Samsara

by thejarl7166

no

3. Imposter Syndrome

Imposter Syndrome

A/N: If you're a new reader, hi! If you're a returning reader, welcome back and, uh, sorry for the long hiatus, my brain was kicking my ass.

In the time since posting the original 12 chapters, I've gone through and edited Chapters 1-10, and I'm planning to rewrite Chapter 11 onwards from the ground up. I'll probably go into more detail in the Ch11v2 author's note.

Original Chapter 1 below for anyone interested:

Spoiler: Chapter 1 (OLD)

Maybe if I hadn't recently moved my bed, I would've noticed sooner that the room I'd woken up in wasn't mine. Maybe if it had been a weekday, I wouldn't have just kept my eyes shut and slept in. Maybe if I'd had even a shred of competency, I would've realised what was going on.

Instead, by the time I opened my eyes to see an unfamiliar bedroom, I was already hearing the jingle of keys in a too-close front door.

I threw off my blankets and shot to my feet, heart and thoughts racing.

What the hell? Had I been kidnapped?

But why me? I was one of the least interesting people I could name, a mediocre university student from a middle-class family. Sick as the thought made me, there were much more attractive girls out there if that was the kidnapper's motive. My last memory had been going to sleep in my own bed, so they would've specifically been targeting me.

If there was an explanation other than kidnapping, though, it wasn't an obvious one.

The front door's hinges creaked as it swung open. Heavy, deliberate, unfamiliar footsteps passed by outside. I flew to the bedroom door and gripped the doorknob. It's not like I was confident I could hold the door shut against the probably-kidnapper, especially if they had a weapon–

Oh god, what if they have a gun? If they could kidnap me in my sleep, they could almost certainly figure out how to get their hands on a gun.

Even after the footsteps grew further away, it took me several seconds to remember how to breathe. Longer to release my death-grip on the doorknob.

Plastic bags rustled. There was the clunk of something heavy being put down. If I was lucky, they'd just gone out shopping. If I was unlucky, they'd brought back something illicit and the plastic bag was just a cover.

The government had banned one-use plastic bags a few years ago.

Fuck.

More footsteps. A door opening – not the front door again. Not my door, either. Several excruciating minutes later, the steady pitter-patter of a shower started.

I sucked in a shaky breath, backed away from the door, and dropped back onto the bed. Whatever was going on, the kidnapper wasn't checking up on me yet.

Okay. I need to think logically about this.

What would be 'logical', though? It's not like I was some kidnapping expert. I didn't even have shitty Hollywood 'advice' on my side; I barely watched mystery shows.

Questions, first. If I had a list of questions, I could figure out how to answer them, right? Writing them down might've helped if I wasn't on a time limit, so I'd have to trust my own memory.

Joy.

So:

- What is this place?

- How was I brought here? Why didn't I wake up until now, and why didn't anyone notice I was being taken?

- Why am I here at all? Why me, specifically?

- And, who's the kidnapper?

Most of those would probably need me to talk to someone. If this had been a TV show, maybe there'd be some letters or a diary or something lying around somewhere. But, it wasn't like things were that easy in real life. Either way, those options were off the table.

I guess my best bet was to just look around and try not to get caught.

With that decided, I stood up to look around– and nearly tripped. I choked back a startled yelp, pinwheeling my arms until I wasn't about to topple over. A few tentative steps told me all I needed to know about my sense of balance; it almost felt like walking on stilts.

Drugs? If I'd been kept unconscious with some sort of knock-out drugs – which was probably the case – they might not have worn off yet. Come to think of it, my vision was pretty blurry, too. Another side effect? Not like I could do much about it if I was right.

Once I was sure I wouldn't fall over, I looked around the room.

For a kidnapping victim's cell, it looked a lot like a normal bedroom. It was small, smaller than my room at home. Even the furniture was smaller. There was more floor space in this room, though, despite how lived-in it looked. Whoever owned it must've been a lot tidier than I was.

Next to the window, there was a desk with a computer and something I'm pretty sure was a drawing tablet. A maths workbook was open on the desk, with–

Wait.

Computer!

I could check the internet! Look at Google Maps and send a message to someone!

No. It'd have a password.

I pressed the power button and, sure enough, a login page came up, not even from an OS I recognised.

Fuck. So much for that.

The shower was still on, but the kidnapper wouldn't be in there forever. If I was going to look around the place before they got out, I couldn't afford to waste time.

Pressed against the back wall was a shelf and a chest of drawers. The shelf was filled with a variety of knick-knacks, the sort that you keep more for the memories

Evidence was stacking up – someone had definitely been living in this room.

So, why had I been put in someone else's room?

No way of knowing. No point in thinking about it. Just keep looking.

The drawers just had clothes in them. Not mine, but they were my size, even if I couldn't tell until I held a shirt against myself for reference.

My pyjamas also weren't mine. The kidnapper must've changed me while I was asleep. I shivered and drew my shoulders together.

Don't think about it.

There were a few other things on the desk by the window, including a pair of glasses and some sort of oval-shaped gizmo. Three screens fanned out from the bottom like some sort of gimmicky flip-phone equivalent. Also like a phone, it needed a pin. Great. I put the phone-y thing back down on the table and turned towards the–

Idiot! There's a window!

I threw open the curtains, ready to slip outside.

Several stories below, traffic dotted the twilit road.

…Oh.

The four-lane road wasn't one I recognised at all. Worse, there was a bus driving by, and it was a completely different design from the ones in my city. Something about the traffic was bothering me, too, and it took a few more seconds to realise it was because everyone was driving on the wrong side of the road.

Trembling, I gripped the windowsill and pushed myself away.

At least the fact that there were people out there meant someone might hear if I screamed for help, which had to be the thinnest silver lining I'd ever heard.

A loud clunk echoed from the bathroom, then a muffled curse.

Can't waste time. Keep going.

I walked to the bedroom door and put a hand on the knob.

The kidnapper is still in the shower. It's safe. There's nothing to worry about.

I took a shuddering breath. Paused. Then, swung the door open.

Turns out, it wasn't just the bedroom that was small. We were in an apartment.

In hindsight, I probably should've realised this wasn't a normal house when I saw we were five stories off the ground.

Outside the bedroom was the main living area, with a giant window on one side, and five identical doors lining the other three walls. There was something that might've been a dining table before being overrun by books and loose papers, as well as a sofa facing a TV.

If 'my' bedroom was Door 1, Door 2 was the one the shower sounds were coming from. Bathroom. I didn't need to use it, anyway – I was more dehydrated than anything.

The kitchen was behind Door 2. It had a stack of takeout boxes on one side and several plastic bags on the other side. I peeped inside. Groceries, not guns – the kidnapper wasn't likely to be armed.

Guess I was just being paranoid, but it was better to check than to risk the kidnapper gunning me down.

Unlike the rest of the doors, Door 3 was locked. Not even the door to my room had been locked. If I had learned anything from video games, locked doors meant something good behind them. Of course, there weren't any easy-to-find keys lying around, and there's no 'press X to examine' popping up in a HUD to give me any idea where one could be hidden.

If only–

A searing feeling spilled from my chest. My heart felt like a crucible, pumping molten metal through my veins, or like a star that had been plunged into my chest.

Strangest thing is, it wasn't painful. It was closer to sinking into a sauna than being thrown onto a fire pit.

Then, as quickly as it had come, the heat vanished, leaving a hollow feeling in its wake.

What the hell had that been?

I'd heard about hot flashes, but that was something else entirely.

There was no way that could've actually happened. Right?

The longer I thought about it, the more I started to wonder if I'd somehow misremembered. Maybe the memory had been stored wrong somehow due to stress.

Even if I hadn't somehow gaslit myself into thinking the weird heat had been hotter than it actually was, there was no way that wasn't some sort of hallucination.

Fuck. Refocus.

Just standing there and letting my mind spin in circles wasn't going to do me any good.

