sniffled, containing my turbulent emotions, "To think humans made this. Perhaps there is hope for our species still, after all."

"You can't afford it, though, can you?" Harriet needled me.

"Not yet. One day, though, it'll be mine."

"One day, you might actually make sense."

The entire outing, aside from entertainment value, turned out to be fruitless. I didn't end up buying anything, mostly because I'd overestimated my paycheck's worth, and underestimated the price of cars and insurance - installment options were alright, but I didn't have enough money to be willing to risk even that, at my current juncture. There were other, more immediate things to spend money on than a car. At least Harriet seemed to have some fun at my expense, bemoaning the fact that I couldn't afford any of the pieces on display.

"How about you make your own car?" she proposed, as we were returning - on foot, rather than by bus. The setting sun made for an interesting backdrop to the conversation. "There's enough scrap laying around that you could repair."

I considered that. The offer was an attractive one - I could probably make engines and systems way superior to anything that mundane engineering, no matter how refined, could form. "Do you really think it's possible?"

"Sure. Tinkers way worse than you have tried and succeeded. Just look at, like, Squealer or something. Actually, maybe don't look at her. She's totally psycho," Harriet mused. She looked at me and smiled. "I'd be happy to help you gather parts, Rob. Gotta make myself useful somehow..."

"A little tinkering project, huh?"

"Sure!" Harriet chirped, skipping ahead of me. "Call it a test of your skills. Or experimentation, whatever. It'll be cool to see what kind of car you make. It might be a decent, normal-looking car, or it might be an eldritch abomination concealed within metal. Just like those racist gloves of yours."

"Well, they used to be shoes, until they weren't."

"I'm glad they aren't." She laughed. "They were hideous."

I smiled, and considered the proposition - making my own car. There was something... harmonic about that, something that really resonated with me. Not only did it seem like an interesting hobby, especially for someone with my power, it'd also help the city by cleaning it of junk and excess, and help my wallet by not depriving it of money that could be spent on other, more useful things. Like, say, college courses that I could use, or working toward the nebulous and odd goal of finding a Way to another, kinder world than this.

"Although," Harriet cut in, suddenly back on track, "We'd need, like, a garage to store your project. So maybe you could lease something out with that money of yours. Or we can hide it in a scrapyard."

A scrapyard. It reminded me of the scrapyard that I'd woken up in. There were a lot of broken-down cars there, come to think of it, and that meant a lot of spare parts that I could fix up with the Clockworks - and that meant a lot of potential avenues in making a car from scratch.

"I think I already even have an idea of where I might find some parts..."

Last edited: Dec 29, 2022

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Birdsie

Dec 29, 2022

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Jan 1, 2023

#476

"Robert, do you suppose Legend can move faster than light?"

"No," I answered, pressing a dust-matted hand against the metal.

After a second of analysis, I pulled away and cleaned my hand with a rag, frowning.

"Really? Why not?"

I reached out with an open hand towards Harriet. "Dog bone wrench, swivel head. Gimme."

"Which one's that?" She looked into the toolbox.

"It looks like a dog bone, and it has a swiveling head."

She managed to hand me the correct one, surprisingly. After placing it securely on the next part of the assembly, I started turning over and over, exerting every strand of muscle in my arm, tightening as much as I could, until there was simply no more hope of securing it further. The wrench's construction made the application of torque easier, and I was naturally strong. The entire block creaked as industrial steel bent under force.

One of the Palanquin's full-time employees, Alfonso, owned a shabby, tumbledown garage in the suburbs of the docks.

It was a dirty side alley deal with a padlocked door. The sort that you left alone and untouched for around twenty years, stuffed thoroughly with old clutter and bric-a-brac, and which the owners reclaimed and auctioned off some further years down the line.

It was about large enough to fit an entire car inside with room to spare. For a straight hundred bucks, Alfonso was alright with me using the place, and his toolbox, to tinker myself a car. He sounded supportive of the idea, even, and offered some decent - if unsolicited - advice.

Harriet sat next to me - dressed in white sneakers, ripped jeans, and a red cardigan - on a padded stool. Every now and then, she'd take a sip from her bottle of orange Minute Maid, annoying me with the subtle, irritating sound of squeezed plastic. I was kneeling, screwing nuts and bolts, as the Clockworks couldn't be wholly trusted to perform certain tasks - the failures of earlier attempts cluttered around the corner of the workshop, small pieces of conjoined steel, and useless hood ornaments.

"So," Harriet returned on topic, "why can't he?"

"Because nothing can travel faster than light. It's how the universe works," I said, returning the wrench. She grabbed it, looked at it, and played around with it for a second, before putting it away. I continued formulating my response, "In any hypothetical system, there could be relativity, causality, or faster-than-light travel - you can easily justify having two out of the three, but not all three of them at once. Otherwise, the universe breaks."

She looked at me like I'd said something weird. "C'mon, there are people who can teleport, Rob!"

"Then because parahumans have limits," I said. "And teleportation doesn't necessarily indicate faster-than-light motion. Even if you were moving at lightspeed, you'd still be able to make it to the Moon and back in only a couple of seconds. Any teleporter moving within the Earth's limits isn't even relativistic. Unless you can move from the Earth to the Moon and back in less than a second, you probably aren't moving faster than light."

"Damn, light is that slow?" she asked in a kind of bland, muted shock - leaning out of her chair. She cocked her head to the side, red hairs flung, like a coronal discharge from a star. "How did those NASA astronauts manage to communicate if there was such a delay?"

"If I had to guess? Good comms protocol. That's why any mission to Mars is a pipe dream, even putting aside the issue of the Simurgh. Not only do you have to reach the planet itself, but you have to mobilize vast resources to construct habitats. If an emergency happened, it'd take at least some twenty minutes for the data itself to reach Earth, probably more, since the colonists would be incentivized to include as much information in the report as possible so Earth knows what to expect. If they didn't, Earth might return a message requesting more information - another twenty minutes wasted, and an hour will have passed by the time the reply of the colonists finally arrived."

I looked around the room for anything else - any knick-knack or piece of steel that I could use - and sighed in frustration.

"Nothing more we can do. It seems we'll have to grab more spares." I stood and wiped my hands on the same rag I'd been using.

"Scrapyard visit time?" she asked.

"Scrapyard visit time," I said with a nod.

After thoroughly locking up the workshop and dropping the key in my brand-new brown leather wallet for safety, Harriet and I walked in the direction of the scrapyard. The same scrapyard that I'd awoken in, coincidentally. It simply happened to be conveniently close to Alfonso's garage.

It stood in front of me, at the end of the street, across the sidewalk - standing from one corner of the block to the other, and extending some ways in. An open chainlink gate with a small modular building, and barren lands chock-full of abandoned treasures; crushed wrecks of vehicles, ancient barrels, and other devices. I frowned at the lack of security - one time's a fluke, but a second occurrence would be almost absurd. Was there simply no one watching this location? They opened the gates and left them like that?

"Do you think it's safe to, like, go in?"

Harriet looked at me. "Oh, are you afraid someone's monitoring it for potential tinkers? I've heard that people sometimes do that."

I nodded and started cautiously looking around the street - no security cameras, or at least, no cameras that I could see. There wasn't a living soul in sight, aside from a young man walking his Bullmastiff, further down the road. He didn't seem to be paying us any mind whatsoever, though - checking his phone, even. I don't think he even knew we existed and were currently scrutinizing him from behind.

"I think it's safe," Harriet remarked.

I nodded in mild, hesitant agreement - if there were secret FBI agents, PRT operatives, or NSA tails, I definitely couldn't see any. That didn't mean they weren't skulking around in the shadows, or on the rooftops. Or maybe I was a touch paranoid.

"Yeah. Still, let's do this fast. We'll need a water pump, an oil filter, a gasket for the manifold, and a camshaft pulley - or any spare parts I could turn into them." The distributor was more or less already done, I could finish it with a couple of spare parts and some results-oriented Clockworks refinement. The same went for the cylinder, block, and other unmentioned parts. "Do you know what any of those look like?"

"No."

"I thought so." Even if she had, Harriet couldn't pick apart a car like me, so she wouldn't have been much use. "Just stand watch, and make sure no one's coming. I don't want to be unmasked because I decided to build a car."

She nodded, and moved to stand next to the modular building, leaning against it - glancing through the windows, it seemed empty. Maybe I seriously was too paranoid, but a city abandoning an entire scrapyard and its contents seemed foolishly optimistic.

I approached the nearest, crushed wreck, and started getting to work, applying the Clockworks as needed to dismantle and break apart the car's hood and bumper, stripping them away so I could perceive the engine and estimate its worth. I cut through several plates of steel and pulled out a perfectly usable - if somewhat old pump. It'd need cleaning and proper care, but it could at minimum work as a spare. I stuffed it down my pocket and looked at Harriet: she was looking outside, as watchful as a hawk. Her attentive devotion to the task surprised me a little, but come to think of it, she'd already expressed a desire to be my sidekick. I supposed this was her own way of realizing that ambition, in however small a way.

I continued to butcher cars, picking them apart, and finding the elements I needed. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it didn't take even five minutes to find everything on the shopping list. The sizes or models I found weren't always perfect fits, but the Clockworks could easily adjust an element, or simply improve its compatibility. Alternatively, I could exchange them, or break them apart into components and remake them. Rather than a straight tinker, I was something analogous, forced to conform to sensible workings, but capable of calibrating the parts to suit them more easily.

Hmm, I could use a catalytic converter, too - most of the ones scattered around were much too large to place in a pocket or even in a bag, but I could stuff one under my armpit and carry it that way. I started picking out one that'd be sensible when I heard Harriet coughing loudly behind me.

I looked, and she was standing halfway between me and the building, casting a nervous look outside.

I looked over there, and I felt a mote of encapsulated exasperation.

"Oh, you've got to be shitting me." I scooted over to conceal my position and started picking apart steel plates to fashion into a quick mask. The piece of steel bent easily as I broke off parts of it, and reattached them, into something curved, with a nub for a nose.

"Hey, bitch!" shouted a Chinese man, leading a group of young adults and teens in ABB colors - already belligerent, but in a casual manner. I had a couple of seconds. "Don't you know you shouldn't hang around here? This place here is private property."

"Yeah. Sorry. Uh, sorry about that," Harriet said - her voice didn't carry quite as well, but I could hear it well enough as a distant mutter. She was, smartly, keeping her distance and stepping away in my direction. "I was only waiting for my boyfriend and his, uh, friends."

"In a scrapyard?" Some dumb asshole laughed at her.

I'd lived in Brockton Bay for some time, now, enough to develop a feel for the place - and I found this aspect of it ridiculous. Normally, you'd expect all the shady, clandestine, and criminal operations to happen at midnight, or in the early morning hours. Here, though? All crime peaked around noon, and then slowly leveled down as you approached dusk. Downtown at midnight, even if you were Black or Asian, you were pretty much safe provided you didn't outright bother or closely approach any skinhead packs.

But always, at fucking lunchtime - like an accursed clockwork - trouble will come and find you on its own, whether you invited it or not. It might be a store robbery, a junkie prick stumbling downstreet with a dream in his eyes, or some bastards stealing your tires - but it's always at lunchtime.

I'd heard, once - I didn't know where - that most robberies and crimes, in general, were committed around noontime. Robbers didn't break into your house in the middle of the night when you were almost certain to be there. Rather, they broke in during the calm, busy afternoon, when you were probably out with your friends, or sitting boredly at work. I didn't know the same applied to organized crime and to gangs, but apparently, it did.

I added eyeholes to the mask, finger-sized, and put the mask on. Then, I stepped out from between the cars - feeling a deep-rooted mote of dread in my heart as I did. They could have guns on them, and if they did, then I was in serious trouble.

"I well recommend you leave the lady alone," I called out.

"Who the fuck are you, prick?" one of the younger ones asked.

I looked directly at him and tilted my head for effect. "Do I need to tell you? I fed your boss his own intestines a couple of weeks ago."

"...The factory collapse," one of them muttered to the others, freezing suddenly. There was definitely a small tremor of change in attitude, there - a sudden, abrupt injection of caution. And caution meant hesitation, and I could definitely capitalize on that.

Good. So they did remember me.

"It seems you don't need a refresher," I commented. I nodded my head at them, dismissively. "Scram."

Annoyingly, and spiking my dread a little, they didn't - instead, they looked to the man standing up front, the apparent leader. He was chewing something in his mouth and looking at me with a slight, unveiled disdain. "Or what, asshole?"

"Or what?" I asked him rhetorically, mimicking his tone, pretending to find the question humorous. "Do you really want to find out?"

He moved towards me in slow measured steps, ignoring Harriet, one step after another - like a calm predator approaching unexpecting prey.

"I heard that you got the boss good, yeah. But any cape has a lucky day, and sometimes capes can get unlucky. And... unlucky for you, I know your weakness, bastard. I know you need to touch people to fuck them up - even if it's for a second, you can't do shit to me, unless you come over here."

"And you believe my legs aren't working?" I started to also move towards him - slow steps, almost matching his own, in an even rhythm. At our current speed, we'd collide within about eight seconds.

"Nah. Because, you see, I've got the great equalizer, motherfucker." His hand started reaching into his dark jacket, and that's when I dashed forward, sprinting desperately. I realized, within a half a second, and much too late to cancel my motion, that I'd reach him a fraction of a second too late. He'd shoot me in the unobstructed head, and then I'd die. I was about a second of distance away when his hand pulled out and aimed a pistol at me, a Smith & Wesson 9mm, with a dark vulcanized rubber grip and slick, metallic barrel and slide stop. It stared me down like a god of death.

A gunshot drowned out the entire world. Nothing on the planet can ever prepare you for the sound volume of a gunshot, especially at close range - not even the experience of hearing one before on multiple occasions, under similar circumstances. I thought I'd be able to anticipate it without flinching, but that wasn't the case. It wasn't a sound, but a vibration; one that deafened you and rattled the entire world; one that reverberated in your skeleton if you were sufficiently close to the gunman, like a man shaking you by the shoulders.

Miraculously, the bullet didn't hit me in the head, though - it struck my left shoulder, like a powerful punch, filling my entire side with a deep, paralyzing, burning pain. The man's arm had swerved to the side.

I looked and saw that Harriet had stepped in to save me, having run at him from the other side. She slammed into him, applying her entire body's weight, with enough speed and force to make the deadly shot miss.

I pushed on through the debilitating shock of pain and punched the surprised man in the face with my remaining, good arm. The moment contact was made, he screamed like a banshee, and fell down powerlessly. His Smith & Wesson dropped, and I instantly picked it up, in case I needed to use it.

None of the other ABB members were reaching for any firearms, though. It seemed none of them were armed. Thank God the ABB didn't hand out weapons to every member.

The criminal I'd downed - Zhao Hui, according to his driver's license - was slowly, panickedly, backing away from me.

I stomped a boot on his stomach and pinned him in place. He cried out in a shock of pain, almost convulsing in response. No wonder, since I'd broken so many of his muscles that internally he resembled a torn pillowcase.

I focused on myself for a second, Clockworks reaching into my frayed muscles, into broken tissues - analyzing the problems as a whole. The biggest one was that there was a damned 9mm bullet lodged in my shoulder, its presence constantly sending out pulses of burning pain that seemed to drown out every other sensation. A stable stream of blood flowed out of my pierced flesh, too, coating my shirt and staining my skin, although not as bad as I'd anticipated. I could survive that with a bandage, easily, and recover without trouble.

I sealed a couple of the worse microwounds with the Clockworks, acted to stem the bleeding, and aided the platelets in healing and solidifying in the wound, as I disassembled the small round into lead and copper and dusted them into a fine powder that my body could naturally break down and absorb. It'd have a couple of nasty side-effects uncountered: starting in a couple of hours, I'd begin feeling slow and lethargic, vomit and experience diarrhea, have a fever, and find it difficult to think. I could aid my body in handling that, though - same as I cured my hangover - with sufficient effectiveness that it'd pass much faster, and with vastly diminished symptoms. And at least I wouldn't need a surgeon.

On the minus side, though, because I'd used the Clockworks to heal, a section of my shoulder's musculature was now halfway calcified. Damn - win some and lose some. At least, that'd heal on its own and wouldn't impede me.

I breathed for a second and focused enough to speak without showing any strain in my voice.

"I can't believe you were stupid enough to try that," I said.

The man started cursing ardently in Chinese - not at me, but at the men under him. They started backing away, in hesitant and fearful steps - intent on escaping and calling help, I supposed.

I raised the stolen pistol at them. "None of you are going anywhere. If I see you moving, I'll shoot your damn kneecaps out." Then, on a spur of thought, I made up a complete lie, "I don't only change shit I touch. I have perfect aim as well. Don't test my fucking patience."

They didn't move.

Harriet, standing next to, and behind me, whispered, "What now, M?"

"I'll deal with them," I said calmly, evenly - and nodded at the gates. "Leave."

"Are you..." She didn't finish the question.

I shook my head.

"Okay. Okay, alright." Harriet stepped around Zhao, and then made a wide crescent around the remaining ABB members, headed for the scrapyard's exit. Most of them were younger than me by several years, and one of them couldn't have been older than fourteen.

"So, the ABB hires kids now?" I asked half-mockingly. "What are you all up to?"

Zhao grunted something out in Chinese, towards them.

"What are you saying?" I asked him, only to receive no response other than a hateful glare. Annoyed, but unwilling to use violence to force it out of him - at least for now - I looked up. "What's he saying?"

A young man in a black-and-red hoodie, maybe seventeen or eighteen, with a short side fringe haircut, spoke up, "He's telling us-"

"Hey, shut the fuck up." Another kid - a short, thin-framed one, with a green scarf around his shoulders - punched the other in the shoulder, showing teeth. "Do you want to die, idiot?"

"Die?" I asked the belligerent one, drawing everyone's attention back to myself. "Who's gonna kill you? Lung? Oni Lee?"

"What's it to you?"

"Well," I started in a slow, annoyed tone; thumbing the safety of the pistol, and making sure that said action was visible, "Given that your boss shot me a minute ago, it seems pretty damn relevant to my business. I have some patience, kid - but only some. Every stupid question you ask, every dumb remark to your friends, and every time this dumb asshole-" I pressed my heel into the man's chest, making him grunt in pain "-speaks in Chinese actively spends that resource. You've got a limited amount, and the clock's ticking. Better give me what I want."

"Or what, you'll shoot us? Kill us?"

I aimed down, between Zhao's eyes - the safety of the Smith & Wesson was off. "No," I said, without looking down. "Him."

They froze.

"You wouldn't. You don't kill," Zhao said, with something resembling a victorious grin.

"You know what they say, Zhao?" I asked. The mention of his actual name appeared to shock him, like a hammer blow to the temple - the burning victory in his eyes was put out in that one word. "Always a first time."

He didn't have much to say to that. There was only the blind, disbelieving shock in his eyes - the world suddenly tumbling on its side. For a second, I maintained a close watch over his brain. The activity in there was something I expected you might see in a trigger event. There didn't seem to be any changes in the brain center that governed powers, though, so for now it seemed I was safe. He was simply in a state of shock.

"See, the way I figure - you said that sometimes capes are unlucky, right?" I asked although Zhao didn't confirm - staring at me like a deer in an approaching van's headlights. "And sometimes they're lucky and win. Let's apply your philosophy to this. At a minimum, I can return the favor and put a bullet in your shoulder. It'll be up to random chance whether you get an infection and die - either lucky or unlucky. Or, there's option C."

"Option C?" he asked, voice husky and wearied; thinned by fear. "What's option C?"

"I make you shit yourself - right here, right now - with my power's aid," I said.

He looked at me like I'd said the sky was purple, like none of my words made any sense.

"Yeah - I can do that as well. I'll also be destroying your pants - you'll have a nice walk of shame back to Lung, in your soiled underwear. Or you can tell me what I want to know."

He burst like a bubble. The question came out of his lips almost before I finished my demand, "What do you want to know? F-Fuck, what do you want to know, freak? What is it?"

"I asked you already - what's the ABB up to? I'm gonna assume your trying to shoot me was an act of amazing but ultimately independent dumbassery at work. But what about this little patrol group you've put together here?" I asked, addressing the younger members. I looked down at Zhao once more. "That's not your standard MO exactly. It seems you're acquiring more personnel, and I wonder for what?"

"The new tinker," said the ABB member with the fringe cut. "She's- she's insane, a fucking madwoman. The Dragon's having her increasing production. And they're preparing for war. Not sure against who, yet - might be Empire, might be something else. Might be you."

"I'm amazed no one interrupted your explanation," I remarked, the pistol in my hand still pointed down at Zhao. "I suppose that's what happens when the possibility of shitting yourself is on the line."

"Could be the Undersiders," said a member who'd not spoken yet. "They robbed the Ruby Dreams casino recently, and they're fucking around on ABB turf now. Lung's angry at them, probably almost as bad as at you and your friends."

Friends? He was probably referring to Harriet and Black Queen. I chose not to question further on that.

"Alright, I'm content with that," I said, lowering the handgun. A palpable wind of relief seemed to run through the ABB's members - Zhao especially.

Then, abruptly - like a magical flying stone tiger leaping into the path of a commercial airplane - I used the Clockworks to put Zhao's pants through the shredder, leaving only detached strips of black fabric at his belt. I didn't make him shit himself yet.

"Almost," I said, as Zhao wormed and wriggled. I pressed my boot down on him once more, and he stopped the elevated struggles, with only a soft moan of pain. "No one escapes the shittening once it begins. It's like Ragnarok. The only difference is it's the ultimate fate of your underpants instead of gods. However - much like a cape that doesn't get shot - luckily you're still in the winter stage. What's this new tinker's deal? What does she make?"

"Bombs!" Zhao yelled - desperate, shouting, doing anything in his power to not force my hand. "She makes bombs! Explosives! Grenades- fuck, I don't- she makes shit that blows up!"

There was only a dreadful silence in the scrapyard. No one said anything at his sudden breakdown - no comments, no looks. Definitely no action either. It seemed they didn't love him much more than I did.

"Hm," I mused, pulling my foot off Zhao's stomach.

I was content with being known as the vengeful man who could be reasonable in return if you were reasonable too. Although - there was one other, separate matter to address: I did not torture people.

"Still, you shot me." I leveled the pistol at his shoulder, aimed so it'd make a wound similar to my own. "And, much as I'd love to let you free, I can't let that go. Otherwise, one of your buddies might retain the bright idea to attempt the same action."

Revenge was another matter.

"Please," Zhao whispered. Desperation flamed in his eyes. "Don't-"

"The balls, then?" I asked, aiming the firearm further down his torso. I started to squeeze the trigger, heart racing, my entire central nervous system preparing itself for that incredibly loud, bone-rattling gunshot.

He started shaking his head and sniffing. His voice was shattered and breathless, a vase's shards splayed on a floor, "No-no-no-no-"

"The shoulder, then?" I returned the pistol back to its original position.

"Please, please, fuck - please, I'm so sorry," he spoke so fast he was out of breath, eyes widening, pupils dilating - I could tell his heartbeat was racing, blood accelerating. "I'll never do anything like this again! I'll go home and I'll stop! I'll run away and never work for Lung again! Please don't shoot me!"

"Come on, I'm only kidding around. Zhao, buddy, I'm not gonna shoot you." I chuckled and pulled the pistol away, feeling a little unnerved. "Or make you shit yourself for that matter. That's completely inhumane - not to mention gross. Skidmark does that kind of stuff. I'm more hygienic"

A damn lie - much like that thing I made up about perfect aim. I'd considered shooting him for a good, fair second there. I'd have never made him shit himself - that was indignant and disgusting, a form of torture that I wasn't sure I had the guts for. However, I was seriously about to shoot him.

But then something about the sudden panic and fear in his eyes and voice made me reconsider.

I was a damned coward. I'd carried out none of my promised threats, just because a criminal who'd swaggered and shot me only several minutes ago - with intent to ruthlessly kill me and display my corpse like a trophy to his boss - started begging for me not to do it.

I was damnably fucking pathetic, a lie wrapped in human form.

"S-" He made a sound, broken, like a record. "Are you- are you for real?"

I needed to do something, though. I couldn't let him go after that. I could be pathetic all I wanted - on the inside - but if everyone here knew that I actually was, then I'd have trouble I didn't sign up for.

"Of course," I said, standing - and offering a bright, friendly smile under my mask.

Then I kicked down and crushed his nose with a nasty, wet crack. He screamed, and none of the other ABBs moved to help. None of them asked me to stop either. They watched or looked away depending on preference.

Ultimately, I allowed him to get off relatively scot-free with a short beatdown and missing pants - and told his buddies to carry him off once I was done. That seemed a deal more merciful than getting shot in the shoulder and shitting your underwear.

Inside, I wasn't sure I'd done the right thing.

Last edited: Jan 5, 2023

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Birdsie

Jan 1, 2023

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Jan 5, 2023

#497

"Are you alright?" Harriet asked as I came out of the scrapyard. She'd been leaning against the chainlink and watching the ABB's newest washouts as they left with their heads bowed, Zhao's arms wrapped around their backs for support, much like a grapevine around a pole.

"My shoulder hurts like a bitch," I admitted. It burned, in pulses of incisive, disabling pain, like someone regularly stabbing a scalpel into my flesh, scraping at the bone, attempting to drown me in stunning anguish.

I'd managed to put on a brave face in front of the criminals, but now I was stuck cursing under my breath with every movement, especially when I accidentally bumped the arm into something. A moment of study made me realize my body's entire left side felt deadened and didn't want to move. It seemed the copper and lead were starting to permeate my body, and I was starting to actively break them down to avoid having a bad time later.

I felt a dark temptation to use the Clockworks and be done with it - to accelerate the healing or even complete it. A horrible idea, of course. A single misstep at any stage of the healing, and I'd infect myself with pseudo-organic nanomachines, turning me into a half-cyborg, or into a bronze statue.

My shoulder's skeletal, multinucleated myofibers were overgrown with calcium deposits and abscesses of calcium chloride. It seemed like microscopic slices of the splintered bone must've been transmuted and bonded to them.

I had no idea where the chlorine came from, though. Natural catabolism? I didn't remember eating any food with a lot of salt content in it, and I watched my intake closer than most: I was one of the few people on planet Earth who instinctively retched and wanted to cry on the sight of fast-food in plastic packaging, because I was deeply, truthfully, uncomfortably aware of what it contained, down to the smallest cow hair and bit of polyethylene.

"I've never met a cockalorum like you," Harriet said. "Come on, we should have you patched up."

"I can handle myself," I said. "I actually need your help with something else."

Harriet stared at me for a second. There was something mean in that stare, a definite sense of displeasure about me. I struggled to conjure a reason she'd be mad for a second, then realized it, and felt like a complete moron with a stick up my butt for not realizing it sooner.

"Oh, and, uhm - thanks for saving my ass."

She offered a thin, dissatisfied smile. "Should've started with that."

"Sorry. I'm really sorry, Harriet. I'm still in tremendous pain, remember?" I excused myself with a little bullshit.

"Right. Right." She clearly didn't buy it. "So, what do you need?"

I stuffed all of my looted car parts into her unexpecting hands and then did the same with the key to Alfonso's garage. She accepted the items gingerly, unaware of their purpose, or the reason I was handing them over.

"I need you to drop these off. I'll grab a bus in the meantime and return to the loft so I can bandage my wound."

She looked down at the car components, and then at me - like I was some beast out of myth drinking from a lake of hydrochloric acid, unaware of its properties. And then she yelled at me, practically exploding with anger, and it shocked me, because I'd never seen her this wrathful, "Robert, you dumb motherfucker, are you fucking stupid or something? You got shot in the shoulder - with a gun - you dumb moron! I can't leave you on your own!"

For a second, I hesitated to answer.

"Actually, I think you can," I argued. At her look - one that could've wilted flowers and given an unexpecting man bone cancer - I sighed and raised my hands in unconditional surrender. "Alright, fine, you win, Harriet. Just hide the parts in your pockets or something and let's go back together. But you're carrying them around tomorrow to the workshop, on account of my shoulder."

She snorted at me, blowing some errant air out of her nose - but in a way that implied she wouldn't argue with my demand. "This is the thanks I get for saving your dumb ass? Fine, Rob."

I was doing a lot of micromanagement and slow regulation on my internals for the entire bus ride, stuffing the lead into my stomach with careful exchanges and letting the hydrochloric acid do its work; as coatings of lead chloride formed around minor particulates and preventing reactions, I combined them into clumps. Lead was a terrible chemical to have in your body. There was no real way to process it, and it was destructive almost regardless of its form: however, there were arrangements in which it could be a little less toxic. I already had a lot of loose copper sitting around in my body, so I took advantage of that by combining it with carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen in my stomach, to form copper acetate.

Then, I burst the lead chloride shells and combined the pure lead with the copper acetate to form lead acetate: a relatively harmless form of lead, inasmuch as lead could be harmless - so much so that it'd been historically used as a sweetening substance, even by the ancient Romans - which, as a sidenote, prompted me to note why I knew that. It'd still at minimum make me sweat and give me diarrhea, but I wouldn't die.

There were substantial remnants of unbonded copper and lead across my body, and for them, I returned to the original strategy of destroying molecules on a one-by-one basis, focused more on the lead. There were still a lot of free-floating excesses that I had no choice but to incrementally break down, with no easy vectors for release, so I actually ended up somewhat irradiating my stomach and liver. It bled off the remnant, at least to a level where I was reasonably certain I wouldn't die soon or suffer a lot.

And, ironically, acute radiation poisoning was perhaps one of the couple things in the world that I had an uncannily supernatural resistance against - one of several forces that couldn't reliably kill me even in hazardously high amounts. None of my DNA could be damaged with it. The Clockwork core simply repaired the nucleotides in the surrounding helixes, the moment they strayed from the unacceptable baseline parameters.

Better glowing in the dark than having a fucked shoulder, I convinced myself.

Still, I was starting to think - the more I persisted in doing this - that, in retrospect, it might've been less painful to manually remove the bullet with a knife and some metal tongs. Apparently, breaking down almost half a dozen grams of lead and copper in your body was different from curing a hangover.

Who'd have thought, except maybe a normal person that wasn't an idiot?

The ascent upstairs was a quiet and painful one, in vigil of any neighbors observing me - a man who'd clearly gotten shot - attempting to skip out on the hospital visit. The effects of the breakdown were starting to make themselves obvious. The most copper a person could safely absorb in their system was about ten or so milligrams. I had over a dozen times this amount floating around in me originally, now diminished with the Clockworks, although not completely. I was starting to feel more than a little light-headed. There was a metallic aftertaste in my mouth every time I swallowed.

"I need to use the bathroom," I told Harriet, directing her to the living room.

Aside from using the toilet to empty my full bladder, I also took off my shirt, examined the wound visually, and cleaned off the blood splattered all over me in the sink, leaving its once-pristine ceramic basket a dull brown-reddish color. I cleaned the mess up, took a look in the mirror - dark eyes sagging with sleepless exertion, black hair matted with sweat - and breathed out. By the time I came out of the bathroom, Harriet had grabbed the first-aid kit from my kitchen and set out some of its contents. I sighed at the melodramatic approach but sat down on the stool she'd dragged over.

"This really isn't necessary," I commented, eyeing the same implements she was with apprehension. "I've already done the titan's share of the work. All it needs is some bandages, maybe cleaning. And I know how to dress wounds."

"You do?" She looked at me as though the discovery was a surprising one.

"Yeah."

"Alright, instruct me. Walk me through it. I don't remember a lot from classes." She rummaged around the medkit, and I sighed once more.

"Grab a rag and clean the wound with saline solution," I instructed. Harriet started promptly getting the materials ready. "Once that's done, we'll clean up the skin a little, bandage the shoulder and it's basically done."

"There's, uh, no saline in here," she muttered. "There's distilled water? Antiseptic cream?"

"Don't use antiseptic chemicals on open wounds," I chastised harshly, making her put it down as though burned. "It can irritate and worsen the injury. And the same applies to alcohol of any kind - never pour ethanol on a wound, it doesn't help. Just use distilled water, it's more than fine. The main idea is to wash out any remaining particulates in the wound and prevent the spread of bacteria, so there won't be an infection. Antibiotics can take care of the rest, in case a fever happens to develop. The discovery of penicillin cut down death rates among soldiers by an order of magnitude."

I didn't tell Harriet this, but obviously, all of that was unnecessary. I'd already handled the brunt of the work, as I said, and I knew for a fact there was no possibility of fever because I'd preemptively kill any microbe that even dared try and cross me. Harriet seriously wanted to help me recover, though, and she'd saved my life, so I gracefully played along with her nurse roleplay for now: more for her sake than my own. More than anything, I'd have liked to nap for a couple of hours in my bed.

Harriet poured some of the distilled water on a rag and started to dab at my wound. The effects were minimal, but I didn't complain. I avoided grimacing, and said, "Once that's done, use a cleansing wipe. Then I'll take a painkiller and we can start the bandaging."

The cleaning proceeded smoothly. My entire left side continued being as stiff and pained as a rock, and the chemicals coursing through me were making me feel incredibly dull. I wanted to fall asleep in my bed and be completely done for the rest of the day. I had the vaguest of feelings that Harriet, overly concerned as she was, planned on staying at my house and nursing me to health like some abstract archetype of a caring grandmother, and that sounded tiresome, but I was starting to feel so worn out I knew I wouldn't have the strength to argue with her. This accumulated into a chain of unpleasant thoughts, like a dark mire in the bottommost level of my mind.

In moments, Harriet bandaged my shoulder with surprising swiftness and skill. She didn't need much help or adjustment from me, hands moving with an almost trained alacrity.

"You mentioned classes?" I asked, looking at the dressed shoulder.

"Uh, oh, yeah, first-aid," she said, leaning back against the counter. "I had to take them when I worked. I was an orphan, too, and we had something similar at the orphanage. A paramedic would come and instruct us how to do CPR and, like, help people with common injuries."

The revelations I was receiving were a little too much for my poor, addled brain. "Damn, an orphan?" I looked at her dispassionate face and realized something, which I said out loud: "Huh. I'm kind of like your family now, aren't I, Harriet?"

"Now I know that you're out of it. Do you want to lie down?"

I nodded and stood. I didn't need support to move around, so I went to bed alright on my own, but Harriet stood by me as I went - in case I tripped or suddenly needed the help - and I appreciated that. I covered myself up in the bedsheets and nodded to her.

"Thanks for everything."

She grinned at me. "Well, Rob, I couldn't let you... shoulder, all the cape work on your own. Eh? Eeh? Pretty good, right?"

"I take back what I said. Get out of my room."

I turned in my bed and waved at her. She chuckled and left, turning off the light.

I soon found that I couldn't fall asleep as easily as I'd hoped - not because of a developing fever, but something almost like that. It was my body, reacting to something more than its underlying physiology, the heartbeat quickening into an unsteady trot, droplets of sweat squeezed out from the forehead pores, rolling down across my face with the thickness of shed tears. I started to turn, feeling every part of the bed with my body and the Clockworks, uncomfortably, deeply, and truthfully aware of how many subtle, annoying flaws its construction possessed.

For example, the midlevel of the bed's left front leg had a screw, connecting to a horizontal sideways beam, connecting to its parallel foot. However, that screw was almost a full millimeter and a half lower than its cousin. I can't explain how much that annoyed me - it felt almost like a spiteful prank from a sentient universe. A well-working industrial machine couldn't have made a mistake like that unless it contained a severe flaw in its own construction, although the bed didn't seem crafted through machinery.

A flaw like that that would've been added by accident by a human carpenter, or perhaps a tired or indolent assembly specialist. And that indicated the existence of its own flaw in those people: insufficient attention to detail and perfectionism, or perhaps sloth in the latter case. The minor, almost irrelevant deficiency of a single, distant being cascaded down like an avalanche, and after several levels of separation, bothered me - and resulted in me being kept up right now. My power was a fucking curse, because every now and then, it'd provoke these spirals of thought I couldn't quit.