Door 5 opened into the hallway outside, which was fucking obvious in hindsight – it was the only door with a wall to itself. Part of me wanted to leave as soon as I could, but I stopped myself.

Shower's still on. After it stops, they'll need to towel off and get dressed. There's time to think.

There was no way a single person could've done all of this without help. If I ran, there could be a lot of people looking for me. Plus, I didn't know how long it'd be until I could contact the police.

Lucky for me, there were several already-packed bags of food I could grab. I dashed into the kitchen – fuck, I'm still barefoot – and scanned the shopping bags. Mostly raw ingredients I couldn't eat on the go, from a quick scan. One had a package of one-use foil baking trays at the top, so I pulled them out to check underneath.

A stranger was reflected in the baking trays. I whipped around, ready to fight or run.

Nobody was there.

Was I hallucinating? I looked back down at the foil container to make sure I hadn't mistaken a face on the packaging for a reflection.

I hadn't.

The stranger's reflection – it was my reflection.

My hand slammed over my mouth before the scream that rose up my throat could reach my lips. The pans clattered to the floor.

What the hell. What the hell?

I took a breath and picked the pans up again for a closer look. The person in the reflection had a few superficial similarities to me, but they were just that, superficial.

Though her hair was brown and straight like mine. It was darker and much longer, missing the purple-dyed tips. She was Caucasian too, but tanned in a way I'd always been too pasty to reach.

Her face was much more angular than mine, and if she'd been a few decades older, I might've said it made her look like a strict school teacher. My eyes had been hazel, but hers were blue, piercing in a way that felt almost accusatory.

I looked away, heart pounding.

Between this, the hot flash, and waking up in someone else's house… this wasn't normal. There's no way in hell this would be normal.

Plastic surgery? Contact lenses?

Contacts were something I had zero experience with. There must've been an easier way to prove I didn't have them than poking myself in the eye.

Wait, did I– did this body need glasses? It would make more sense than knockout drugs somehow affecting my eyes, not that I had any actual experience with that sort of thing.

My lack of balance from earlier was starting to feel suspiciously close to the sort of clumsiness people got after growth spurts. If I was taller, the plastic surgery theory would fall through.

I leaned on the kitchen counter and buried my head in my arms.

There was no kidnapping, I hadn't been picked up in my sleep. I'd woken up in another person's body in a completely different country. It was the sort of thing that only happened in stories and, yet, here I was.

The sound of the pans scraping against the counter as I shivered was the only sound in the apartment other than my breathing.

…

The shower.

It had stopped.

Fuck! I'd been too occupied to notice, and then, the kidnapper–

Not necessarily a kidnapper. There was still a good possibility they were responsible for whatever this is. But if they were, why were they acting so casually? If I'd soul-napped someone, I wouldn't just go grocery shopping and have a shower.

Footsteps. Softer than before, but still audible.

Idiot! Don't get distracted and go off on tangents!

Fuck. What do I do now? Act natural? How the hell can I act like someone I've never met?

I cast my eyes about, searching for something, anything, that could help.

The groceries.

Heart in my throat, I started checking through the kitchen drawers to find where the one-use pans should go. If I couldn't risk talking to them, I could occupy myself with busywork, in case they thought I was the real owner of the body and left me alone.

The footsteps transition from carpet to linoleum.

"Morning," they called. Their voice was baritone and slightly gruff. Almost certainly a guy.

I forced the choking sensation flat and replied "Morning."

I'd tried to not sound scared out of my mind, but it just came out as emotionless. He didn't reply immediately. Had my voice been too flat? Had I sounded apathetic to someone I shouldn't sound apathetic to?

…Wait, what sort of relationship did this body have with him? If they were best friends or something, what if he took it badly?

"You planning to put away the shopping?" He asked, unbothered by my tone and oblivious to my fretting.

Oh, and he had a very American accent. Which meant this body probably would've had one, too. Shit. I was terrible at accents at the best of times, let alone when I was desperately trying to act normal in someone else's body.

"Mm," I said. If I kept talking to a minimum, he wouldn't notice, right? Not that I normally talked much anyway.

By the time he started to talk again, I'd put away several cartons of soy milk (blech) in the fridge and moved on to the vegetables.

"You have any homework to do?" He asked.

To avoid talking, I just shook my head.

He meant university assignments, right? He had to. This body looked around my age, and I was a second year university student. I wasn't a teenager again, right? …Right?

If I had to deal with high school drama, if this body's history wouldn't let me reclude away from it all again, that would be a serious problem. Dealing with whatever friends she might have would be bad enough. Worse still, without any of her memories for context… I grit my teeth as I dumped a new bag of carrots next to the older looking one.

The burning feeling boiled up in my chest again.

I hadn't misremembered a thing last time and, this time, I knew the current situation wasn't exactly normal. Whatever this was, magic or powers or whatever kind of supernatural thing this was, it was real.

And I didn't know if it was a good thing or an indication that something had gone horribly, horribly wrong.

I felt someone looking at me, the not-kidnapper.

"Everything alright? You look a bit flushed," he asked.

"'M fine."

An unfamiliar hand brushed against my forehead.

I jerked away, even as I desperately tried to keep the tension out of my face.

"Brianne. You're feverish. Did you catch something?"

Just 'feverish'?

And, 'Brianne'? Was that the body's name?

For the first time, I turned to look at the man.

He was half a foot taller than me and looked about a decade or so older, with short-cropped brown hair, a neat beard, and the same piercing blue eyes I'd seen on the body's – Brianne's – face.

Family. Great. Just what I needed, an older brother or something who would've known her for her entire life.

Unlike Brianne, though, his facial features suggested he had an Asian parent or grandparent. More worryingly, he was muscular, with a soldier's posture. If he figured me out and attacked me, there was no way I'd be able to fend him off.

The stuck-in-a-hot-forge sensation vanished again, leaving me feeling just like I had before it had started. That had lasted, what, twice as long as last time? Would it be twice again as long next time? If the duration increased exponentially, there was no way I'd be able to hide it.

The man continued. "Do you have any other symptoms?"

Fuck, uh…

"Tiredness?" I hazarded. Best case scenario, I get an excuse to stay in Brianne's room and do nothing. Worst case, he turns out to be the overprotective type and tries to dote over me. If that happened, I might be able to chase him off by saying I didn't want to get him sick, too.

Or, well, the worst case would be him taking me to a hospital and the doctors asking about money I couldn't pay and personal details I couldn't give.

He nodded curtly. "I see. In that case, get some rest, and I'll check back in on you tomorrow."

'Check back in on me tomorrow'? Did he not live here? But, if that were the case, why had he used the shower?

That was beside the point. If he was going to leave, I wouldn't have to worry about him noticing any weird behaviour, at least for a while. Procrastinating, in this case, was probably the best thing I could do if I didn't want to risk tipping him off.

"Thanks," I murmured, putting the last can into the pantry.

"Thank me by looking after yourself."

There was a pause.

"And," he said, "if you want to tell me what's actually going on, I'll be ready to hear you out."

Conversation apparently over, he left the kitchen.

Shit.

Shit shit fuck that was not good.

Was he onto me? I started to pace back and forth, caught between keeping my footsteps quiet and bleeding off the nervous energy.

There was only so much I could excuse by pretending to be sick and tired. I still didn't know how Brianne behaved at all. For all I know, I'd been acting like the exact opposite of her.

Would he immediately jump to possession, though? It was so outlandish that I still had a hard time believing it, and I was the one doing the possessing.

I stopped pacing.

What if this was a world where mind control was a known factor? I'd just assumed I was in a different place in my normal world, but if this was some sort of isekai, I wouldn't even be able to trust my own common sense.

Should I really just jump right to 'alternate universes' like that, though? Interdimensional travel was even crazier than somehow bodyjacking someone.

But, the more I thought about it, the more things started to click together. The computer's weird operating system. The round thing that might've actually been a cell phone. Neither of them had been any more advanced than what I was used to – maybe even the opposite – but they were foreign in a way that didn't make me think the creators were familiar with the versions I knew.