How many people were out there, sitting around and wantonly spending their lives, possessing such minor defects? How much of that accumulated, over such avalanche events, to create flaws of marginally greater relevance? Did that contribute significantly to the shitty state humanity was in?

For a moment, I wondered if I was developing OCD or something like that. Or maybe I'd gone full fucking nutso.

I stood, my shoulder shaking - with a stinging, almost faded remnant of pain. I couldn't sleep like this, no way.

"Harriet?" I called out, voice a little rasped - dehydration, combined with my generally crappy state. I needed to have a glass of water, and maybe another dose of painkiller if I was feeling unkind to my liver. Which, honestly, I was.

I entered the apartment and saw it was now empty, all of the lights out. I flicked the light switch and rummaged around the kitchen. The first-aid kit had been placed back in its spot, under a counter shelf. Next to it stood a semi-familiar pill bottle, emanating Aspect Radiation at me, like an insult.

"I need to learn what you do," I muttered, crouched down. A weary, forceless hand picked up the pill bottle. I stared at the crunchy, rattling tablets with my tired eyes, pondering the risks of saying YOLO and chugging like a madman.

Instead, I stuffed the bottle into a small backpack and looked at my clock. Almost six in the morning - seeing that shocked me a little. I'd slept a decent amount through the night after all, even though most of what I recalled was dreamless turning and thrashing.

I need to remake that bed, too, I decided. If the Clockworks fucked it up, I'd sleep on the couch.

But I could handle that upon my return. Since Harriet was in charge of the workshop delivery, and she'd almost definitely sleep until the late afternoon, I decided that I might as well make researching the mysterious pills into my daily task.

I showered for almost half an hour in the comfortable, cleansing water of the penthouse - drinking some, and breaking down any metals within. Instead of changing my bandages and wasting perfectly decent absorbents, I cleaned them out and dried them with the Clockworks. I put on a semi-formal, decent-looking outfit of a dress shirt and dark pants, grabbed the backpack with the pill bottle, and went out, headed for the parking lot with the van. As I was stacking up on useful items, I noticed something odd about Phineas' protective talisman - one of its symbols was smudged.

Convenient. I'd be able to ask him about that.

I'd learned of a shortcut, in my free time, leading from the Way, and into the Wanderer's Library proper, allowing me to cut down on travel time: there was another secret passage the docents had neglected to ever show me, that didn't require moving through multiple side hallways, and a long corridor of stone. Aside from that, the Library was its usual self - contemplatively quiet and serene, with hundreds of patrons ranging from almost mundane, to completely alien, calmly wandering around and reading the assorted tomes afforded to them by the source of all knowledge.

Although no one in the Library owned anything, technically, the Serpent's Hand possessed a decent section of the Library reserved for its own members, and more or less no one except members or people interested in hearing the pitch ever went in there. I'd learned to recognize its location, based on its surrounding shelves and floorboards, which would've seemed to be an amazing feat a couple of weeks ago.

A woman, middle-aged, sat in a padded chair next to the door. She wasn't reading a book - she was penning one, committing ink to paper. I'd only seen her a couple of times, and never really spoken to her, but I recognized her name.

"Meredith," I said by way of greeting, and to draw attention. "Do you know where I can find LS?"

"No," she answered curtly - with a mote of hostility.

I stepped away with a grunt, deciding I'd continue my search without help. "Sorry to bother you."

"Can I give you a piece of advice?"

I looked back, and I saw that she was staring into her unfinished book - having written halfway down the page, and stopped there, pen slowly and measuredly tapping against one point. She wasn't looking at me on purpose.

"If the advice is any good," I said. "Although, judging by your tone, I think it'll be more of a veiled threat."

"Don't get smart with me, child," she answered, with an undercurrent of barely suppressed spite. There was definitely some hatred there, a hatred I felt I didn't do anything to earn. "I am looking out for your best interests by telling you this, as cruel as it is: after your current visit, leave and do not ever return to the Wanderer's Library. Break off contact with everyone you've met here. Forget about the vagaries of magic and visiting other worlds. Remain where you are, and focus on what you have. Then you'd be doing a favor to everyone." She returned to writing her book, disinterested in me.

I stared at her for a long second, doing my best not to show any signs of shock.

I hadn't told anyone, not a living soul - not even Harriet, let alone someone like Phineas or Alison - about my plans to move to another world. How in the imperial fuck did she know about that?

"I need to know," I said, "Do you and I have any history with each other?"

Her grayed eyebrows shot up as she snorted, and it came out almost sincerely pitying for me. "Not as such," she said, and finally turned to me with her full body, to have a conversation. "But I do know a lot about what you are."

An iron-solid glacier cracked within my heart, releasing arctic waters into my circulation. My blood ran cold like a blizzard. I stood paralyzed, fearing the extent of what she knew, what she might've told other people - and what exactly she did know. I was certain even I didn't have more than maybe a single piece of the puzzle, so for all I knew, the hostility she emanated might've been because I was a demon fated to end the world or something.

"Don't misunderstand, please: I do sympathize with you, to an extent," she said, perhaps seeing my shocked expression, in spite of my best attempts to conceal it. "It's indeed a very confusing and worrying situation to be in: a monster wearing human skin, surrounded by countless wisemen and witches, almost none of whom are willing or capable of telling you anything. And that's why I'm telling you to consider my advice. If you stay where you are, and don't come here, and don't get involved with any of us, you'll be safe and capable of living a happy life."

There was a lot I could've asked her at that moment. And I sensed, through some instinct, some subconscious understanding of her behaviors, that she'd answer mostly any reasonable question. I could've asked her what I was, or who else knew about my inhumanity.

Instead, I asked, a little worried, more than defiant, "What... What's going to happen if I don't?"

She frowned, and looked away from me, returning to her book.

Meredith's soft reply came as a murmur, a reticent one; displaying an unwillingness to continue this conversation: "A lot of bad things."

I could've pressed her on that, or asked another question. Instead, I walked off - my tread accelerated - in search of one of the Black Queens. I had a lot more questions that needed answering, now.

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Jan 6, 2023

#504

Alison - Black Queen Implex - stood in front of me, eyes like dark full moons. She cambered to one side, observing me, like a scientist watching a lab rat. Her dark eyes were focused, intent, deep, and sharp; like scalpels peering into the depths of my soul, dissecting me on the table of the world.

After a second, I met her gaze, and I had to comment on it.

"Christ, you Black Queens are fucking insane."

"Only a couple of us," she said defensively, stepping back away from me, as though satisfied with the response.

"Whatever. Can I meet a nice one for a change? Most of you are so dour and depressing. Like a bunch of emo kittens."

I liked the Pink one. She reminded me of Harriet but on hardcore steroids and faerie magic - normally that combination would be a kind of bad thing, but she was actually rather decent about it. Admittedly, a part of that biased opinion might've found its origins in the fact that Pink had straight-up offered to be my girlfriend upon meeting me, and I apparently wasn't in that hallow stage of life yet where your hormones stabilized and you no longer felt excitement over every girl that gave you a modicum of attention. And I'd definitely never admit to it.

"Now I can't believe you said that," Black Queen Implex gaped at me.

"We're one for one," I answered, remembering she'd done something non-particular to offend me earlier in the conversation. "If you want to play the full set, you know where to find me."

"Incredible. How did the others have the patience to be around you?"

"I'm only this much of a dick around you, Implex. That's the secret." I made a pointing gesture at my own forehead, almost like a revolver, and clicked like someone opening a door with a key. "It's my own special relationship with you from now on. Just slinging unsubtle barbs at each other, until eventually one of us gives up and probably strangles the other."

She didn't answer for a length of time - almost enough to worry me and get me to look over. There it was again, that calculation, like a cold, sociopathic lawyer digging into a detailed case file and analyzing her client's actions in search of potential discrepancies and perils that might jeopardize the case. The scrutiny let up after a second, replaced by a neutral look.

"Are you alright?"

"No," I said with a deep sigh. "Not really, I don't think I am. I mean, I got shot in my shoulder yesterday, and I'm still a little out of it. Why?"

"It seems to me like you are projecting some issues onto me," she replied. She took on a thoughtful pose. "Or, at least, using me as a target to release your pent-up frustration."

"Damn. I suppose they don't give out queenship for nothing. Saw right through me."

"Always a pleasure to psychoanalyze." She looked at me with a slight smugness painted on her pale lips. The expression faded away in moments, into sterile concern. "What's the actual problem?"

"Their leader - Zhao. I made a lot of threats, and I didn't carry out any of them. I pretty much beat him up a little, knocked him around, and then let him go. That's not how you - err, the other you - told me to do things, in regard to reputation. It's also not exactly how we acted with Lung. Now I'm thinking this could spawn some trouble for me."

"You'd be correct," Implex answered. "Good behavior often draws in trouble, from those who seek to abuse one's benevolence. Charity can be a weakness."

That was disheartening to hear. Did I have to become more like the villains of the city to defend myself against them? Create examples out of random criminals who were simply people in a bad situation, corrupted over time by a terrible environment? It sounded like something a person worse than me would've done. Did I have to become that person? Did I have to man up and grow some balls?

"Do you believe your actions were good?"

"Sure," I answered numbly, vaguely - shrugging with my one, good, non-stiff shoulder. "I spared a man a lot of indignity and pointless suffering, even though he might not have deserved it. I suppose that's a form of kindness, even if it was stupid of me."

"Then don't fret!" There was a moderate, lofty perkiness to her response I didn't anticipate. It knocked me out of my groove, and changed the mood and tempo of the conversation, like a snap of the fingers making a beat drop in a song. "A show of kindness can indeed be misconstrued as weakness, but that doesn't matter. Being unreasonably kind to your lessers is a privilege afforded to the truly strong. The intelligent will always understand this. The fools will attempt to abuse it."

"Yeah, except I'm not sure if I'm actually as strong as you think." I frowned and looked at Implex. There was speculation in her eyes: a look that I was accustomed to, now. It was something that most Alisons had, even the innocuous, quirky, and chaotic ones. She, in particular, often dipped into it. She was thinking of a solution to my problem.

"Then we'll simply have to make you stronger. You'd mentioned being capable of seeing Aspect Radiaton with your Clockworks? And issues with some bottle?"

I blinked, forced to recall the conversation - had I mentioned a bottle? After a moment, I realized what she meant, and blinked again, searching through my backpack. I withdrew the prescription pill bottle, and stared at it, before showing it to her.

"Yes," I confirmed. "I know the contents of this pill bottle are magical, and that's about it. I can see the patterns of magic, but I can't see past them."

She eyed them for a second, then her eyes pivoted to me.

She chuckled at me, amused. "Robert, that's exactly what it is. You only need to learn to read the patterns. They are hidden, yes, but not invisible: and there's nothing past them. Come with me. I'll show you a couple of items, and teach you to discern between their functions... From that, we'll move onto proper aural readings, and more advanced techniques. You'll be a budding sorcerer in no time, and alongside your natural abilities, you won't have anything to fear in the department of parahuman criminals."

I nodded in assent, although somewhat unhappily. The idea of expanding on my ability to see magic with the Clockworks didn't seem like a train headed straight for station victory - more like a long, excessive trip. It seemed a little stupid, to be so unexcited about learning magic of all things - it was something everyone dreamed of as a kid.

But I wasn't a kid, and as far as I could remember, I'd never been. I had a lot of rising problems, and only a limited amount of spare time to address each of them. If I had to start practicing magic on top of that, I could easily get lost in the exercise.

Implex led me downstairs, to a cellar laboratory of some kind.

"Can I smoke down here?" I asked.

"You smoke?" she questioned, casting a sharp look, then snapping back. "Also yes."

"Don't you already know that?" I asked, nicotine-deprived hand already reaching for my pack of Marlboros, and the other rummaging around the back pocket for my lighter.

"Robert, there's like, six or seven of us in total that live around your multiversal neighborhood and hang around this portion of the Library," she said. "Yes, we do write letters and message each other, and we exchange memories on important... matters, but not every minor detail. No offense, but you being a smoker is trivial. If curious."

"Curious?" I asked, cigarette stuffed between my lips.

"It'd seem your ability wouldn't lend itself to smoking, no offense. And I know you've had drinks with another Queen, which is another thing I wouldn't expect."

I clicked the lighter once, and frustratingly, it didn't light. I attempted again, then again, and on the fourth click, the flint struck and a small flame went up - as stable and bluish as a miracle on a boat headed downriver. I took a solid, nasty, adhesive drag as the flame burned, lighting the tip orange - and it felt like I was suffocating myself.

There it was, the sensation of ash and tar in my throat and lungs. The familiar, deathly venom that was my companion ever since I hooked myself on smoking.

I felt there were a lot of people in the world that could honestly say they'd started smoking because of friends, family members, or parents - observing behaviors and joining in for social credit, or simply picking up the habit because it was otherwise convenient. I didn't have any data to confirm it, but I imagined there were only a couple of people like me who'd never had a lot of prior exposure, but decided to start on it out of nowhere.

I started smoking because I had a cigarette and I could, and once I lit up, I'd never made the decision to stop - now, already five feet deep, I probably never would.

"I agree with you," I said, looking at Implex. "It's a little ironic."

"How's that?"

"Out of everyone in the world, I'm probably one of the most consistently self-aware of exactly how much deadly poison I'm putting in my body. I'm able to count every dose. Every cigarette I pick out, before I smoke it, I can see its exact contents - tell you its composition, like an expertly done laboratory test. Every time I take a drag, I can see the smoke eating away at my tissues, killing a part of me with a death of a thousand little chemical reactions. Sometimes, I actually feel a kind of sudden fear - the instinctive fear a mammal feels when its brain detects danger. In those cases, I suddenly get cold feet, and use the Clockworks to disassemble or destroy the chemicals. It's a risk to do that, but I've started doing that more recently. Other times, though, I kind of... just let it happen, I guess. Even though I don't eat anything in plastic packaging, because the food almost always contains small microscopic bits of plastic, I'm completely fine with deliberate suicide through a cigarette. I let it kill me, and I'm left wondering why."

"Gods, you're edgy," she said, stepping away from me with apparent disgust. "Don't speak to me again about cigarettes. Forget I asked."

I chuckled. "I told you, Implex. You're not my teacher, you're gonna be the victim here, forced to be in the same room with such a dick as me."

"Enough," she said - a mote of authority entering her tone, that snapped me out of my humorous mood. "Let's focus on your training. Finish your cigarette, while I prepare a couple of items."

There was no ashtray in the room. That wasn't a problem, though, as I could simply bond the ash's carbon and then subsequently break it down into fine, granular elements, spreading them evenly. It was close to making them vanish, when in reality they simply became so small you couldn't see the individual bits with the naked eye, or interact with them in a meaningful fashion. The rest was insubstantial on its own.

I was done with the cigarette when Implex returned, carrying an antique Victorian brass lamp under one armpit, several books stuffed under the other, and also a teddy bear.

"Oh, what's Mr. Teddy for?"

"I'm with the Special Victims Unit, and I can see the future, so I've decided to cut to the chase," she answered, a little snippily, spreading the items out. "It's so you can show me where Lung's going to hurt you when all is said and done."

"I wouldn't exactly have control over that. Nor can I see the future."

"Most people don't - that's one of the things I'll attempt to teach you."

"Future-seeing?"

"Control." She eyed me with a level of disgust that hadn't been there in our previous conversation. "Assuming you can focus enough not to completely blunder the lesson."

"Someone's a little angry."

"Someone's a little daft. Sit down."

I complied without a word of complaint or argument - she was clearly entering a bad mood of some kind, for reasons as opaque to me as a brick wall. If there was something I'd learned from Harriet's example, it was not to argue with someone who's already done with your shit.

"Touch the lamp and describe it."

I looked at the lamp for a second, and shrugged - my finger made contact without getting shocked with electricity or burning, so it seemed she wasn't setting me up for an epic prank. I analyzed its structure, contents, composition, and function for a couple of seconds.

"A lamp manufactured circa 1890, electricity-operated. It's Victorian-style, meant to evoke the appearance of earlier oil lamps. It shows surprisingly little deterioration or damage for its age. The lampshade was a slightly later addition, made somewhere in the early twentieth century. It's overflowing with magic."

"Anything else?"

I focused. What could she be referring to...?

"It's... rather weird, now that you mention it," I commented, a little perplexed for a second - both that I didn't notice this earlier, and that it was happening. "The molecules aren't... vibrating enough for its apparent heat. The lamp's outer warmth feels like room temperature to my hand, more or less, but that doesn't correspond to its physical interactions. It should be cold enough I'd almost immediately recoil in pain."

"And why is it like that?"

"Presumably because it's magic?"

"No. Focus on what you're sensing. Sense the magic and perceive it."

I tried to do what she demanded. I really did, and I did my best - I attempted to think about it, and will myself to sense it, and then I attempted to connect the idea of sensing to each of my individual senses, like sight and hearing. That didn't work, so I cycled through several different mind-states and roughshod mental techniques, including attempts to philosophically reduce the tasks into one unified action, or collapsing it into intermediate steps, and even acting out on pure, mindless instinct - with no hard thinking or complex logic involved.

None of the approaches seemed to work, yielding no useful information.

"I can see you're struggling," she said. "Relax a little. It doesn't come naturally. It's like using a muscle, only you've never used yours before, so it's atrophied. It needs exercise. One of the approaches you attempted is going to work, you only need to repeat it enough."

"So I have to sit here and touch this lamp and keep thinking about how magical it is? For how long?"

"For however long it takes you to accomplish your goal."

She sat down opposite me, and cracked open a book. I felt a flash of irritation. She'd known this exact thing was going to happen, so she even stocked up on reading material to pass the time. "I recommend you focus instead of directing childish annoyance at me," Implex said. "I'll keep you company but try not to distract you."

"Are you psychic?" I asked, realizing how oddly aware of my thoughts and actions she appeared to be, even in spite of knowing me since basically today.

"Hm, you're indeed rather as self-aware as you claimed to be," she muttered. "It's impressive that you realized it so soon. Most don't ever."

"I've never met a psychic Alison before. What am I thinking about?"

"How I'd look naked."

"Nope." I'd actually been thinking of the number seven and its relation to other prime numbers. I felt a little surprised that she was that far off.

She hummed, still looking at her book, not interested in me. "It's good to know you don't find me attractive enough to be distracted from your task of focusing on the lamp." She stressed the final words.

Cowed, I focused on the lamp.

Nothing came to me - no sweet revelation or manna from heaven, no eureka or glorious discovery. At least for an hour, I sat there like a dog waiting for its owner to come back home, staring intently at a dumb fucking lamp, slowly developing muscle cramps and early-onset arthritis. By the end of the hour, I was starting to feel like dashing the damn thing against the floor and letting it collapse into a thousand pieces.

For most of that time, my organism was suffering and stewing in its own pain. Excess matter from yesterday percolated through me, and I felt nauseous and unbearably hot. I felt extremely fatigued and I was having stomach cramps that seemed aligned to lead to something worse by the evening.

That's when Implex looked at her pocket watch, and told me, "Hm, time's up."

I took my hand off the lamp. "So?"

"So, you're far too annoyed to continue. I suspect your lead poisoning has made you more irritable. A vexing situation."

"Oh, that's some great insight," I said sarcastically.

"You remind me of myself when I was starting out as a practitioner," she commented. There was little to no salient emotion to that comment. It was like a doctor's note in a medical file, made in absent thought. "The wondrous pull towards magic can be attractive and marvelous enough, and a lack of immediate results can be off-putting enough, to incite negative passion. A lot of us start off like that: brash, arrogant, impatient, aggressive. "

"And you end up cryptic and annoying, even when you claim and promise you won't be," I countered. "You know what? If I ever learn magic, I'll actually tell people things. I'll explain them in great detail. I'll write entire books on universal secrets and I'll make sure people can read them alongside the morning newspaper."

"That's the highest ideal of the Serpent's Hand," she said, looking me straight in the eyes. "But sometimes, keeping a couple of secrets can be useful, and sometimes, they might even exist for your own protection. Sometimes, you simply have to forget about the unfortunate things you've learned so you can live in peace, and others can continue the fight."

"You're starting to sound like the SCP Foundation."

She frowned. "Don't compare me to them. I don't lock innocents in cages and poke at them with sticks, unaware that I am a cockroach nibbling on the clipped nails of gods. There's a difference between recognizing that knowledge and wonder should be free, and recognizing the dangers of certain forms of it. Even the Hand doesn't meddle with the forbidden."

"And that makes you different from the Foundation how?"

"The Jailors," she put a lot of pressure on the word, "receive their moniker, not because of their overall logos, but due to their modus operandi. Their aim is admirable. It's to create a world in which humanity doesn't have to fear the eldritch darkness in which existence itself was birthed. To make it so people can live, and not have to wonder whether tomorrow may be the day the Scarlet King shatters his final chain, or Yaldabaoth at last uncages.

"It's their methods we have an issue with: locking away everything, without any distinction between good and evil. Even the Hand seals away evil entities - and yes, even the Hand sometimes erases information from the world, when its presence exhibits potential for dangerous consequences down the line."

"It doesn't seem a lot of Black Queens would agree with you."

"I do hope you won't begin to perceive us as merely an entity of one person infinitely refracted. Knowing the truth about the Black Queen is an honor rarely afforded even to the Hand's inner members," she huffed. "Each of us has our own experiences and beliefs. We respect one another. Many of my sisters would annihilate the Foundation, had they a chance to do so - whether due to personal reasons, or more philosophical ones. I believe the Foundation is a stabilizing force. Without it, only the Bookburners and Madmen would remain, and I'd rather that wonders be imprisoned, than dead."

"Alright. I'll keep that in mind."

"Still, I refuse to let that attitude stray you from the path of good learning. If you wish to be so completely open about secrets, open your mind and focus on the fucking lamp."

I leaned away at the acerbic language, then put a hand on the lamp.

"Alright, alright. No need to raise your voice, Alison."

After a minute of lame silence - with Implex no longer reading, but staring at me uncomfortably, I cleared my throat.

"But you are cryptic," I said.

She raised an eyebrow. There was a prompt in that, to continue.

"To me, at least," I said, keeping my hand on the lamp. There was no way I'd figure it out while holding a conversation, but I'd rather not have Implex getting mad at me again. "What you said puts things into perspective. I'd come into the Library to ask you questions, and you're teaching me: showing me the intermediate steps to the answers, instead of simply answering my questions. Can you see how frustrating that is?"

"There are answers I can give you, sure. But giving them to you would be like answering a Buddhist koan," she said. "It wouldn't actually give you anything substantial. You'd have the answer, and still not know how to put the question together to get there. If you want to calculate something mathematically, you learn the equations."

"Or you recreate the system from first principles in base-thirteen, if you're a supergenius. Just like you must have." I leaned back in my chair, arm extended still. "Except I'm not a supergenius. I'm not a genius. I'm not even average. I'm a fucking talentless moron. I'll never get anywhere like this in a reasonable time. Still, I can accept doing that with actually useful training, where the ability to solve unexpected or apparently intractable problems is more useful than immediate knowledge, like with the lamp," I said, looking at it and nodding.

Then, I stared at Implex - almost a focused glare of sorts, attempting to suss out how tempered she was feeling right now, and unsettle her. It might've been effective, and it might've not been - I couldn't tell, because her poker face was straight-up legendary.

"But there's other things you could tell me that'd actually help me."

"Like what?"

"Like what I am," I countered - and there, for a fraction of a second, I saw it. A thin, swiftly concealed flash of surprise in her dark eyes.

She didn't expect the ace to come out of the sleeve, or at least, not this fast. I wasn't on the backfoot anymore. I couldn't dictate terms, but I could strengthen my position, stake it out by showing the second ace I had. Letting her know that she was trapped and about to be cooked on a roast.

"Meredith didn't wanna say. But we've been talking for a while, and I can tell now that you've used your psychic mumbo-jumbo to dodge the topic when I met you earlier today. You slipped a psychoblast into my brain, stunned me, and made me feel fuzzy, made me forget what I wanted to ask. That's why we had that staring contest. No escaping it anymore."

She drew her lips into a humorless smile.

"And you claim that you aren't a genius."

"Maybe I'm a genius when it comes to annoying you. And I'll keep doing that, unless you stop being so fucking cryptic. I'm not kidding around here."

"I'm not at freedom to discuss some things," she claimed assertively, unconcerned with my words and feelings. "The Black Queens - the Little Sisters, we don't normally act on our own, especially the sort that extends beyond a single world. The matters that are beyond one Queen's jurisdiction, we have to make decisions on together, otherwise we'd constantly get into arguments and impede each other. I can't tell you the truth without the permission of the other Queens."

"Seriously?" I asked, sternly disbelieving. Out of every possible objection she might've raised - from the philosophical to more personal - it turned out the reservations were a matter of policy. Inside, I was starting to think they were a little more like the Foundation than they were willing to admit, although I didn't say that out loud. "This isn't some state secret. It's my own fucking life. My own DNA. This isn't something you get to keep away from me."

"Actually, I do get to do that," she claimed, indifferent and nonchalant about my words. "And you should keep focused on the lamp."

"No," I said, with a spark of anger. Aggressively and intently, I thought about the one actual thing that I knew would piss her off a lot. "I'd rather imagine what you look like naked."

The remark, and perhaps the psychic backwash floating from my brain, kindled a dark look on her face. "Don't test me, Robert."

"Or what? What can you do? Except keeping answers out of my reach?" I asked, and then continued pressing: "It's clear that I'm special in some manner. You've been looking out for Skips on Bet, and you haven't found shit except me - maybe there are some out there, maybe there aren't. Thing is, I don't see Phineas driving his van around. So it's clear you don't give a shit about them. And you mentioned that my matter extends beyond a single universe's reach, so it's clear this is something major. I'm special. This is about me."

The contents of my speech embittered her, blooming into a dark hateful bud, then dimming, close to the end. I didn't let Implex get in even a single word.

"So, I'm asking you in all seriousness - what can you do? Make me forget? I'll find out about it and question you again. Kill me? It's clear you don't intend to. Stop teaching me magic? If I actually learned magic, I'd ask the spirits if I should start giving a fuck."

She was, by the end of my speech, sitting calmly and primly - hands steepled together, staring into my eyes without showing an inch of intention to submit.

"I'm still not telling you anything, Robert. I know you want to know, and probably you deserve that. But it's dangerous. You could do something stupid if you knew."

I took a second to think about her words, about the contents of our conversation. It was clear that beneath that mask of calmness and resolution, she was starting to boil with anger, concentrated more on how annoying I was, than on maintaining hold of the conversation. Before I could think too long about it, I decided to ask her a different kind of question.

"If you won't tell me, maybe the Foundation will?"

Implex looked taken aback by that comment, revealing the surprise. Then, she narrowed her dark eyes at me. "You wouldn't be such an idiot. That'd spell out your doom."

"Really? Would it?" The question had a bit of a rhetorical edge. "Apparently, I've survived my entire childhood in there. I think I can handle it."

"They didn't know what you were back then." She purposefully leaned forward, elbows on the table, looking me in the eyes. "They do now."

"You've said it yourself. The Foundation's not that smart," I commented with casual tones, like a gentleman commenting on the flavor of a tea. As though I were completely disinterested in her argument. "I'd be able to convince them that I'm more useful alive than I am dead. I'm sure they'd want something with my power in captivity. I could be an incredible asset for them."

Implex folded her arms once more, leaning more into her chair's backrest. She watched me with mild, increasing contempt. "How would you convince them? They wouldn't give you a chance to speak. They'd shoot you on sight."

"Really? Huh." For a second, I pretended to think about her words. "But I've heard they even have demons in captivity. They don't kill them."

"Well, obviously. Demons aren't as dangerous as Leviathans. They're-" She closed her mouth and realized it a fraction of a second too late. She could read my mind, but she couldn't read her own, and over the conversation, I'd unsettled and angered her too much for her to focus on what I was doing.

I smirked. I've outsmarted the outsmarter. "See, now you've started to give me useful information. You've made a blunder. Checkmate, Black Queen."

"Fuck." She placed both hands on her face and rubbed it. She didn't say anything else, for a long second, and I decided that I was more or less done here. I could look up the term she'd mentioned and then research from there on my own.

I stood from my chair and moved to exit the room. I stopped about midway and looked back at her with an acknowledging nod. "Oh, I figured the lamp out, by the way. It's indestructible." There went my plan of dashing it against the floor in a final act of spite as I stormed off.

Implex looked at me and opened her mouth.

"Yeah, and the bear toy's an empty vessel for a spirit. And your cup size is B, and your butt is totally unremarkable. Have a good evening."

I walked out, digging out another cigarette from my pack. That last remark was misogynistic, and I knew that, and I wasn't happy about it, but damn if she didn't deserve to hear it for blasting me with her psychic power.

Last edited: Jan 8, 2023

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Birdsie

Jan 6, 2023

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Jan 11, 2023

#514

An hour and a half later, I felt like a new man.

The amaranth red, all-healing panacea in the capsule had restored me to a state approaching something like primordial perfection. I fell into a daze of borderline bliss under its slow, comforting influence. As though I'd been taken apart in a careful and precise manner, had every little part of me splayed out on a table and then lovingly cleaned with a fine brush and attentively combed free of any impurities, then meticulously reassembled. The cleanliness and purity reverberating across me were almost divine in origin - the closest I'd ever come so far to nirvana.

Every symptom of overdose, every accumulated ache, and even some conditions that I hadn't thought about was repaired. I could think a lot clearer, or at least with a lot more satisfaction because a number of minor hormonal imbalances and symptoms of my earlier contusion were magically fixed.

And not only that - but also, I now understood how to read and comprehend Aspect.

I was capable of sensing and understanding magic, and how crazy was that? I found my own emanation and reading it almost droll: a stable aura of almost pure green, with a swirling highlight of azure blue, and occasional rises of black.

As I passed around so many other people, among the skyscraper-stacks of the Wanderer's Library, I took an opportunity to read into theirs, out of a sense of curiosity. It seemed my Aspect was comparably vibrant, as most of the locals had only quantities of blue in theirs. There were a couple of other greens, too, although not a lot. After the last half an hour passed, the remnant of the pill's substance had metabolized, and I was clean.

I'd decided to sit down in an alcove, a small private sanctum within the Library's fiction wing, and I allowed myself to doze off a little, into a state between restful sitting and napping. Enjoying the afterglow of the experience.

"I've heard from Meredith that you're snooping around," said a familiar voice.

And like that, my pleasure levels crashed down, fell through the roof, and destroyed the immaculate piano of serenity my brain had been playing on for me. Irritation came back, strong, although not half as strong as it would've been, once upon a time.

"You've got some serious issues to work through, Gotyard," I replied, turning towards the source of the sound. The same man who'd been so strongly against me having anything to do with the Serpent's Hand faced me, arms folded. There was, of all things, a small wand tucked away in a holster on his shoulder. All Harry Potter style and shit. It looked ridiculous.

"What are you looking for?" Gotyard asked, with a raise of his eyebrow.

"Neville Longbottom, apparently."

"Yeah, Avada Kedavra and Wingardium Leviosa. Haha, very funny," Gotyard replied with an annoyed expression on his face.

"Actually," I said, "It's pronounced, 'Le-vee-OH-sa, and not 'le-vee-oh-SA.' Get it right."

He took out his wand and pointed it straight at my feet. He uttered a word I couldn't entirely understand, something that almost sounded Swedish or Danish, and before I could react, I was lifted up and held upside-down, flung out of my chair and hovering several feet in front of him. Not close enough to reach, and not close enough to the floors to reach them either with my arms. My wallet and phone almost flew out of my pockets and hit the floor, but I caught them both, holding on with a tired expression.

"Hey, do you wanna become a docent, asshole?" I asked him. "Because that's how you become a docent."

"I'm not harming you, am I?" he asked, showing me a degree of smugness and the self-assurance that came with feelings of complete superiority over someone else. "I could do a lot, but I'm not. Take it as a kind gesture of goodwill, greenhorn."

"Didn't you fail at being an accountant or something?" I asked him, knowing he couldn't really hurt me. I was a little upset about having my rest interrupted, but not enough to put any venom into it. "Go take your Hogwarts bullshit elsewhere."

Gotyard inhaled sharply and drew his wand away. The sudden absence of magical energy made me fall on my ass as he walked off indignantly, cursing under his breath. I didn't catch most of it, except his final name for me, as he stepped away with a glare. "Dipshit."

"That's the House you were sorted into, yeah," I replied. He definitely heard it but must've lacked a reply, as he didn't deign to return to face me.

"Well, Mr. Robert, talk about burning a man alive," said Sixth - another semi-familiar face and voice. There was a hint of subsonic hum to his vocalizations that I found comforting and equally disconcerting. The inhuman appearance didn't bother me as much. A dark-feathered birdman was no more strange or unusual than Gregor the Snail, or even Newter. If anything, he was decently normal in comparison to most of what I'd seen walking around the Library, at this point in time.

"Sixth Wandsman of Cross. Did I get that right?"

I'd met him alongside the rest of the Serpent's Hand circle in which Phineas, Meredith, and Gotyard were members. I'd never seen or even heard much of Sixth beyond that unexceptional introduction, though. All I remembered was that he was something called a Wandsman.

"That's right. Do you mind having a word with me?"

"What's up with you guys, today?" I asked in slight surprise, and arising annoyance. I ask for peace, and the universe offers me some battles to fight instead. I stood up, using a bookshelf to stabilize myself. "Everyone's all over me today. Meredith, Little Sister-" I said that with maybe a touch too much bitterness "-then Gotyard, and now you. It's like everyone in the Hand wants a piece of me. I don't even know why."

The Wandsman looked at me curiously, as though peering into my eyes in search of something ineffable. "I don't know about what could've drawn the attention or ire of the others," he commented. "But as I understand it, according to my sources, today would be prime to ask for an interview."

"An interview?" I brushed off some clinging dust from my pants, looking at him in slight confusion.

"Have you never read Watching the Watchers in all of your time spent in here?" Sixth asked, sounding perplexed that I hadn't. I couldn't say I was familiar with the book he'd named, though.

"I've no idea what that is."

"It's our newspaper," Sixth said. He sounded a little offended that I hadn't known that, or perhaps miffed. "The Wandsmen, we are journalists. We report on all manner of phenomena and events in the mystical world. Thanks to our work, everyone can know the latest."

"So, you're like, Lois Lane?"

He stared at me, eyes squinted. His words came out slow, hesitant, but verging on the side of agreeable, "Yesss... Like, er, Lois Lane."

"Cool. And why do you want an interview with me?"

"You're famous. Need I say anything more?"

"Since when am I famous?" I asked in a combination of affront and disbelief. I'd already known that I was something of a celebrity, although the Hand's members seemed more focused on making my existence a pocket hell dimension, rather than asking for autographs.

I didn't even have any idea why I was so fiendishly peculiar. Maybe this was someway tied into me being a 'Leviathan.' I hoped that had as little relation as possible to the Endbringer of the same name. More importantly, perhaps Sixth could be informative here.

"I don't count the years. I merely report on them. In a newspaper." He clicked a pen, drawing a notepad from beneath his coat. His expression came out looking on the side of hopeful, inasmuch as a pseudo-bird could express such emotion to a human's visual cortex. "So, that interview?"

"Uh-huh."

Instead of staying in the middle of the cluttered and relatively empty alley, Sixth and I went to a side room. One of the reading rooms that ordinarily you'd go into to have a calm and silent place to read the kind of books that needed complete and undivided attention, or simply where you didn't wish to be interrupted. There was nothing producing sound and surprisingly few bookshelves. There was only a table and a couple of padded red armchairs.

"Alright, I think you should know something about me," I admitted, as I sat down opposite Sixth. He'd used the short window of opportunity to draw out some more journalistic supplies, including some that were magical tools. "And it's that I know very little about myself. I've lost my memories."

"I'm more than aware of that, Mr. Robert," he said, calm and even, an unperturbed boat in response to a minor tidal wave. Even as he said it, his feathered hand was moving with flicker-fast motions, writing down every word that fell between us. It seemed he intended to transcribe everything from the conversation right down to exact paraphrasing. I needed to be careful about what I said. "Everyone who's been following your story is."

"My story, yeah," I agreed, slow and methodical - pursuing the answers, still. "Can you tell me about that? Just, give the readers a recap for the sake of good storytelling? And me?"

He looked at me for a second. Even his hand stopped moving. This part was off the record, it seemed.

"You haven't learned of it from anybody else yet?" he asked, sounding as though he'd not actually expected that occurrence to be the case. "Not even from Little Sister?"

"No."

He looked at me squarely, as if attempting to detect bullshit. His eyes closed, and he drew in a breath.

"I'll abbreviate what I know. If you wish to know more, simply ask me questions regarding the specifics," he explained. His eyes opened, hands steepled. "In summary, under the SCP Foundation's custody, you were a member of Mobile Task Force Omega-7, also known as the Pandora's Box. A Task Force composed of anomalies, with the sole function of locating, destroying, or containing other anomalies, especially ones of exceptional value or danger. The Foundation used you as a soldier to contain a number of sapient entities. The anomalous community at large, I believe, called you Sergeant T3."

"T3?" I asked.

His response froze my blood cold.

"Trap, Torture, Terminate."

He said that as casually as a man commenting on the taste of pasta.

"Also a tasteless reference to the T-model of androids from the Terminator series, referring to your oftentimes legendary ruthlessness and calculation in the pursuit of your assigned missions. You held a reputation for violent thoroughness, Mr. Robert, much as your Mobile Task Force's commander. Although, I do believe your official callsign in the Foundation itself was Sergeant Treble," he commented, as if we were discussing the color of the sky or the nature of the grass. "It doesn't change what the other side of the conflict thought, of course."

"Trap, Torture...?"

"Terminate," he finished, calmly, watching me. "Yes."

"The fuck did I do?" I asked, voice rising a notch.

Suddenly, based on that name, a decent amount of Gotyard's distaste towards me seemed earned. And Meredith's. Everyone's.

"Mr. Robert, I believe the name rather makes its point clear. You specialized in capturing hostile targets from ambush, interrogating them for information, and disposing of them in a violent manner. Whether they were indeed supernatural or not. It was a different time, but..."

He stopped there, apparently seeing the incrementally growing horror and stupefaction on my face.

"I don't suppose," he started slowly, "that you're willing to continue the interview?"

"I am. It's just... well, you've told me a lot more than I expected," I said. A lot more than I should've been able to handle, but the shock of new discoveries was something that I was slowly becoming accustomed to. "So, I was some kind of... special agent that hunted down and killed mages?"

"Anomalies," he corrected. "I don't believe you've encountered or even killed that many mages."

"Right." It was so odd, hearing the word 'killed,' in reference to myself. I'd never killed anyone, at least as far as my memory went, and I'd been so conscientious about it. I didn't seem like the kind of person that had it in me to commit a murder, even in the line of duty. "Right. It's a lot of information to take in, that's all. You wanted an interview?"

"Mr. Robert, I think, for the sake of your emotional well-being, and the efficiency of the interview itself, it'd be best if you'd processed the shock prior. If you'd like, I'm open to rescheduling," he offered. "And if there's any other information you haven't been divulged, that you should know, I'd be more than happy to share it with you. As a Wandsman, it's my sworn duty to make sure as many beings possess as much knowledge as possible."

"What's a Leviathan?" I asked immediately, hoping that he'd know, or at least have a clue.

He pondered the question for a second. "Depends. In what context?"

"What'd be the most common?"

"A beast of God, mentioned in a number of books descended of the Adamic - or as they are often known - Abrahamic faiths," he answered. "Although, I dare say, if you were looking for a Leviathan, you wouldn't find one in the Wanderer's Library."

I shook my head. That couldn't have been it. I wasn't a sea monster.

"Any other contexts?"

"I... don't rightly know," he said. He sounded contrite about it, like he was sincerely sorry to disappoint me. "Forgive me. Ironically, I am a scholar of matters more mundane and modern, than ancient and deep. If you are looking for information on such esoterica, you'd better ask a member of the Hand. Or, if you are looking for information on your hidden past, something to help you restore your memories. There's-"

"There's something that can restore my memories?" I asked. His words suddenly intrigued me, even ignoring the potential of remembering my actions as Sergeant T3. If I remembered everything, I could resolve a lot of problems in a single action.

"As I was about to say," he continued, a mite annoyed, at which I smiled remorsefully, "There's a number of ways. Mnestics, spells, special devices... Some are less or more reliable than others."

"Can you run me through them? What's mnestics?"

"The SCP Foundation utilizes amnestics - a type of controlled substance - to edit or remove memories. However, they also produce a drug with the opposite effect, a mnestic: reinforcing or even restoring lost memories."

"I don't think the Foundation is anywhere close to likely to cooperate with me on that."

He smiled ruefully. "No."

"And the others?"

"Well, as the wisemen say: magic has a solution to every problem, if you sacrifice enough, or are clever enough," Sixth claimed. "If you don't know the spells yourself, you could ask someone in the Hand for aid."

"I'm not on speaking terms with most of them right now," I said, considering my relationship with the circle. Most of them either completely hated me, didn't care much for me, or I'd antagonized them recently. And there was Phineas, but Phineas being cryptic and unhelpful was kind of like water forming pools: a part of the natural function. "It's a good piece of advice, though. I could look around. It'll probably take me a while to find someone with such a specific ability, but at least it's achievable."

"There is a third option. A much easier one. Although somewhat dangerous."

I quirked an eyebrow. "What's that?"

He looked at me uneasily. "Where do you stand financially, Mr. Robert?"

"I think I'm rather well-off now, all things considered," I admitted after a second of thought. It wasn't like I was homeless anymore, and Faultline provided a steady paycheck. "Why? Do you know some dude that sells memory restorations?"

"Yes," he said matter-of-factly. "I can introduce you, although I'd advise caution. They have something of a dark and foreboding reputation in anomalous circles, a well-deserved one, I'd say. A reputation for avarice and ruthlessness, that is."

"I think I can deal with a greedy brain-peddler. What's his name, Sixth?"

He leaned forward, and spoke the words dramatically, "Their name is Marshall, Carter, and Dark."

Last edited: Jan 11, 2023

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Jan 11, 2023

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Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Jan 22, 2023

#523

I dropped my spanner back into the red toolbox, with a clang of metal. Harriet, next to me, startled and smiled. "Already done, Rob?"

She closed the short novel in her hands, a 2034 satire book, titled 'I, Morgoth.'

Allegedly written by a member of the Tolkien Estate. It was a pastiche of the Silmarillion, written from the perspective of Morgoth, now presented as a bumbling and feckless villain; not even aware that he was evil, and endlessly confused about why random people kept accusing him of breaking some lamps. The reason he'd strayed from Eru's song was a severe hangover resulting in equally severe confusion, which spread infectiously from there. It was honestly a pretty decent read if you knew anything about the source material.

It was a cheat I'd figured out with the Clockworks. The exchange setting produced a similar item, one of more or less equivalent value and kindred composition. If you used it on a newspaper, it'd issue you different articles: like slices of information from an alternate reality.

So, used on a piece of media, recursively, it could turn one simple book into a source of limitless entertainment, changing it constantly. Used on scenes or pages, you could pick out chapters to alter. If used on a section of the story and everything following that section, I was able to create branches of narrative diverging completely from the original.

Like, the Lord of the Rings, but what if Frodo was killed early on? And so on. 'I, Morgoth,' had started out as one of the installments in the Hobbit series.

Deep in my mind, though, I was already thinking of practical applications that didn't involve simply passing the time for Harriet. I could use this function for what amounted to largely safe, en masse generation of sensible and stylistically appropriate fanfiction. If I altered the narratives enough, they'd start to degrade and develop into something of itself, casting away enough of the original elements to become its own work. Then I'd be able to sell them.

Honestly, Robert, Harriet had said, when I revealed that plan, You get the most powerful transmutation power in the world, and you wanna use it to sell comics.

She had a point. At the same time, selling comic books was safe and inoffensive. Selling weapon could be dangerous and draw a lot of undue attention to itself, and it'd leave behind a bad taste in my mouth.

"You're staring off into blank space," Harriet commented, snapping her fingers, breaking me out of my economically tactical reverie. "All dumb-looking and shit."

"Sorry," I muttered, looking back down. Her language grated on me. There was always something to Harriet, a subtle pricklishness about the way she spoke. Even after weeks of knowing her, she could tick me off, like an expert clockmaker slowly assembling a set of gears and winding them up.

"Yeah, I'm done with the whole engine," I summarized. "All that's left is the car's body, interior, wheels, doors, chassis, windows, et cetera. And getting a license plate and driving license, obviously. Hopefully, those last ones can be handled with elegance."

"Rob, I don't think you'd know elegance if it batted its eyelashes at you and curtsied."

"Says you," I replied with a frown, crouching down, picking up the engine, and then standing. My back strained under the weight as I carried it across the small garage workshop, to a small table. It'd be able to rest there, until it was ready for placement.

"I think we're done here for today. Let's go for some food. Pizza?"

"Hell yes."

There was a pizza restaurant close to the Market, a small and unassuming location called Pizza Rat's Pizza Parlor. Given the surrounding lots, it wouldn't be wrong to assert it was almost on the edge of town, and bordered some of the neighborhoods that might be considered bad. It took Harriet and I the better part of ten minutes to walk over there on foot.

We sat down and ordered a medium pepperoni, olives, mushrooms, and diced pepper pizza. Rather uncharacteristically for most of our dinner 'dates,' we ate in silence, mostly thinking and exchanging random commentary on completely unrelated topics throughout the meal.

"Is there a way to develop superpowers without a trigger event, do you think?"

"Sure." It didn't take me long to answer that. I was a living case example. "Superpowers are basically a state of mind. Anything exceptional counts as a kind of superpower."

She stared at me for a long second, biting down further and further into the tip of a pizza slice, clamping on with her teeth, advancing a little, and then chomping down again. Only once she'd seized a good third did she rip it away, and then start chewing.

I didn't know why, but I stared at her and studied the process closely. Something about the simple act of eating pizza with someone was soothing to me. It felt like good memories.

Harriet then replied, glancing momentarily in the direction of the kitchen and other customers, to make sure we wouldn't be overheard, "Do you think... you could make me have a superpower? If you enhanced me on the highest setting of the Clockworks?"

"That's dangerous," I commented without inflection - lightly, as though speaking about the flavor of the cheese. I also looked around for safety, before continuing, "You realize the upper setting isn't to be toyed with, right? I'd made some mistakes with it, but-"

"Oh, come off it," she sighed, leaning back into her seat. "Name one dangerous thing you've made with it."

"...I've turned your shoes into fish that would've grappled onto people's feet and bred. That would've been dangerous, if Phineas hadn't dealt with it."

"It'd have been mildly annoying for the local populace. Try harder, Rob."

I frowned and thought for a second, on how to flip this around. I thought, maybe, to share about the pencil in Faultline's office, but then I realized, that hadn't exactly been a portent of the apocalypse either. I couldn't think of any other case I'd used the Very Fine setting to create something extremely dangerous: only extremely useful things.

"It... I don't know, Harriet," I said, finding myself the slightest bit convinced to view it from her perspective. "It tends to go... a little to the extremes."

"Yeah. But that's just the thing, isn't it?" she asked, now leaning forward - with palpable excitement, that she'd managed to sway a part of me. I felt a little sick. "It makes things extremely better at what they are. I'm your sidekick, so it'd make me, like, the ultimate sidekick."

"You're not my sidekick," I answered, and then immediately reworded, knowing it'd anger her, "Or, not only my sidekick, at least. You're a multifaceted person. A human being can't simply be broken down into a convenient archetype. There's component bits and pieces that make you Harriet. Being a sidekick is only one of them."

"Really? Because the Clockworks didn't seem to care your stupid anesthesia pills were carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen," she said, almost paraphrasing something I'd said earlier in the week. "They made magical healing pills, Rob. And they made creepy annoying shoe-fish, because we were close to the sea, and you wanted to annoy me. If you target a whole target, it'll target them holistically. It seems pretty damn obvious to me."

"I hate how smart you can be..." I muttered, and then sighed out. "I don't know. Are you sure about this? The risks are immense."

"What are the odds I'll die? Tell me honestly."

"There are fates worse than death."

"Like what?" she scoffed indignantly, as if challenging me. "Being your sidekick forever? Having to make cheesy puns? I'm already looking forward to doing all of that."

I stared at her for a long second.

I looked down and closed my eyes.

I'll regret this choice, I told myself with conviction, as though it might assuage some of the inevitable guilt. It's a terrible idea. But if I don't, she'll resent me.

"Fine," I accepted. "But we'll do it on my terms. I want time to prepare, in case something goes wrong as I'm predicting it will."

"The more you think of it as wrong, the worse it might go. Just think of it as a new exciting adventure, Rob." She smirked at me, and served herself another slice of pizza. I clicked my tongue and decided to relent. Arguing here was pointless, especially when I'd already acceded to the main demand. I lost the conversation.

After our meal, I went back home - while Harriet remarked she had a couple of things to handle on her own, and went off in the direction of the Boardwalk.

My phone rang as I was lounging around on my couch, thinking of what a terrible mistake I'd made, agreeing to Harriet's proposal.

"Hello," I said into the speaker.

"Evening, Robert," Faultline said in a demure greeting. There was something wrong - I could tell almost immediately - from the innocent tone of her voice, almost as if attempting to conceal the brewing worry. "Can you get down to the Palanquin in maybe fifteen minutes?"

"Is there a situation?"

"There's a mission coming up. A pretty big one, just a step out of town."

"Where?"

"Boston. I'll give you the deets once you get down, so hurry up. There's a full debrief coming. Client's got something specific in mind."

"Alright, I'll be down in a sec."

"Also, pick up some donuts or something. There's a shop on the way."

"Am I your errand boy now?" I asked, somewhere between affront and playfulness. She didn't reply, so I said, "Fine, fine. I'll get you some donuts."

"Sweet." She ended the call.

Ten thousand dollars.

That wasn't even a lot, was it?

It seemed almost too good to be true.

For the equivalent of pocket change - only ten thousand - that I could earn in a single mission, or even a couple of minor outings as a cape, or even selling some random and unstable shit I made, I could purchase a Schulman-NY Programmable Mnestic Device.

It wasn't even an especially unique item - not auctioned, but sold in bulk. According to Sixth, it'd definitely work and perform as advertised, too.

All it'd cost is ten thousand dollars.

As luck would have it, an opportunity to earn that exact amount came up, like a bolt from the blue, or perhaps a deus ex machina.

It was one of the slow days, the sort of days where the atmosphere and ambient lighting dropped so hard it affected neurological function and made you feel equal parts leisurely and queasy, as though the universe were meant to last forever, and that was somehow a scary prospect. The afternoon was rainy and overcast, dark clouds gathering on the precipice of the shore, and letting down occasional drizzles of rain over the city's municipal grid. Cars drove a beat slower than usual to account for the conditions. It wasn't the streets of Brockton Bay that I was talking about, though.

I was talking about Boston.

"Are we ready?" Faultline asked, over the slight crackle of radio. The rented cargo van seemed to lurch under the weight of my full armor as it made a turn. "Comms check."

"I can hear you," Gregor answered.

"Reading you five-by-five," I said, strapping on my right hand's gauntlet, a polished, almost seamless glove of bright white steel.

"Copy," Spitfire and Newter said at the same time, with Newter adding a swift, "boss."

I'd named the improved suit of armor, 'Mek Suit, Mk. 2.' Although Faultline insisted on it, I wasn't a real tinker: I didn't sit in a workshop with a wrench and screwdriver, tirelessly screwing on plating and assembling circuitboards to create ray guns and hoverbikes. I'd simply touched the suit of armor and magically made it better.

Still. It'd be easily mistaken for solid tinkerwork, especially by laymen. It was an almost deceptively lightweight suit, it didn't weigh me down any more than a heavy jacket and padded pants would. However, the protective layers of alloyed metal were sturdy and absorbent enough that I could handle a barrage of small-arms fire and come away feeling no more hurt than a man pushed around by a bunch of kindergarteners.

All I had to fear was parahumans, and even then, only several types. My worst match-up, all things considered, was probably the mobile artillery sorts. Capes like Legend or Eidolon, who could move around faster than I could catch up, and drown me in enough firepower to turn a brick house into a brick memory.

Aside from the Mek Suit, I wore an olive-colored backpack, secured over my shoulders and torso with a number of polyester straps, containing some heavy equipment. There were also pouches containing several useful items on my chest. An assembly of refined medicines, demolition equipment, small explosives, and one-time combat gadgets for varied use.

I'd taken anything that could be even remotely useful on a mission like this, sort of ad lib style, intent on using the right items as problems came up. I didn't know much about the Teeth, and most of the available knowledge about their powersets were speculation aside from the Butcher, so I'd taken a little bit of everything that might provide a counter.

"Remember - the Teeth aren't some push-around C-listers. Don't take any unneeded risks. And that goes double if the Butcher appears."

"How much did you say Accord was paying for this?" I asked.

"More than enough," she answered. "Focus on the job."

It was difficult to focus. I wasn't prone to anxiety, and anxiety wasn't something I was feeling at that moment - the anticipation before violence, maybe - but rather, I was in a state that resembled impatience, annoyed that I couldn't know whether or not this'd be enough.

After several minutes of sitting and staring at one another in the van, with a bored Newter sitting away from everyone else to avoid accidental touch, the vehicle lurched to a stop.

Faultline spoke over comms, "We're here. Everyone out."

As I walked out, I looked down at my forearm PDA and started playing with the settings. I enabled the sonar visor.

My world turned into a dense mass of blurred feedback dots, like the white-and-black grains of television static, layered over the normal world.

It came together to form solid images, a tapestry of see-through vision spanning the entire block, stronger in locations with noticeable sound sources. It didn't have the precision or programming to allow me to pick out individual words or sentences, but mapping people's locations based on footstep vibrations was child's play, even through the walls of buildings.

As soon as I'd mapped out the locations of the foes, Faultline climbed, ascending the face of the building, sinking her fingers into its face as effortlessly as she might've into butter, doing the same with her feet. Handholds and footholds, made on a whim. She was extremely adept at using her power, in a way that I found myself vaguely envying.

It was something I'd thought about often since our first mission. I had a lot more versatility and potential over her. In fact, her power was almost objectively bland and perceived as weak. But even so, she had a sort of unnatural instinct for using it, or maybe smarts. Something that you didn't see with other capes often, not even the veteran sorts. Coming up with creative uses and smart applications came almost second nature to her.

Meanwhile, here I was, still mulling over whether turning my best friend into a potential eldritch monster was a bad idea or not.

"Am I good?"

She was more or less on level with the third floor. I offered a couple of minor corrections until she was perfectly aligned on a horizontal level, her own head on level with the head of someone walking down the hallway immediately beyond.

"Up here?" she asked, over radio.

"Yeah. Five seconds or so left." I waited, and once the time was correct, I said, "Now!"

She reached through the wall, with a soft sound of crumbling brick and plaster, and grabbed onto an unexpecting man's collar. He didn't even have the time to let out a yell of alarm.

A high-voltage taser installed into her glove immediately took him down, dropping him almost like a fly sitting down on an electrified wire. There was a pop of dynamic electricity, much quieter than I learned to expect.

"It's clear now," I said. "Do we climb after you?"

"How many on the lower floors?" she asked, grunting as she squeezed through the wall, widening it as she came through.

"Seven or so," I reported, peering through the walls. The distance, some forty meters, made precise discernment a little difficult. "And at least two capes, or... at least, I think those are capes. Spree, I can recognize. I'm not sure about the other one, but she's not dressed normally. Either Butcher or Hemorrhagia."

"It can't be the Butcher," she answered. "Butcher's elsewhere right now, north of the city. I got that confirmed from a couple of old contacts."

"Are we taking them down, then?" Spitfire asked.

"Accord wants us to scare them, possibly beat the snot out of them," she answered. "So, yes. It depends on how much we can get away with. If possible, we'll attempt to do that. If not, breaking their sandbox and toys ought to do pretty well."

"That's difficult with someone like the Teeth," Spitfire muttered next to me, and not into her earpiece.

"I'll admit, it's one of the more hazardous tasks we've taken on," Gregor agreed, ruminating on it. "It seems Faultline is feeling more confident with the new equipment."

It wasn't clear whether Gregor himself approved of that mindset, but at least he wasn't directing any hostility my way.

Newter climbed in after Faultline, and then Gregor was about to start the process, when Faultline's voice came through the radio, "Actually, hold on. I think we could do better with a two-pronged assault. Spitfire, come up here. We'll flush them out from upstairs, and Gregor and Mekhane can catch them. It'll be much easier to do it that way. When there's a fire, everyone runs out."

"You want to burn the building down?" I asked in disbelief.

"It's the Teeth's," she replied. "Why not?"

"I am with Mekhane on this," Gregor answered. "The public likely won't appreciate destruction of property. It could diminish our image."

"Capes fight, property gets destroyed. It's what happens. We're going with this. It's more effective." She started giving out orders, "Newter, with me, behind. Be ready to move forward and take out anyone if they show up. Spitfire, up front, next to me. Mekhane, if you've got any traps, set them down now around the exits. Gregor, you stay near the main exit."

I started doing that, slinging my backpack off my shoulder and peering within. There were a lot of options to choose from. A lot of schizotech - a bag of tricks, almost - that I'd never named, or even pondered, past the theoretical physics of how they might operate.

I picked out one of them, a combination of trigger mechanisms, copper wire, and an electricity box that formed what I now called a shock mine. I mounted it next to the door, primed it, and moved away to the safe distance of five feet. After five seconds or so, it became armed, and it'd shock anyone coming through with enough electricity to knock out an adult human male unproblematically, and mostly non-lethally.

"Electric mine at staff exit door. Alert me when exiting through it so I can disarm it," I reported. Disarming it was more of a theoretical process, and a time-consuming one to boot; one that'd involve a lot of tin cans being thrown. The problem with a mine you can't walk up to without activating is that disarming it is a pain in the ass. "They'll probably use the emergency exit, so I'm setting down something a little stronger over there."

"Understood. We can't take too long, though. Half a minute."

The next piece of supernaturally weird heavy gear I'd brought along went right under the emergency exit door. There was something almost wrong about doing that: setting up mines next to escape routes. It felt like committing a war crime, and that struck a familiar and eerie chord with me. It was difficult to forget what I'd learned from Sixth.

"I'm ready," I reported, after a couple of seconds. "The emergency exit is mined with something that slows down any movement over it."

"Copy. Spitfire, are you ready?"

"Yes."

"Go on three..." Faultline said, as I slung the backpack over to my back again. I didn't want to leave anything useful or incriminating behind on accident. "One, two, three!"

109

Birdsie

Jan 22, 2023

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Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Mar 7, 2023

#535

There was no real warning of a counter-attack.

There was yelling, shouting, and the sound of rapid footsteps, and I tensed as a sea of men started pouring out of the door. A landmine activated and failed to make even a dent in the sheer mass of bodies. I stepped back, as they screamed and started falling over, clattering, and seizing on the floor.

All of them wore the Teeth costume: dark crimson, covered with spikes and spines. None of them made it more than a couple of feet out of the door before falling over, but even so, they didn't stop coming - there was almost a crowd mentality, a subconscious hive mind sort of awareness to them. As they stepped out, they shambled vaguely in my direction before falling over on the accumulating pile of twitching bodies around the door. At least fifteen men in a couple of seconds, and then twice that many in several more. A stream of Teeth, pouring out like someone's merciless diarrhea.

Among the members of the Teeth, Spree was the one I'd anticipated as being the most straightforward to deal with. It seemed like I'd been wrong because I heavily underestimated how many clones he could make. This wasn't a mere 'create a squad of myself' ability. It was crowd manifestation. A crowd that was almost senseless, directed only by a will-shadow of purpose set by its inceptor, and then swiftly discarded as circumstances changed faster than it could adapt.

As I watched, though, the Sprees lasted for increasingly longer without falling over - as the real one managed to reach closer to the exit, I supposed, that his clones were supposed to clear for him. A shortsighted strategy, since he'd end up placing himself between the anvil and hammer in the end. A fire at one end, and a mountain of himself on the other. It didn't mean that I was safe, though.

A Spree clone managed to leap over the bodies of several, other, fallen Sprees. He attempted to tackle me, and failed, as I moved to the side and dodged. He ended up careening down to the alleyway floor, sliding against it like a bowling ball down the polished alley. He attempted to stand, but failed, as a knee buckled for some unclear reason. He didn't stand again. In the meantime, at least five more Sprees came out, and failed to even reach me - clattering over other Sprees, or over each other. A return to the mindless chaos.

I moved for the door at an oblique angle, avoiding the center of the zone of danger, as more Sprees poured out. As I'd expected, the presence of previous Sprees made the task of reaching me a complicated one: a mound had accumulated, almost waist-high in some places, and they didn't have the manual dexterity and coordination for even that kind of climb: attempts made resulted in them falling down flat on the other side of the mound, and joining its writhing, uncontrolled mass within seconds. The more put-together ones made token attempts at standing up but promptly failed.

Fuck me.

A body of a Spree clone reached out, a hand covered in clawed gloves catching onto my ankle. I kicked it away with almost no resistance, and the hand didn't reach out again, the clone simply watching my movements with an almost feverish gleam in its eyes. There was mettle in those eyes, but only for a moment. A passing shadow of hostile awareness, as though remembering it was supposed to be my enemy, and then forgetting.

The internals of the clone were terrifying, in that subtle chemical horror kind of way that most people's bodies already were, taken a step and a half further. It was degrading rapidly and comprehensively on a molecular level, proteins and filaments breaking down into a semi-biotic plasm, that in a couple of minutes, would resemble a splatter of smoked fatty acids and greasy powder on the floor of the alleyway.

The axons of its brain were a collapsed ramshackle mess; the cortex resembling a ruined building after a war. There was only a skeleton of reason and animalistic instinct left, and the centers for motorics and language were so degraded it wouldn't understand language and could do little except make feeble attempts at motion. The clones went braindead within seconds of being released and essentially inoperational within a minute: corpses with remnants of life. In fifteen, they'd be nothing but wet mush.

And, as far as I could see, they were identical to normal human beings. Just like Oni Lee's were more or less identical until they were carbon dust.

Something about that - the concept of birthing hundreds of real, sapient beings, that proceeded to wear away into nothingness within minutes - struck a chord of terror within my being. It was familiar in the worst way possible, like an itch you couldn't scratch, that haunted you since you were a child.

I controlled it and moved past them, once more set on my task. Ignoring the hands reaching out, the shuffling sounds. The muted sounds and throaty rasps let out by twitching, confused corpses around me, piling up into small hills as more of them poured out of the doorway.

I placed my hand against the wall and reached in with the Clockworks. It was something I'd appropriated out of Faultline's skill kit.

In a second, a considerable crevice opened up, and I reached on through with my hand, caking the gauntlet in a breading of white mortar and pale dust, and caught onto Spree's - the real one's - shoulder. A convulsing shock ran through his nerves as I destroyed select portions of them, and he dropped, the outpouring of clones arresting. Some of the fresher ones that he'd created moments ago swiveled around to look at me, but I moved away from the wall. One of them cursed at me, and then ran for the door. It didn't matter, since it'd end up the same way as its compatriots.

He'd seem unbothered. Maybe even unaware of his power's workings. Or maybe he simply didn't care.

"Spree is down," I reported.

"Mekh," Faultline called on the radio. "Can you get the van ready?"

I nodded to myself, looking down at the corpses next to me. The twitching remnants of over five dozen Sprees, enough of them to almost cover the door, like humanoid sandbags. It was such a morbid sight, yet so fascinating. Especially the way they deteriorated, the same way everything else around them deteriorated, only slightly faster.

"Copy."

"Are we leaving?" There was a sound of moderate surprise in Newter's voice. Like he'd been enjoying himself and was a little disappointed. "Already?"

"Yes."

Just a five-minute attack, she'd said. In and out.

It was faster than five minutes, and felt more brutal. I'd expected our proper combat operations to be similar to the reputation of the Crew: fast, professional, and done with the precision of a neurosurgeon's hand. This was exactly that, but there was also an almost ruthless tilt to it, an element of 'rip out the weed, collect your paycheck, and leave.' An ordered driveby.

It didn't bother me, strangely. But as I'd discovered recently from the Wandsman, it wouldn't be the first thing I did some questionable things without feeling especially bothered.

After some time, the horror stems from the abstract sense of how little you care anymore.

And so, five minutes later, Faultline's Crew was back in the van, I'd removed my costume, or at least the cumbersome parts, and reviewed the situation. It was so fast, so smooth, I couldn't even find anything to criticize. A perfectly conducted mission, and one that we'd be paid handsomely for, if I understood our objectives correctly.

An effortless win should've been a good thing.

For some reason, though, it wasn't.

As we drove away, I felt a listlessness in me, rising almost like dough in the oven. I wasn't sure it'd leave anytime soon, but for now I could pretend it didn't exist.

A hubbub and clamor surrounded me, the sounds of almost a dozen other tables full of customers.

As I returned to the table with a tray of food and drinks, I overheard a young woman complaining of stomach pains, an old man complimenting the place's fries, and a couple attempting to rein in their unruly children and have a nice family outing.

Fat Ben's, an out-of-way diner that sold waffles, bacon, and similar food that passed for American cuisine. Its location was southwest of the Lord's Street Market. It was almost on the border of the city proper. The asphalt parking lot outside covered more land than the diner and its surrounding buildings.

A caustic symptom of the disease that was our nation's car obsession, sparked by legislation and infrastructure planning influenced by vast and avaricious corporations that needed to sell their product: vehicles and vehicle accessories.

And I would be contributing to it, another cog in the machine of society, turning in the same direction as everyone else because it was easier and more convenient to work in harmony with the machine, rather than push against its insurmountable weight and force. If you had such limited time, only a million years to do things, then why destroy what others already built? Make stuff on top of that. There was a wisdom in that, I supposed.

My fingers tapped uneasily against the tray as I thought about it, every spark of neurons bringing me deeper into the pit.

I sat down, putting the red plastic tray on the table. Everyone immediately grabbed their own food - Harriet reaching out for a disgusting, sloppy hamburger with particularly strong gluttony. I couldn't understand how she was capable of digesting that mess. It was a heart attack and a host of diseases besides, although she didn't seem to care, even after I told her. The very idea of eating it made me sick down to the bone, even if I could clear away the bacteria and unhealthy organic elements in a single prod of the finger.

"A toast," Jack declared, raising his cup. "To Robert's new car."

"That's a stupid toast," I commented, one hand supporting my chin. I used the other to raise a cup of tea, in spite of my protest. Everyone took a sip of their drink, mood faintly celebratory. I sipped the tea daintily, careful not to scorch my own tongue.

"I feel you and I might need to do something fun together, Rob," Harriet said matter-of-factly, unwrapping the paper around her hamburger. "You're having a mood again. All mopey and depressed."

"I don't have 'moods,' Harriet."

"You do, you goober."

I saw no reason to continue the argument, at least not in the current iteration. I might as well attempt to outwarm the sun or drown a cup of water. There was, in Harriet, an endless patience for inanity, and that was something no argument could defeat. Rhetoric and craft mattered not, in the face of complete conviction married to utter ignorance, and Harriet possessed both of those in enough abundance to share with the world every day.

Maybe I should confess, instead? About the Wanderer's Library and what I'd learned? And what I planned to do, to learn more?

No, she'd yell at me, the hypocrite. Call me an idiot for having secrets I didn't want to share, and wanting to contact a dubious organization to recover my memories. All the while demanding I do something completely stupid and risk her own life, for mere power.

She could never understand my perspective, I realized, somewhere deep down.

I perceived the world differently from other people. It came as a part of seeing the most fundamental elements of its structure on a daily basis: the atomic nuclei and background radiation affecting them. I could shield computers against single-event upsets, but I couldn't shield mankind against failures of perspective, because those were macroscopic phenomena: systems inherent to the way lesser systems developed into larger ones. A problem emergent from the core principles of the matter: the inability to understand the other clumps of matter surrounding us.

Sometimes, I wondered what human society might be like if there were no parahumans, and everyone had my power instead. There'd be no meaningful secrets anymore, and no more ignorance of the truth. It'd be impossible when the truth was staring you right in the face.

After we finished our meals, I drove everyone home, and then went to my apartment, and laid down on a couch. Thinking about this.

An itch in your brain. Like a damned parasite.

I felt adrift sometimes. It was my power's fault, I supposed. It made me think: once I had my memories, then what? Would I come back here to Brockton Bay and be a parahuman mercenary forever, providing labor for masses of flesh that might not be alive in fifty years? Would I do something else, find a new and fresh reason to exist? There was doubt in me, that pursuing my past was the correct answer to my future, but godsdamn it, I didn't see any other solution. My past was the reason I existed in the present, and people kept digging it up.

Sergeant Treble. The cold killer of the SCP Foundation.

Was it something inherent in my nature, then? That I ended up as a mercenary working for Faultline? Or an accident of convenience? Phineas was the one who'd put me in contact, but the thought must've at least crossed his mind, that I'd be suited for this line of work, given my past experiences.

Maybe he was even hoping this'd dredge up some old memories? Like a flashback?

I knew, unlike him, that brains weren't so convenient. At best, I'd keep suffering bouts of deja vu, and feel unsettled by the strangeness of my surroundings. Adrift.

"No more waiting," I whispered.

I had the money, so tomorrow morning, I'd be going to the Library. And from there, I'd make a journey back to the past.

90

Birdsie

Mar 7, 2023

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Mar 22, 2023

#544

In the innards of the Wanderer's Library, a couple of bookstack boulevards down from the section with Glortothian self-help books, between the pyramid-stacks of archivist paperwork, in a small cramped room filled with ancient clocks, I met with a man.

"So," I started promisingly, heading over to a chair on the other side of the coffee table in the middle, "you're my liaison?"

The Wandsman, Sixth of Cross, had arranged for one of his personal contacts to offer me services as an exchange liaison for a minimal fee - a mere ten percent of the product cost. I'd be getting a financial advisor, a supernatural guide, and potentially a magician - all in one package, for a measly eight hundred or so bucks. I could've afforded even a charge of thirty percent or thereabouts without any grief in my heart, with the newfound income from my recent illicit activities, although I wasn't one to start off a maybe-promising business relationship I didn't know anything about by overpaying. It seemed like ten percent was more than satisfactory anyhow.

"That I am," he answered with a nod. We did the entire familiar old ritual of shaking hands and exchanging nods, as he introduced himself, "Alaric Ravenwood. Doctor, actually, if you will."

"You've got a doctorate?" I asked in frank surprise.

"Yes, I have got a doctorate in Demonology, although that was after doing some postgrad work." He sounded almost a little smug about it. "I spent most of my time at Deer, earning myself a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Thaumatology."

One of those, I thought immediately, is not like the other.

Then again, I'd already seen and heard about much weirder stuff than a dude with a doctorate in Demonology, so I was almost unfazed. There was a man made out of gold flying around and putting out volcanoes in my home dimension. How was a demonologist financial advisor the weirdest thing I'd ever seen? How could it even compare? There was no reason to be weirded out. And honestly, if an operational promoter wanted to summon himself some imps and succubi in his quaint suburban home's basement, then who the fuck was I to question any of his actions? I didn't have a doctorate in Demonology, and I certainly wasn't a fucking priest.

"It seems I'm in good hands, then," I said diplomatically, easing into my chair a little.

"Do you mind if I smoke?" he asked, drawing a carton of cigarettes.

"Not at all," I said, already feeling my respect for this kindred spirit increasing in magnitude, "Actually, do you mind if I bum one off you?"

"Please, by all means," he said, offering the pack. I slipped one sumptuous cigarette out, took out my zippo lighter, and lit the tip in one smooth pass of the wrist.