Well. One more thing to think about later.

When I'd finished packing the rest of the groceries away, I started making my way back towards Brianne's room. The locked door was open, now, revealing a somewhat messier bedroom with a row of cardboard boxes lined up along the back wall. The man (who's name I still didn't know) was inside, packing things into a bag.

Kinda disappointing, but it's not like locked doors in real life were going to have treasure behind them.

Back in Brianne's room, I closed the door and collapsed back onto the bed. Not long after, the front door opened and shut again.

He's gone.

Finally, I was able to break down.

I curled around someone else's pillow, sobs wracking someone else's body.

My friends and family. My home. My life. What if I could never get back to them? I didn't know how whatever this was had happened. Could I reverse it? Would I be stuck here? Forced to act out the life of a stranger, until…

Until I was found out and they did to me whatever they did to body snatchers.

Eventually, the tears ran out. I was left laying on top of the bedsheets, shivering.

There were probably better things I could've been doing. Searching the apartment top-to-bottom for clues. Trying to see if this body had the muscle memory to get into the maybe-phone or the computer. Even just making something to eat.

Actually, now that I thought about it, breakfast sounded good. Eating something could make me feel a bit better, maybe.

Making scrambled eggs wasn't exactly eventful, unless you counted me zoning out and nearly sticking an eggy spoon in my pocket. I sat down on the sofa, swiping the TV remote out of the way, and dug in. The eggs had come out fine, if maybe a bit overcooked.

…TV remote. TV. You goddamn idiot.

Thankfully, the TV was just a normal TV. No circular shape or weird OS.

Less thankfully, though, was the content. A reporter, male, with slicked-back hair and a charming smile. 'Stan Vickery – Channel 12' was emblazoned across the bottom of the screen, and images of people in strange costumes were on either side. The reporter continued to speak.

"–tween the Empire 88 and Coil's mercenaries has calmed down."

I–

"The Protectorate arrested several of the unpowered henchmen, as well as the Empire cape Heimdall, who is expected to be convicted to the Baumann Parahuman Containment Centre."

What? That's– it can't– no.

Worm?

The TV announcer droned on, even as fire coursed through my veins again.

For a moment, I could almost feel tongues of flame licking against the inside of my skin. Except, when I looked down at my hand, there was a flicker of flame leaking out of a fissure in the palm.

Did I have powers? Was I a cape? Did I have a shard in my head? Was Brianne a cape, or…

…

…Did I have a trigger event just now?

The fissure on my hand yawned open and, inside, there was a row of human teeth. Maybe it wouldn't have been quite as bad if I hadn't been able to feel it, feel the flames inside taking form into a human tongue, feeling more cracks splitting open across my body.

The heat faded.

The cracks remained, pairs of lips and gnashing teeth winding around every surface of my body.

When I screamed, I screamed with fifty mouths.

A/N: I'll be keeping the original author's notes, but I'll be putting them in spoiler boxes like so:

Spoiler: Pre-Edit A/N

Spoiler: Perk/s rolled this chapter

Last edited: Jul 15, 2023

271

Lazypika

Mar 10, 2022

View discussion

Threadmarks Chapter 2

View content

Lazypika

Lazypika

Sleepy...

Mar 10, 2022

#14

A/N: This is an edited version of Chapter 2. Ch1-10 have been edited, anything beyond that is being rewritten.

Original Chapter 2 below:

Spoiler: Chapter 2 (OLD)

As it turned out, I was right about being able to scream to attract attention if something went wrong.

"What's going on in there?! Are you alright?" Someone yelled, pounding on the front door.

I shot to my feet, opening my mouth to reply. And my other mouth, and my other mouth, and...

Pressing a hand to the side of my li– my original lips let me centre myself and focus on the real mouth, pressing all the other ones shut.

"I'm fine!" I called, turning off the TV. "Just a movie!"

The probably-neighbour groaned. "Don't watch it so loud, then. I was worried."

"Sorry!"

If they could tell I had a different accent from what Brianne should, they didn't say anything.

Once I was sure they'd left, I collapsed back onto the sofa.

So. I was stuck in a fictional hellworld. There was an alien parasite messing with my head, horrifying mouths all over my body, and an apocalypse coming in only…

What was the date, for that matter?

Neither the computer nor the probably-phone showed the date on their lock screens, but the body's muscle memory was able to get the phone unlocked after a few tries.

And yes, it was a phone, even if it had a circular screen and rotary menus. I repeated the pin in my head over and over, 0425, 0425, as I tried to navigate through the thing's blurry UI. It took an annoyingly long amount of time for me to remember that glasses would probably help with that. The ones on Brianne's desk worked perfectly, though they were a bit tight around the nose.

Pressing and holding the centre of the radial menu brought up a shortcuts screen, and– gotcha. A time and date. Today was the third of May– no, Americans.

The fifth of March, 2011.

Canon start was April the… 9th? I knew it was a Friday, and the Lung fight was a Sunday night. So, the 8th, not the 9th, by the phone's calendar. Lung was on the night between the 10th and the 11th.

Taylor had gone to meet the Undersiders on the day after the Lung fight – she'd been browsing PHO for info on the ABB and the Undersiders, and she'd gotten a message from the account named 'TT'.

So. I had one month and eight days until I had to decide whether or not to interfere with canon.

What would I even be able to do? All I had were extra mouths. A reasonably fit person with a weapon or fighting skills at any level above "none" could take me out.

Well, I didn't just have the mouths. They'd come from some sort of fire thing. Trying to call the feeling of heat forth didn't work. Neither did my attempts at breathing fire, no matter which mouth I tried.

What I did learn was that, in whatever non-euclidean biology they had, each one could breathe independently of the others. So, not only did I have dozens of mouths, tongues, and pairs of teeth, I probably also had dozens of pairs of extradimensional lungs.

Given the fact I couldn't hold my breath for any longer than before, it was probably more like quantumly entangled lungs or some other fancy buzzword I didn't actually understand, rather than a whole bunch of separate ones.

Putting a hand on my stomach (ignoring the pairs of lips pressing on the other side of the fabric) and breathing through the extra mouths, I could still feel my chest rising and falling. Though, if I balanced inhaling and exhaling the same amount at the same time, the chest motion balanced out, too.

So, I could never go to a hospital ever, if I didn't want anyone finding out about whatever fucked-up biology I had. There was also no way I could ever go out in public in anything short of a balaclava.

I grit dozens of sets of teeth and tried to not cry again.

Forget the deadline on the 10th, I'd be screwed the moment the guy from earlier came back.

There's no way I'd have a power that's just mouths, though. 'Body covered in mouths' is barely fit for a grab-bag cape's secondary power, let alone a singular primary one. And would a power fuck over my secret identity like that?

I sat down.

There was a very minor character, a shaker, whose power was an ear-splitting sound that they couldn't turn off, loud enough to be audible from half a city away. There was Alabaster, permanently pale. There was every Case-53.

So, a shard absolutely would pick out powers that'd fuck me over.

Maybe I'm a Changer or a Breaker? Maybe I can make them go away?

I pressed my lips together, willing them to turn back into normal flesh, and…

They vanished, the lips melding back into smooth skin. A relieved laugh burst from my mouth – my one mouth – before I could stifle it.

I guess all that worrying was for nothing, huh?

The mouths were still there, though, even if they weren't visible. Dozens of tongues pressed against the sealed-over flesh where the lips had been. Even then, it was still better than I'd hoped.

Crisis averted.

Now, I should probably learn how these things work. I'd rather work stuff out now than be caught off-guard later, especially in public.

Each mouth had a different voice, depending on the size. The normal-sized mouth on my collarbone had my – Brianne's – voice. The largest one on my stomach had a deep, bassy voice. The tiny one on the side of my left wrist sounded like a cartoon mouse.