He didn't look impressive, not in the slightest - a short and slim man with square glasses, a scruffy beard, a suit that looked almost vacuum-sealed to his body, and a red tie - and maybe that was the idea. If the Merchants underestimated him, it might be even better, although I was hardly the leading expert on matters of thaumaturgical trade.

"So, you're kind of like my representative for the deal?" I asked a quarter's way into my cigarette. It was a decent texture, although a brand I didn't recognize. It must've been from another world, or some alternate timeline to Earth Bet's.

"Yes. It'll be a simple business exchange, I've already contacted MC&D's business representative about the product you wanted to buy - a Schulman-NY Programmable Mnestic Device - and arranged for a meeting this afternoon in Portlands. I've asked for you to come here a little earlier, Mr. Robert, so we could discuss the strategy we'll use."

"Portlands?" I asked innocuously, noticing the oddity of the word. I'd learned to pick out some of those little details most people would miss - in the Library, missing a detail like that could be the difference between having an ordinary day and drinking alien piss by accident.

"The City of Three Portlands, yes," he said, and then, leaning back a step, "From the confusion in your tone, I assume you don't know much about it?"

"Pretty much don't know anything about it."

"Ah, it's fortunate we've had this meeting, then," he said, with a clipped smile appearing on his face. "Three Portlands is an independent city-state and enclave of the mystical, located within a self-contained pocket universe, accessible via an arrangement of Ways located in and around Portland, Maine; Portland, Oregon; and the Isle of Portland in the United Kingdom. I attended Deer College, in Portlands, and I know of an entrance the academy uses that's metaphysically conjoined to the Library. A useful little shortcut that we'll utilize to reduce travel time to a minimum. Gives us more time to plan."

I nodded. That seemed efficient and reasonable.

"Of course, we'll need to pay a drop of blood each, to the gate toll demon..."

Ah, there's the other shoe. I was looking around for it.

"Is that dangerous?" I asked, feeling confident his reply would be - if nothing else - informative. He was, after all, a demonologist.

"I've personally known several ghosts using the aforementioned Way that were relatively unhurt by the entire process, and if there's anyone who'd be easily preyed upon by such an entity, it'd be them. Deer's dark spirits are well-trained, I assure you."

"Ghosts can bleed?" I zeroed in on that curio.

"Yes," he snapped, and then, as if realizing I didn't know anything about the supernatural, eased back into his chair a little and cleared his throat. His next statement was a bar quieter, as if careful for anyone not to hear us, "In fact, Mr. Robert, it's considered, aah... phantasmophobic, to state otherwise, and I'll ask you to refrain from doing that. Anti-undead sentiment in the community is strong enough as it is. I understand the confusion, however."

"I'm sorry," I apologized sincerely, and then nodded in acceptance of the facts, "Don't be racist to the undead. Got it."

"Yes, in particular, it's considered extremely rude to ask anyone the manner or date of their death. You should refrain from that, more than anything else. Although I doubt it'll be relevant during our exchange, as Marshall, Carter, and Dark isn't known for utilizing ghosts as employees. And besides, it's a relatively minor product we're buying - barely on the radar for meet-ups like these. Any lower, and you could've ordered the product online for personalized delivery. So I doubt we'll meet with an entire entourage of traders and armed guards. Most likely, it'll be one of my colleagues, a person I already know. Now..."

He opened a suitcase and started arranging some papers. "I'll need to brief you on the likely forms of interference we'll face."

"Interference?"

In the middle of arranging those documents, he suddenly looked up at me, through his square-rimmed glasses, smoking cigarette jammed in his mouth. He removed it, looked at me with a different eye, and asked, "Aren't you wanted by several groups of interest, Mr. Robert? Or at least, aren't you something of a minor celebrity?"

"I didn't know the Foundation was planning on getting involved," I commented lamely.

"I don't know if they are," he answered thoughtfully after a second of staring at the table. "But it does - as any competent individual with the same double major as me will tell you - pay to have competent and reliable defenses in place and fail the ritual, than it is to succeed greatly but without any safeties in place. The former is a frighteningly effective learning experience. The latter, at worst, leads to a swift demise, or at best, is the formation of a bad habit."

"One that'll kill you in the end," I said ruefully, looking down at my cigarette with a slight quirk of the lips.

"Quite."

He proceeded to brief me on the most likely culprits of a potential attack or interruption in our business dealings. He based them on an extensive study of my past life, and the people I've pissed off, as well as those who'd most like to reclaim me for their own purposes. Those were, in decreasing order of probability: the SCP Foundation, the Global Occult Coalition, the Church of the Broken God, and finally, the Chaos Insurgency.

There were also the Merchants themselves, and the risk they'd decide to make the deal into a trap in order to kidnap me, although we intended to keep my identity secret from them, and they weren't frequently keen on prying into the identities of paying clientele. If anything happened, it was more likely they'd stray on the side of fiscal safety and offer to pay me off instead - although Dr. Ravenwood warned me not to accept any such deals, and I decided it'd be smart to listen in this particular instance. Not that any of them knew who, exactly, I was, in any case.

I didn't recognize one of the names, though. "Who is the Church of the Broken God?"

"A clockwork cult, worshipping machines and exalting transhuman self-modification above all else. I've reason to believe, based on a detail a more-informed colleague slipped to me, that your ontokinetic abilities are related to a construct of their faith," he informed. "If so, it is not entirely inconceivable they'll attempt to capture you. Their capabilities aren't anything you or I wouldn't be capable of dealing with, though."

I nodded.

"And what about the Insurgency?"

"Ah," he reacted with acknowledgment - it was a smart question, pondering why they were so low on the list. "Although it's certain the Insurgency's agents would love to possess you, the Madmen are barred from Portlands and, indeed, wanted for terrorism. It'd be difficult for them to even safely enter the city, so I doubt we'll be seeing them."

A common pattern with the Insurgency, I made a mental note, as something to remember in the future: They have very little in the way of supernatural allies, and a lot in the way of people hating the shit out of them.

"Your fees are surprisingly cheap," I commented and then flicked some ash into the ashtray he'd brought out, "For the quality of services and competencies you provide. It's not like the deal I'm making has an especially huge price tag on it, and you're only getting a small cut."

"Thank you," he said, with a growing smile of pride. It seemed like he enjoyed compliments of that sort. "I always offer cheaper rates to new and promising clients, however. After all, you'll be all the more likely to call on my services in the future, if you're assured in person of their quality. Moving on..."

Then we handled a couple of minor details. Since I couldn't show my face safely in a public space with spirits and anomalous entities - in fear of being instantly recognized - it seemed I'd be wearing my supersuit, and pretending to be Dr. Ravenwood's bodyguard. There were a couple of special acts we'd put on, in order to make the pretense work since Ravenwood wasn't known for showing to business meetings with personal entourages.

Once every detail was hammered out, we checked the time, ate lunch together and had a casual non-business conversation about Portlands and Brockton Bay respectively - "superheroes, truly?" - to pass the time. I asked him what a doctor - especially one of demonology - was doing arranging business meetings and giving financial advice, and he informed me that I'd be surprised how profitable and educational such a profession could be. Let alone, professionally rewarding.

He also compared doing business to demonological practice by saying they were essentially the same thing once you stripped away the extraneous elements, with the foremost difference being that non-demonic compacts had a slightly lesser volatility and risk, and the debts weren't quite as crippling. Usually.

Once the time was right, we left the lunchroom and moved for the Way.

The closest Way to Portlands - and Deer College's entrance, specifically - was at the conclusion of a long, spiral hallway, that seemed to turn in on itself impossibly. A circle crossing its own path like an infinite, self-swallowing snake. There was a door with a dark, cold, steel doorknob that looked like a sleeping demon's face at the end of that hallway with a small, stone basin and a clean steel knife on a pedestal next to it.

Dr. Ravenwood promptly instructed me to prick my finger and release a drop of blood into the basin, and I did. The doorknob's eyes opened, shining a maleficent red light. Its jaw parted, and there was a click, as the door unlocked. I passed on through, and Ravenwood followed moments after paying his own toll.

"What'd have happened if you hadn't paid, doc?" I asked curiously.

"I'd be denied entrance next time, and have to appeal my crime with one of the infernal courts," he answered. Then, thinking for a second as though predicting my next question in advance, "Most likely, I'd also have to pay an exorbitant penalty. Something on the order of half my skin, or a gallon of sacrificial blood to the dark gods."

I looked at him a little funny once he finished that statement, thinking he was about to say, 'gotcha!' and tell me he was kidding, and all he'd need to do was pay a couple of dollars for a ticket. He never did, simply moving on.

The Deer campus was interesting - in how mundane it appeared. I didn't see many signs of anything... obviously supernatural, and even the stuff that I detected by reaching out with the Clockworks wasn't overtly paranormal. There was some almost electric mythos in the air, a sensation of not-so-ancient power, like static build-up that reminded me of the Library. That could've simply been some bleedthrough from the Way, though, it was hard to tell.

After walking deeper into the city, I started to see the signs. Three Portlands seemed a decently normal city at first look - the streets, sidewalks, road signs, building facades, and even the parking lots were almost painfully average and generic, not differing from anything I'd seen in Brockton or Boston over my days. Dressed in my supermercenary armor, I was probably among some of the most interesting pedestrians out on the street.

It was actually when you squinted that you started to notice the cropping-up oddities, the small marks that something was stranger than in ordinary locations. There was a black-skinned man with a jovial smile and a cane enjoying a sunlit walk in the park, and shadows appeared to flee or shrink at his approach, as if he were a source of some invisible dim light. The local abattoir seemed to have a couple of strangely-shaped carcasses, and a bunch of chattering children were standing in line, discussing the origin of the freshest cuts. A dignified man drove past us on the street in a 1925 Rolls-Royce Phantom, and I was fairly certain that he was Dracula, or at least cosplaying Dracula.

It wasn't anything I'd not seen before in the Wanderer's Library, although the contrast of all this abnormality in what seemed a fairly normal city somehow found a way to induce vertigo in me anyway, as if reality stubbornly wanted to keep giving me slight jolts on a regular basis and reminding me how weird it was.

I shook my head, and followed Dr. Ravenwood into a car with a dark paint job and tinted windows - the Clockworks informed me it was a modified Lexus IS200. His casual entry of a key into the ignition switch also told me the vehicle was probably his own. I looked at him for a moment. He was smiling.

"It's uncommon for a personal automobile to be allowed on the streets of Portlands," he informed me conversationally. "My special dispensation is a point of pride."

After a couple of seconds to put his files in order, and taking the payment money from me, we started driving.

"So, where's the deal happening?"

"A parking lot by the edge of the city, far away from prying UIU eyes. The outer reaches of the Periphery, as it is called, can be a little dangerous to traverse on your own. Too far out, things start to deconceptualize." I decided to ignore the latter part of the statement - as ominous as it was - because it seemed fairly comprehensible, and he'd mentioned already the nature of this place as a pocket world. I was familiar with the idea from some of the books I'd read. Instead, I focused on another unfamiliar term. An organization, I suspected.

"UIU?"

"Ah, the Unusual Incidents Unit of the FBI," he said, waving a hand in a dismissive manner, as though it were the most casual and dismissable thing in the world. "Don't worry about them."

I blinked a little. For all the caution he'd shown while briefing me on potential danger scenarios, here, Dr. Ravenwood seemed to be treading forward as if the conversation was about the weather, and the weather decided to be particularly boring and uneventful.

"Don't worry about some special unit of the FBI?" I asked disbelievingly.

"Mr. Robert, I assure you, the UIU is the least of anyone's problems," he said, letting out a small sigh, as if predicting my next objection.

I'd opened my mouth to speak, in fact, although at his tired look, I relented and allowed him to speak. He continued smoothly the moment he saw I wasn't going to butt in with fruitless protests.

"It's a bit of a complex situation, with the UIU. It has a... let us call it, an official authority within Portlands - it is its zone of jurisdiction as a matter of fact, because of some long history I won't bore you with. However, as impolite as it might be of me to say, the UIU is also something of the buttmonkey of the anomalous community. Everyone makes fun of it, and no one treats it seriously. Not the Foundation, not the Insurgency, or the Coalition. Not even the Serpent's Hand." He considered for a second, deeply. "Especially the Serpent's Hand."

"Now I know you're having me on."

"I am rather deadly serious, Mr. Robert," he insisted. "As a matter of fact, UIU agents have a strict policy of... well, I don't even know how to explain it..."

I didn't press or offer ideas, waiting for him to say it in his own words.

"Allow me to put it like this: UIU agents only intervene in the smallest, least dangerous, least important, and least relevant affairs of the moonlit world. The field agents are under strict orders to follow the orders of a member of any other supernatural faction or government, regardless of the situation. Just because you are wearing a suit of strange-looking armor, it is probable you are a paranormal entity of some kind. As such, if you told a UIU agent to drop his firearm, look the other way, and hop like a kangaroo, they would comply in a heartbeat to ensure their own continued survival. It's happened before countless times." He considered the situation for a second. "Most of the time, the UIU's agents don't intervene in interfactional conflicts like this for that very reason. Saves everyone the time and embarrassment of having to put up with them."

God - his words alone were something, but I could not explain the sheer dismissal of his tone - I'd never heard such a scathing critique of anything, and he'd simply been stating matters of fact, almost bored with the topic. Maybe that was it. The fact that an entire profession existed out there, in which trained and most likely competent men and women participated, and whose sole existential goal it seemed was being dismissed as impotent.

After ruminating on that for a couple of minutes, and seeing on the GPS that we were still a ways out of the area the trade was happening, I decided to ask more questions. Purely out of curiosity.

"So, Deer College..."

"Oh, you're asking me about Deer?"

I nodded. "Kind of an interesting name."

"Gets its name after Reed."

"Reed?"

"Reed College, Portland," he said, glancing at me in the mirror, as if puzzled briefly. "You know, the mundie one."

"Right. What else can you learn about in Deer?"

"What can't you?" he asked with a chuckle. "All sorts of majors you can apply for. It's divided into mundane and occult divisions. You pick one of each, and you get a double major. So, for instance, I was a double in Economics and Thaumatology, and I later got a doctorate working elsewhere with practice for a couple of years."

"Thaumatology, that's magic?"

"Broadly speaking, yes."

"They teach you any spells, doc?" I asked curiously.

"A couple," he said, almost distantly. "I'll admit I've always been a middling spellcaster. Could never manage to work up the potential, and I've lost some of my edge since my education finished. Nowadays I mostly know a couple of tricks, minor cantrips that almost anyone could replicate. But I've an eye for detail like no other, and I always come in meticulously prepared, so one of my lecturers recommended me to develop in the direction of-"

"-demon-summoning," I finished.

"Yes." He sounded oddly proud, maybe a touch defensive. He must've experienced some pushback on this in the past.

After a couple of seconds driving, his lips parted, and he asked me, "Any reason you ask? Were you thinking of applying?"

I chuckled. It was a cold sound and came off more pessimistic than I aimed for. "A higher education would be nice. Something to look forward to, in life. And I wouldn't mind being able to cast actual spells. Not sure if they'd take a Foundation war criminal, though."

"I'm sure there are extenuating circumstances," he allayed, and then, with a bit of a sniff, added, "And if needed, I'd gladly provide a recommendation."

"I'd appreciate that," I told him in full honesty, although I wasn't counting on any fulfillment of that promise. Life and its brutal ways already taught me to be a little more downbeat and kill my expectations about such matters. For every victory and positive thing in life, there had to be at least three that wanted to slit your throat at night.

"Ah. Right," I said. "I noticed I drew a couple of looks with my armor and all."

"Well, as you said, Mr. Robert: better the armor, than the man. If anyone recognized the man, we might have ourselves a spot of trouble, after all."

"Mm," I made a sound of agreement. I expected him to find a way to continue the conversation, but he didn't, so it ended there. Almost awkwardly, were it not for me immediately distracting myself with our interesting surroundings.

After a couple of minutes, we arrived on location. It was a concrete parking lot surrounded by a sparse forest, more than a couple of bushes, and some old streetlamps.

A middle-aged man with a black, well-kept beard, dressed in an elegant gray suit and jacket stood at the end of the parking lot, holding a cigarette between his dark gloves. He noticed our arrival and crushed it beneath his shoe the moment we parked, clearing his throat as he approached and shook Ravenwood's hand.

"Dr. Ravenwood," he said in a polite manner, offering a nod. He then looked at me and pointedly didn't offer a handshake. I almost smiled ruefully. "And a friend?"

"A guardian of sorts," Ravenwood corrected. I folded my arms for brutish emphasis.

"I did not know you anticipate trouble with our company, sir," the man replied. He squinted a bit. "I'm-"

"I am sorry to hurry along proceedings of politeness, but I don't have all day, Johnathan," Ravenwood answered. He brandished the small suitcase containing the cash. "And I've brought you the money requested for the product. Now please sell it to me."

The man instead recentered his focus on Ravenwood and frowned a little. "You're a little on edge today, doctor. Is something the matter? I assure you our meeting is secure. I've seen to the matter of it personally, and you ought to know I am not sloppy with such things."

"No," Ravenwood said, "but my timer runs dry."

"A different date or time should've been scheduled, then," the man answered, offering something of a shit-eating grin. I wanted to punch him the moment that annoying self-satisfied expression appeared on his face. "As a merchandise handler for Marshall, Carter, and Dark private limited company, I should inform you that I am unwilling to deal in bad faith. If you suspect there is something dangerous threatening you, I'd like to know about it, and its potential ramifications on myself and our company."

Ravenwood frowned and then made an expression of surrender. "Fine. I've made a mistake, Mr. Phillips, a gross and terrible mistake, and dealt with a demon I shouldn't have. It cannot claim its price on me yet, but I feel its touch closing in. It wants to make me forget things, and I wish to avoid that fate. And this fine gentleman here-"

He indicated me with a hand.

"A priest in training. Although you might instead call him a noble paladin of the modern world, with enough Akiva to act as a repellent," he said, "He agreed to protect me until such a time I feel safe once more."

"For payment?" the nosy Mr. Phillips asked, raising an eyebrow in my direction.

The exact moment - half-second, really - of non-response from Ravenwood was enough for me to understand this was my designated cue. I needed to answer this one for myself, and probably a couple more to come, otherwise our ploy would be too suspicious. "God does not work his miracles for free, Mr. Philips. Even men of cloth must eat."

"Or men of steel, apparently," he commented, looking down at my bulky chestplate.

"Ah, but what finer steel, than one hidden beneath the cloth?" I asked, pretending to smirk knowingly underneath my helmet - like an actual wiseling. Even though I didn't think my answer was that witty, and he probably wouldn't either.

"And what deities - prithee - dost thou heed, paladin?" There was a deep undercurrent of amused mockery in that question.

I frowned. That wasn't a part of the preparation work or one of the many questions or situations that Ravenwood told me to anticipate. I considered how to answer, and started feeling pressed, but not a second passed before I was relieved of the duty of having to respond.

"Irrelevant," Ravenwood jumped in right there, pretending to cut me off, "Are we going to make a deal, or are you going to waste my fucking time over a mere eight thousand dollars?"

"I can see through your lies, doctor," Philips answered with a faint smile. "However well-crafted they may be."

"I haven't a clue what kind of schizophrenia you're suffering from, but please, get it cured."

Mr. Philips closed his eyes, sighed, and shrugged. "Oh well, I've dealt with much, much worse. And more impolite besides. I suppose you were correct: your affairs are yours, and I am too nosy. Come with me this way, gentlemen."

He walked down to his car, a large steel-colored Chevrolet SUV, and we followed.

After opening the trunk and rummaging around, Mr. Philips removed a hefty-looking metal container with handles on the side, and delicately unsealed it, opening and showing the interior. There, inside, I saw a metal box with small attachments, a button keyboard input, a small black screen, and a couple of translucent tubes - one of them long and disconnected, with a puncture needle at the end. That was it. The cornucopia of memories.

"A Schulman-NY Programmable Mnestic Device, mark seven," Mr. Philips said, presenting it like a grandiose trophy. His tone was now strictly professional, absent of any previous amusement. "None of the kinks of the earlier generations or market prototypes. A one-year user guarantee of suffering no neurodegenerative disorder as a result of use, or your money back. And, of course, an attached user manual, now with helpful images and infographics." He raised a small booklet, then dropped it back in.

"Taking it," Dr. Ravenwood said, handing over the money bag. Somehow, Mr. Philips merely glanced inside, seemed to mutter some numbers, and immediately knew the correct amount - down to the dollar. He smiled, and put the bag inside his trunk, handing over the box holding the device in return.

"A pleasure to make a deal with you, gentlemen." He shook Ravenwood's hand and then extended it in my direction. In the space between one second passing and another, I glanced at Ravenwood and saw no obvious indicators of him being for or against in his expression, meaning I could do whatever I wanted.

Oh, what the hell, why not? I thought. Already have what I want, might as well be nice.

I shook the man's hand solidly. The moment our handshake finished, hands still clasped, his eyes started widening. Not as eyes widen in sudden realization of a horrible fact. Rather, as eyes widen upon seeing an avalanche, and tracking its approach. Only, he was looking right at my helmet, where my eyes would've been.

"You're... You're T3."

He attempted to pull away and maybe run, but I tightened my grasp on his hand, almost crushing bone. He winced, nose furrowing in anger and pain. "Fuck!"

"I ain't shit, actually," I told him matter-of-factly, and channeled my best impression of what I thought Sergeant Treble might've sounded like - cold, disaffected, ruthless. Playing on the only advantage I had right now, and that was apparent fear. "T3 would've killed you in a heartbeat, and you know what he could do to people if he wanted. In fact, you'll do your best to forget that I'm anything but a nice and innocent, god-fearing paladin fighting the good fight."

"Yes! Yes!" he screamed out, still in terrible pain, "Fuck! Just don't kill me!"

"And when you make a report to your superiors," I continued, squeezing the hand a little. He made a wheezing sound. "What's it gonna say?"

He spoke through an almost-closed throat, eyes bulging out, voice choked with pain, like a haze of static, "That Ravenwood - wanted - to protect himself against a demon. A priest in armor was with him. Protecting him from the demon."

I squeezed a little more.

His words came out like a waterfall, pouring out like a symphony of compliance, ten syllables per second with an undercurrent of agony, gasping out for relief between individual sentences and half-sentences, "A-nice-fucking-priest, nicest-fucking-priest-I've met, holy shitting fuck, all-he-did-was-pray-and-eat-wafers, awh fuck, I-saw-the-demon-even, the-demon-was-there, fuck, fuck fuck, please, fuck, let go, come on, I'll cooperate I swear!"

I released his hand. He immediately clutched it with the other one, wincing.

"Good. Then our business is concluded."

I started moving towards our vehicle, with Dr. Ravenwood and the device in tow. I had what I needed.

79

Birdsie

Mar 22, 2023

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Threadmarks Motor 4.x (Interlude: Lung)

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Mar 22, 2023

#550

"-and now, onto summer sports events," said the reporter's chattering voice, sounding muted through the speaker of the TV set.

Lung sat, powerless, and contemplated the events of the last couple of days, as he'd been doing since the moment it happened.

A defeat, so complete and resounding, so humiliating had only happened to him once before in his life, and only when he was not yet parahuman. It was an embittering feeling to find himself in that position once more, stripped of everything, all because of one lucky tinker with a strong ally... That damned woman.

Something like that called for vengeance, for throats slit, for shootings ordered.

And yet... he'd been warned, and he'd known, and he'd learned. There were still many beings in the world mightier than himself, against whom even his uttermost could do little. The wisdom in those situations was to avoid confrontation, to allow the larger beast to pass by unobstructed and harmoniously coexist with its whims. He'd learned this once, with the black-haired woman, and then once more with Leviathan. Always, his anger yearned to be strong enough, and it'd never be enough.

On the couch across the room, a slumbering Oni Lee was lying, high and numb on a cocktail of sedatives. Recuperating. Downstairs, in the basement, Bakuda was laboriously working to ensure their organization didn't suffer for its leader's absence. He let out a deep sigh at that infuriating thought and pressed down on the remote with the nub of an arm he'd regrown.

It switched channels to something with cartoons. He pressed once again, cycling, searching for entertainment, for a distraction from the spurious wrath of his thoughts.

His healing was painfully slow, almost unusually so, even in the inactive state. He'd have loved for someone to fight for even a minute that couldn't kill him immediately in his almost limbless condition, to accelerate the process, but that wasn't an easy thing to locate.

His current predicament was however soluble by time, and Lung had nothing if not reserves of careful patience.

There was a sound beyond the door, a distant knock, and a sound like someone falling down with barely a sound. He stopped cycling and craned his ear curiously.

Another knock and the door of his shoddy apartment safehouse was kicked open. A man in a dark suit - one of his own - yelled an interrupted warning as he tumbled down to the floor with a painful noise, the wind knocked out of him. He attempted, one time, to stand again, but it seemed the impact had been stronger than he'd given credit to, and he failed. He seemed to drift towards unconsciousness, as Lung's eyes flickered up to the cause of his fall.

You, he realized, and the wrath in him stoked. It rose, a slow-burning crucible, and the excitement of his power anticipating a difficult battle followed. His arm started to stretch, new strands of muscle forming in the deep heat. Not fast enough, not against this opponent. At this healing speed, it'd be at least a minute and a half before he could even properly reach out and grab something that wasn't put into his hand, and maybe two minutes before he could walk.

Across the room, the weight on the couch shifted minimally. Oni Lee's eyes fluttered awake, and then, calculatedly, closed once again. He was now awake, if barely, and waiting for the right moment to strike. In a second, Lung realized the intent of the enemy, and his eyes flickered toward the doorway once more, with a pinch of shock.

A woman in a black suit stood there, wearing a fedora, and wielding a suitcase. One of its corners was scuffed, as though it'd been used to make a heavy impact on something. She'd act and kill Oni Lee in a couple of seconds, or at least disable him.

She took a single, confident step indoors, and before Lung could shout a warning, Oni Lee teleported behind her and attempted to use a kitchen knife to strike her in the back. A smart attempt, acting from where she couldn't see - although Lung knew for a fact she didn't need to see in order to win. And Lee was feeble and exhausted, and his footing was extremely unstable after several nights of lying impotently in bed. Most damningly of all, she'd known what he'd do, before he'd even conceived to do it, like a prophet.

A movement of the suitcase to block the weapon, one slight adjustment of her footing, and a brief lunge of the boot to kick the side of his groin, and a pained, stunned Oni Lee was dropping down to the floor. She kicked with the other knee right into his jaw, adjusting her stance to maximize the blow's strength, and he was out cold in one attack.

All without really interrupting her walk deeper into the room, not for more than half a second, smoothly proceeding out of that complex martial move and into casual walking motion once again. She'd taken out a competent killer and high-level teleporter in one move, limiting his active field of vision by constraining it to the floor, and then her knee.

He looked at his unconscious subordinate and felt the rage strengthen. He looked at the woman, hatred pooling in his eyes.

You, he couldn't manage to say, with his haggard throat.

Calmly, she leaned down and disabled the television, then sat down opposite Lung, in a small sofa chair. She adjusted her tie and looked him in the eyes. She was perfectly calm and unperturbed, treating him as a hapless amputee, rather than an equal foe.

His healing factor was accelerating, accelerating like the heartbeat pounding in his chest: a sledgehammer on an organic gong. The heat was starting to build and rise like a furnace melting steel, and he could feel the first of his scales waiting to come out, eager to begin surfacing from below the skin.

His better arm was starting to gain definition and muscle, enough to strike or strangle. And the worse one, the one that'd been completely pulverized, was almost as decently repaired as the better one. All in response to this one, woman-shaped threat.

His throat was now solid enough to speak clearly and loudly, and without any residual pain. He opened his mouth, to ask her a question, but she quickly preempted him.

"Does the Black Moon howl?"

"...what?" he asked in turn, confused.

She opened the suitcase and pulled out a manila envelope. Careful as one handling radioactive material, she undid some laminated cover on it and then started pulling out a small sheet of paper. Its reverse, facing the table, must've had some image on it. She didn't flip it around for him to see, instead pulling out a second, apparently identical sheet of paper. They were lying there, almost like an implied threat. He couldn't reach them yet, and his legs weren't fully operational, healed down only to the thighs.

"Kenta," she called his name, worrying him further. He'd known the devil-woman knew far more than she let on, but this implied he'd held much more attention in her mind than he anticipated. His anger continued to rise, although now, in his state, he hesitated to strike.

"Does the Black Moon howl?" she asked again.

"No. What the fuck are you talking about, crazy bitch?" he spat the words.

She methodically picked out one of the papers and pinched its edge. Almost languorous with her movement, she turned it facing towards him.

There was something on it, a mishmash of brightly-colored fractal shapes: red, green, blue, and other shades of those same colors; some of which he didn't even know the exact names. It made his stomach feel weird. After a couple of seconds, he couldn't quite focus on it, and something in him felt limp, disarmed.

She lowered the paper onto the table, face-down, and then showed him the other one in an identical fashion. It was an image of himself, crippled, sitting on the couch and facing the frame, as if taken by a polaroid camera in real-time. His breathing went unsteady, as something in his throat untied itself. He coughed and blinked, feeling sweat on his forehead. Every single part of him felt unsteadily loose as if teetering on the brink of reality; ready to collapse into a pile of impuissant strings on the floor.

"Does the Black Moon howl?"

There was an influence in the question, a compulsion, like a forced loosening of the nerves.

All of a sudden, Kenta felt more relaxed than should've been possible, as though every muscle had slackened in one instant, and there was no more will to move them. His regeneration slowed down, half-formed arm's short fingers wavering in hesitant motion.

He didn't know how to reply, and yet, his brain did so - almost on its own, without any conscious input from him. "Only when the stars dim."

"Kenta," she said. "Does the Black Moon howl?"

"Only to enlighten the world."

Her voice was starting to become more intense, in his mind, like an inescapable clarion. A droning suggestion that couldn't be escaped or ignored. Something that forced comprehension, even in a state of total apathy, and overrode any other prerogative.

She reached deep into her suitcase, and dropped two more items on the table: yet another manilla envelope, and a thick book with the imagery of a dark city and orange-lit clouds on it. She returned the images she'd used into their original envelope, and redid the lamination on it, before stuffing it down her suitcase.

He looked at the book, wondering at its purpose.

'Worm,' it said. By John C. McCrae.

"Read the book," she instructed, and he knew that he'd do so, no matter what. Even if circumstances forced him to kill himself at the cost of such an action. "Only the first couple of chapters matter. Afterward, burn it, and read your orders in the envelope, fulfilling them to the best of your ability. Then burn it as well. If anyone asks about my presence here, including your men, you are to remind them the value of not asking stupid questions, and never bring it up in conversation again."

And he knew he'd do so, as certainly as he knew that he was Lung, as certainly as he could see that Oni Lee was on the floor. Because disobedience of those exact orders, at that moment, was impossible. Something he couldn't even imagine, let alone fathom on a mental level. It'd be easier for him to perceive a color that didn't exist.

"Good evening," she said, and the loosening effect from earlier dissipated. His anger returned in full, all the more raging for her assertion over his own will, and he wanted to kill her on the spot, although his standing orders prevented it. He needed to read the book first. Attacking her meant he might not get the opportunity to do so.

She'd left. He was almost completely regenerated at that point, ready to return back to work. On the floor, Oni Lee shifted and let out a groan, as Lung picked up the book and started reading. He needed to absorb the chapters as quickly as possible, then burn the accursed tome to ash.

A small Chinese restaurant, on April 9th, somewhere in the docks.

Alone, and thankfully in silence, a despondent Lung sat and drank. He decided that he'd drink enough to be nigh-thoughtless. It'd be one of the last proper freedoms, one of the last pearls of liberty and peace, he could enjoy before his reckoning and subsequent internment. He'd never been much for drinking, without that.

And so I must lose, he considered glumly, pondering the dark contents of the envelope. He knocked back another drink and sighed out in satisfaction.

An hour to midnight, he finished the flask of whiskey, and decided to sit down and maybe eat something. A decent, filling meal. He wandered slowly into the empty restaurant's kitchen, and rummaged around its stocks in search of food. Tomorrow night, after all, it'd be the reckoning. It was best to do everything now, before it started.

He'd become almost precociously aware of the dates and times of day, ever since his reading of the book and envelope. His subconscious mind itself was ever-keenly aware of them, not bending on the prospect of losing awareness of the current events. He was aware of the precious free time he was chasing after and steadily losing.

He cracked open an egg, and it sizzled against the pan. A slow, nice cook. He added salt and a little pepper, before throwing in a couple of handfuls of diced duck meat. Once more, his thoughts started turning in the direction of the envelope, and its portentous contents.

In a manner of speaking, it was almost enlightening, like a message from God. It clarified his position in the structures of the world, as a mere agent of circumstance. He was to serve as this... protagonist's first victory, so to speak. A powerful springboard used to advance to even more considerable levels of influence and repute.

It annoyed him, nonetheless, that he'd lose to an insect armed with insects. Especially since with the foresight of the book's contents, he'd be able to prevent a certain loss all the more.

The only consolation was that she'd die in time, and he'd probably survive beyond the events of the book. And that she was strong enough to make her victories matter. Better if defeated by an inherently strong and worthy enemy, rather than a pathetically weak but lucky one.

He'd read the entire book, studied its contents almost religiously. Contessa, the woman, had said only the first chapters mattered, but not indicated he couldn't read all of it.

Actually, the initial order implied he was factually encouraged to read its full contents, and given his nascent awareness of Contessa's power and its all-encompassing nature, he frequently wondered at the nature of that order. Or perhaps more accurately, its origin.

She was a schemer at heart, an insidious plotter. She could plant her seeds years in advance, and she reaped forests of rewards later without breaking a sweat. Could her involvement be such a seed, one so hideously concealed even he couldn't fathom its presence? He couldn't see any rational way in which she'd indeed benefit in due time, from letting him know of such things. If anything, he'd be a more considerable risk and impediment to all of her organization's plans, even though he didn't intend it at the moment.

Was it a gesture of mercy, then? A meager attempt at conferring solace by explaining the forthcoming events and his inevitable role in them? Or was it something more sinister?

He considered, in some of his idle moments, also the strange nature of reality.

Did the book come first, and his world as its product, or did someone see the results of his world, and produce the book? The manner in which the envelope explained his orders almost seemed to suggest the former as the truth, although that seemed downright absurd.

It couldn't be true, could it?

And even more intriguingly, the irksome Mekhane, the annoying boy he'd clashed against, was conspicuously absent from the book's events. He did not appear in any chapter, and no character resembling him was even mentioned in any of the insect girl's encounters.

How to account for him, should he appear?

He added some vegetables to his plate, and started eating as he considered.

No, that was a dead question. Accounting for him, alone, meant he'd already failed the task. He'd attempt to ignore his existence as much as possible, without rousing anyone's suspicion. If needed, he'd make some token remarks of sparing him benevolently and not pursuing further vengeance, and that was about it.

It was more probable anyway that Contessa was handling that angle of events, perhaps steering him in directions away from the narrative of the book. It'd be childishly easy for her to do through second-order interlocutors and arranging seemingly random circumstances to happen at select moments. If he didn't appear in the book, then interfered in Lung's mission, it'd be a problem for Cauldron as well, after all.

Somehow, despite the countless discoveries, he didn't despair at his new life mission.

Most in his position would ensnare themselves with impotent wrath. To know one's future, yet stand incapable of preventing it, seemed like the perfect storm to incite curses against the heavens. But, instead, he felt almost at peace. He was uncertain whether the removal of his agency had an inherent effect on him, or whether it was something involving the master effect the woman had utilized. Seeing the world he lived in from so many new angles of fresh perspective seemed to shade his mistakes all the lighter.

Besides, he could've suffered much worse fates. He could've found himself stuck in the city as Leviathan's waves crashed against it, or perhaps even during the arrival of the Nine. And the less said for any excessively aggressive clones of him existing, the better.