Once I'd gotten a little more used to them, I found that I could coordinate them with inhuman precision. I could sing duets with myself, or even several different songs at the same time. It didn't make my singing any less off-key – it made things worse, if anything – but it took my mind off things for a moment, and that's all that mattered.

The multitasking didn't seem to apply to anything else – I couldn't write with both hands at the same time – but it was still just weirdly fun to be a one-person choir.

The heat came and went again, and despite my best efforts, I couldn't use or manipulate it in any way.

As well as having a weird lungs situation, the mouths had an even weirder stomach. My power listed everything I'd eaten recently, if I focused on it, with amounts so precise I could see how fast the stomach acids were dissolving my breakfast down to six decimal points.

What's more, I could combine them and spit them out again in perfect condition. Scrambled eggs and fizzy drink came out as a sort of Sprite-flavoured egg pudding, entirely whole and ready to be eaten, other than the coating of saliva. It didn't matter which mouth I put them in, either. Every single one of them led to the same place, and everything tasted just the same in each mouth.

Two pieces of paper I'd drawn a rabbit and a bird on had come out as a single piece of paper with a rabbit-bird that Google said was called a skvader.

On that note, for some reason, I was able to draw now. Really well.

There'd been a drawing tablet in Brianne's room, right? Did some of her skills carry over to me? Not all of them, of course – walking around when I was nearly a foot taller was still a nightmare. Still, unless that somehow came from the mouths thing, it must be from her.

So, not only had I stolen her body, I'd stolen her talents, too.

No. Don't think about it. Just get back to testing.

The insides of the mouths seemed to be tough, far tougher than normal. While the lips were still vulnerable, I could pour hot sauce or boiling water straight into a mouth and be just fine. I registered the spice and the temperature, but they didn't hurt.

While I didn't have the jaw strength to chew up a teaspoon, I could still cut one up with a pair of bolt cutters and eat it without the jagged edges cutting my oesophagus, even if I only regurgitated spoon pieces.

Or, testing with a new spoon and a stud from Brianne's jewellery box, I could spit up a golden spoon, encrusted with diamonds. Solid gold, and high-enough karat that the tests I was getting off Google were coming up as 'pure or near-pure'.

Cutting a piece off the spoon handle and combining it with an empty egg carton resulted in me laboriously pulling a solid metal egg carton out of my largest mouth. The carton, weirdly enough, had a proper hinge where the cardboard had just been pliable enough to open and close.

The power must be detecting the purpose of the things I was combining – I hadn't eaten anything with hinges that it could've drawn from. Shards worked off the host's understanding of the world around it, so it made sense.

Maybe I would've been more disturbed by the thought of an alien in my head if I hadn't been holding a foot-long golden box. I wasn't about to make another one of these, though, even if I got another egg carton – I only had so much tolerance for the throat constipation. I just settled for making half a dozen egg-shaped, egg-sized diamonds (complete with yellow-diamond yolks) to put in it.

Combining gold with a pencil just gave me a pencil with a gold core, unlike the solid gold spoon. I could draw with it, too, so the 'lead' must've been alloyed with something else to make it soft enough to scrape off on paper like that.

It's not like I had any idea how to sell these things, especially in a world where NEPEA-5 existed. The power of Shiny was just too alluring to resist.

Wait, didn't parahuman-made material decay over time? It was the other reason people with powers like Kaiser's couldn't just crank out cheap materials all day to sell.

I hadn't used this power on anything too important, so it'd probably be a worthwhile test, seeing how long it lasted. If they reverted, I could just put them back in the fridge and hope the guardian didn't notice. Maybe I shouldn't have done that right after he went shopping…

After some consideration, I hid the more conspicuous transmuted objects at the back of my underwear drawer. The man from earlier was almost certainly related to Brianne, and possibly even her legal guardian, so it was pretty unlikely for him to look in there. Hopefully, he wouldn't notice the missing spoons.

I probably shouldn't use this power on anything else, for now. It would be bad if I turned half the house to gold. Who was I, King Midas?

Out of curiosity, I googled "Midas cape". While 'Midas' wasn't taken, 'Little Midas' was, by a minor villain known for working with mercenaries. Well, not like it would've been a good hero name anyway.

Was I going to be a hero? It's not like I was eager to put on spandex and beat people up. Nor was I good at fighting in any way, shape, or form. As cool as the idea of being a superhero was, law enforcement was far from a dream job.

What would I even do? Bite people? Throw gold at them? I didn't want to use my power on any electronics since missing tech was much more conspicuous than missing food, so I couldn't check whether I could spoof being a tinker.

If I got my hands on some explosives and poison and whatnot, I could probably combine them into some pretty nasty stuff. Canned war crimes. I didn't know much about chemical weapons or improvised explosives, but even just drinking my way through a chemical cupboard would probably give me something suitably flesh-melting.

I shuddered and shook my head.

Either way, this power would need a ton of prep and resources – that I didn't have – for me to be able to use it in a fight.

For now, I'd just try to keep to the status quo. No risking my life by going after dragon-men or neo-nazis. If I was going to do anything to kick canon off its path, it'd just be calling the Protectorate with my information, leaving the fighting up to the actual heroes.

I had enough info on them that I could convince them I wasn't full of shit. I'd just need to get my hands on a burner phone, go to a park or something so they don't trace me back to this apartment, and ask after Colin Wallis or Robin Swoyer or something. Risky, bringing up secret identities, but it'd make sure I was taken seriously.

Possibly too seriously. Hm.

Well, I could workshop it. I had over a month to think it over before the Lung fight. There was time to figure out what I needed to do for this, or think of a better idea.

I spent the rest of the day browsing the internet, trying to bring myself up to speed on Earth Bet culture.

My first stop, a news website, was headed by an article on the Simurgh attack nine days ago, and holy shit I am very lucky I didn't arrive too much earlier. Scrolling further down, there were remarkably few other articles on the attack. Information suppression? Probably for the best.

Instead, I had the misfortune of coming across articles on Canary. The Master whose power had caused someone harm against her will. Logically, I could connect the severity of the scaremongering in the articles to the genuine, rational fear of the recent Simurgh attack. That didn't stop me from feeling like someone had punched a sinkhole into my stomach.

Stop. Go do something else.

Facebook seemed to be the dominant social media platform on Earth Bet, because of course it was. Youtube existed, Twitter didn't, Reddit didn't, and Tumblr did because that cockroach of a website wasn't about to die from something as small as diverging history.

Then, of course, there was PHO. Not just snippets of it from PHO interludes in Worm and Wormfic; this was the whole damn site. Every bit of cape geekery, every who-would-win debate, every fanfiction (which felt weird, now that they were about real people). For some reason, it was actually located at ' ' as opposed to ' ' or something. I didn't know what devil they'd sold their souls to for them to get their hands on that URL.

Heat spilled through my chest again, leaving after twice the time it had taken the previous time and maybe two thirds of the time it had taken with the mouths.

There didn't seem to be any regular intervals it came in at. Unless there's a pattern I hadn't figured out? I fumbled my way to the phone's clock app and started a timer. No guarantee I wouldn't forget to record it half the time, but there was no reason I shouldn't try.

Was this something that built up? If the duration increased by one 'unit' each time, and it reset after it did the mouths, would I get something new on the next cycle?

…If I turned out to be Dauntless but with mutations, I was going to scream. With all of my mouths.

It would also mean I'd been isekai'd to Worm with a Trump power, which was about the most generic fanfiction premise I could think of.

Except, this wasn't fanfiction. I wasn't an omnicompetent Mary Sue or Gary Stu who could run up to Taylor and be her instant best friend, hitting the ground running and charging right into heroism with enough plot armour to outfit an army while their enemies put all their resources into mass-producing idiot balls to juggle.

This was very real. This was very dangerous. I had a very, very good chance of fucking things up – same as normal for me, except the stakes were way the fuck higher than how good my grades were.