Indeed. He'd gotten off relatively lightly, and fate itself had placed in his lap, a hefty piece of reassurance.

At the end of the story, after all, he was one among the few who remained alive.

83

Birdsie

Mar 22, 2023

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Threadmarks Protocol 5.1

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Mar 30, 2023

#561

As always, I was carrying out my return back home via the Wanderer's Library, although I didn't have much opportunity to search the Library's stacks, or time to waste on doing so. After parting with Dr. Ravenwood, I was intent on returning home as fast as possible and delving deep into that mine of unplumbed memories hidden somewhere deep in my cerebral cortex.

It occurred to me that perhaps I could've used the Clockworks to stimulate a number of select neural connections, although that sounded to me like an amazing idea in the same way a horse was technically an elephant. It'd probably lead to an immediate aneurysm at best, or transform me into a psionic abomination at worst.

Hopefully finding out I was a war criminal wouldn't traumatize or change me too badly, I reflected as I looked into a stained glass facade amongst the stacks, showing another section of the Library behind it. It reflected my faceless helmet, showing none of the emotion that I imagined was warring on my face. Hesitation. Doubt.

After hearing what I'd heard about myself, could this really be worth it?

I was something called a Leviathan if Implex's faux pas could be believed. And could it? Even assuming it couldn't, it didn't change the Black Queens were intent on manipulating me, and pigeon-holing me into some crucial role that I didn't imagine I would much appreciate. They came to Earth Bet specifically to find me, and they did that real fast. If I was that important to a society of multiversal sorcerers, I needed to find out why, and if I regretted it, damn them for not telling me.

As I was marching down the stacks, dressed much like a bizarre rendition of a technoknight, with my suitcase of illegally acquired mnestic technology in hand, I was accosted.

A child made of shadows approached me, from between the bookcase walls, and cheerfully proffered a small card.

"A telegram for you, Mr. Treble!" it spoke with a subsonic hum as if multiple children's voices were layering over one another.

I wasn't expecting anything of the sort to happen today. As far as the Clockworks were able to tell, this entity wasn't sentient. Some manner of delivery spirit, or even a spell construct.

"I... what?"

"A telegram for you, sir!"

There was an unspoken yet credited rule once you've been in the Wanderer's Library as a patron for some time: 'don't question it.'

I nodded and accepted the telegram, and read the contents of the card, Clockworks creeping into the ink and paper, studying the writing. It was heavily touched by sorcery.

'Meet at Café La Bête,

Now.

- LS.'

I lowered the message. I was intending on asking the child for some instructions on reaching this Café, but to my disappointment, my interlocutor and courier had disappeared into thin nothingness in between eyeblinks of analysis. Not even a black mist to show for it.

It seemed like I was on my own to procure the directions, although I was proficient in doing that already, so it didn't take especially long.

"East and two lefts of the northish-southish edge of Aisle 6722-AΣ," said one of the Watchers of Paragon, in synthesized British English. "It's open from around seven AM to nine PM; ten PM on Sundays, although, you should be warned, the only thing the damned Beast sells is coffee and only coffee."

"I suppose I'm in for a cup of Joe, then."

"I did not know your kind was cannibalistic," it said dryly.

I chuckled. "Me neither."

All seventeen of its heads chuckled as well.

Before the conversation devolved into a discussion of the exacting flavor palettes of human flesh, I decided to move and locate the Café in question. It blended extremely well into the stacks, its wooden facade and interior possessing a chestnut polish; all the more difficult to find due to its deeply obscure location, away from the major arteries of movement and interdimensional shuffling. Almost as if she'd picked it for being out of the way.

The lighting inside was deep and warm, suffusing every corner of the room, and the doorbell made a little ring as I came in. Behind the counter, instead of a human, there stood a lycan, a being made of matted dark fur, with a cruel snout. It looked at me as I came in, and let out a hoarse declaration, in a voice that sounded like ripped cloth, "Be with you in a minute."

I nodded and cast a look across the room. In the corner booth, I saw one of the Little Sisters, a variant dressed elegantly in a suit, with a pair of dark Oakley wraparound sunglasses. It lent her the distinct aura of a secret agent, like one of the Men in Black. There was even a little earpiece, with that fancy wire swirl.

I sat down, slowly, opposite of her - and set down my suitcase on the side, out of easy stealing reach. "So, is Treble my actual surname?"

"By some accounts," she replied. She did a one-handed cast, and erected a privacy ward, a simple one to obscure the sound into meaningless babble. I recognized that one well, because it happened to be one of the most popular spells locally practiced. "As luck would have it, I am Black Queen Treble. A Treble to deal with a Treble."

That's when the Beast of Gévaudan, the owner, came into the privacy bubble. "Have you decided on anything, sir? We have coffee, coffee, and coffee."

"A cup of coffee, then."

"Will you have anything with that?" the Beast of Gévaudan asked, jotting down my order on a small notepad.

"Uh, maybe-"

He growled as if I was threatening him with bodily harm.

"-coffee," I stated confidently. "Just coffee."

He offered a happy look, suddenly, and then stepped away. "Right up."

Once the Beast exited our private abode, I looked to Black Queen Treble,

"Listen, err... if you'll insist on calling me, Mr. Treble, we're in for a world of confusion," I said, raising a hand. "I know you're my 'Little Sister,' but sharing a surname is excessive."

"In that case, you may call me Agent Chao. Helps avoid the confusion."

I snorted. "What are you, a Gock?" There was no change of expression and no counter-statement. "Oh, wow, you're actually a Gock. They sent a Gock Allison after me? Are we scraping the bottom of the barrel? What's next, Unusual Incidents Unit Allison?"

"I don't believe any individual instance of me could be so unimaginative and incompetent as to work for a detachment of the FBI," she replied coolly.

"I think you need to give yourself less credit. You're like the Interdimensional Council of Reeds, except less cool."

"Mr. Treble," she said, snapping me back to attention. "If you please, relinquish the illicit device you've acquired. I'll only ask once."

"Or you'll kill me?"

"No."

I nodded because the answer made sense. "Right, you'll track me down to my home, and then kill me. Can't kill a patron of the Library in the Library." I rapped a finger against my temple, in a thoughtful manner.

Soon, the Beast returned with a cup of coffee - settling it down on our table.

I looked down and analyzed its contents. I didn't entirely trust any drink or food before doing a thorough check of its chemical structure, but I found the coffee within the cup was fairly standard and eminently drinkable: 98% water, one percent organic compounds including caffeine and carbohydrates, and some minority of the staples: potassium, magnesium, calcium, phosphorus... All heated to eighty degrees Celsius.

I removed my helmet after a couple of seconds, taking off the straps, and then placing it on the seat next to me. I took a sip of the coffee, slurping it from the edge of the cup.

"Excellent coffee," I commented to Treble, "Good blend."

She nodded, and absentmindedly sipped her own.

"How come you and I have the same name?" I pressed on that once more. "Treble?"

"Multiversal coincidence," she replied smoothly. "As it happens, one of your childhood mentors was a former Global Occult Coalition operative. I believe your de facto surname was a way of honoring him."

"De facto?"

"Your Foundation's records had a different one," she replied, revealing that fact as though it were merely the weather forecast. "It hardly matters, though."

"And were you trained by the same operative?"

She only offered a tight smile. "I can neither confirm nor deny."

"So, you aren't going to kill me?"

"No, and I do not plan to kill you," she answered. "I said that I'd ask once because I dislike pointless chatter. I don't repeat questions pointlessly, and I provide all information I am willing to divulge relevant to an interlocutor's choice prior to offering it to them."

She sipped coffee, as I ruminated on that fact.

"But you still want something from me," I said, "because we're talking, instead of amicably parting ways. If you aren't going to convince me, then what?"

"Perhaps I could answer questions to sate your curiosity?"

"Oh, you'd really do something that friendly? Contrary to the other Black Queens' desires? I doubt it's out of the kindness of your heart."

"Call it a favor owed to an old friend."

"Alright, what's the name of the ex-Gock operative who allegedly trained me?" I calmly sipped my cup.

"Agent Ukulele."

I snorted into the cup, and then choked, coffee pouring out of my nose. She offered a sardonic smile, clearly amused by my reaction.

"Ukulele? Seriously?"

"Most of them are stupid."

"Who are the members of O5 Command?"

"A British woman, an artificial intelligence, a German war veteran, a cowboy, several people who can't die, Satan, and a black housecat. None of them have names anymore. Does it matter? You'll never meet any of them, and even if you do, it won't matter who they are. It'll only matter what you are doing in front of them, and why."

It really said something about my life and the inherent weirdness of reality that I didn't even momentarily question that list of characters - even the part about the cat.

"Hmm," I hummed, drinking more coffee. I was in an eager hurry to move out of here, although I couldn't say that she didn't catch my interest with her open explanations. I decided if she was so honest and straightforward, I might as well ask for a couple of spoilers in regards to my memory-viewing experience. "Tell me about my former unit."

She offered a thin smile. "Now, that I can't tell you about."

I raised an eyebrow. "You can divulge the O5-"

She raised a hand, in turn, to stop me. "Almost everyone knows the O5 Command of the Foundation spreads falsehoods about themselves. I offered you a number of potential identities, and no doubt at least a couple of them are false. I don't actually know who the members of the O5 are, Mr. Treble. No one alive does, especially not a 'Gock' like me."

I sensed the slightest bite of vengeance to that. Maybe I'd earned it.

"However," she continued, "There are some things you'd better discover on your own. If you're planning on going through with the use of the device, why bother hearing it from me? There's nothing quite like hands-on experience."

"You're right." I stood and took my suitcase - finding its contents, thankfully, still there. She didn't portal out its contents while I wasn't looking or anything. Not that I could've realistically done anything to prevent it, except maybe taking petty vengeance. Unlike murder, the punishments on theft in the Library were relatively light, assuming you could prove and conceptually justify the action as theft, rather than simply taking an unattended object. There was little concept of private ownership for the librarians, and some long-time patrons as well.

"Good talk," I said, as I moved for the door.

"If I can give you one last piece of advice?"

I stopped and offered a lidded half-look. "If you'll say something ominous about watching me, or me watching myself, don't bother."

"If you dig around in your past, you're sacrificing your future," she stated instead, and there was a confidence in that statement that hadn't been there before. "I am certain of that. As certain as I can be of anything. I came here to warn you - regardless of whatever schemes others have in store for you, there exists a chance you can live comfortably in the dark. Just keep on living the small, enjoyable existence you've carved out for yourself. If you bring back what happened, you can't have that anymore."

I frowned.

"Sorry, Agent Chao, but I think I'd rather die in the light, then let the likes of you tell me I can suckle your tits with the lights off, like some fucking infant. Goodbye."

I left the Café, and went back to Brockton Bay.

As soon as I got back, I'd delve back into the past, no matter how allegedly horrific and life-changing its contents might be - and damn them, or damn me, I wasn't going to stop because of a couple of shocking insights shared over a cup of coffee.

Absolute darkness, a newborn crying out in fear and pain, a sound like flesh being twisted. A second deafening sound, a scared howling, piercing through the room-

A flash of light, and then a white ceiling decked out with fluorescent lamps. The squeaking of medical stretcher wheels, and the sound of rubber suits clinging onto human forms - butyl rubber-clad hands pushing the stretcher onward. I looked around, and I remembered... the men in hazmat suits. And something else as well, that I couldn't easily recall - a presence, a weight on my chest. I could understand it, but I couldn't understand anything else.

Another flash, and I was in a dark cell, metal walls and metal floors, and I couldn't leave it.

I remembered sitting in that darkness, and not understanding why I was so lonely and why nobody would come to play with me, and then something shook, and rattled the cell.

And...

And... then what?

"Fuck."

All of a sudden, I was back at home, once more in Brockton Bay, lying sideways on a luxurious beige settee that I'd chosen as my spot for recalling my life's contents. The port of the Schulman continued being injected into my spinal cord, but with a press of the switch, the pressure released and it detached. I let out a little moan and sat up.

Across the screen of the device, a pixelated lime-on-dark message blinked: 'Session Duration: 1 hour, 24 minutes.'

According to the user's manual, that meant I should take a solid break from any further memory-recovering for at least about eight hours.

It seemed that I didn't exactly win the lottery despite my initial beliefs. This NY-Schulman device was crafted with the idea that its user wasn't some complete idiot, and would target at most two - maybe three or four at most - segments of missing or scrambled memory, each of them no older than a year.

I, on the other hand, was using it as a method of total amnesia recovery. According to the user's manual, that was indeed a completely plausible use for the device, although a user should be warned it wasn't optimal, and might result in medium-term mental health consequences if proper rest procedures weren't strictly adhered to.

So I was doing it piecemeal, a segment of memories at a time. The manual suggested that in the case of complete retrograde amnesia, it'd be a smoother recovery if started from the first missing patch of memory, and so I was starting with my childhood. It was called the NY-Episodic Recovery Treatment, so I'd set the device to that.

Only, it seemed to not have worked so well. An hour and a half, and all I remembered was some pained screaming, a bunch of dudes in hazmat, and a dark room. It was either a symptom of all people not remembering childhood well, or the amnestics burned out a large hole through my brain was they were leaving.

I used the Clockworks to assess my body and its current state. I was experiencing disruptions in brainwave patterns, leading to momentary acute mental confusion, and I was dehydrated to fuck. Otherwise, completely optimal.

I went to the kitchen to have a glass of water. I needed to hydrate more.

I'd spent almost the entirety of yesterday - after returning from the deal - poring over the contents of the user's manual and studying the interior structure of the Schulman Programmable Mnestic Device. It didn't surprise me a lot to learn it contained some substances that shouldn't have been chemically stable with each other.

At least it didn't scramble my brains. It could've made me recall memories asynchronously, and wouldn't that have been a mess to deal with? Not knowing what happened earlier, and what happened later?

Harriet, it seemed, left me a message, asking for my response on that 'thing,' we talked about. A veiled code for changing her with the Clockworks, something that I wasn't looking forward to, starting with the day it'd first been brought up as an idea. Mostly because it seemed like a horrendous risk to even try.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized - and settled - on the firm idea that I wasn't going to do it, no matter how ardently she begged.

If the Clockworks operated on anything even close to expectation, that meant I'd already corrupted the pool of possibilities through negative thinking, and that wasn't something that'd be easily undone, except maybe through extensive hypnosis. And I didn't have time for any of that shit. If Harriet wanted anything from me, she'd have to settle for minor gadgets.

And in the meantime, I considered my other affairs. After purchasing the NY-Schulman, I was running out of funds again, and I'd need at least some more to pay for Dr. Ravenwood's services, not to mention obvious expenditures like food and bills. None of that shit covered itself, and although Faultline was a well-paying boss, she wasn't benevolently generous. I needed to work on doing some actual tinkering, maybe even some cape footwork.

There was something about me, something dark and itchy, that wanted to return back to the streets. I'd read somewhere, during my brief period of web-trawling, that individuals with a corona pollentia carried certain leanings to dangerous behaviors. The reason the entire conceit of capes even developed was because all capes were inherently more likely to be the sort of people who'd go out in costume and fight.

I wasn't a cape, though, at least not in the truest, strictest sense. I didn't have a corona pollentia, so as I sat in the kitchen, I wondered if maybe that mnestic device unloosened a couple of psychotic bolts in my brain, and I needed to unwind now. If I'd been Sergeant Treble, and Sergeant Treble was known for violent tendencies...

I changed a fork into a spoon, and then a spoon into a collapsible spoon with a retractable neck, making it more compact. Then I improved it once more, into a better, even less toxic metal, and then once more, into a metal that'd enhance most savory flavors of the food put into the spoon's bowl. I stopped there, realizing what I'd been doing.

"No matter how you look at it," I muttered glumly, "Most of what I do in this fucking apartment is sitting around and experimenting with my power."

That said, I couldn't go out and do anything without Faultline's say-so. The Crew didn't participate in vigilantism or anything as foolish as patrols. The mercenary game required more patience than that.

I packed my bodysuit and armor into a duffel bag, simply to be on the ready, and went out.

If I went for a walk, I could get my mind off of things.

And look at the worst-case scenario - if I happened to stumble into some interesting situation, it wasn't like I could be faulted for intervening, right? After all, it'd be the situation that found me and not vice versa.

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Birdsie

Mar 30, 2023

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Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Apr 12, 2023

#565

The streets of the Brockton Bay docks made for a somber and depressing sight, particularly in the early afternoon, when the angled sunlight cast long shadows across the worn asphalt and cracked sidewalks. The mood was even more apparent on the far eastern side, where the distant sound of seagulls and the smell of saltwater permeated the air.

There were marks delineating this section of the city, a divider between it and the rest - the affluent districts. They were subtle signs, the kind of stuff a child or someone occupied with their phone wouldn't notice instantly, yet oppressively omnipresent. A lot of faded paint and rusted metal accents. Artistic chains of graffiti covering the alleyways, providing a dash of color to an otherwise bleak environment. The warehouses lining the streets were like massive titans, casting deep shadows that swallowed up the nearby pedestrians.

As I walked down the street, I could hear the distant clang of metal against metal, as construction happened in some workshop, and I followed the low murmur of conversation. A metalworking business of some kind. I made sure to remember its location, in case I ever needed a bunch of worked metal on short notice. People down here were always strapped for cash. An easy, well-paying request wouldn't be turned away, even if it raised questions.

Despite the dreary surroundings, there was a strange energy that coursed through the people here. An energy born of necessity and hard work, the kind that comes from a community that has no choice other than to persevere in a hostile environment. Men and women in work clothes moving past quickly, sometimes driving by in worn-down cars, their faces etched with a mixture of fatigue and grim resolve to continue.

In a couple of places, I saw the depression instead. The ones who fell between the cracks. The homeless, wandering the streets as lone wolves or as packs in an urban sprawl, not unlike myself only a couple of months ago. There were desperate addicts, as well, and the occasional street tough or solo criminal. I didn't approach any of them.

Here and there, I could spot a few colorful signs advertising local businesses, their neon lights flickering even in the fading light of day.

A seafood restaurant boasted 'the freshest catch in town,' while a nearby dive bar beckoned with a promise of cheap drinks and decent company. But these were the exceptions rather than the rule. For the most part, the streets of the Docks were quiet, the only sound the occasional roar of a passing truck or the creaking of old, stacked shipping containers.

I stopped close to the northern end of the city, near and then a couple of steps away from the furthest, northernmost edge of the Boardwalk.

In the distance, I could see the ocean, its waves crashing against the nearby concrete promontory, and the shield bubble of the Protectorate Headquarters.

"A nice walk," I muttered, "all things considered."

I could've driven out here. I had a car now, and it worked extremely well, so I pondered what inhuman force possessed me to walk across the entire city on an outing.

It felt almost dangerous, for some reason. I couldn't tell why, but for some reason, I was on edge. It seemed like any moment, those ABB members I'd beaten up might turn the corner and recognize me, deciding to get a little payback. Or maybe I'd encounter a cape, or some other ridiculous and improbable situation.

I mean, imagine if I encountered, say, Lung. Even if I was a cape, and he was a cape, and I went out at night, what'd be the odds of meeting him on the street? Just bumping into him? He'd need to have a moment of extreme carelessness, and I'd need to simultaneously experience an instance of immense luck - or misfortune, depending on who you asked.

I was annoyed even thinking about this. It was like a vexing parasite desperately clawing at my deeper thoughts in search of something concrete, and the current thoughts swirling about my cerebellum were the dandruff of that scratching. The unsatisfying dross of failed contemplation revealing itself as a nothing but a shade of the actual thing.

For absence of anything else to do, I slowly reached into my back pocket and pulled out the new brand of cigarettes I'd been meaning to try.

Nightmist cigarettes. The external packaging featured an elegant, art-deco inspired design, with a shimmering golden logo and accents. I picked out a single stick.

In terms of content, it didn't differ much from your typical deathstick. A bunch of cancer locked in a small tobacco rod, wrapped beautifully for your convenience. Flavored, too, for extra pleasure as you slowly killed yourself with the suicide of a thousand carcinogens.

I checked that I was alone as I placed it in my mouth, then made the oxygen vibrate. There was a flash of orange, and a slight pop of abrupt combustion, as the cap of the cigarette came alight, simultaneous with me drawing in a deep breath.

A small trick I'd learned to do with the Clockworks. There were only so many ways to change how a temperature system behaved on a microscale. Given that absolute zero was 273.15° Celsius below zero, and absolute hot was close to a literal decilion degrees, then, absent any environemntal favoritism for making air colder, there was a strong bias to make it hotter.

"Smoking? That's a shit habit."

I craned my head. The voice and its tone were familiar.

Maybe I do have some kind of magic to me. It seems every time I smoke a cigarette on my own, I end up summoning a conversation partner I didn't expect to have.

"Shadow Stalker."

She was currently dressed in plain clothes, all civilian and mundane, instead of waltzing about in her frankly rather intimidating vigilante suit. That said, I was betting without even needing clairvoyance that if I checked in that duffel bag slung over her shoulder, I'd find some conspicuous items and an alternate outfit complete with a spraypainted hockey mask.

I hadn't paid much attention on our first meeting. I'd been a panhandler on the Boardwalk, and she was a random member of a gaggle of teens providing me with incidental charity. Now, I had to admit, she looked too young to be a cape, in much the same way that a child soldier halfway to being an adult soldier looked too young for it. Too accustomed to the mask and cops and robbers game, such that if you pointed it out, it'd merely confuse them.

I decided not to say that. I didn't even have an opportunity to, because she seized initiative on the conversation after my haphazard greeting.

She offered me a curt nod of acknowledgment, followed by a return to sneering in distaste at my cigarette. "Put that shit out."

I promptly took the cigarette out of my mouth for a second, and breathed out a cloud of ash. I watched the smoke rise from its burning tip, a languorous streak of gray mixing with the lukewarm air. "Why?"

"I told you. It's a shit habit."

"I suppose," I answered, flicking away some ash. "I've been told smoking kills."

"Oh yeah? Tell me something I don't know."

"The same exact gene is responsible for determining what kind of earwax you have, if you lactate after giving birth, and whether or not your armpits have odor after you sweat."

Her overtone of aggression dissipated, if only for a second. "Seriously?"

"Yes." She looked at me like she'd expected me to say 'no,' and that knocked her even further off-balance. I continued, "I bet you didn't know that. I also bet that you didn't know the alleles for dry earwax and no odor are especially common among east Asians, even more so with Koreans. All of us Westerners stink by their standards."

She frowned - albeit with less venom than before - as she approached to stand by my side, at least a couple of footsteps away. Out of arm's reach. She must've disliked the smell.

"That sounds like some Empire bullshit. A bunch of made-up science."

"Oh, please - us whites are the stinkiest of the bunch," I said, and then breathed out some acrid cigarette smoke. "There, case in point. And double that for the Empire."

"I heard that you beat up Lung with some chick," she said.

It'd have been way too much to pretend no one would ever discover my involvement in that affair, although Shadow Stalker had an especially decent surveying position. She would've no doubt reported at least something minor to her PRT overlords, such as encountering me by accident, if only so she wouldn't be smoked.

I could understand that, sympathize with it even. Some inherent hunch, most likely a holdover from my old incarnation, informed me that bureaucracies sucked.

"Correct. And I've been up to some other stuff, since then. Even joined a team. You hear about that, too?"

She didn't incline her head. "I have."

It was, I understood in hindsight, something of a complete faux pas for capes on opposite sides of the hero-villain dichotomy to know one another's private identities. It made for an awkward spot of silence as we processed the nature of our circumstances.

In a strictly and absolutely technical sense, I wasn't an actual villain, and something more of a villainous rogue, or if you weren't coddling words, then I was a cold-blooded mercenary. However, the other side wouldn't - and probably didn't - necessarily see it that way.

"I could bring you in," she said, calm, saying it like a statement about the weather.

"Maybe. Probably even," I added. "You're much faster than me. But if you were planning on doing that, I bet you would've already."

I decided not to push that envelope. Actually pushing her, saying I doubted her skill and abilities, would only result in a confrontation. And honestly, out of my suit, I wasn't sure I could win against a capable mover with a ranged attack option.

They always got me when I was out of my damned suit. An insane thought crossed my mind, a mix of bitterness at the unfairness of the universe, and the ridiculous improbability of such a string of circumstances: maybe I should fucking start wearing it everywhere perpetually, even to the bathroom? They couldn't possibly find a way to get me then, right?

"Actual question - I hope you don't take it the wrong way," I said, as I squashed the stub of the cigarette under my shoe.

"Go on," she allowed, a little snappishly.

"Did you come here for some chitchat, between old combat buddies, or did you have a deeper topic to broach with me?"

She chuckled, then broke out into sudden laughter. Amused by me, in something of a condescending way. I didn't frown, although I felt a mote of irritation.

"Fuckin' combat buddies? What even are you, twelve?" Her expression squared, and her tone returned to something even and measured, if on the lighter side. "You and I did a team-up once, Mekhy, against Oni Lee, and that's it. Doesn't make us 'old combat buddies,' you fuckin' earwax hobo. I came by 'cause I was returning from a patrol and spotted you standing out here like a sore thumb. And I was curious about Lung."

I nodded. "Not much to say, honestly. Met another cape, a really strong one. Lung tried to pull some shit on me and the others, and we beat the shit out of him together. The building happened to collapse after deciding it was done with us abusing its structural integrity. Honestly, I would've preferred if it hadn't done that."

She snorted lightly. "Would've loved to see that fucker go down."

"Lung, or the building?"

Her good-natured smile disappeared, replaced by brisk annoyance. "Lung, obviously."

"Mm. How's the Ward life treating you?"

"It's the same shit. Don't feel like talking about it. I thought I'd give you a heads-up, though."

"A heads-up?" I questioned.

"I need to clear the air on this," she said, turning to face me, arms folded. "We aren't buddy-buddy, you and I. We kicked Oni Lee's ass together, it was fun. You've clearly got what it takes to be a cape. But you chose to play for the other team, so next time I see you? I'm kicking your ass."

"Not out in my civvies, though," I pointed out.

"No," she agreed. "Breaks the rules of engagement. That shit's not done. Unless you're one of those New Wave pricks or something."

New Wave. Another hero team in the city, completely independent, operationally detached from the Protectorate itself. I didn't actually know much about them, except the fact they eschewed the idea of masked and civilian identities being separate, and some factoids about their roster. A bunch of brutes and what the internet helpfully termed as flying artillery.

Also a strong healer, interestingly enough. It didn't mesh completely with their entire stylistic of sharp energy swords and glowing heroic lightbeams. There could've been even more jarring differences, though, I supposed. They could've had a mind-controller or blood absorber or something, and that would've been even weirder.

"Well, thanks for the convo," I said. "Have a good week of beating up shitstains like me."

She snorted. "Maybe I should teach you some respect one of these days? Doesn't have to be a cape fight if I only use fists on you, right?"

I smirked in response. Here, I was feeling a little more confident. "Are you sure you could win against me if we fought with fists alone?"

She raised an eyebrow, clearly not expecting me to match confidence for confidence.

"Cocky," she commented. "I'd even take you up on it, but I don't have the time. Gotta get home or else I'll get my ear chewed off."

I nodded without offering comment on the fact that she was a teenager still living with her parents and going to school. It'd highlight the differences in lifestyle too much, maybe even create an angle where I was condescending down to her. Despite my previous statement, I really wasn't interested in making enemies.

"Well, see ya," I said, offering a brief wave as I turned back forward, and returned to my past time of smoking cigarettes and staring at the sea.

Shadow Stalker departed with only a grunt.

After standing there for a couple of minutes and finishing another cigarette, I thought about the odds of encountering Shadow Stalker in civilian clothes in a city as large as this.

Even if I assumed she operated mostly in the Docks on her time off, doing side gigs and moonlighting as a vigilante even while being a Ward, the odds of a random encounter still had to be astronomically low, right? It required both of us to share an even remotely close intersection of paths and having a passive level of self-awareness and perception to catch sight of each other. Granted, this time, she'd caught sight of me.

But... that couldn't work. No matter what, existence simply didn't work on Dungeon and Dragon rules, where every time I went out into the city, some proverbial game master rolled some dice and determined what kind of whacky character or combat encounter I'd have this session. It was far too unbelievable, at least in a city the size of Brockton Bay.

But then, I'd seen and heard of stranger phenomena in the Wanderer's Library.

Definitely stranger, at least. I'd met an alien - an actual Gray alien with huge black eyes - that spoke telepathically, and in Wingdings no less.

And I'd heard of subtle and easy spells that altered probability and fortune before. It wasn't even that difficult or rare. I mean, alteration of probability was among one of the first mysteries that Serpent's Hand inductees learned to perform, via the blue lily chains. I still wasn't at that level - crafting workings on purpose - although I did check frequently with the Clockworks, and I did have some byproduct magic on me. The markings of sorcery.

In some environments, that manner of thaumaturgical potential could be stockpiled by sheer accident, or simple accumulation of natural mythos over time.

An established pattern was more likely to repeat itself, once the mystical side of the universe understood it. That whole assumption was the basis of all modern ritualism.

I looked down at my pack of cigarettes.

It was impossible, but...

There was only one real thing I could do about this. Test it, empirically. Derive a result from a hypothesis and an observation.

Hypothesis: every time I smoke on my own, in a somber - or at least quiet - setting, the universe will deliver someone to me for conversation. For safety's sake, it'll be assumed there's a limit of this happening... maybe once a day at max.

How else could I test out whether my hypothesis was correct reliably, except doing this same exact thing sometime tomorrow?

If Shadow Stalker came once more, though, I'd have to change locations. Otherwise, it might be sheer coincidence. A confluence of our schedules: unlikely, albeit not impossible.

I'd smoke in different locations, then, and see whether I met different people as a result. Tomorrow, somewhere in a public park. And on the day after that, I'd see.

I didn't see any action that evening, even as I returned home.

I'd planned on involving myself directly if I saw an altercation of some kind, but much as I thought, crime - or, at least, parahuman conflict - didn't conveniently appear whenever a bored cape needed it. Especially out on the open streets.

Even in a city as crime-ridden as Brockton Bay, because of its sheer size and distribution of populace, it was probable that out of a dozen patrols around a city district, maybe one or two of them would see anything more eventful than loitering, and even then, a cape fight would be asking for a lot. Unless you literally went around the open street in costume, yelling for the nasty villains to come out and fight you, or something. Then one of them might notice and come out. But only a complete dickhead would do something like that.

After returning, I settled down on the couch and prepared to do another deep dive into the past. Hopefully, this one would bear a little more fruit.

...And if it didn't, there was always tomorrow.

Last edited: Apr 12, 2023

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Birdsie

Apr 12, 2023

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Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

May 5, 2023

#568

A long while ago, Alison Chao, one of the first Black Queens I'd met, asked me to keep a dream journal. As soon as I woke up, I was to write down as much as I could remember of my dream, before the details started eluding me. It puzzled me at first, but I did owe a favor to the woman, so I hadn't questioned it.

After some time, I weaned off the practice. More in coughs and sputters, than in some concrete decision to end.

On some mornings, I was simply too damn exhausted and forgot to write, so I didn't. I'd most often elect to make some coffee instead - and by the time I'd truly woken up, the dream would be a long-forgotten mist and there would be nothing left to write about. As the days went on, this kind of thing happened with an increasing frequency, until the dream-keeping ended completely, about the same time I learned about the possibility of buying a device to restore my memories.

However, now I found the practice hadn't been entirely useless. It allowed for a degree of unconscious self-awareness, improved my memories of my dreams and subconscious. It was a subtle, ever-so-elusive effect on the mind, like a surface of sand gently swimming past your fingers as you brushed your hand against it.

And that's why I found that dream journal so useful in hindsight, now.

The images and sounds the Schulman-NY showed me during the next session were almost like a lucid dream. It all flowed seamlessly from one scene to the next, and provided sufficient context for each individual scene that I wasn't confused by exactly what I was remembering at the moment. The clarity of the memories and sensation was a little disconcerting. It felt almost like an out-of-body experience, or attaining the whispers of some distant, ephemeral version of enlightenment.

It wasn't perfect, mind you, but for recalling a memory from your childhood? One allegedly removed with the strongest brain cleansers that industry could manufacture? There was a whole lot of stuff, even during that first memory session, to consider.

I remembered... a cold and dark cell, with a barebones bed. It was unadorned except for some luminescent stickers on the wall, in the shapes of rainbows and stars, and one shaped like a smiling unicorn. The cell hadn't actually been cold and dark - it was kept at comfortable temperatures, and I could turn on the light whenever I wanted - but I always remembered it as being such, because I was alone the entire time.

Days and nights, and days and nights, and days and nights spent in that cell. It almost made me angry to even think about it. All my food, clothes, and minor items were provided through a slit in the door. I remembered having minor troubles with language as a child, because I'd never had much of an opportunity to speak to anyone. My social interactions were limited to a visit from a shrink in a labcoat once a week, eventually downgraded to once a month.

They were afraid of me, even then, as a toddler - as an infant, even. I'd be willing to bet half my current possessions they had one of those D-Class personnel changing my diapers.

I had some abilities, too. The memories around there were even blurrier, as vague as a ruined, half-burned reel of film. I remembered sometimes I'd walked on the walls of my cell, and other times I could see as perfectly in the dark as I could in bright light.

Once or twice, my hearing was suddenly so sharp I could hear the people outside my cell talking. I'd repeat their words quietly, and they'd pick it up on their microphones. They'd be confused, a little worried, and stop speaking. Then, I could hear the scratching of a pen on paper. Preparing reports. Writing down my activities.

Afraid that even as they were listening in, I was listening right back. That, if anything, amused me a little. Let the bastards feel a little anxiety.

There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the abilities. Not that I could discern at least. My child self could understand them, how to leverage them, and make them appear. It seemed like I was limited to having one superhuman ability at a time, and there was some kind of mental logic that I needed to follow and trigger in order to activate it, or to remove it to make room for another ability. As I became older, there was a pattern of weaker, or less reliable ones. Or less interesting, at least.

I didn't remember how that worked, though, and I don't think my fifteen-year-old self would've either. It was something I did as a child, and it seemed the ability to take on abilities had disappeared entirely after the cross-experiment. That was the actual big one, the one that raised my Containment Class to Keter.

One day, around when I was maybe six or seven and playing with my figurines, a number of scientists and soldiers came to my room.

A scientist leading them, a middle-aged man in a labcoat with pale skin, balding hair, and a terrifyingly cold and emotionless expression - I'd found it a little scary, especially back then - told me that I'd be shortly coming with them for cross-testing with SCP-914, in order to find out whether any promising interactions could be found.

Apparently, it was 'standard procedure,' but I'd been 'overlooked' or something. As I reviewed the memory, I got the distinct impression he was attempting to deceive me and craft an excuse for their actions, but severely overestimated the actor he was set against. As a matter of fact, I'd had no fucking clue what the hell he was talking about, at the time.

He promised me rewards of my choice, in return for my cooperation. I didn't entirely understand what he meant, because I was a kid, and I'd been pretty dumb at the time. Little to no comprehension of what 'reward' even meant. He explained, in more detail, that if I did everything they asked me to do, I could have more toys to play with or better food.

"Like Mr. Blue?" I asked, indicating one of my favorite action figures - a Superman with bendable arms and legs, and a cloth cape. I'd had no idea what he was called back then, so I made up a name for him. "Okay, I'll do it for more toys."

Even as I agreed, he didn't exactly seem pleased. Nor displeased, really. He didn't have much of an expression whatsoever. It was like talking to a block of wood.

It was among my first real experiences with Site 17, seeing the corridors of the Foundation, the infamous side offices, the busy personnel. After a couple of steps, I hesitated to move on further - it was honestly terrifying. Almost my entire world up to that point had been a lonely cell, action figures, sketchbooks, and occasional talks with the shrinks. This was the Allegory of the Cave, compounded by the sterility and stern atmosphere of everything.