The most practical plan would be to say 'Door to Cauldron' and go straight to Doctor Mother with all of my canon knowledge. Knowing Scion's weakness would let them plan for Gold Morning better, and probably minimise deaths in the long run. If Word of God was to be trusted, they did have a net positive result on society, as awful as they were. I didn't have any reason not to believe Wildbow on this, if I was in his world.

Unless this version of Earth Bet was a fanfiction one.

Shit.

There was an easy way to check. I searched up as many fanon terms as I could think of.

'The Rig' – nothing but normal oil rigs. As per canon, people were just calling the Protectorate ENE 'The PHQ'. That one had fucked me up when I'd learned it, and I'd refused to believe it until I'd run a ctrl-f search through a .txt file of Worm.

'Fortress Construction' – nothing. There was a Brockton-based construction company called Rock Bay Construction that did Endbringer shelters, but Thomas Calvert wasn't mentioned once on their website. I wouldn't rule out the idea that he still had fingers in it anyway.

Using 'Mastered' to refer to mind control – still nothing. 'Master' – the term for the power classification – wasn't even in wide use outside of boards for Parahuman Studies students (Boards ► Parahuman Science ► Non-Articles) and cape nerds (Boards ► Parahumans) and such, as far as I could tell. The only power classification that seemed to see mainstream use was 'Tinker', according to a Google Trends knockoff.

A few more searches of similar calibre got the same results. So, me being in fanfiction Earth Bet was pretty firmly ruled out, for better or for worse.

What was I– right, Cauldron. Thanks for the continued support, attention span.

So, if I could trust canon, contacting Cauldron would be the most efficient way to make a positive change.

Except…

Without a moral compass like Hero in their inner circle, Cauldron's humanity had eroded over the years until there was nothing left but the worst, most pragmatic parts of them.

Maybe it was a bad choice to want to stay away from them. Maybe it would cost millions or billions of lives down the line. Maybe I wasn't being perfectly rational about this.

Wildbow had built them to be a moral conundrum, and I'd seen enough arguments break out about Cauldron that I was thoroughly sick of them. There was no easy answer as to whether they were right or wrong.

Right then, I was definitely falling on the deontological side of the argument (and, ironically, that was a word I only knew from the Worm fandom). I wasn't being objective enough. But, fuck that. Fuck them. Their actions were bad enough that I couldn't help them in good conscience.

If I wanted to consider working with Cauldron in the future, I'd damn well get as many second opinions from Earth Bet natives as I could before I committed. Healthy communication was one of the core themes of Worm, and a choice with as wide-reaching consequences as this wasn't something I could afford to decide unilaterally.

From the fact I hadn't been assassinated by Contessa already, they didn't seem to think I was going to be a possible leak, so I was safe on that front. That or the fact she was so severely overworked meant she just hadn't gotten around to taking me out, yet.

Comforting.

Well, if she did come after me, there'd be nothing I could do, so there was no point in worrying about it. The Simurgh's next attack was at least five months away, so that was another scary Thinker I didn't need to worry about yet.

Unless she went after a satellite and kicked off a Rube Goldberg assassination plot.

Again, if she tried that, I'd be screwed no matter what.

Again, I shouldn't worry about it.

I spent the next several hours trying not to worry about it while scrolling through PHO.

PHO was somehow exactly the same as and completely different from the Worm fandom. It was the same sort of content – debates, memes, news, trolling, fanfiction, etc – but it was seen through a completely different lens.

Heroes were celebrities. To the people living here, they weren't fictional characters. They were real, living humans, even if they took on made-up identities. It was an obvious statement, but it summed the difference up better than anything else I could think of.

Capes were real people, in this world, using real powers making real decisions. There were very real PR people making sure they were putting their best feet forward. While there were still plenty of morality debates and powers discussion, there was a lot more focus on the lives of the heroes, both in-costume and out-of-costume.

If there were AU elements in this world, nothing on any of the wiki pages seemed to indicate it, which was both comforting and seriously worrying. Canon Worm was a terrible place to be.

Well, I'd deal with it when I dealt with it.

Eating lunch and dinner were both ordeals, with the mouths power. Everything I ate, I was given a detailed rundown on. Not only was each dish getting mixed together into god-awful frankenfood, the stuff I'd read on the internet had somehow gotten in there.

I specifically did not regurgitate whatever a ham sandwich, a coffee, and a half-dozen news stories about Armsmaster had mutated into. A drawback of this power – I'd need to use it on an empty stomach if I didn't want contaminants getting in.

The computer's password continued to evade me. It wasn't written down anywhere I could find in the phone, and muscle memory was a whole lot harder to rely on with an 8-or-more-character password than a 4-number pin. I had to quit before the thing locked me out for 24 hours or, god forbid, sent an alert to Brianne's guardian.

The heat came back, and I checked the timer. 7:13:08.37. I took a screenshot, reset the timer, and renamed the screenshot to "1 – March 5th". Three 'units' of 'power-time' later, the heat faded.

So. There went the theory that it does something every third go. Hopefully, it wasn't winding up just to hit me harder later.

Well, for all I knew, the mouths were the worst the power would have to give, and I'd get an Alexandria package or something. Or change to one? There was a chance the mouths could disappear.

Honestly, I wasn't that cut-up about the idea. The power was neat to use, I could do some cool stuff with it, but the sensory parts weren't the sort of thing I wanted to live with for the rest of my life.

…Was I going to have powers for the rest of my life?

How long would 'the rest of my life' be?

Don't think about it. You can't do anything about it, either way.

The thoughts still stuck to me, even as I showered and went to bed. I didn't brush my teeth; as gross as my mouths felt, I had no idea which toothbrush was even mine. Plus, I was tired, and I wasn't exactly enthusiastic about brushing fifty sets of teeth.

Trying to go to sleep was like sleeping in a hotel room. The bed was just wrong, not springy enough, and it was nearly as wide as it was long. The pyjamas I'd worn all day were sweaty enough that I had to sleep in a t-shirt instead.

Falling asleep was difficult enough on a good day. This was probably the worst day I'd had in… ever. It didn't help when I heard the front door open around 1 AM.

Brianne's guardian was going to be waiting for me in the morning, and I hadn't come up with a single idea for how to deal with him.

If things went wrong, the PRT would be carting me off before breakfast.

A/N: For any returning readers wondering, I changed the date of Brianne's arrival from April 2nd to March 5th, as I'll be increasing the time frame the fic takes place across.

Spoiler: Pre-Edit A/N

Last edited: Jul 15, 2023

248

Lazypika

Mar 10, 2022

View discussion

Threadmarks Chapter 3

View content

Lazypika

Lazypika

Sleepy...

Mar 11, 2022

#18

A/N: This is an edited version of Chapter 3. Ch1-10 have been edited, anything beyond that is being rewritten.

Original Chapter 3 below:

Spoiler: Chapter 3 (OLD)

"You killed me," she snarled, one hand wrapped around my throat.

I screamed, lashed out, but my foot hit her hoodie and went right through her torso – there was nothing under her clothes but thin air and hate.

Her grip tightened.

"Murderer, murderer, murderer," the mouths lining my body sang.

Despite the fact she was hollow, her grip was unbreakable, no matter how hard my fingers scrabbled against hers.

"I'm dead, and you robbed my corpse of everything I had."

"Thief, thief, thief," the mouths crowed.

Piercing blue eyes caught my gaze. A heavy, leaden, guilt stopped me from looking away.

Someone grabbed my shoulder from behind. When he spoke, his voice was cold judgement.

"You came after my family. Since she's dead, I won't feel guilty about cutting her body apart piece by piece until you have no mouths left to scream."

The mouths didn't speak; they just laughed, fifty voices in an asynchronous chorus, the jury cackling as the judge snarled and the executioner's grip constricted.

I thrashed. Swung at her again. Teeth gnashed and bit into–

–cloth, tearing at the bedsheets, and I rolled off the side of the bed.

The room wasn't mine, smaller, with a bookshelf filled with keepsakes and a computer on a desk. An unfamiliar alarm tone was ringing.

Oh.

Right.

I was here.

For a while, I just laid on the floor, panting.

The nightmare– it's not like I'd wanted this to happen! It was just– shitty circumstance. Both Brianne and I were victims in this. In a way, we'd both lost our lives, hadn't we? She'd lost everything but her body, and I'd lost everything but my personality and memories.

I had no reason to feel guilty over this.

So stop thinking about it.

I clutched my pillow to my chest, digging my fingers into the fabric until they hurt. Fifty pairs of teeth bit the insides of my cheeks. Focus. Fucking focus.

Brianne's guardian. How would I deal with him?

If only he'd been a Worm character, maybe I would've had an idea of how to tackle things. There'd be details I could dredge up, information that wasn't locked away behind his bedroom door.

Even if I didn't know his name, I couldn't think of any characters that fit the description of 'Soldierly half-Asian man'. Lung was half-Chinese half-Japanese and thus without Caucasian ancestry. The guy clearly wasn't Oni Lee from how he behaved. If there were more characters from Brockton Bay that fit the bill, they were escaping me.

I'd set my alarm for 6 in the morning so I'd have time to prepare for the talk. Big mistake. Waking up early after falling asleep late felt awful. Having a different body wasn't about to let me get away with a shit sleep schedule.

If I'd used the extra time well, maybe it could've been worth it. Instead, I just spent my time flitting between planning in a notes app and watching vapid animal videos to try and stave off the crushing dread.

By the time I heard the guardian starting to traipse around the apartment, my plan looked something like:

- Show that I'm not sick. Ideally, without my power heating me up.

- Say as little as possible to avoid him realising I have the wrong accent.

- If he figures me out (or already has figured me out) and starts getting aggressive, I scream for help.

Which. Fantastic plan. Very well thought-out, clearly.

I was fucked, wasn't I?

There was a knock on my bedroom door.

"Are you decent?" The guardian called.

"Just a sec!"

I struggled into a pair of jeans, trying to ignore the cat videos roiling in my stomach.

Better to get this over with before I lost my nerve.

When I opened the door, he was standing outside, arms folded and expression unreadable.

Before I could say anything, he lobbed a small white container to me. I nearly fumbled it, but I was able to catch it.

"I checked your medication yesterday, and you hadn't picked up the refill yet," he said.

I looked down at the label. Vyvanse. That was the name of an ADHD medication, wasn't it? Did Brianne have ADHD too? Or did Earth Bet still call the inattentive type 'ADD'?

"Thanks," I said, slipping it into my pocket. I'd put it wherever it was meant to go once this was over.

He put a hand against my forehead. I froze.

"Fever's gone," he said, "that's good."

I shrugged, and we both fell silent.

If nothing else, it didn't seem like he knew what to say, either. Maybe there was a chance I could make it through this without incident?

A burning feeling welled up in my chest.

Not now!

Brianne's guardian had moved away to lean against the door frame, leaving about a metre's distance between us. As long as I didn't give him a reason to move closer, hopefully, he wouldn't notice.

Even if my internal body temperature felt like molten iron was flooding my veins, my external temperature was apparently just at 'fever' levels, so it's not like he'd feel any heat radiating from me.

The guardian opened his mouth, then closed it again.

Was he trying to figure out how to confront me? I was almost certainly acting wildly out of character. Even if he didn't jump to 'cape', he could assume I was, I dunno, on drugs. Or coming off a bad breakup. Whatever normal teenagers did.

Hold on, if he thought I was a cape, did he think I had a power I could use on him? Was he scared of me?

Somehow, that didn't feel likely to me.

He inhaled again, and–

"I'm sorry," he said.

…

Uh.

What the hell could I say to that?

He apparently took my silence as an invitation to continue. "I've been thinking about what I said last week. While I still stand by the points I made, I worded them poorly, and some of the things I said weren't necessary at all."

Context? Please?

So… he'd said something to Brianne a week or so ago, and it had devolved into an argument? I think? What could I even do with that? If there was something I could ask without seeming suspicious, it wasn't occurring to me.

I should probably just try to shut this conversation down.

"S'fine. I'd rather not think about it," I said, hoping desperately that no accent was slipping through.

He stiffened.

Shit shit shit.

"If what we said was so bad to you that you can't even think about it a week later, then it's exactly the sort of thing I'm worried about."

Okay so I just fucked that one up entirely. Awesome! I loved getting the exact opposite reaction to what I wanted!

If only I just had to worry about him trying to attack me. Right now, I was walking through a minefield in a foreign country, and nothing on the warning pamphlets was in English.

I shook my head.

"Save it?" I pleaded.

Procrastinating was a terrible idea in 90% of cases, but at least this way, I'd have more time to look around the house and try to get a better handle on things.

(Because that had worked out so well last time. I'd done a wonderful job at thinking of a game plan instead of procrastinating like a useless piece of shit.)

He pinned me with a stare, and I couldn't help but remember the nightmare I'd had last night.

"On one condition," he said. "Don't put yourself in danger."

Put myself in–?

Wait, did he think I triggered? Or rather, that Brianne triggered from whatever the argument had been? Had it been that bad?

To be fair, he could've meant something else. The argument could've been about, I dunno, her getting blackout drunk at parties. Not everything was about capes.

"I won't," I said.

"You promise?"

"I promise."

He nodded, but his gaze didn't become any less penetrating.

"Just…" He paused, searching for words. "Things get better, even if it doesn't feel like it. I was never very close with my own parents, so I don't know what it's like, but I think I know enough to get a general picture."

So it's a parents thing. Did they die, and I was sent to stay with him? Or was it something more sinister? Had they been abusive?

"It's not easy," he continued, "but you find ways to get away from it. Ways to become the sort of person that'll be able to avoid situations like that."

The phrase 'situations like that' made me lean towards abuse.

I hadn't just overwritten a random person, I'd probably overwritten an abuse survivor, not long after they'd gotten away from their abusers. Please don't let that be the case.

There was a silver lining, though. It sounded like he was a more distant relative who'd only recently become her guardian. What's more, if I'd just been through something awful, I'd have an excuse for shutting down any future arguments he tried to start.

"Thanks," I said, and my relieved smile was entirely genuine.

"Don't mention it," he replied, and his smile was just as relieved as mine.

We lapsed into silence for a while and, for once, I didn't want to bolt as soon as I could.

"Will you be well enough to go to school tomorrow?" He asked.

Fuck. School.

I didn't want to go. I really didn't want to go, except I wasn't 'feverish' any more, and if I was, he'd probably take me to a hospital or something. If the doctors looked too closely, they could find out about the mouths or, even worse, ask me for details I wasn't going to be able to give.

Besides, there was a limit to how much I could put that off, no matter how much I wanted to. I was probably going to flunk any American history classes, but maths and literature should be fine.

…I didn't even know which high school I went to, or where it was.

If I was a Winslow student, I was going to quit.

Maybe I could ask him to drive me there? But, I didn't know how long I'd been living with him. Hell, maybe she'd been living in Brockton Bay before moving in with him. Besides, I'd rather not give him more opportunities to find me out.

Looks like I was going to have to wing it.

"I don't have a fever anymore, and I'm only tired now from not getting enough sleep last night. I should be fine." It was the longest thing I'd said to him so far, but it didn't seem like he was getting suspicious.

"Good."

Another pause.

"That should be all. Remember to stay out of trouble, okay?" He said.

"I will."

"Text me if anything goes wrong."

I had no idea which contact in my phone he'd be.

Molten iron pumped through my chest again as I considered my options.

"My phone's been acting up, can you text me to make sure it's working?"

He shrugged and pulled out his own much more sensible-looking rectangular smartphone.

My phone beeped, and I had to swipe away the weird pie chart lock screen menu so I could check the text.

Aaaaaand his number was stored as 'Asshole' in the contacts. Great. It was revealing of something, but not anything actually useful.