I continued on, when the Doctor reminded me about my upcoming rewards. I could have a lot of new stuff if I obeyed their orders, so I put on a brave face and continued after them.

After several hours riding in a van with blacked-out windows, I'd arrived at Site 19's Facility 23. No conversation on the way there, as far as I could remember.

After stepping out of the van, and beholding the small complex of buildings ahead of me in stark amazement, I was ushered on into the facility.

And then... and then...

My eyes opened. I felt a moderate headache coming on almost immediately as I regained consciousness, the sort that pulses and maybe leaves in an hour if you don't move around too much. I released a deep sigh.

"Damn," I said, in frank astonishment: shock, even, as I came to fully comprehend the extent of the Foundation's treatment of me. It'd been even worse than I expected, by several degrees of fuck-up-itude. "Holy crap, my childhood was seriously messed up."

It was no wonder I later turned into someone called, 'Sergeant Trap, Torture, Terminate.' How can you treat someone like this as a child and not expect them to transform into a complete sociopath with utter disregard for sentient life?! I didn't even get to watch cartoons. How was I supposed to learn all those beautiful aesops and moral life lessons if I couldn't even have Peppa Pig explaining them to me? Nevermind that, holy fucking shit, I didn't even have parents. I didn't even have surrogate parents, only emotionally distant psychologists.

I clutched my head and massaged my temples, pondering this cruel and fickle bitch that humanity most often called existence.

"Christ on a fuck," I whispered, standing up from my couch in a springing motion, as the Schulman-NY's probe came out of my body with a slinking sound. I bounded across the apartment and to the kitchen, where I started pouring myself a glass of water.

I didn't have much time to contemplate my past state as a child, because someone rang the doorbell. Almost exactly as I was leaving the kitchen.

I wasn't even mad or surprised, honestly. I didn't exactly have it in me at the moment to think much of an early morning visit. I'd welcome any distraction, even stupid ones, from having to contemplate the sheer and complete mistreatment I'd suffered at the hands of the SCP Foundation as a young child.

I opened the door as wide as I could, and found Harriet striding into my apartment like she owned the place. "Hey, 'sup, dork?"

"Ah, well, well. If it isn't Ms. Wannabe Sidekick!" I said pleasantly, closing the door. "You should've phoned ahead, I would've brought out the vintage."

"Needling this early on, Rob?" She sounded kind of amused by my attempt, and made it sound as if I'd failed completely to scratch at her. I knew her well though, and I knew my jab had at least a mediocre effect - if not a moderate one. It was at least strong enough to elicit an internal cringe. "Don't you need some more sleep?"

"Don't you need some more eyeliner?" I fired right back, smirking.

"Ooph," she exhaled, and moved over to sit down at my couch - as if stunned by the strength of the blow. "Fuck, you win this time. That was good, if a low blow."

"I do my best. Coffee, tea? Wine?"

She raised an eyebrow from the couch, crossing one leg over the other. "Drinking wine at eight in the morning?"

"It can't be morning," I said, tasting the words I was about to deliver in my mind, and pondering how to intone them for maximum impact, "You're up and about, and you're so nocturnal that vampire hunters run away from you screaming in terror."

"Oh, fuck off, you've won already."

"Sorry," I replied, sincerely. I started making some tea, as she'd not named a clear preference. I took out a couple of forest fruit tea sachets - Harriet liked hers sweet - and my favorite teapot - which is to say my only teapot. "Just had a rough night."

"Hm, same here," she answered, lounging on the couch. "Dream about squids?"

I narrowed my eyes. That was a very suspicious thing to say. "No, err, I've been returning my memories piecemeal. Like I told you I would."

"Oh. How's that going?"

"As it turns out, I was emotionally, socially, psychologically, and to an extent, physically, neglected as a child." I started heating the water on the stove. I didn't have to use my superpowers for everything.

I could see the conflict on her face. A war of the worlds. The angel on her shoulder ordering her to commiserate, and the devil saying, 'oh, yeah, that explains why you're like that.'

It seemed like the forces of Light won this particular coin flip, because she took on a regretful expression and said, "Sorry to hear that, Rob."

After drinking tea for a couple of minutes, the conversation didn't venture anywhere too far. An exchange of what little I'd learned in the recovered memories, and Harriet giving thoughts on the matter. She provided some insight, such as pondering whether or not my ability was more flexible because I was a young parahuman, and it hadn't set in stone quite yet, or whether the scientists might've done something to constrain and limit me to matter alteration.

"Anyway, when are we making me superhuman?" she shot out of nowhere.

I sighed out deeply, putting down my cup. I should've expected this idiotic topic to come up sometime soon, it was already that time of the month.

"Preferably never," I cut away, before adding, "But I'd rather wait until I'm sure that I can control my power, and maybe so I can establish a safe method of implementation. Honestly, if you need to be my sidekick, I'd rather issue you some amazingly good equipment than give you straight-up transhuman augmentations. One's less dangerous."

"Equipment can be stolen."

"So can your life," I said, raising a finger before she could cut in and deploy a counter-argument. "If you're ever in a situation where someone can steal a suit of power armor from you, then you're also probably in a situation where they can shoot you dead."

She didn't have much to say to that.

"Listen," I said, "If I am ever going to do this, I want to do it right. And that means having my full memories. It means being prepared in case something goes wrong. It means knowing the potential consequences. If by God's sacred fucking name, there is some method to reverse fucked-up Clockworks results that I don't know about because I don't remember what I was doing in my twenties, and I kill you - or worse - by accident, I'll never sleep again at night. So let's not rush this thing like a bunch of idiots, alright?"

After my speech concluded, I took another, wavering sip of tea, and stared her right in the eyes as she took a second to come to a decision. Harriet ended up sighing, not unlike me a couple of minutes ago.

She nodded, and offered a pained but contrite smile. "I think you're right. Let's stick to equipment, then. And let's not rush even that. If you say you don't want to, you don't want to. Besides, I need to come up with a costume concept!"

I nodded, satisfied with the conclusion. It was easier than I'd thought. "Wanna watch TV?"

"Ooh, yeah, there's a cool new show I wanted you to check out!"

"What's it about?" I asked, as I moved over to grab the TV remote from the table.

"Oh, it's about this team of hip young adults fighting evil with magical bracelets that let them transform into super forms. It's kind of campy, kind of too early twenties, but has its charm."

I picked up the remote, a flimsy small thing of black plastic. I should've invent a telepathically activated TV already, on second thought - using remotes was so last century. I'd maybe work on that during my free time, assuming I didn't have more pressing needs to see to.

I flicked on the TV, and it displayed the last channel I'd been watching: the news. There, a young brunette news reporter was speaking with a serious expression, a clipboard in her hands, and looking carefully at the cue behind the camera, reading in a somber yet almost uplifted tone.

"-as last night, and confirmed by the PRT East-North-East."

A picture appeared of a man I recognized. Indeed, how could I mistake him for anyone else? It was the same oversized Chinese asshole that Black Queen and I beat the shit out of only around a month ago. Arguably the first serious cape fight that I'd ever been involved with.

It was the leader of the ABB, Lung, in three layers of handcuffs - and, curiously slumped unconscious, with a length of rebar also wrapped around his elbows for additional reinforcement - laying sideways on Armsmaster's bike. It was a picture taken from above, somewhat an angle, and with mediocre lighting: a smartphone camera photo from someone's upper-story window.

It didn't change the fact it didn't look edited or made up. Or the fact the news caster already said the PRT confirmed this capture.

"Holy shit," I reacted, almost sounding bland - the revelation was surprising in an odd manner. I didn't honestly expect Lung to be packed up by the PRT all of a sudden, especially since he'd been decreasing activity over the last couple of months. If anything, that should've reduced the odds of law enforcement stepping in on his turf.

This was kind of unbelievable, not in the sense he'd been caught, but in the sense that he'd been caught right now of all times, when you'd least expect it. Normally, a major villain being taken in often had a prelude in the form of some big gang war, or failed robbery. This looked to simply be... well, either an accidental encounter, or an organized mission by the PRT.

"Armsmaster soloed him, apparently," Harriet told me, and I looked to see she'd started digging up additional facts on her phone. "He came up with some potent tranquilizer that works even through Lung's healing factor."

"Damn," I said, looking at the TV once more - at the unconscious Lung. "Armsmaster's a fucking badass."

"Hey, uh, you managed to beat Lung too, remember?" she pointed out.

"Yeah, with Black Queen's help," I said defensively, not feeling too miffed about admitting that. "If I tried it alone, he'd have fried me to a crisp. I'd have to be extremely lucky to defeat him all on my own, or come in prepared with some kind of heat-nullifying item. Even then, he'd probably be able to fight me off long enough to grow wings or claws and escape by climbing a building and gliding downstreet."

And then I frowned a little, at the contents of what I'd said.

That's right, actually. Lung wasn't only a strong regenerative brute, he was also a decently strong pyrokinetic, especially once he was further into his transformation. And his claws allowed him to climb extremely fast, while the wings aided in aerial maneuvers.

Armsmaster had an amazingly fast and terrifyingly loud bike. This much was common knowledge, it was almost like his second trademark signature gadget after the armory of halberds. However, I didn't remember anything about his bike having the capability of flight. If Lung attempted it - and he would've known what Armsmaster is capable of doing - he should've been able to escape an encounter like that.

I looked at the TV once more.

Did Armsmaster manage to somehow take Lung off-guard? Maybe. But I had some honest skepticism, because Lung should've been more paranoid, especially after his recent losses and change of the action model for his entire gang. If anything, he should've been ready to run at the sight of a hat.

Or maybe I was misreading him. He did seem to be an impulsive kind of person, so maybe anger got the better of him when Armsmaster challenged him?

I didn't know, and I couldn't, but somehow this entire affair felt strange. I could buy Armsmaster defeating Lung in a one-versus-one. He'd been a tinker for a heck of a long time, and he would've prepared some countermeasures for Lung. I couldn't buy Lung not being aware of that fact.

As much as I tended to overrate myself, and underappreciate the Dragon of Kyushu in casual conversation, he wasn't an idiot, and he was capable of due caution when it suited him, or when it was needed. Encountering a Protectorate hero, especially one of the premier frontline combatants, should've been a red flag to run the fuck away, or hide, or do something. I couldn't buy him being unable to escape.

Was Armsmaster seriously such a badass, or did Lung fuck up in some spectacular fashion? Again, I couldn't see the latter - even if he took the wrong exit out of a building, so what? Just smash through it, or melt the lock. Burn the tranquilizers out of your system. Avoid line of sights with someone who might shoot the syringe darts at you. And Lung would know all this, probably even better than me. So would Armsmaster.

"What are you thinking about?" Harriet asked, briefly bringing me out of my stupor.

"That something isn't adding up," I answered. "How did Lung not manage to escape?"

"Armsmaster caught him off-guard?" she proposed.

"He's been cautious, so how?" I asked in return. "He wouldn't simply walk the streets openly after putting his entire gang on the defense for weeks on end, all while letting his tinker prepare. That'd be idiotic. And if Armsmaster was acting alone, this wasn't a Protectorate operation. It was a... out-of-the-blue thing. A random encounter during patrol or a call-in. That Armsmaster must've won almost immediately, without even having to call in for backup. Look at the scene on that picture, there's not even cop cars around the bike, let alone PRT vans. He did it solo. Almost vigilante style."

"So, what you're saying is... Lung must've seriously screwed up getting away?" she reasoned.

"Yeah, but again - how?" I faced her with a serious, contemplative expression. "Lung's one of the most experienced capes there are. He made the mistake with me and Black Queen, because we were relative unknowns. So he got unlucky, and we the opposite. But he knows when to fold them. He wouldn't have survived out there for so long otherwise."

She considered this, as I had for over a minute.

"Armsmaster had secret help, then," she said.

"Or, Lung made a token effort to resist, and then gave himself up for some mystifying reason," I proposed the alternative.

We shortly considered both ideas, and tacitly rejected the latter. Maybe he could've, but Occam's razor said to go with the simplest explanation.

"Who helped Armsmaster then?" she asked me, as if wondering if maybe I'd already figured it out in some Holmesian leap in logic.

"No clue," I said. "But if they were Protectorate or a Ward, there'd be no reason not to mention it on TV."

It had to be someone who'd be capable of reining Lung in, preventing an escape. Maybe even knocking him down so Armsmaster could arrest him more easily.

Someone that Lung wouldn't expect, like me or Black Queen.

"Someone new," I blurted out.

"New?"

"A new cape," I said. "Think about it. He lost to me and Black Queen, because he didn't even know that we can manage him. He overestimated himself, and underestimated us. It had to be the same situation. He encountered someone he thought he could crush..."

"And then he didn't manage it," she finished the idea. "Instead, he was the one who got crushed."

"Or at least distracted," I said, "or knocked out; prevented from escaping, is what I'm getting at. Something along those lines. It would've given Armsmaster enough time to administer his shit without Lung scrambling away at speed. That's all Armsmaster really needs in this situation. And then the newbie doesn't step out as the savior because they're still new and don't want to be hunted down by half the ABB."

Not that I could blame them, honestly, since I already knew gangs to be a bitch and a half to deal with even on the nice days.

"Alternatively," I proposed, "it could've been an ambush. It couldn't be an established hero, or the news would've mentioned it."

"A villain," she said.

"Or a rogue, but there aren't a lot of those in the Bay," I answered with a nod.

"Right," she said. "Only you and Faultline's Crew, and then some minor names."

"So, yeah, probably a villain. It could've been a new villain, too, or even a new rogue. A hero isn't out of the question either, but if they were a hero, they would've taken this goldstar opportunity to sign on with the Protectorate already. Maybe a vigilante that doesn't like operating within the law, like Shadow Stalker. I could buy that."

"Or we might be completely off-target and making insane theories that seem plausible but don't hold up in reality," Harriet proposed. "Maybe Armsmaster is just a badass and can shoot a mean sedative dart from across a hundred meters."

"Maybe," I said, shrugging. I felt pretty pleased with our theorizing. It seemed plausible because it was plausible. Because it made sense, in a way that Armsmaster randomly encountering Lung in the middle of the night didn't. "There's a lot of maybes. But it doesn't change the fact it's suspicious. There's one thing left that bugs me."

"Hm?"

"If Armsmaster randomly encountered Lung, it couldn't be on patrol. His route wouldn't take him so deep into ABB territory ordinarily," I said, calling upon what I could only term a gut feeling about law enforcement agencies. From my past life, I supposed. "So this was a call-in. And here's the kicker: who'd call in Lung? And why would the PRT respond so deep into the Docks?"

"Armsmaster-"

"-chose to respond, yeah," I said, "But consider the fact the call-in went to him, and not, like, a random welfare agent. The console had to specifically pass this onto him, even though it's risk as fuck to send in the Protectorate leader into a place like this to fight Lung alone."

"What are you saying?"

"I dunno. Just that it's weird. Maybe the PRT is stupid, I don't know." I stared off into empty space as I thought.

"What if this was planned out?"

"Planned out?" I invited her to elaborate.

"Someone knew where Lung might be," she theorized, "And so they sent in the newbie villain or rogue or whatever - actually an agent - and called it in. The newbie helped keep Lung pinned so Armasmaster could take him in."

"Empire did this, then, you're saying?"

"Maybe." She kicked a heel at the floor thoughtfully. "It'll definitely kickstart a gang war of some indefinite scale, and they have an advantage without Lung in charge of the enemy team. It's most of the ABB's cape strength eliminated in one fell swoop."

"No, I don't think so," I said, quietly disagreeing as I shook my head. "Maybe it was planned out by someone, or maybe not. I'm not sure on that part. But if it was, it wasn't the Empire. This kind of shit would take, like, 200 IQ to execute, and you'd need to be sure the newbie cape can actually keep Lung pinned for long enough to matter. It's too risky."

"Precognition," she suggested.

"As in, some fucking mastermind with precognition made sure the newbie cape was there to maintain Lung's inescapeability, and then secretly called in Armsmaster to hit him from behind?" It sounded too ridiculous, but then I realized: "Actually, that'd explain how they got the call-in past the PRT's spam filter, as well. Just get the dispatcher who'll believe you and pass it along, then pick the right time to execute the plan. It'd still be risky with only one newbie cape, but if you're already putting out this much, there's a lot you could do to mitigate the danger."

Having back-up ready in the area, or simply knowing to fold and not attack - assuming you were a precognitive, anyway.

My eyes went a little blank as I realized the intricate depth of this shitty, probably-not-true scenario we'd crafted. "Fucking hell on a stick, Harriet, if this turns out to actually be true some weeks down the line, you're a genius and I'll kiss you on both cheeks."

"Thanks."

"Probably won't though."

"Not thanks." She rolled her eyes. "Let's watch that TV show now, yeah?"

"Yeah, yeah." I settled down on the couch next to her. "What's it called?"

"Power Troopers."

"Mhm." I started flipping across the channels in search.

Last edited: May 5, 2023

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Birdsie

May 5, 2023

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

May 17, 2023

#580

"Smoking, Rob?" Newter asked me, even as he cast a scanning look around. "On your own in the corner of the club?"

"Almost," I answered faintly, breathing out a cloud of gray smoke.

It was a surprisingly placid afternoon at the Palanquin, and I was smoking alone in a corner booth. There wasn't enough clientele to bother with any strobing lights or intense music, so it was almost somber and borderline contemplative as an atmosphere, and I found this conducive to careful thinking.

"Almost?" He sat down on an available chair, a leather-padded one, a safe distance away. His most frequented domain, the mezzanine, sometimes bored him, and he'd come down to the mortals to party. Newter wasn't completely senseless, though, and often avoided drawing too much attention to himself on the busiest nights, despite his unusual features. Even navigating a crowd was something of a pain, as Newter often preferred to crawl instead of walk. The counterbalance of his tail made it a step too annoying for him.

"I was attempting to verify something," I earnestly told him, "and your unexplained appearance is another point added in favor of an unlikely hypothesis. What are you doing here, anyway? Weren't you and Faultline meant to do something out of town?"

He shrugged. There was a vigor in that shrug, implying he didn't even mind, and in fact, was satisfied with this state of affairs. "Plans change. Bank robbery."

"Ah, that one." I clucked my tongue.

I'd heard about it. In fact, it appeared that everyone in town and their deaf grandmother heard about it by now. There were only a handful of reliable eyewitness reports going around, although some of the stuff I heard was pretty wild. The grapevine of criminal operators that Faultline often rubbed elbows with provided some details the news didn't.

According to them, the Undersiders managed to mop the bank's floor with all of the Wards so thoroughly the bank will never have to hire a custodial worker ever again. Then the villains found some postage stamps and mailed the battered, half-conscious junior superheroes back home to their parents. It was a brutal, resounding defeat on the heroes' side, the sort that might've been labeled a total fiasco. A failure so embarrassing it'd be a stain on the name of the local PRT for many years to come.

At least, were it not for the redeeming factor of the new Undersider, now labeled Skitter. I'd been on the lookout for new capes, although I honestly didn't believe this Skitter could be anywhere remotely involved in aiding Lung's arrest. Aside from her casual portrayal of blatant villainy during the robbery iself, making it a touch improbable she'd attempt to clash swords with the biggest bad kid on the block in the name of justice...

Bugs?

Against Lung?

No way that's be effective. It's almost laughable to imagine, even. He'd bitchslap this Skitter once and throw her across the street into a conveniently left-open garbage truck. His ambient fire would also cook any insects to a crisp in an eyeblink.

It definitely had to be someone else.

"Did Faultline mention anything? About the robbery?"

"Faultline didn't have much to say on it, aside from, like, oozing a general sense of distaste for a rival's victory - she and Tattletale don't see eye to eye."

I nodded. I'd already learned about that particular interesting little infonugget from Emily.

"And about me?"

He looked awkward and uncertain of himself, a deer in the spotlight, like a midget on a stool told to recite Shakespearean poetry. "Well, uh, she did mention something about not feeding your wild, borderline schizophrenic theories? I'm not sure what that means, though."

"I've been doing some theorycrafting," I answered him, as casual as an afternoon breeze. I dragged my cigarette, feeling the soft smoke in my lungs. It roiled, like tarry thunderclouds, lubricating my contemplations. His next question caught me off guard as a result, and I ended up coughing out some of the smoke.

"Not planning a socialism, are you?"

I smiled ruefully. "Hardly. If I ever choose a political model, it's the one where I'm in charge."

"Oh. So, you're capitalist then?"

"Or monarchist. It doesn't matter." I waved the subject away, like dispeling a bad memory. I'd reacquired a couple of those over the last few days. "No, I've been thinking about Lung's arrest. It doesn't make sense to me. I don't see a way in which he loses to Armsmaster."

"And you told Faultline this?" I nodded in response to his question, cigarette in my mouth, and Newter leaned in, curious. "Ooh, what did she say? I mean, I can guess, but..."

I started quoting word for word, even imitating the unamused tone of voice she'd used, "'I do. Armsmaster, a tinker with many years of experience, created a potent tranquilizer and shot Lung with it. After a moment, Lung fell unconscious, making him eminently arrestable. And you've built up this sacred stone statue of Lung in your head, like a shrine to a thunder deity, because he was the first and toughest villain you fought, and his existence threatened yours. Therefore, you also consider him the be-all-end-all of parahumans across the world, perhaps half a step under Eidolon in terms of talent and resourcefulness. If not above.'"

She hadn't chastised me for voicing the idea directly, even then, although I could've sensed the unspoken judgement in the words anyhow: 'cold, frightful arrogance.' An entire speech-essay contained in a shell of a couple sentences, vividly iterating why I couldn't let foolish expectations color my every prediction of the future, else I'd wind up with biases. Often, in a way, Melanie could condense a conversation into a sentence.

"Then, she made some idiotic jokes about having 'the Talk' with me, and how sometimes mommy cape and daddy cape really, really hate each other, and they become nemeses."

Newter snorted, and then burst out laughing for a second, and I barely withheld an annoyed groan at the remembrance of her antics. She'd made my concerns into a juvenile charade.

For some reason, though, I was convinced that I was correct. And therein lay the crux.

"She also called my observations biased, so now I'm carefully considering whether or not I was too rash in coming to my conclusions. Except... I'm also fairly certain I now have latent psychic powers, and I might've been a commando war criminal in my previous life. How am I supposed to know what's real, when my cigarettes can summon magical creatures?"

"Rrright." Newter's skeptical drawl said it all - I really did seem schizophrenic, didn't I?

"There's more to it, although not a lot," I said. "In short, Faultline acknowledged there was something slightly abnormal about Armsmaster randomly encountering Lung on the streets, but wasn't convinced there was anything remarkable about it."

"Huh. I mean, fair's to you both - but even if you're right, that's still a pretty wild conclusion to come to. I mean, what even gave you the idea, man?"

I'd have loved to investigate the night of the arrest, on some level. Another part of me didn't want to bother. However, what could I really do in this situation? I wasn't Faultline, and I didn't have any of her seedy underworld contacts. I also doubted she'd acquaint me with any of her own. And I didn't care enough to prove my suspicions anyway.

"I dunno. Just a random hunch that developed into rationalizations, I suppose."

I looked down at my cigarette, watching the tip smolder like the entire world after the eighties, and then flecked some ash off into the tray.

"Good talk, Newter," I said, squashing the cigarette into the ashtray. It went out with a satisfying sizzle, even as I stood, and picked up my hoodie. I didn't look at Newter as I spoke, occupied shuffling through my pockets to make sure I had everything on me.

"Hey, do you mind letting Gregor know about the chems if you see him?"

"Oh, sure. You did work on them?"

"Yeah," I confirmed. "I'll be trying to do yours next."

"Sweet. Looking forward to it, my guy."

I nodded. They'd both requested chemicals of different sorts: Gregor wanted something to enhance his abilities, and Newter, something to suppress his own. I already prepared an entire set of injectors for Gregor, each with different albeit similar effects. I suspected that I'd have a hell of a time working on Newter's. I'd need some precursor EDCs to work on that, since half the job involved making sure his sweat didn't have narcotics in it.

As I headed for my car in the parking lot, however, something in the distance rumbled. I frowned and looked around. Another rumble came, seconds later, and I was expecting it now. North. And not merely a rumble, but a pop of shockwave; distant vibrations sailing over the city rooftops, over blocks. It was louder, more powerful than a gunshot.

An explosion?

It took a couple of seconds, maybe fifteen, as I stood in the parking lot, but I soon heard another one, and decided this was too structured. I looked over there with a deep-set frown, and sighed in frustration. I didn't have much to do anyway, so I might as well check it out.

I drove away from downtown, progressively deeper into the decrepit areas of town. The district I was in, southwest of the boardwalk, lay in a criminal twilight zone, kind of in-between the shantytowns and Empire-controlled downtown areas. No one had much of an interest in the local areas, since there wasn't anything to be organized. As I drove, there was another rumble, and I could hear this one much better. Only the one, though.

I found the first signs that something was wrong as I turned the corner onto Park Avenue. There, I decided to leave my car behind, approaching... a structure, for a lack of a better word. It looked almost like a surrealist sculpture out in the middle of the street, and seemed to be made out of molded silicone, a pillar of pastel-white, shooting tendrils of much sharper material into the environment, a couple of them spearing through car hulls and windows, having left sprays of glass or sheared stone. A couple of the tendrils reached as far as the buildings on either side of the street, blocking any hope of passage, at least for vehicles.

There were a couple of people around, recording or making phone calls. A woman's arm was caught by one of the spikes, and she was bleeding, although someone else had already applied a tourniquet and an ambulance was on the way. That's when I realized - this wasn't merely an emplacement. All of these tendrils exploded outwards from the pillar at high, bullet-like velocities. This could've easily been a fatal event if someone happened to be in closer range.

And then I recalled the rumblings from before, and realized - this was deliberate. A parahuman ability in use.

I sprinted down the sidewalk, in the direction of where the other explosions took place, and I saw an entire street littered in ruin. There was a patch of street set aflame, as if an incendiary charge was detonated and spread flammable oil around. Another section was pulverized into fine dust, as if struck by a giant's fist from above and shredded down. The front face of a residential building was collapsed, the people within attempting to either climb down to safety or standing on the edge of their houses, incapable of reaching the doors.

There were more esoteric forms of destruction. One of them in particular, in what seems to have once been a pizza parlor, caught my eye. I didn't even know how to describe it, honestly. It was like a fissure in the world, a spatial crack that distorted the light around it, kind of like a vortex or a black hole. It hovered still, about fifteen or twenty feet above the ground. It seemed to be the source of the destructive effect in the building. The entire interior of the pizzeria was scattered, in a way I struggled to describe, or even process with my eyes: it was like someone had made a three-dimensional grid of the inside of the building, assigning a coordinate to each one-and-a-half-yard cube, and then shuffled them around randomly, creating an utter, chaotic mess. A man was bisected, caught between coordinates, his individual halves lying across from each other; one having reappeared above a section of table, and the other next to a door from a toilet stall. There were random bodyparts or sections of bodies scattered around.

I saw corpses as well. In the pizzeria and across the street. That much was obvious. I mean, this was clearly some kind of terrorist attack. It didn't shock me as much as it should've, though. I only felt a certain sense of sublime detachment and something bordering on disbelief as I observed the results of the attack, affected by a case of bystander syndrome: standing like a pole instead of helping anyone, or even calling the PRT.

The shocking aspect - the one that actually drove me to stand so still - were the statues. Close to the center of a small park, I could see a zone of terrain, about ninety feet in diameter, shaped like a blossoming flower, with uneven, almost frilly edges. It had mutated into... I didn't know exactly, at this distance, and for obvious reasons I wasn't eager to approach, but maybe crystal or glass.

There were statues in that zone, most of them midway into running away from its center. A couple of them crouching down, or down on their stomachs; crawling away or covering the backs of their heads. A man had been fully midair when it went off, and as a result, his statue fell against the vitrified earth, crashing into at least two dozen fragments. I could see smooth, crystalline shapes inside the fragments: internal organs.

At the edge of the glass circle, there stood a statue of a girl, maybe ten or eleven, one foot planted into the glass floor and the other raised to run forward, hand reaching out to beyond its edge, and disappearing into a smooth circle. There, a couple of steps further beyond that, was an older woman, holding onto an arm made of flesh and sobbing, down on her knees. The sight turned my stomach into a knot. I wavered.

A bomb, it made me realize. Someone threw a bomb or an explosive, and everyone started running. They didn't make it, because it wasn't a normal bomb.

Explosives, and parahuman. I connected the dots in a moment, even in my state. The ABB's tinker did this, or at least crafted the tools used to carry this out.

I almost reeled. Only a couple of minutes ago, I'd been calmly discussing with Newter, about the arrest of Lung, and now this? How did it develop into this?

No. Focus, I thought, and pulled out my phone. I already saw a lot of people calling emergency services, so it'd be downright idiotic to make another call - all of the operators and dispatchers would probably be swamped with calls, so adding my own to the stack wouldn't be helpful. Instead, I called Melanie. After a second, she picked up.

"M," I said, as I walked in the direction of the apartment building on the edge of collapse. "There was a bombing on Park and Lincoln's. A parahuman bombing."

"I know," she answered, sounding muffled. "There were others, too. One on Lord's Street. One close to the Boardwalk, somewhere, and a couple in the Docks. All over the place."

There were people screaming in there, inside the half-collapsed building, calling out for aid, as one of the explosions took out sections of flooring in a way that made exit from the individual apartments impossible, locking them out of the stairwells and hallways. The luckier ones had already evacuated, or in the case of those on the low floors, climbed down. I considered what I should do.

I had an idea, then, or at least an inkling of one. I wasn't an architect or engineer - or a legitimate one, at least - so I wasn't certain of its feasibility, although based on my understanding of physics conferred by the Clockworks, it was promising. I'd need a mask to protect my identity, but I could use the Clockworks to reinforce the building's supports and demolish some of the thinner walls to create exits.

"The ABB carried this out," I told her, at more of a hush - I stood in, not exactly a crowd, but in proximity to a lot of people I didn't want overhearing the specifics. "Do you remember when I told you about that prick, Zhao? He said they've got a tinker who makes explosives and bombs. It can't be anyone else."

"Meet me at the Palanquin as soon as you can," she ordered. It wasn't the voice of Melanie, but the voice of Faultline. "I want everyone accounted for."

"No," I said, shaking my head,. "There's people here I can help."

"Are you seriously-" There was an agonized sound from the other end, like she was a shepherd after a long day of work, watching one of the lambs wander onto a highway, and incapable of mustering more than a mild protest to the tragic loss of livestock. "Alright, fine, fine. Go be a hero. Just don't get hurt."

"Got it," I said, as I stashed my phone back in my pocket. I ripped off a part of my shirt, disintegrated eye holes, and looked around - no one was paying much attention to me, so I tied the ripped shirt piece around my face, as a cloth-mask.

Last edited: May 28, 2023

71I'll tell you something from the heart: the tenements in east downtown weren't the pristine models of architecture you'd hope that advances in American engineering could provide. The one ahead of me, for example, was a night terror in the form of architecture. It loomed almost like a fading titan, its facade marred by years of neglect and the weight of shattered dreams. The once vibrant beige paint, now peeling and cracked, revealed the underlying layers of concrete and gypsum like a gruesome autopsy of hope and prosperity.

It wasn't the sort of building that survived an explosion of awesome proportions. It was the sort of building that sagged beneath the weight of the expectations that society placed upon it, and then toppled with no less ceremony than a magnilocutious speech during a cavalry march.

I strode confidently in the direction of the entryway, a challenger to its inherent weakness and the explosion that rocked its foundation, analyzing the building's structure, and attempting to divine its inner layout based on the spread of the windows and doors. Its facade was thick, absorbing a decent amount of damage, and holding the front steady.

One of the escaped residents, also on the phone with someone, looked at me as I moved towards the building, and lowered his device. "Hey, sir, are you fucking crazy?" he asked me. "Can't you see that whole place is about to collapse? Leave it to the firefighters." He seemed to only then notice that I had a mask around my face, and reconsidered his words, as if suddenly realizing he'd been advising tactics to a career soldier.

"I'll be fine," I declared, calmly continuing onward for a couple of steps. A brick chose that moment to clatter over the edge and crack apart on the asphalt next to me, like an eggshell tossed from a skyscraper. The startlement I felt and showed must've ruined the effect of what I'd said, because suddenly, the man looked at me like I was an idiot begging to die.

I took a deep breath, trying to steady my racing heart, as I reassured myself in a soft whisper. "The odds of another brick falling are incredibly low," I murmured, my voice laced with shaken, wobbly determination. "Lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place, and bricks surely follow the same rule."

I didn't hesitate for long. I'd battled capes before, on at least two different occasions. In my previous life, I was some kind of badass - if evil - torturer war criminal. I didn't do all of that so I'd bitch out here because a brick fell down and crashed against the pavement. I managed to psyche myself up successfully, proceeding in the direction of the building.

I moved in through the opened door, and once I was out of the sightline of most people, I placed my bare hand against the unadorned concrete wall directly ahead of the entrance - one of the central, thickest walls of the building; a main support of the structure.

I could feel the invisible datafield of the Clockworks spread through the construction, the pipelines, the wires, like someone dabbing a touch of black ink into a decanter of water. It spread through the medium, but nowhere near fast enough to read the entire apartment building and its every nook and cranny. I'd need at least five minutes to cover the entire fundament of the building. I couldn't afford to waste time, so instead I refined the main wall as a precaution and moved on. It made the wall even thicker, covering more space, and altered its structure. Better and stronger; an effective increment of forty years without maintenance.

I stood on my tip-toes, and touched a hand against the ceiling, feeling into the beams, and spreading the Clockworks alongside them as well. It lost impetus after spreading down across six of them, the ones in the center, almost like a cross-section of the flooring and ceiling directly beneath: sadly unsupported along most of their total lengths by any pillars or walls, except for one of them. I refined these as well, creating a more stable atomic matrix, designed to not deform whatsoever. It was sheer luck the Clockworks gave me that result.

It'd hold the center of the building, at least for now. A stable spine, but it mattered little if the flesh around it was sloughing off. I'd need to hurry and make rescue openings.

Then I started the door-to-door march, moving along the southern side of the building, and destroying the walls parallel to the living room of each street-facing apartment. It didn't require much effort; merely a tap of the finger, to effortlessly crumble apart stone and reveal the hallway. The residents within definitely noticed, because the sound of the wall being obliterated into shreds was no less loud than if I'd used a sledgehammer for the task.

"Come out!" I declared, as I moved from wall to wall, opening holes, "I'm making exits for you! Go downstairs as fast as you can!"

A teary-eyed woman, dressed in nothing but a bathrobe and underwear, exited the first apartment I opened, with a small child in her arms. "Thank you!" She then ran away.

Soon, a couple followed out of the second apartment, the man muttering his own thanks in my direction through the sounds of my work. And then more and more people, out of the rest, and the ones I continued to open. I could feel the building listing to the side, making it more difficult to walk. The collapse was slowed down, not entirely stopped. The combined weight of all the floors above was pressing down on those beneath, making a crescent.

I'd rescued a total of some twenty-five residents, when the floor beneath me vibrated and shook - an extremely bad occurrence, especially since I could feel into the floor, and track the connection of material chain reactions that caused this. One of the main supports had raised its hands in surrender and cracked. An estimated thirty seconds to collapse, maybe forty, by my best estimate, assuming nothing more jostled the building.

I'd definitely saved at least a couple of lives, then, since there was no fucking way that any firefighters were ever getting here in time to deal with any of that.

As I reached the end of the hallway, I used the other staircase to descend. Because there'd be at least three dozen people out front, I decided to use one of the back exits, and circle back around to my car.

I couldn't do anything else to help out that wasn't redundant. Paramedics could provide appropriate medical aid for dealing with minor injuries as well as me, and would appear in much better numbers, and I didn't have any trust in my power to heal considerable or life-threatening afflictions. Its skewed, inhuman definition of 'improving' the state of a near-fatal wound might be to render it full-fatal.

I didn't want to have to carry the dubious esteem of being locally known as the cape that delivered a terrifying coup de grâce to a dying civilian while attempting to save them. As if I wasn't already in enough trouble with the law for being an unsanctioned, barely-washed mercenary operating on US soil. I mentally celebrated doing a good deed instead, as I left.

I could hear the apartment's distant collapse, as I moved away from it, between the residential zones. It started with an ominous groan, reverberating through the streets like a dirge of warning. I turned around to observe the collapse visually, and I could see the apartment as it slumped over, almost hunching down southwards. Then, it crumbled in less time than it took me to light a cigarette, with a thunderous roar, sending plumes of almost picturesque dust and debris billowing into the noonday sky like a volcano eruption. I couldn't see well from the angle I was standing at, but I saw a couple of the upper floors cascading downward in a macabre ballet, one falling on top of the other, like repeated drumbeats.

It was beyond a lethal impact: hundreds of tonnes of concrete, rebar, glass, stone, and wood. Anyone within and around the building would've been crushed into modern art.

A poignant reminder to not stay in collapsing buildings, Robert, I thought to myself.

I decided the crisis was over with that event, and started moving away, as I'd planned to do anyway - still wearing a mask over my face, in case anyone identified me by clothing and decided to snap a photo. I'd remove it once I was a safe distance away.

As I was stepping between the apartment blocks, about a hundred yards away, I found a crying teenager crouched near a dumpster, not older than fifteen or sixteen. She looked at me with wild eyes as I approached, and stood, showing the effects of excessive adrenaline.

For a second, I thought she might've seen, or been close to an explosion, and I was about to say something about that, ask if she was alright, but she pre-empted me.

"Are you a cape? Fuck! Please, don't get near me! I could go off any second!"

"Go off?" I asked in confusion, choosing wisely to hold my distance for now. "What do you mean by that?"

"It's Bakuda," she said, through trembling lips. Her throat sounded rasped, sore, and almost choked up, even as she spoke, "She- I- I-" My interlocutor started hyperventilating mid-sentence, stumbling over her words, and erupting into wild stutters.

"Calm down," I said, raising a hand, recognizing a form of the Japanese word for 'bomb.' It must've been the moniker of the ABB's tinker. "Bakuda. She did what?"

"S-Surgery. Kidnapped us and operated on us," the girl rasped out, showing me the side of her collar. There were sutures there, above the chest, below the neck, in the shape of an 'x.' It must've been a sizable opening. She was shaking even as she explained. "She had a bunch of her men scatter us here. They had bombs in them as well, so they had to listen."

"Wait," I reacted in delayed understanding, feeling like a tremendous idiot. "In them? She's making human bombs?"

Her look was answer enough.

I looked at her for a second, feeling ice spreading in my veins. Frozen in shock. The revelation completely reframed the last couple of minutes, and everything I'd seen over their course. It explained the odd positioning of the bombs, the strange positioning of corpses and surviving civilians. Why make bombs explode in the middle of the street, and not in a building? Because the bomb was fucking sentient, and didn't want to hurt people as it died.

"Yes! Yes," she answered - and then, realized, as if reminded of her current state by my question. Tears welled in her eyes. "Oh God, oh fuck, I'm gonna die, aren't I?"

It snapped me out of my shock as well, hearing that realization.

I wasn't a hero, a cape-and-mask star of salvation, justice, and fairness that constantly flew around putting out fires and saving maidens in distress. I wasn't Scion or Superman. I didn't really care about other people, in plural or even as an abstract concept, and based on what I'd learned about my past self's downright borderline evil escapades, an argument could be tailored that I was a substance actively harmful and deleterious to human beings.

However, to use a demonstrative metaphor, I was in front of a person that'd been set on fire, and I was the only individual in a hundred-mile radius holding a bucket of water.

And I didn't want to be an asshole. I wanted to be a coward even less.

I squared my shoulders and breathed in, a slow and steadying breath - filling the lungs, and then metaphorically the rest of the body. Like a balloon full of tension, attempting to drive it out with forced serenity. One more crisis, then I'm safe.

"How are the bombs programmed?" I asked slowly, taking a step in the direction of the wall. I sounded calm and controlled as I asked the question, but internally, I was shitting my pants. If I was in the blast radius of whatever Bakuda had cooked up, I could end up as one of those awesome statues, or maybe worse. And I didn't even know the blast radius. It seemed varied, but always large. If I was in distance to converse, I could've already been within it for all I knew. "How does she make them go off?"

"I- I'm not sure. They might be on, on- like, a timer, but I saw her activating them remotely on her own." She reacted to something with an agitated shake, and for a moment, almost startled me. Then I realized she was looking off into empty space, with a thousand-yard stare. Reacting to a memory. She explained before I asked, not that I was sure I even wanted to. "I- I saw her kill Lin, because she wasn't... wasn't walking fast enough."

I allowed that statement to hang in the air for a second.

"Does she have a detonator?" The nameless girl offered me a blank look. "Like a..." I made a hand gesture as if I were holding a pen, and clicking it.

"No, no!" The girl shook her head, black hair swaying. "Nothing like that. She doesn't need one. She can make you blow up without anything. Just by looking at people."

"Does she wear a full facial mask?"

She nodded. "Yeah, yeah, like a gasmask, kinda."

An integrated tinker HUD, then. Classic.

I had one of those as well, as I suspected did every tinker that could make masks at all. A practical little invention. Everything runs a lot smoother when you have control over it, and can see its status in real-time. It was like carcinization; nature always attempted to evolve a crab. Or, in this case, a tinker would always try to have a HUD if reasonably possible.

She can see a display of her active bombs and select one with eye movements, and confirm the detonation with some switch on her costume. If she's detonating them from across the city, she's left this girl alive as a distraction or a part of the second wave. She'll probably make her blow up once she thinks the emergency services arrived here - an attack on the city. Just a theory, but I'm running with the idea this is terrorism for now. That means I've got maybe three minutes, if I'm lucky. Alternatively, it's on a set timer, and I might be dead at any moment, and there isn't a point worrying about it.

"What's your name?"

"I'm Cindy."

"Cindy. I'm a cape, and I'm fairly confident I can disarm your bomb safely if I can touch you. Will the explosive detonate if I approach?"

"I don't know."

"We'll try something else first then. Something to boost our chances."

I proceeded to take out my smartphone, and smashed it against the wall. Cindy startled. I crouched down over the scattered parts, and started refining and exchanging individual components of worth, attempting to aim for a particular assembly of electronics.

I was swiftly annoyed with the result drift - a term I'd invented to define refinements that started diverging away from what I was hoping to obtain, resulting in further divergence as I continued the refinements. Imagine you needed a fireaxe, so you exchanged a sword for something else. Instead of an axe, though, it gave you a spear. And then a spear became a quarterstaff, and a quarterstaff a mop, and a mop a bucket, and so on, until any remaining hope of getting that axe was nonexistent. Like that, but with electrical components.

I'd need something that can work on RF protocol and act as an IR repeater simultaneously, and the baseband processor decided it wanted to become a novel and completely worthless audio oscillator instead. Its only use was the ability to produce seven different tones depending on voltage, except that was useless unless I intended on quitting caping tomorrow and joining a synthetic instrument orchestra.

"Are you crazy? A-Aren't you gonna call for help?" Cindy asked me, staring at me as I tinkered with components, clicking my tongue and tossing a couple of the worthless ones away. "How's that help our chances?"

"It'll be a while before city services can arrive here, let alone a trained surgeon that can remove the bomb from you. That's assuming you aren't meant specifically to cripple the city's services and explode when they come here to help you. What's more, I strongly suspect that surgically removing the bomb from your body would set it off, and I doubt anyone can be procured who's simultaneously a surgeon and a bomb defusal expert."

"How do you know that?" she asked nervously, standing still and kind of folding her arms over each other for comfort, holding onto the elbows.

"It's what I'd do if I was a crazy bitch terrorist tinker," I said, sighing at a completely useless clockwork potential storage system the former battery turned into. "Do you have a phone?"

"Yeah."

"Toss it."

"Are you gonna break it as well?" she asked, with welling hesitation.

"Do you prefer a broken phone or a broken everything?"

She didn't hesitate after that. I caught the phone and started plucking out the last components I needed, exchanging parts of them, and physically altering others with a needle. After a couple of seconds connecting wires, my ghetto engineering project was finished, and I had a mostly operational - and, I suspected, safe - radio jammer that, if it worked correctly - and it should - would cancel out the transmissions from Bakuda's headset.

It didn't resemble either of our phones or even an eclectic mishmash of them, but something more in the shape of a dull, gray plastic chocolate bar with a sticky antenna at the end and a bunch of circuitboards and wires haphazardly taped around it.

I slid it across the alleyway to Cindy.

"Pick that up, and hold down the red button," I said, even as I stepped back.

"Um-"

"It's safe," I assured her, continuing to step back.

"Then why are you moving away?"

"Just in case I'm wrong. I'm like ninety-nine percent sure I'm not, though."

Credit to Cindy where credit is due, she didn't pointlessly argue with me, or scream in fear, which I would've considered reasonable given the circumstances. She breathed in visibly and then, gritting her teeth, held down the red button. Nothing happened.

"Keep holding it, and as you do, check the panel on the side. Is there a blinking green light?"

She turned the device over, thumb still on the button. "Uh, yeah?"

"Okay, that's actually amazing news," I said in relief, as I started to approach with swift steps. "As long as that green light is blinking, you are about ninety percent assured to not explode. Keep holding the button as I approach, alright? I don't have any duct tape to stick it into place, so I'm counting on your flexor muscles not giving out for two seconds."

She nodded, and seconds later, I was at her side.

"Don't move," I instructed, as I touched a finger to her sutured chest.

I sighed almost immediately. Can't a Striker-Tinker brother get a fucking break in this town?

"Oh man."

"What?"

"Nothing. Just more of a pain in the ass than I thought," I said. Either Bakuda was downright paranoid, overly perfectionist, or she'd have a fucking stroke if someone ever managed to defuse a bomb of hers. Or all three. "She's made an assembly that's impossible to defuse for anyone except maybe a tinker. Even for me, it's gonna take a minute, so hold still."

Normally, in a bomb, you had a fuse, a detonator, and a charge - or an explosive material. Once a circuit was completed, such as by a timer reaching down to zero, the fuse would set off the detonator, and the detonator would provide the chemical or thermal energy or whatever else for the explosive material to go boom.

In most scenarios, cutting the correct wire was a satisfactory option for shielded bombs, but in a decent amount of them, if you weren't a trained counter-terrorist, you could probably get away with either ripping out all of the wires simultaneously, or if the interior elements weren't shielded, plucking the fuse or detonator out. As long as the assembly's components weren't together, it wasn't really a bomb. Just a fancy piece of electronics and-or volatile chemicals. Part of the reason you made bombs that way was because you didn't want them to explode mid-creation, and normally, bombers didn't account for defusal teams arriving there in time.

However, Bakuda apparently considered the mere idea of honest simplicity and universal engineering to be an odious affront to existence; a concept that had to be actively battled.

She'd gone to what I could only assume was a painstaking effort and created a bomb that I could only describe as the opposite of failsafe: the detonator was a part of the material, and so couldn't be removed, and the fuse was actually preventing it from exploding, rather than causing the explosion. A detonation signal from the headset would cause the fuse to disable its stabilizing function on the assembly, leading to an immediate explosion. Furthermore, ripping out any of the wires would collapse a different circuit and detonate it. Removing all of them at the same time would instead trigger a reactive chemical attached to the fuse and detonate it. And removing the bomb from its carrier would complete a circuit and detonate it.

In other words, if you took any part of the bomb away from any other part of the bomb, it'd immediately explode, and there were only so many ways you could circle around this issue. I doubted even Bakuda herself could've defused it, once she was finished assembling it. It was essentially impossible outside of parahuman powers or bullshit tinker devices. I was actually halfway surprised she'd not made it a function for the bomb to detonate if there was a buffer overflow in the radio receiver, or if it couldn't receive a signal. I supposed it made a kind of sense her suit detonator would operate on active emissions, though, instead of passives that she disabled to cause a reaction. After all, a constant passive emission telling bombs not to blow up would be something that a tinker like Armsmaster could easily track.

Maybe the most annoying part of the entire ordeal was that my standard trick of simply dissolving the chemical structure wouldn't be safe to use here. That'd be a win.

She'd used a complex hexogen-based charge with a more esoteric chemical structure contained within a shell of it, that I suspected ran more on parahuman pseudo-physics than strict logic. If I managed to render it down, the remaining atoms would still rebond into some kind of nitramine, and possibly one that wouldn't need a fuse to explode.

That wasn't to mention the core substance that, as far as I could tell, was a volume of carrier particles that had mass and behaved like a liquid and might possibly cause the surroundings of the explosion to undergo a reaction similar to nuclear fission. It seemed like some sort of radioactive disintegration bomb. I had no fucking idea how Bakuda could even make something like that in a dingy-ass Brockton Bay workshop without being directly funded and supplied by the United States Department of Energy, CERN, or NASA.

I decided, at that moment, that despite more or less being one, I fucking hated tinkers.

In any case, it seemed the rescue attempt was done. I couldn't see any standard or even non-standard way to defuse the bomb. Bakuda had masterfully placed me into a checkmate, without even meeting me: she'd placed all contenders and potential bomb defusers into a corner, whether knowingly or by accident.

I had an idea, then, or at least a miniature shadow of an idea. It seemed riskier than anything I'd ever done with the Clockworks, riskier than perhaps anything I'd ever done, period. It was riskier than humoring Phineas, and far more dangerous than affiliating with the Black Queen.

I didn't want to do it, at least not seriously. But I heard a whisper from someone with a Cheshire grin, then. A man clad in shadows holding a ukulele, looking at me.

Be a crazy motherfucker, the inner voice kept saying, an insistent tingling at the edge of my fingertips, and I found my lips moving with it. Do it or no balls.

It'd return to me, every now and then; more often and more keen every time I recollected some memories. It wasn't an instinct, not quite, as it wasn't something hardcoded into my brain. It wasn't like a fight-or-flight instinct that most mammals had. It wasn't a special power or some kind of unique dissociative state.

It was like a different perspective, a way of viewing the world. A methodology, even. There was something appealing and nostalgic about it, as well, like remembering all those fond moments of fly-fishing with your dad back in summer when you were young. And there, I saw a condemnation of my actions, directed from my own self.

I should've been saddling this horse a long time ago since it always had a backup plan.

If you can't destroy the army by yourself, raise your own.

I looked at Cindy. "A question for you, Cindy."

She wavered at my tone of voice. "Yeah?"

"How attached are you to, say, your kidney? Or your current body? Just making a general assessment of the level of attachment we're dealing with."

"Holy shit," she breathed out, the question clearly spooking her. She gave me a worried, albeit resolved look. "Look, if you can get me out of this alive and conscious, and like, I can still breathe afterwards and shit, you can have my ring finger in a jar. Why?"

"Do you solemnly swear to not betray the secret of my superpower to any governments, shadow organizations, superheroes, and supervillains?" I asked her in full seriousness.

She nodded after a second.

"I am not actually a tinker," I said. "Ever hear of Mekhane?"

She nodded, as well. Good.

"Yeah, that's the name I'm going by," I informed her with a slow nod, "But I'm not a tinker. Whatever I touch, I can change. I can make it worse, I can make it better, or I can swap it out for something else. It's how I jury-rigged that jammer you're holding onto like a life buoy."

She cursed in another language. "Are you gonna transform the bomb into something else? Something with less explosive power?"

"Unfortunately, because of how my targeting operates, that idea probably wouldn't be safe," I responded with an easygoing tone, and cut in before she could curse again or display worry in any other way, "However, I do have a couple of other ideas, ones that are completely crazy but might just work."

"Alright. Okay. What's that?"

"I'm planning on transforming your kidney into a sentient anti-bomb."

A kidney was optimal as the choice, since out of all the human body's organs, it was the least crucial to survival after the appendix. Cindy didn't have an appendix.

Her reply was almost immediate. "I'm not sure how to feel about that."

"A second ago, you were giving away your ring finger."

"Right," she answered with a shallow voice. "And the other idea? Or ideas?"

"I can also try and make you superhuman with potential consequences, and we'll hope you survive the blast," I responded. "Or both."

"Or both?" she repeated. "Is that the last idea?"

"Yeah."

She looked discomforted. "What are the risks?"

"For the former one, your sentient kidney might not want to even eat bombs and so it'll be useless, it might not be strong enough to absorb the explosion and radiation, it might make you go crazy, it might go crazy itself, it might eventually mutate, it might try to eat you from within-" I stopped the listing at her increasingly paling and worried expression, indicating this wasn't a route she was willing to stomach, even with a bomb almost literally in her stomach.

"And for the latter, an estimated coinflip you won't be superhuman enough to survive, an estimated one in five chance you'll end up looking kinda freaky."

I wondered, somewhere deep in my mind, whether it was the actual lack of time that made my explanation hurried and brief, and a little slanted, or whether I was subconsciously portraying the superhuman route as a superior option because I wanted to see if it'd work while simultaneously washing my hands clean of any repercussions.

Devilishly done, Sergeant T3, the most pessimistic part of me thought.

"Fine," she said, after thinking about the prospect for about five seconds. "If cutting out the damn thing isn't possible, let's do that. Just remember, if I explode-"

"I'll explode as well. I'm not dumb." She nodded, and closed her eyes, drawing in a deep breath. I could see the stammering flow of oxygen across her body, the stutters caused by frayed nerves, the fear responses in every limb. "Ready?"

"Yeah."

"Three, two, one..."

I activated the Clockworks.

Last edited: May 28, 2023

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Birdsie

May 28, 2023

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

May 30, 2023

#595

There was an explosion.

This, I could ascertain from the fact I was lying on my back with tinnitus ringing so harshly in my ears, it felt as though I'd been exposed momentarily to a goddamn cacophony of jackhammers on steroids and chorus of howling animals' rights activists with severe anger management issues, after having been thrown across the alleyway.

The explosion didn't kill me.

This, I could ascertain from the fact I was in a world of torment, coughing and seizing painfully on the floor. It felt as though I'd been abruptly wrung through an industrial grinder. It was almost abstract, like a Picasso painting of pure agony, with every bone in my body feeling as if it had been used as a piñata for an army of sadistic rugby players.

I reached into myself with the Clockworks, performing an analysis, fearing the worst. Transmutation. Genetic recoding. Forms of harm that I couldn't recover from.

It wasn't as bad as I'd believed, and for a second, I chastised myself for being a complete drama queen. Placebo effect got the better of me.

I had a couple of burns on my right hand's fingers - the sort of burns you had after dunking your fingers into an open flame for a couple of seconds and holding it there, but not anything worse. I had a hairline fracture in the same arm's radius bone, and several more fractures of a similar nature on my ribs, sternum, and spinal cord. About a hundred bruises peppered my entire body as if I'd been tenderized with Lung's very own sledgehammer, and I was discombobulated moderately from the impact with the alleyway floor and the inner ear being fucked to high hell. I had mild internal bleeding in sections of my stomach, seemingly from the force of the shockwave hitting me almost literally like a truck.

In other words, it wasn't any worse than a particularly exciting night out drinking. I reached into one of my pockets, desperately searching, and found a small red-white capsule. I never left home without at least three. I swallowed it, and sighed out in relief. I'd be functional and cracking wise again like an asshole in about a minute or three, once the analgesic kicked in. After that, half an hour and I'd be miraculously healed of all earthly ills.

Including being almost obliterated by an explosion.

I should start selling healing stuff, I thought to myself, even as I lay there, relaxing as the effects took hold. I'd invented a cure for cancer, and one that was effective. If by accident. I didn't know how to make a business out of such an affair the government wouldn't shut down, though. At the very least, doctors would lobby against me if I made too many steep advances in medicine. Just sell them illegally, I decided. Like everything else I made.

After regaining a modicum of self-control over my neck and no longer feeling quite like I was being skull-fucked by a hyperactive gorilla, I looked across the alleyway and smiled in relief when I found Cindy standing there, and staring at her own arms in astonishment.

She looked... well, I wouldn't use the word 'fine,' at least for now, because I was fairly certain 'fine' people's arms and clothes were not supposed to be on fire. The fact she wasn't screaming or afraid of being in that exalted state at least indicated she wasn't in any serious agony, rather unlike myself a second ago.

Also, she'd not changed into a freakish mutant, at least not externally.

Success? I labeled tentatively.

In retrospect, it was almost unceremonious. I'd been expecting immediate death or complete victory, and instead, I was tossed aside like a ragdoll and heavily wounded and seemed to have achieved partial success. Instead of a coin flip that ended in heads or tails, the coin landed on its side and flipped me the bird in return.

Reasonable, still.

I'd expected Cindy to start crying by now from the sheer relief of not being stuck as a human bomb anymore, although she rather seemed to be in a state of shellshock instead - attempting to process the situation, failing, and following the drift of events further without much contemplation - which I also considered a valid reaction to trauma.

"Hey, Cindy," I slurred from the floor, head swinging upwards, "You good? You're on fire?"

"Oh holy shit!" she called back, as if realizing I existed, and ran across the alleyway. Still on fire, and seemingly unbothered. If anything, she was more focused on me, in my slight daze. She hovered over me like a helpless duckling left alone with a butter knife and no idea how to smear bread. "Are you okay? Holy fuck, you got thrown back like thirty feet."

"I'm alright. I'll stand up in a second, once the entire world isn't a carousel," I answered, raising a hand to wave off her concerns. "You're on fire, though. Are you not, like, hurting? Is that a parahuman ability you developed? Being on fire and not screaming?"

"I-"

It seemed the explosion had profound effects beyond what I'd anticipated, on her as much as me. It seemed it was the first time she realized that she was, indeed, on fire. Like, actually set ablaze. Human Torch-level shit.

Alright, maybe not Human Torch, but close. She could make a decent stand-in for a discount Firestarter cosplay, or even audition for the role of Flaming Hot Cheeto mascot. She was embracing her inner pyromaniac with gusto.

Also, I was noticing a deviation in my overall thought patterns. I was... more crude, for lack of a better term. Interesting, that. I didn't have a concussion, as far as I could tell. Maybe it was some mild post-explosive grogginess, like the incendiary equivalent of after-wank clarity.

She looked down at her arms, at her flaming shirt, and hesitated. She clenched her hands, then unclenched them, looking at her fingers, each fingertip like a small candle.

"It doesn't hurt at all," she remarked. "How?"

"No idea," I said, beginning to flip over onto my stomach. I aided myself in standing with my elbows, and in a couple of seconds, I was on my feet, dusting off the alleyway grime from my pants and arms. My right hand stung like a son of a bitch, and could probably get infected on contact with dirt, so I avoided using it. "Although I think it's entirely possible you may have absorbed the bomb. Or most of it, anyway."

"Holy shit," she said once more - and I was starting to feel this was probably her favorite turn of phrase when suspended in a state of cold, terrifying shock. Understandable. I myself was partial to 'what the actual fuck,' but I'd seen enough weird and incredible shit I wasn't really shocked in my current state. Just mostly glad I survived with only bruises to show.

"How?" she asked, looking at me with questions in her eyes. "Am I a cape now? Am I gonna be alright? I won't get cancer in a week or something, right?"

"I'll check as soon as you're not on fire," I said, once more drawing her attention to that, raising an eyebrow. "You're a little too comfortable with that."

She realized I was right, and we spent about half a minute putting out her assorted body parts. Or rather, Cindy did that herself and I watched with bemusement, as I was too busy swaying on my feet. After that, I touched a hand to her shoulder.

It took me a second to realize the nature of the alterations.

"Definitely a parahuman of some flavor," I said without a hint of surprise. "Although you don't have one of those brain tumors."

"Isn't that a good thing?" she asked sheepishly. "Not having a, uh, tumor?"

"Astute observation. However, it's not like a normal tumor," I answered. "Most capes have a growth in their brain called a corona. It helps them regulate and control their abilities. Don't freak out too much, though. I'm pretty sure you're fine on the psychological and control end. Although your complete disregard for being on fire is a little concerning."

She offered me a huff, looking down. "I, ah, dunno what to say about that." Cindy looked at me again. "So what can I do? I don't... feel anything, really."

"You're a living energy sponge," I said. "Every tissue in your body can absorb all sorts of energy, or deflect it should an excess be accumulated. It's what happened there. The bomb went off and your tissues drank up the shockwave and radiation. The excess then leaked out of you and into the environment, which is how I ended up married to the tarmac."

"Right," she breathed out, seemingly comforted to hear that. "What does that actually mean, though? Does that mean I can't get hurt by like, fires and explosions?"

I nodded and started listing: "And also bright light, loud sounds, radiation, kinetic energy... Pretty much anything that isn't outright atomic disintegration. Once you've absorbed sufficient energy, you'll start deflecting it instead to - as far as I can tell - no hard limit. It'll start metabolizing after some time, replacing your need to eat, hydrate, and sleep, and making you stronger, like you've had a decent workout. You're probably one of the most durable capes in the world right now, only a ladder step below Alexandria."

Also, there were a host of other minor benefits I hadn't mentioned. Her tissues absorbed excesses of hormones and chemicals, as well as electric activity in the central nervous system, muscles, and brain. It meant she was immune to tasers, toxins, and certain emotion control powers. It also explained the reason she was so unnaturally calm about being set on fire, or about the explosion, or the entire events of the last couple of hours from her perspective. Most people would've started breaking down. She couldn't.

I might've made a slight mistake, I considered.

It'd be alright, probably. She could still feel sadness and anger, I was rather certain. Just not whatever her power considered as above the 'excess' threshold. And I was fairly certain that somehow, the ability was selective, such that it didn't treat positive emotions the same way.

I didn't know whether that might lead to some kind of mania in due time, although I hoped it wouldn't. If the absorption was so discerning, surely it could see the merits of healthy emotional development as well as being completely bulletproof? If not, I'd need to do something about it.

On the side of demerits, she didn't have Alexandria's incredible strength or ability to fly, which I considered something of a pity, really. It'd be nice to have that knowledge, that I can theoretically churn out new Triumvirates if I'm ever in a pinch and need an over-kill squad.

"Holy fucking shit," she upscaled her standard reaction. "That's... kind of awesome to hear. Taking the risk paid off, huh?" She laughed stammeringly, casting her eyes up at me.

"Fortune favors the bold," I said. "A little voice in my head told me if I'm gonna risk death for a stranger, I might as well make our death as cool as fucking possible."

That seemed to remind her of the nature of the situation. She gave me an indecipherable look, something between surprise and realization, and then cleared her throat and breathed out.

"Thank you for helping me, also. Like, I mean, holy fuck, that entire thing was so intense. You didn't even need to do that. But you actually pulled through, and we both made it..." She trailed off, looking down and contemplating the past couple of minutes. She looked up at me again, and spoke with a clouded tone, "I'm pretty sure I owe you my life, too. You're a hero, Mekhane."

"No problem," I answered, "It's only a moderate risk of fatality or permanent loss of limb."

She let out a snort, and started to follow me as I made my way out of the alleyway, managing not to stumble. The effects of the panacea were kicking in even harder, full overdrive across my body. I could even physically feel the hairline fractures starting to seal up with new bone mass, as subtle lumps of heat beneath my skin and flesh. Cindy didn't seem to notice my enjoyment of the healing, merely wandering after me and looking around at the chaotic streets of Brockton Bay, listening to the distant sirens.

Then, as if remembering something, she looked at me and asked, "What about Bakuda?"

"Bakuda?" I asked back, cocking my head to the side. "What about her?"

"Someone needs to... I don't know." She shrugged impotently and looked at me with a strange look in her eyes. "...Stop her? That sounds so stupid. But you're a cape, right? I mean, I suppose I am too now, but I don't have any idea how any of this works. And I don't want to fight that maniac, at least not on my own. She's crazy and dangerous."

"Look, Bakuda's probably about to reach the summit of everyone's shit list," I said, pointing upwards demonstratively. "The government isn't going to like her because she's a terrorist, the rival gangs will absolutely despise her because she's drawing a hornet nest's attention to everyone's shared dining hall. Sooner or later, someone will inevitably get exhausted of daily explosions and impale her head on a spike. It'll probably be Kaiser in all honesty."

He was a neo-Nazi and a crime boss, but from what I'd heard from Faultline, he also appreciated the finer aspects of living in a calm and uneventful neighborhood. That eternal peace and quiet all white supremacists wanted deep inside their shriveled fig black hearts. He'd definitely want to make a strong-handed show of force over locations so close to his territory getting bombed with impunity by a rival criminal organization. Especially with the racist agenda providing further impetus to drive the mules of war onward.

"So you're..." She couldn't grasp the correct words, for a second, and ended up saying, "Just gonna leave it?"

"Yeah, pretty much. A villain that goes around the city kidnapping civilians and implanting them with exotic bombs to use in terrorist attacks is something that we rogues often term a self-resolving problem," I said.

She didn't like that turn of phrase and offered me a dark look. Her dark eyes pierced through me with a chilling intensity, as if I'd committed a grave offense. It was the textbook definition of a withering look. The silent wrath didn't intimidate me as much as she believed it had.

I offered a mildly apologetic and weary look, accompanied by a tired exhalation. "Listen, I've had a long day, and I really wish I could stay and chat about the morality of chasing after Asian mobsters, but I have a meeting with my teammates and my phone's a myth on par with Leviathan only targeting cities in the northern hemisphere, so I can't call them to let them know I'm not dead. Have a swell cape life, and avoid weird masked bombers, okay?"

I waved my hand in a slightly mocking, slightly serious goodbye, and then started turning. However, the look of annoyance disappeared from her expression, replaced by a sudden, almost burning curiosity.

"A meeting? Right, you're on a team," she said, eyes widening in slight realization. She leaned forward. Attempting to recall facts about me, judging by the focus and contemplation visible on her face. "You work for, uhm, Faultline? The mercenary company leader?"

"I'm amazed you know that much." I raised an eyebrow, looking at Cindy under a new light. I was sincerely amazed. Most people didn't pay much attention to mercenary capes, in the media or otherwise. "More like a mercenary squad, though, but yes, essentially."

"Can I come with you?"

I'd earned this one, I supposed. I'd risked my own life to save someone else's and succeeded beyond the initial aims of the project.

Now, they were a cape and capable of returning the favor, so obviously, it'd form a fucked up life debt, the sort that I hadn't even believed existed outside of comic books and fantasy novels. Naturally, she wasn't saying any of that out loud, because it'd be fucking embarrassing and raise immediate objections from me, but I could feel the gratitude oozing off of her, like some dark, forbidden radiance.

It was as if I had become the accidental hero in her twisted mental fairy tale, the one who stumbled into the stage's spotlight while trying to secretly take a leak behind the scenes without the director's knowledge or permission.

However, I also sensed a degree of enlightened self-interest in the request as well. It wasn't a pure attempt at following me like a dogged samurai after their daimyo. There was something else in there, something rational and directed inwards. I had a couple of suspicions. She probably wanted an introduction to the cape game and the weird lifestyle. Who better to show you the ropes than an actual cape team?

It didn't change the fact that I wanted to slam my head repeatedly against a fucking brick wall until my brain cells sailed out of my skull like the people thrown off a derailed rollercoaster. As if dealing with Harriet on a daily basis wasn't enough, the universe decided to throw a second puppy at me while chuckling from the safety of the metaphysical fence separating us.

I shook my head with a sigh. "Always the same shit," I said. "Save someone's life and they'll throw themselves off the balcony on their own."

She looked at me a little weirdly like I'd spouted off some nonsensical crap in front of her, and I focused my eyes, looking directly at her with an oppressive gaze. "Why?"

Cindy looked unabashed and unworried. "Because, uh... maybe I'd like to join you."

"Really?" I raised an eyebrow, showering her with skepticism. "For someone not interested in fighting maniacs, you're awfully clingy to being a cape."

"I said I didn't wanna fight maniacs on my own."

"Alright, okay, point taken," I responded with a slow nod, acquiescing to the correctness of that statement. "But have you considered, like, not doing that? And going home instead?"

I only realized it a second later, after making the rhetorical question. Her not mentioning any parents or family, the scared looks, the mention of a 'Lin.' If Bakuda could kidnap one person from a house, and force action on victims, she could kidnap an entire family effortlessly.

Either Cindy didn't have relatives anymore, or she was hoping to rescue them. Shit.

To my faint luck and its dying vestiges, she didn't mention any of that. Instead, she made a rational and convincing argument.

"I mean, you even said it yourself: I'm probably one of the toughest living capes right now. I could be an asset to your team. I'm not afraid to get hurt, and I'm probably not gonna be hurt by much anymore. I'm eager to do hard work, as well. All you have to do is tell Faultline about me," she argued, and I had to admit, argued well; folding her arms. "So, uh, yeah. How about that?"

It didn't seem I'd ever get rid of her.

However, the argument wasn't faulty. She was rather durable, and, misanthropic as it was to think, I and the others could use a meatshield. Among the diverse powersets the crew had to offer, a frontliner that could handle sustained bombardment wasn't one of them.

"Get a costume first," I sighed. That'd at least give me a couple of hours, if not days, to explain the situation to Faultline. "And come to the Palanquin when you're done."

She gave me a strange, mystified look. "As in the club?"

"Yeah, the club." I waved a solemn goodbye as I turned around and walked in the direction of my car. "Goodbye, Cindy."

She didn't respond, simply watching me disappear into an alleyway.

It took me a short drive to return to the Palanquin, and because I'd been seriously hurt, I was double careful to avoid collisions and obey traffic laws.

I found Harriet already there, standing outside the Palanquin with a worried look, a foot tapping against the sidewalk and checking her phone almost like it could reveal the secrets of the universe any second now, and she didn't want to miss it. I hadn't even parked the car and removed the seatbelt, and she was already striding in my direction with fast steps. It was as if her concern had sprouted wings and was now dive-bombing straight toward me.

"Robert!" she yelled, "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," I confirmed, stepping out of the vehicle and offering her a look of mostly blank reassurance. I didn't feel smiling was entirely appropriate, but I displayed that I wasn't covered in wounds, or agonized as I'd been only half an hour ago. I looked around the parking lot and found that it was safe to converse. No civilians in earshot. "I'm sorry if you called. I had to... creatively sacrifice my phone."

She nodded, choosing not to question that any further. "The others are inside. There's-"

"Also," I interrupted her statement, raising a finger, "I know you hate it when I do superpower things behind your back, and especially if I don't tell you after. Therefore, I'm telling you immediately, so you don't have a casus belli to shout at me later, alright?"

Harriet shot me a frank look, one that scanned me as if I'd declared the invention of a new method of converting bacon into diamonds. A little perplexed and mildly disconcerted.

"Alright?"

"I've enhanced a human being. Made someone have superpowers. It worked."

Harriet's expression didn't change, or at least, not in the way I expected. She blinked once, as if I'd said something blatantly stupid, and after having another look at my face, she blinked once more and seemed even more perplexed than at the start.

"As in, you used the Clockworks on someone?" she asked, leaning forward to reduce the space between us, allowing for more effective whispering. "And it worked?"

"Yeah. I was more or less forced to," I admitted. "It was either that or almost certain death. They'll be coming around soon. Huh, I expected you to demand more explanations."

I looked at her with pleasant surprise.

She huffed out instead, and rolled her eyes. "I can live without superpowers and explanations, Rob," she said. "I'm just happy you're okay."

"Hug?" I offered, knowing she liked them. She, in turn, knew I didn't like making skin contact with other people. It didn't change the nature of the gesture, and the fact that I was making an exception.

Harriet smiled and leaned forward, wrapping her arms around me. I could feel the network of blood vessels running through her eyeballs, like spurs of lightning or the roots of a tree. I comprehended that shattering her femur required an application of at least 1690 PSI, depending on the angle. Even after being washed thoroughly with nettle shampoo and rinsed in hot water, there were molecular traces of nicotine in her hair - the consequence of standing near me as I smoked cigarettes. The embrace didn't last for long.