Glad he couldn't see the phone's screen, I gave a thumbs up, then changed the contact name to 'Guardian'. While I was there, I reset the heat timer and recorded the results. I'd missed one, but it had only been a few minutes between that and this current one, for some reason.

Interaction? Maybe it perceived me trying to manoeuvre through the conversation as 'conflict'?

"If that's all?" He asked.

"Can't think of anything else."

"Then I'll see you tonight, if you're still awake when I get home."

The heat rose to a fever pitch then flickered out as he walked out the door.

When he was gone, I went over to the apartment window to watch him go. Several minutes later, he walked out the front of the apartment building and drove off on a worn motorcycle.

"Sure, he was all sympathetic and nice at the end there," a snide, synthetic voice spoke up, "but that was the most half-assed non-apology I'd ever heard."

I whipped around, baring a dozen pairs of teeth.

Lying on the bed was a robotic chameleon, lazily slapping its tail against the sheets.

One of its ball-bearing eyes rolled around in its socket, while the other had its pin-sized camera focused on me. The screens that made up most of its skin were showing scale textures, shifting through an RGB cycle.

"'I'm sorry that I was right and you got offended over it'," it said, mimicking the guardian's voice.

"What are you?" I hissed. "How long have you been there?"

Its other eye turned to focus on me as well. "Relax. I just got here. It's not like Mr Soldierguy would be able to see me anyway."

I tentatively put a hand on its back, and it passed right through. "Are you a hallucination or something?"

It lashed out with its power-plug tail. I was a bit too slow in jerking my hand back, and when the prongs touched my skin, I got a joy-buzzer shock.

"I can go at a higher voltage than that," it warned, going back to tapping its tail against the sheets.

"Up to?"

"'Bout a taser, but if I use it too many times, I need to plug in and charge."

That was… underwhelming.

"I have a long tongue, too." It stuck out its tongue, a cord with an inch of exposed copper wire at the tip.

"That's it?"

"What, like you're any better, mouth-girl? At least I can zap people, not just bite them or bash them with gold egg cartons or whatever." It snarked.

So, whatever it was, it knew about the mouths and the ways I'd goofed off with them.

"Did you come from my power?" I asked.

It gave me a flat stare, and the screen on its left side changed to display 'I'm with stupid', with a 3D-rendered arrow pointing at me. "No shit."

"Right," I muttered.

I tested one of the mouths. Still there.

So, I was some sort of trump? That was good news. Even if my power turned out to be Discount Eidolon and only gave me three powers at a time, that was still two more powers than most capes. Plus, trumps were just cool.

The heat had intensified both times I'd gotten powers, but it had been for different durations each time. For the mouths, it had been for all three units of time, the full 20 or 30 seconds. This time had been a minute of normal intensity with a less-than-a-second flash at the end.

The chameleon, still with the 'I'm with stupid' pattern, clambered up my arm to rest on my shoulders.

"Do you have a name?" I asked.

Its tail thwapped against my back. "Nah."

It paused.

"I'm an electric-age lizard for an electric-age world. How about Electric Age? …No, Electric Aeon, that's much cooler."

I politely didn't mention how chunni it sounded.

"Oh, shut it. It's not like you have a cool name, Brianne," it said.

"That's not my name."

"Well, you'd better get used to it, because that's what everyone's gonna be calling you from now on."

My name. I wasn't even going to have my own name, maybe even for the rest of my life. The name my parents gave me, that I'd had for 20 years. I wasn't particularly attached to it, by any means, but it was mine, and it had just been stolen from me.

And now I was going to have to steal someone else's name. I was stealing someone else's name, and I didn't even know what the whole thing was.

"Check her wallet, dumbass."

Check–? Oh, for an ID card?

Her wallet – actually a purse – was in a handbag on her desk. Which meant I was probably going to have to wear a handbag. Not really my first choice, but if I couldn't find a jacket with big enough pockets, I'd have to get used to it.

The name on her Arcadia High ID – which answered the school question – was 'Brianne Steele', no middle name. Also something to get used to.

Did that mean the guardian's name was Mr Steele? If there was anything with his name on it in the apartment, it'd be locked in his room.

While there had been a stack of papers on the table last night, they'd vanished at some point, and I couldn't find anything else. If there was any clutter, it was locked in the guardian's room. Weirdly enough, there didn't seem to be any sentimental stuff lying around other than the things on Brianne's shelves.

Some searching through her room let me find a printed-out schedule for her classes, which was lucky for me. The only half-days were one every Wednesday, oddly enough. Didn't the Wards have half-days every day, or was I misremembering?

If I'd been at home, I could've just opened up the wiki to check, clicked down to the citations, and read the quote from the story about it. Right now, I wasn't at home.

More heat. I hit the timer and recorded the time.

So that was three hot flashes in quick succession. Something had to have triggered it. Or was it just random? For all I knew, it could be going off some arbitrary shard logic. I wouldn't think so, not with shards, but it could very well be the case.

Thirty-three seconds into the new timer, Aeon perked up, tail going still.

The heat intensified.

Information flooded into my mind, like someone had jammed a coherent optical transceiver into my head and started pumping it full of information.

I staggered, then shook my head, as if it would make the knowledge of hard kinetic weapons and layered hulls settle into place faster.

Forty seconds into the timer, the floodgates shut again, the heat vanishing.

Still dazed, I staggered to the bedroom shelf and pulled a box of art supplies off the bottom. Then, I cleared the desk and began to draw.

Time passed. I wasn't sure how much. Every time I thought I was getting into a rhythm, I'd reach for the computer and realise no, of course the designs for induction drive tuners wouldn't be on a public database, I'd have to write them up myself.

By the time I was done, my fingers were stiff, my arms were sore, and my stomach was growling. I spread the sheaf of papers out on the floor, moving out to the living room when I realised there wasn't enough space.

Blueprints crawled across the floor and up the walls, adhesive putty holding them in place. The drawing of the finished product was in the centre of the arrangement, with the individual components spread out around it.

Even covering the floor and two walls, I'd still skipped out on a whole lot of detail. But, staring up at it, knowing exactly what it meant and how each part worked, was making my head spin.

It was a motherfucking spaceship.

Spoiler: Pre-Edit A/N

Spoiler: Perk/s rolled this chapter

Last edited: Jul 15, 2023

243

Lazypika

Mar 11, 2022

View discussion

Threadmarks Chapter 4

View content

Lazypika

Lazypika

Sleepy...

Mar 12, 2022

#25

A/N: This is an edited version of Chapter 4. Ch1-10 have been edited, anything beyond that is being rewritten.

Original Chapter 4 below:

Spoiler: Chapter 4 (OLD)

"Ah yes, a fucking spaceship is something that you can hide in your sock drawer. It won't even take too much time or resources to make. Great use of your time, blueprinting that."

Aeon had been silent during the drawing process, but was talking now.

"Look, I…" It was objectively correct. What could I say to justify myself? "I just… I had to make sure I wasn't going insane."

The 'I'm with stupid' graphic appeared on its side again. "Riiiight, because getting fifty extra mouths and a robot ghost lizard is something that just happens every day."

"Look, those are different. They're actual physical things. I just… I had to get this down on paper. To prove it wasn't just in my head."

"And now you have something else to hide from your guardian."

I did, didn't I.

"Eat it," it suggested, "or burn it."

"I'd rather not."

"Why? The thing's only a liability. You can't even use it for anything. Besides, it's a basic-ass design. You can just remake it."

I really didn't want to. If Aeon asked why, I wouldn't have a good answer for it. The blueprints were a concrete thing I'd made, far beyond the basic programs I'd written for computer science assignments.

The objectively best option was to get rid of it. The objectively best option made my chest clench.

It sighed. "At this rate, you're going to have more powers stuff in your underwear drawer than actual underwear."

"I know, I know," I said, gathering up the papers.

"And I'm not even sure that thing will fit."

I held up the sheaf of papers next to the much larger drawer and gave the lizard a look.

"No, not the papers," it said, "that thing."