After separating, we started moving in the direction of the Palanquin, in measured footsteps.

"...and? About the augmentations?" she asked, after a second. I smiled ruefully, knowing she'd want the news anyway.

"It's theoretically sound," I answered. Judging by her surprise, she wasn't expecting that answer, or at least not that iteration of it. "I'm still not exactly comfortable with it. However, if you can wait a week so I can make some preparations, I'm willing to make an attempt. I think I understand how the Clockworks operate a little better, now, so I'll need some time to stack the deck in our favor, so to speak."

She nodded, seemingly satisfied.

"You wanted to say something as well," I pointed out.

"Just getting you up to speed on the news," she replied, sounding absent. "Bakuda's hit a couple of train tracks, the Harborview bridge, and a bunch of power transformers. Civilians, too. You saw?"

"I did," I answered saliently with an increasing frown. I could remember the statues, the interior of the parlor. The sheer havoc and destruction on the streets. It clung to my mind like a parasite, equally withering from how resilient I was against its draining, and feasting on my constant mental returns to the sights. I should've been more terrified, more disgusted. I wasn't, and perhaps Sergeant Treble was even to blame. I didn't know. "It's fucked, what she's done. I saw at least a dozen corpses today."

I shook my head. Harriet put a hand on my shoulder and urged me in the direction of the staff entrance. "Come on. Let's go inside."

Last edited: May 31, 2023

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Birdsie

May 30, 2023

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Jun 5, 2023

#598

I entered the bare, unadorned meeting room on the mezzanine's level, to the concern of everyone present. The crew's discussion, however, didn't even last five minutes, and then everyone departed. It was more of an assembly to make sure everyone was safe, and the meaty part of the discussion bypassed me due to my prolonged absence.

Emily briefed me on the relevant facts: mostly, the scope of the attacks, and the fact that a supervillain named Coil, operating out of downtown and often feuding with the Empire, had reached out to Faultline almost as soon as the attacks started in order to invite us for some kind of meeting on neutral grounds in a couple of days, assuming none of this calmed down.

It didn't.

The ABB's bombing raids continued relentlessly; every day adorned with the ominous sound of distant booms. An explosion every six hours or so, sometimes in a short chain of several minor detonations in a minute. It seemed initially Bakuda was content to aim for crucial structures: railways, main streets, power transmission lines and substations, and other infrastructure. However, starting on late Monday, she'd broadened her horizons substantially.

On Tuesday morning, a church in south Brockton was targeted. A hospital that was already brimming with people affected by the attacks the same night. A sizable bus terminal close to the city's center also became a target, effectively eliminating its services. The attacks were becoming increasingly more brazen and destructive, as if Lung were actively encouraging them, rather than attempting to dissipate them. The death toll soon rose into the dozens, and the injuries into the scale of hundreds, if not thousands; reports were contradictory albeit all of them spoke purely of high and impressive numbers. Hospitals were flooded.

Oddly, as a response, crime only decreased, and I could even make an educated guess as to why, one that Faultline concurred with. Because all the heroes and police were out in force, and the city started talks of calling in the National Guard, no villains wanted the associated risks. The ABB stirred up the hornet's nest, and no one wanted to enter the crosshairs as a potential supporter of this terrible, widespread chaos.

Having effectively disabled the city's services, the ABB reigned almost uncontested on the criminal scene, although it was steadily getting swarmed with security agencies and law enforcement. It made an opportune time to decide on its fate, while everyone was distracted with each other. It was decided the meeting would be held on Saturday. An optimal day to attend for anyone who otherwise might've had other obligations, such as work or schooling.

Also, Cindy soon came around, like a dog sniffing in the bushes.

I found her standing in front of the line, and sighed deeply, offering the bouncer a nod.

She was allowed in, and as we rounded the corner into the already booming nightclub, past its myriad clients, I started up a fresh conversation. It felt like removing a band-aid from a small cut, when it didn't have enough time to heal.

"So, kid, you actually showed up," I said in a manner of calm, unperturbed welcome. However, I was, in truth, disturbed to see her here. Often, if people were about to do something idiotic, but you gave them a couple of days to consider it, they might realize it.

If she hadn't, it meant she was committed. Over-committed.

"Ah, hey. I... couldn't find the place for a while, and it was difficult to sneak out," she answered sheepishly, looking off to the side.

She was dressed much different than last time I'd seen her. Back then, she was in casual clothes. Now, she was dressed almost like a tryhard biker gang apprentice. An unzipped leather jacket with a borderline-emo skull-ink pattern t-shirt, dark jeans, fingerless gloves with studs, and a duffel bag stuffed with... stuff. I didn't even care to look. I hated touching people, and avoided close contact with complex things as a rule, unless I had to do that.

It didn't help that everything was so damnably complex, so unique, so worthy of my brain's preciously limited attention. From the smallest carpet fiber to a beating, human heart.

Assuming no external force damages it, my own heart can beat a Graham's number of times, before needing a replacement or else suffering critical failure, I knew as intimately as a man knew the contours of his own hand. And I knew Harriet's would beat around two billion times more at its current rate. Jack's, only three hundred million or so. Sobering.

As for Cindy's attire, it was almost like she was doing her absolute level best to fit in with the clientele and act cool and controlled. Given her overall skittishness, she was failing.

It seemed like having superpowers didn't lend you a magical anti-anxiety factor. A small boon in Harriet's favor was that she was never anxious to say something offensive or dumb, and so reminded me how much normal I am in sheer comparison. Even if I was an alien cyborg monster with a twisted mess of cosmic absurdity instead of DNA.

Cindy had also cut her hair much shorter, almost a pixie cut. To make concealment easier under a helmet, I imagined.

"Sneaking out? I never asked, actually - your parents alright?" I asked, raising an eyebrow minimally, as if to indicate I'd cease this line of questioning were it unwelcome.

She looked up for a second. "Yeah, my parents are fine. I wasn't... like, taken in a home raid. It happened on the street close to the docks."

I nodded, and then pointed up the stairs. "The boss' office is thataway, right through them doors. It's up to you to negotiate the specifics with her. Good luck and don't mind the writing on the wall if you see any. It's perfectly normal."

She gave me a mystified look, and then trundled off upstairs. As she did, Newter stood next to me, and looked up the stairs, before whistling.

"New teammate?"

I exhaled, and stepped around him.

"What?" he asked, a mite defensive. "I'm only asking..."

As there wasn't much of an opportunity to verify and adjust for the actual demonstrable level of Cindy's power, I was stuck on Wednesday making a costume, and improving its comfort and durability, if not necessarily its protectiveness. All it needed to do was reliably withstand exposure to nuclear flames, and I could definitely make cotton that durable via recursive enhancement. It'd be expensive on the cotton, since material had to convert through at least metaphorical value...

I also added in a black utility belt with ludicrously deep pouches, as that was something that everyone on Faultline's Crew had nowadays.

They are bigger on the inside. That's the trade secret of the patented utility pouch. The atomic matrix of anomalously stable lead-200 somehow creates a constant emanation on the folds of space-time, causing anything within to shrink to around twelve percent of its normal volume. The effect is smooth enough to not cause undue harm or destruction.

At least until you put in anything even a little radioactive. Then you'd be fucked, since the miniaturized radiation wavelength would increase in frequency and energy intensity correspondingly, becoming over eight times as radioactive. At least before I fixed it. There are often consequences to playing around with non-sterile space-time.

A utility belt of that sort could've been its own SCP in another universe.

On Friday night, after an entire week of recursive tinkering, experimentation, and pushing the boundaries with the Clockworks, I returned home mildly exhausted on a mental and emotional level. I was about to clatter over into my bed, when I noticed a visitor. Just sitting there, casually hanging out in my kitchen.

"I'm not looking forward to this conversation."

"Neither am I, Mr. Treble," said Agent Chao, or Black Queen Treble - the Queen I'd coincidentally shared a pseudonym with in the past. "Neither am I."

"Just call me Robert." I tossed my heavy duffel bag onto a couch with a sound of shuffling equipment, and then started undoing my jean jacket's buttons. "Help yourself to coffee or tea. Whatever you like. You've already helped yourself to my door locks, apparently."

"I assure you," she offered dryly, "I took the uttermost effort to be as gentle with your locks as possible. No locksmith will be needed."

"Don't worry, I'll do my best to be gentle with you as well," I said with matching dryness, draping my jacket down over a chair and standing over her. "Now, for real, can I help you, lady? I'm a little sleepy and exhausted after a long day of work, so unless you want so much to undress and get cozy in bed with me, I'd recommend leaving me alone."

"Sexist," she accused, voice and face blank.

It threw me more than a little off-balance, enough that it must've showed on my face. I'd expected a witty retort, not a point-blank accusation of blatant sexism. I blinked.

"I mean," I answered, displaying not a mote of shame, "maybe it's because I'm attempting to convince you to leave, because I don't like you, Treble. You broke into my house, so I want you to understand that I don't want you here, and that I want you to leave me alone."

"No," she answered - and I sensed it wasn't to my request to be left alone. Instead, she was replying to something else, as if correcting some fundamental misunderstanding.

"No?"

"You don't understand," she replied, calm and observative, yet unerringly patient, more like a machine than a person, "I am not accusing you of being sexist, and therefore evil; or therefore flawed, or therefore anything. I am only pointing out your immediate response in a situation of discomfort with an attractive woman was a number of sexually charged retorts. In dealing with feminine assailants, especially equals or superiors, you default to that."

I frowned. There was a chord of something to that. Not truth, but recognition. But I couldn't recall a single time I'd said anything sexist to Melanie, even at the nadir of our arguments.

Then I shamefully realized the immediate answer that pushed itself to my mouth was, 'bold of you to assume I consider someone with your tits attractive,' or something to that effect.

And that made me consider if maybe she wasn't wrong.

I decided to inquire, "Only with equals and superiors?"

"Too uncomfortable to employ with subordinates, and there's better weapons for that. Employing infantilization, non-sexual humor. Downscaling or downplaying their issues, propositions or arguments, supported by authority. It'd achieve the same effect, except better, and with none of the issues," she answered swiftly.

I was about to speak, when she continued on without my say-so. More and more questions and retorts pressed themselves to my lips as she did, although I withheld them for now.

"And you don't employ it as a part of an actual sexist belief system or some witticism. It's not an application of charm or charisma, or even a flirtation. It's not charming, or supposed to be, in the slightest. It's smarmy if anything, because it's crafted to be. It's a verbal attack, employed against an interlocutor you designated subconsciously as hostile. It's meant to discomfort me, push me towards revealing my motives through unnoticed body language, and in turn render me worse at reading your own by refusing to look at you or establish eye contact. In pointing out the absurdity of me entering your own home, you attempted to unsettle me by turning my attention to how much this resembles some manner of conjugal visit or rendezvous between lovers, and suggesting the next natural thing, while downplaying the salience of your own interest by simultaneously mentioning you're tired and would prefer me to leave just as much. I imagine that if I were male, you'd attempt to accuse me of excessive machismo. Or maybe homosexuality. Depends on what you'd think might sink a deeper hook into me. You're excellently trained. Conditioned beyond instinct. It comes to you so naturally it'd be unnatural for you to socialize without it as a weapon on-hand."

"Very astute, Dr. Freud," I said, at the height of dryness. "And now you'll tell me I downplayed your argument's importance with crude humor related to psychoanalysis. And I'd reply that it's a natural element of social combat - or an argument, if you prefer the official name - to treat your opponent as an idiot when it's true. It also doesn't change the fact you've been attempting to distract me by alluding in the vaguest manner possible to things you know about me, which I allegedly don't."

She showed me a deep grimace in response to that, in a revelation that I'd caught her red-handed. I sat down opposite of her.

"You know," I offered, "You didn't have to do any of this. If you'd simply asked me very nicely to have a conversation, I'd have humored you. No need to bait me in with secret lore."

I'd have maybe said, 'to have a date in some quaint supernatural cafe, like last time,' originally, but that also touched on what she'd pointed out. Sexism and creepy flirting, weaponized or not, wasn't something I wanted to employ in conversations, period. It didn't have an iota of charm regardless, much like she'd said.

"If you're curious," she proffered in a contemplative tone, looking off to the side, "He employed something similar, although I could never be sure whether it was a conversational tactic, as it is with you, or whether he was genuinely a vile bastard."

"Who?"

"Ukulele," she reminded me, looking almost surprised I didn't make the connection myself.

"Ah, right. That person. You mentioned all Gocks have stupid names. Humorous, even."

"The point of keeping them stupid isn't the humor. It's to avoid giving out impressive and cool names to rookies. Keeping them humble."

"Speaking of points," I said, drawing out the next thread, "if you might ever mercifully get around to one? Please?"

She sighed, once more caught red-handed.

"Robert, I'd like you to hand over the Mnestic device to me."

I looked her in the eyes, as coldly as I could manage. I made my tone as uncompromising as I could, without going overboard like I was trying too hard. "No. That's final. Now leave."

"I am here to warn you of something terrible," she said, leaning forward on the table, looking annoyed I rebuffed her so easily. "Do you think you're some Clockwork God? You're-"

"A Leviathan, whatever that is," I interrupted her, and she looked equally surprised I knew that, as she was annoyed it didn't seem to earn her any favors that she was about to say it out loud. "Not the Endbringer, at least. I don't remember sinking any cities or islands. I'm afraid you won't earn points with me by revealing things I already know."

"Do you believe the SCP Foundation lost you by some cosmic accident?" she asked. "It didn't. Do you believe it amnesticized you and displaced you to another universe of its own accord? Such a valuable and dangerous anomaly? This was planned, Robert. All of it."

"By whom?"

She looked me straight in the eyes, darkness meeting darkness. "It doesn't matter. It really doesn't, and even if it would, I couldn't tell you. It's more complicated than I can-"

"Then I don't want to listen to whatever else you might have to say to me. You know the problem with you Black Queens? You Serpent's Hand motherfuckers? For someone professing the love of knowledge being commonly available, none of you are ever keen to share anything with me. So I'll find my own answers. And you can go fuck off now."

"You'll hate them," she warned, almost like a dog growling in alert before it bit you.

"I believe I might hate you just as much."

That, more than anything I'd said over the course of the conversation, seemed to sting her at least a little. She didn't anticipate the viscerality. I suppressed a flash of satisfaction.

"Spite, Robert?" She sounded incredulous, as if that was terribly out of character for me. I was starting to get the impression she didn't actually know me. "You're doing this out of spite?"

"As good a reason as any, isn't it? But I also like to think there's an element of necessity," I explained patiently. "Even if you were to give me the answers now, how could I trust you're not simply telling me what I want to hear? Whatever eldritch secrets they are, that I cannot hear them, I'd rather have the most credible source, which is myself."

She leaned back, and pulled at her dress shirt's collar to ventilate. She looked nervous, unsettled. Agent Treble wasn't bothering to conceal her own emotions anymore, and she was on the border of being matted with sweat. I'd done, or stated something - in the last couple of sentences - that actually managed to penetrate her armor and strike fear into her.

It was honestly a little too sadistically satisfying for my own good. I didn't want to partake in too many unwholesome emotions. She made it both too easy and too tasty.

"My last offer," she said, sounding almost pleading. Desperate. Like a petitioner on their knees in front of a king. "Surrender the device, and I'll find a way to displace you and everyone you care about to a much better world. I'll put in every effort, pull in every favor, to ensure you have a calm existence, unbothered by anyone or anything. A virtual paradise."

I pondered at the crux of the offer, and something jumped out at me.

"Why don't you steal it from me? It'd be so simple. It's right there on the table." I looked over at the aforementioned device, casually lying with its probe extended on a length of cord. So did Treble, even though she didn't budge a muscle to retrieve it.

She looked at me once again, without a single alteration in her expression, awaiting my answer to her offer.

"You can't," I reasoned. It was the only reason I could even imagine. She wanted me to not remember who I'd been, and she'd probably have killed dozens of people to achieve that end. And yet, she was neither assassinating, nor coercing, nor threatening, nor stealing, nor sabotaging - affairs that, as I understood from rumors, came as second nature to Gocks.

She wasn't shoving a pistol to my face, or Harriet's skull, or threatening to explode the Palanquin with a C4 or stolen Bakuda bomb. I had no doubt she could've killed or kidnapped everyone I'd ever known in a single afternoon of wetwork. She wasn't doing that.

She was asking me nicely, making arguments. Portraying herself as a sympathetic figure with a common past, almost like an old friend in a high place. Distracting me from the nature of her request. Attempting to establish a rapport with me, without seeming too suspicious or out of place. As if none of the normal options were even available.

For Agent Treble's mission - whatever it was - to be achieved, I had to actually desire to hand over the Mnestic device. She couldn't smash it apart with a hammer while I was out.

I considered.

"Why?"

She didn't answer. I shook my head.

"Are you planning to stay here while I deep dive?"

"No. I'm leaving." She didn't offer any last warnings, or words of goodbye. She simply picked up her shit and left. Then, I sat alone in the kitchen, feeling restless. Listless. It wasn't how I expected the conversation to end. It left me feeling adrift.

I looked longingly at the Mnestic device, pondering its existence and role in our universe. It was lying there, discarded, sad, alone. I didn't ascribe feelings to inanimate matter. I knew better than most that even humans didn't really have feelings, not on an ontological level. Hormones, electrical signals, and dumb, complex mathematics were the sum of every work of art and love ever made.

And all of it was the result of a chemical reaction accidentally kickstarted billions of years ago in some underwater volcano, resulting in a chain of further reactions that became more complex with each iteration, its distinct elements falsely coming to believe they were individuals. Lords. Gods. As opposed to meaningless grains of sand in a cold desert.

Life was nothing more than death, forced into a drift, like an inverse bow-wave.

So then why should I be afraid of letting go? Why should I be afraid of anything at all?

I took the Mnestic device, breathed in, and allowed Agent Treble's words to circulate in my head like a swarm of locusts. It couldn't stop me. Wouldn't.

I laid down and jacked in. The next session was more vivid than most, a dreamspun cotton landscape resolving into tarried images and sounds.

The Mnestic device hadn't always been reliable.

At the start, I recalled only fractional memories, and often in low amounts per session. About the equivalent of three to five short movie scenes every time.

After several sessions, they started becoming far longer and more elaborate, and I remembered entire sections of important life events at a time. Getting my first toy, speaking with my shrink about my coloring books, staring at the night lights, and so on, and so on...

The memories even became clearer over time, as if a veil were being lifted, the haze and murk of uncertainty dispelled to show me clear and crisp memories of the past, in full vibrant color and complete with sounds I hadn't even been aware of at the time of making the memories themselves. It was magical.

There was one, sole exception.

I didn't remember how I achieved my current status. How I received the Clockworks.

I recalled standing in a cold, airy chamber, with the emotionless researcher - Dr. Gears, as I'd learn a little later on - standing next to me, labcoat swinging almost like a dramatic cloak around him. He was explaining the purpose of the cross-experiment to me, something about the machine's abilities to alter matter. I hadn't been listening.

Instead, I'd been staring at the machine in question, as if drinking in its outspilling magnificence. The dials, the booths, the mechanisms. It was all so grandiose and fascinating to me. I couldn't understand for the life of me - couldn't even comprehend any of it.

And that's when it happened, and the memories cut off, becoming a vague reel of burned film instead. It had frequent cuts. stops, and breaks. I remembered reaching out with my hand. I remembered a field of corpses, battered, bloody, cut all to pieces, some of them smoking. The corpses of soldiers. I remembered... death. Almost dying, or at least getting very hurt. I remembered seeing a female doctor yelling at other doctors.

And then I remembered sitting in a cold, hard, lonely box. Just me and the Clockworks. No way to get out without being gassed to unconsciousness with sedatives. SCP-199.

I remembered the countermeasures from the file that Black Queen procured for me, and with the context of the memories, it showed how much they actually feared me. I was a harbinger of doom in the Foundation's eyes, a weapon of mass destruction in a child's deceptive form. I wasn't treated like a human being whatsoever. Just like a monster.

It continued on, for many years. I attempted to escape twice or thrice when I realized how much I hated the box, and how much I hadn't seen of the outside world. Or when I realized how much I missed my Superman toy. The opportunities to escape weren't numerous, but I seized them whenever they showed up. They weren't allowed to hurt me, you see. The soldiers. They couldn't shoot me or touch me, so tackling and cuffing me was out of the question, not that it'd have worked. And tasers could only help that much when you still needed me out cold. They utilized sedative gas sprayers instead.

It didn't change the fact they couldn't actually hurt me. And that, for a kid as bold as me, was a hell of an incentive to keep making attempts at escape. I refined and improved my tactics over the years, getting closer to a full getaway each time, and resulting in a better security detail being assigned each time as well.

After the sixth attempt, where I almost reached Gate A, there wasn't much hope, as they implemented a new, much better cell and even acquired drones to keep me in check.

It all changed on my twelfth birthday. That's when he showed up with an offer.

Dr. Alto Clef: the closest person I've ever had to a father.

78

Birdsie

Jun 5, 2023

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Jun 27, 2023

#602

I stared at him for at least a second. A man in a labcoat and some kind of hat entered my cell and casually approached its center.

The SCP Foundation was a leviathan. It was a mechanism made of millions of interlocking elements, like an advanced version of a computer. One that could have, and often had, serious effects on the real world. It didn't, or at least wasn't supposed to, make mistakes. After a certain level of complexity, computers were too large to malfunction, even if you took into account the possibility of the equivalent of an ion striking a microprocessor.

How come, then, that an unknown man with no tranquilizing agent or filtered facial mask entered my cell? It was like the one-oh-one of dealing with me, basically.

They were enabling this escape. Sponsoring it, practically.

I felt a surge of paranoia. What if they weren't? What if this was bait? What if they had gotten fed up with me attempting to run?

Before I could finish letting out the same breath I'd taken as the door opened, I decided to abandon the ruminations and speak.

"Aren't researchers supposed to be smart?"

He looked at me with a curious gaze, as if wordlessly inviting me to continue.

"I mean, I've tried to escape a bunch of times. Look at how close I was on a couple of occasions. I feel we've seriously got to consider that I'll escape sooner or later, and it's economically more viable to release me."

It was cheeky of me, but intellectually, I understood he wasn't a source of harm. If he was planning on killing me, he would've done that already, with a bullet applied to the brain.

"You're mouthy for a barely socialized twelve-year-old," he commented.

My eyebrow twitched a little. Apparently, scientists were also allowed cheek. Okay.

"I have daily visitors. The food lady sometimes talks to me. The maintenance technicians are a little less talkative, but the psychologists are the best. I asked one of them to teach me words and read me books, and she agreed. I'm not allowed to have my own books. Not that I could read them in the darkness of this place. She does have a flashlight, obviously, and lets me look at the pictures."

He nodded in casual understanding. "From what I understand, you've attempted escape six times? That's a lot for a kid your age. Must've been chaotic."

I didn't speak. I didn't have much to say. I'd already been chastised, over and over, for doing something so dangerous. As if anyone could understand.

I knew there was an entire world outside. An entire universe, with its own mysteries and sights and experiences, so much deeper and more meaningful than a dark box. I knew that a night's sky was supposed to look so beautiful and mesmerizing, with all its stars and moon.

And yet I was sealed away in here, in a metal cube. It was maddening, sometimes, especially at night. Or at least what I thought of as night - the liminal period when I was starting to wind down and tire, wanting to fall into a deep sleep.

"Normally," he continued, "in a stable environment, the reason someone might escape is if circumstances become suddenly worse. Has that happened to you?"

"They don't ever become much worse," I answered him, confident in my answer. "Or better. It's always the same. But I don't even have a bed, I don't even have lights. I used to have both. I remember being in a truck once and seeing a small glimpse of... of..."

I struggled to identify the word.

"The surface?" he tried. "The outside?"

I nodded at the second one, and he allowed me to continue.

"I used to hope that I could see more of it. Have a bed and lights again." I stopped for a second, to consider how much I should say.

Under most circumstances, a child in my position might've been depressed, as the natural consequence of multiple failures and being stuck in a lose-lose situation, where every action feels meaningless. I wasn't the sort to despair and surrender, though. Even as I spoke, I was planning on how to move around him to reach past that door..

"In that case, I have an offer for you, kiddo," he said, offering a tight smile. He stood to the side of the door, its bright rays shining directly in my face. It took a moment to not squint. It also gave me a better look at the man himself. His eyes were heterochromatic, and underneath the labcoat, he wore a tropical print shirt. He moved one arm towards the door.

"Come with me, and I'll show you the outside. After that, we'll discuss the reason for this visit. Then we'll also discuss finding you a comfy bed and some lights."

I looked at him in surprise. "Just like that?"

"Just like that," he nodded.

"But..."

"But what? It seems too good to be true? You'd be right," he informed me, unashamed. His smile didn't wane. "This isn't free. I'll need to ask some things of you. But I can promise you a look at the outside, if you're at least willing to hear me out."

I considered for a couple of seconds, and he waited patiently.

In the end, how could I ever hope to say no? I'd wanted this since I was a little kid. It was my only real pursuit, the final aim driving me. If I couldn't have that much, I was a fool.

And not having to make an escape attempt was so much easier.

"Who... even are you?"

"Call me Clef."

"Alright," I said, even though it felt off. "Let's go, Clef."

A smear of fluorescent hallways. Sterile tiled floors and ceilings. Clear panes of glass and metal doors that slid when you used a keycard. I was as familiar with most of these as a man familiar with the shape of the neighborhood he lived in, although under most circumstances, only as the backdrop to my escape attempts. It was almost difficult to look the researchers and security officers in the eye.

After what felt like at least fifteen minutes of moving past an entire sector of corridors, the man in the labcoat and hat scanned the final set of doors, and past an armed checkpoint, availed me to the sight of reinforced doors, reading, in bolded white lettering: GATE A.

The Holy Grail.

An elevator, spacious, well-lit. It made a whirring noise as its doors closed and it lifted off.

I knew, on some level, that it was disingenuous to say I'd lived my entire life's course out in some abyss of eternal darkness. There were moments of luminosity I remembered, including my escape attempts. It didn't change the fact I wasn't accustomed to such brightness, and it seemed to show, because the scientist spoke.

"Interesting that you don't squint."

"My eyes adapt fast," I said. "I'm not like you guys."

His curious look, as if unsure what I meant, silently asked me to expand on that topic.

"I'm, like, built different. Better." I shrugged, offering him pursed lips and a look of reluctant incertitude. "I don't know what to tell you."

"Are you saying you're not human?" Clef raised an eyebrow, projecting skepticism.

"I don't know," I answered, finding that a disquieting idea.

After some time, we arrived on the surface of the world. Almost immediately, like an invasion on my being, I could feel it - an unfamiliar strangeness touching my lungs. A brisk clarity in the air, as invigorating as it was fulfilling. Like a narcotic. My eyes almost dilated as I stepped out of the elevator after the labcoat, who displayed his credentials to the security guards. They offered me the most skeptical look as I followed him outside, on foot, outside the chainlink fences and concrete parking lot, the physical facility left behind.

No cars. Instead, we moved onto a meadow on foot, all covered in grass. Greener than anything I'd ever seen or imagined.

As soon as there wasn't a ceiling above me, I looked upwards and faced an infinite sea of blue, dashed with occasional slashes of sugar-white puffs. A radiance overlooked it all, a light so blinding that even I couldn't look. I beheld the magnificence of the outside, and lost balance in less than a second, the sheer vertigo of not seeing a ceiling above making me completely lose control over my legs. I fell onto the grass, still drinking in the sight.

"Pretty damn awesome, right, kid?" the labcoat asked, after a minute. "But you should see the local forests, too."

I didn't answer for a second.

"That's the sky, right?"

"Yeah."

I didn't know what to say. Words weren't enough. And if they were, I didn't know enough of them. If I had to pick something now, years later, I'd have said it was limitless and free.

"Holy."

He chuckled.

After a minute, I stood, and followed him out into the woods.

There was greenery everywhere. An abundance of grass and trees, and the distant sound of cars moving down the country roads. I saw a bird, small and gray-brown, and for at least a minute, my eyes were glued to the alien creature. After having a trek down the forest path, we came out into a clearing, showing a distant meadow covered with shining golden wheat, a distant barn, and a town. It looked almost like a picture from a fairy tale book.

"Welcome to Michigan," Clef said. "Home of Site-19."

"Won't anyone get mad at you for telling me this?" I asked.

"Mad? At me?" He affected an amused tone. "No, who could ever get mad at me?"

Somehow, I could feel that a lot of people were always mad at him.

"Do you wanna head into town?" he asked, looking at me. "Pewamo's a mile down that way. There's a convenience store there, so we can buy snacks and then have a talk."

"Won't I look weird?" I asked, looking down at my jumpsuit.

He looked at me as if I were an idiot. It took me almost a full, good minute to realize what he wanted and expected from me.

"Oh." I shuffled on my feet. "Uh, am I allowed to do that?" It sounded dumb. I'd never asked for permission to use the Clockworks before, but now it somehow felt unholy to do otherwise.

"As long as you're with me, I'm giving you permission."

I nodded, and used the Clockworks. I made my clothes shift, as I sometimes had with equipment I found, and then shift again when I found the result poorly matched for the weather. In the end, I was dressed in a rather tasteless orange t-shirt and black pants, with black-and-white sneakers, but at least I didn't look like an escaped child convict.

"Better," he said. "Let's head on into town."

"By the way, about your name..." I said, as I followed after him.

"It's Clef, I already told you. Dr. Clef if you want to be formal about it."

"Yeah, but that sounds dumb. Like it's not even a real name."

I stared at his back. He didn't answer, but I could feel a rising sense of amusement.

"It's not your real name?" I asked.

He didn't answer, again. I felt my frustration mounting.

"Hey, come on, you told me we're in Michigan. That's in the United States, right? So what's your name? John? Daniel? Uh... Daffy?"

"Daffy's not that common a name," he said with a chortle. "You're thinking of a cartoon duck."

"I don't know the difference!"

"I actually can't tell you that one, kid. My name, I mean," He sighed, as we came out onto a country road. "Nevermind. Let's head down this way. It'll be faster..."

A convenience store, small and compact, with a glass facade revealing an entire wall of freezers, and multiple rows of shelves stacked with packaged and canned goods. A man with a ruddy beard, dressed in a jacket, stood behind the counter, reading a magazine until we came in. He let out a long-suffering sigh.

"Doc," he greeted Clef with a skeptical look.

"Mikey."

"I'll have some of those pretzels. Oh, and two muffins," he added, even as he grabbed a bag of chips and some other junk food and put it down on the counter. After a second thought, he added a can of pop, presumably one meant for each of us. It all looked weird and foreign to me. I always ate meals from a tray. Not having one to eat from was disconcerting.

But I could adapt. I'd always been amazing at that. Once, during a reading session, Dr. Lea explained the word's definition to me, and I latched onto it. I couldn't help but think of it as anything but my defining trait. Self-modification resulting in a better suitability for one's environment. They put me in an inescapable cell, so naturally I attempted half a dozen escapes. I could live without trays.

Still... I looked at the muffin, and reached out with the Clockworks, and I could feel and see the contents, the deadly substance within the innocent form. The nightmare of the baked confection. It astonished me that human beings could eat such things without dying. It was exactly the sort of trash my medical supervisor warned me not to eat, once, while checking my heartrate and warning me to maintain healthy living habits.

A park bench in a park served as our impromptu resting-and-snacking spot. It gave me a fresh opportunity to observe the strange world around me, and I was somewhat stuck mentally on the concept of a tree. Such a strange thing, even if I knew they existed beforehand. It looked and worked almost like the arteries inside of a human body, with leaves replacing individual cells. Or how the movement of electricity in an atmosphere prioritized flowing into polarized matter.

It was something I'd learned, inherently and internally, without any of the books. A lesson that I'd never spoken aloud, and wasn't certain I could even capsulate in words as a twelve-year-old child. It went something like:

Nature was the result of the principle of organic self-interest being married to progressive development, and so always took on the path of least resistance for maximum benefit. As a result, its designs tended to repeat, or at least echo. Kind of like history.

"Ever watch any cartoons?"

"Maybe when I was younger. Why?"

"So you know about Superman?"

"Yes. I had a toy Superman once. He was taken away."

He coughed a little, perhaps choking on a potato chip.

"Right. Anyway, the O5 hired me-"

"What's an O5?"

"It's like, imagine someone cloned the President twelve times and then made a special forestry-oriented task force devoted to finding the biggest possible sticks to shove up their asses. And then you put them in charge of a global shadow organization."

"And these people with sticks up their asses hired you?"

"Yes," he continued smoothly from that rejoinder, "hired me to assess you, and to act as your... handler, should you agree to a deal I'm about to offer you."

"Given you mentioned Superman, I'm supposing that he's got something to do with that." I cocked my head to the side. "Are you sending me after the real one?"

He looked at me levelly.

"Superman isn't real. He's a fictional character."

"Really?" I looked down, eating a candy. Its taste was almost acerbically sweet. My youthful taste buds demanded more. "Huh."

"But you're pretty close to the gist of it. There's something called Omega-7, a team composed of the Foundation's more... cooperative SCPs, that's being put together. The O5s want it assessed if you'd like to be a part of it, and if you're even suitable for it."

"And what do I get in exchange?"

"A lot more outings of this nature," he started. "Also, Class 4 socialization privileges, meaning you can talk to a lot more people, including others like you. Also, I could have you moved to Site-17, the primary humanoid object containment site. A more comfortable cell. All the bedding and lights you can take, and maybe even a TV to watch cartoons on."

"So, I am getting a lot of stuff, in exchange for being Superman from time to time."

"Yes."

"It seems like a good deal."

He didn't say anything to that.

"I'll take the deal," I said, after a second, picking out a pretzel. It had more salt than an ocean. "I'd rather be a member of the Justice League than sit in a cave." I bit the pretzel and it was excellent.

"Glad to hear it."

For minutes, we sat in silence, eating.

"You're a smart kid. Too smart," he said.

I looked at him. "Am I?"

He nodded. As he spoke, it was in an analytical tone, as if picking me apart, "Eloquent, too. And far too emotionally stable for someone only ever talking to shrinks. I wonder how much of that is you, and how much is your ability. You mentioned that you aren't exactly human. How did you determine that?"

"My DNA," I answered. "I checked it out once, and it looks freaky. I've had nothing to do aside from studying my own biology inside-out for months on end. I spent entire days carefully tracking how the proteins in my cells develop, assessing trends."

"We'll have to check that."

"But you still want to hear what I've found."

He nodded.

"Everything you said, pretty much, and then some. I'm stronger and faster than an average kid my size and age should be, although not by a lot. I'm also probably gonna live very long. The reason so I'm so good at talking is because whenever a psychologist was reading to me, I'd secretly carve small copies of the text somewhere inside my body, making copies as needed, and I'd exchange it later for different texts. I spent days reading about chemistry and biology, stuff like that. Also language. I know a bit of French and German."

He looked at me in a bit of startlement. "How did you fit entire books inside of yourself?"

"The atomic world's incredibly large," I said with a shrug. "Every human cell has enough DNA that if you were to stretch it out, it'd be longer than you are tall. I write between myocyte layers. There are some trade-offs to making the copies too big or too small. If it's too small, it heals way too fast, and I have to make more copies for redundancy. I've found a more-or-less optimal size at about three-point-eight microns per pixel equivalent on a computer. If anything starts healing, I can recognize fresh tissue from old tissue."

I considered binary, as well. A dot or an absence of a dot to record the data. I wanted something more efficient, though, and given the precision I was able to work with, I considered whether the method was entirely flawed. Maybe if I was doing that, I should downscale to sizes at which healing is even more difficult?

"I'm pretty sure I'll never die of old age," I admitted. "My telomeres don't degrade much. It's why I wasn't ever worried about my odds of escaping. I have infinite attempts."

I looked at Dr. Clef, curious.

"So, am I on the team? Did I pass your assessment?"

He offered me a cold smile.

"With flying colors. We'll start basic training tomorrow."