"What thing?"

"I dunno. The thing. The thing that's somewhere."

Very illuminating.

"Look," it snapped, pointing with its tail, "it's that way, and it's big. That's all I know."

'Big'? There was no way this was a good thing, whatever it was.

I'd been planning to check out the bus route to Arcadia as a test run for tomorrow, and whatever 'that thing' was seemed to be in that direction.

I hid the last of the papers away and started packing a bag. Brianne had a debit card, and she'd had the good sense not to write her pin number down anywhere I could find. Luckily, though, she also had $40 or so in loose bills and change, so I wouldn't be strapped for cash if something went wrong.

There was a bus pass in the wallet that'd apparently give me unlimited rides for the month, so I didn't have to worry about rationing anything out for that. Between that and the map on my phone, I'd be able to navigate my way to Arcadia today. If I got lost, I wouldn't be late for school.

Ugh. I'm really going to high school again, huh?

"You could always wag," Aeon suggested.

"This is America, don't they call truancy 'playing hooky' here?"

"Awesome! You're already sounding like a Yank."

I sighed. "I'm not skipping school. They'd call my guardian, and I'd have a whole lot of explaining to do."

Aeon groaned theatrically and flopped onto its side.

"Look, I'm not exactly excited about it either."

It groaned louder. "Just get it over with. Rip the bandaid off, and we can get back to lazing around and browsing the internet."

Hearing it admit that so frankly was embarrassing, but it's not like that wasn't what I'd been planning to do.

"Let's just go," I muttered.

Back at home, there had been new buses added to the fleet every few years, slowly replacing the old diesel models with more modern electric ones.

The buses in Brockton Bay were scuffed up, worn down, and fucking loud.

"Well, if all the rich, important people have fancy cars, they're not going to care about how shit the buses are, as long as they work," Aeon said, clinging to the top of my head.

I didn't want to make a judgement on that without actually researching it, but it would make sense that–

Heat.

Intense heat, from the start.

And I was on public transport.

I fumbled for my phone to hit the timer, while Aeon pulled my hood up over my face. Being in public without a sick mask felt bad enough but, right then, that was cranked up to 11.

For the first heat, my body had mutated, mouths with fantastical properties growing all over it. Three units of intense heat.

The second, I'd gotten a robot ghost lizard with a weak taser power. A fraction of a unit.

The third, basic spaceship designs from a thousand years in the future. One unit.

This fourth one?

By the time the heat had died down, 40 seconds had passed. Six units.

And I had no idea what had changed.

"Boring," Aeon muttered, oblivious to the thoughts whirring through my head.

I'd just gotten a new power. There weren't enough examples to tell what longer periods of intense heat did, but I wouldn't be surprised if it correlated to the strength of the abilities. If that were true, this was the strongest one yet.

And I had no idea what it was.

When I stepped off the bus in front of Arcadia High, the worries had boiled down into something smaller and easy to push down. The problem with simmering something, though, was that it became concentrated, and I wasn't exactly looking forward to dealing with that particular anxiety demi-glace.

The school was, unsurprisingly, closed. I'm not sure what I expected. Part of me wanted to try the door, see if I could explore a while to figure out where my classes were, but I'd rather not be seen trying to break into a building.

"You just don't want to confront people," Aeon said.

Touché.

It slapped its tail against the back of my head. "Anyway, let's blow this popsicle stand and go find your cool powers thing."

Who unironically says "let's blow this popsicle stand", anyway?

"Me, weren't you listening?"

I sighed. "Okay, we're going to find the cool power thing."

"Finally."

The "cool power thing" was a whole lot less easy to find than Arcadia was. In the case of the large public school, I could just look it up on a map. For this rather less publicly known thing, all I had was Aeon's weird compass sense for the thing. I wasn't even sure it wasn't just messing with me – I'm 90% sure it's pointing me to a different location than it was at first.

"That– no, that way."

'That way' was directly through a building.

I sighed.

"Stop with that. We're close!"

I sighed louder.

Finding the way to get to the other side of the building took five minutes. It would've been nice if the way wasn't cordoned off by white and purple police tape.

Someone in dark militaryesque body armour looked over to me. "This area is closed off to civilians at the moment. If you need to go though, find another route."

Whatever this was had appeared hours ago, according to Aeon. More than enough time for the PRT to find it and seize it, apparently.

I nodded numbly and left.

"Well, shit," Aeon sighed.

"What now?" It's not like I had any stealth powers or anything. There didn't seem to be any better option than to just wait for the news cycle to talk about whatever it was. Even then, there was no guarantee the PRT wouldn't hide things, or just outright lie.

Aeon's side lit up with the now-familiar "I'm with stupid" message.

"I'm invisible," it said slowly, like it was talking to a child.

Oh. Duh.

"I'll be back in five."

Knowing Electric Aeon, I wasn't sure it was a good idea. Between its laziness and its devil-may-care attitude, its personality didn't seem to be very suited for delicate infiltration missions.

It hopped off my head and scampered towards the cordoned-off area while I walked back to the bus stop and sat down to wait.

Five minutes passed, by my phone timer.

Then ten.

By fifteen, I was really starting to regret this whole idea.

Nineteen minutes later, when a bus was just pulling up, Aeon came scampering back. Its screens were showing an urban camouflage pattern instead of its normal gaudy RGB scales.

"Get on the bus get on the bus!"

Confused, I hopped onto the empty bus and took a seat at the back so the driver would hear us talking. It dropped from my shoulder onto my lap.

"What happened?" I asked.

"Fucking Tinkers." Its tail swiped from side to side, then thudded against my leg. "Armsmaster's visor lets him see electricity or something. I had to book it before I learned if EMPs hurt me or not."

Fuck. If I was lucky, Aeon would've been dismissed as a glitch or harmless snooping or something. More likely, though, the heroes would assume it was connected to whatever my power had made and, thus, that I was connected to it.

"We shouldn't do anything like that again," I said. "He shouldn't have the EMP yet, I think, but what if he had something else that could've hurt you? Killed you?"

"I can come back if I die, idiot."

"Wh– you never told me that!" I hissed, struggling to keep my voice down.

It paused. "Huh. Guess not."

I groaned.

"Are there any other abilities you forgot to tell me?"

It thought for a bit, then said "Just one thing. You know how I'm intangible?"

I nodded.

"It's selective. I can still pick shit up if I want." To demonstrate, it tugged at my sleeve. If I didn't know better, I'd say it reminded me of Stands from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure – they worked like that, too.

"That's it?"

"Think so."

If it said later that it had a new ability or a Pokemon evolution or something that it had just forgotten, I was going to Scream.

"So, what was actually there?" I asked.

It stopped waving its tail and looked up at me.

"So. You know how you have that spaceship power you can't use because you don't have the resources?"

…Where was it going with this?

"Basically," it said, "it came with a starter spaceship. Just a little one, smaller than the one you designed."

Whatever I'd expected, it hadn't been that. My power had come with something tacked on? A ready-made spaceship? And it hadn't even appeared near me. There was maybe one parahuman I could name with a power that could do stuff like that – Ogun – and even then, the tech was generated in his vicinity, not miles away in the city docks area.

For that matter, why would a shard power give me spaceships in the first place? They were clearly meant to be space-worthy, which would be counter to everything the shards were trying to do. They didn't want their test subjects to escape.

The heat came and went, lasting only a single unit of time. I'd actually stopped to count it, this time. One unit of power-time lasted exactly seven seconds, as far as I could tell.

Anyway, It was certainly possible for a shard to give out a spaceship power. There were natural Eden triggers – Leet, Vikare… even Contessa, if you counted the shards Abaddon had given to Eden. I could've gotten a power she hadn't properly restricted before she died.

The gaining-powers-over-time was strange, though. Maybe I'd gotten Eden's version of Dauntless' shard or something? Or, more concerningly, Abaddon had given Eden his version of High Priest and Queen Administrator, and I was Eidolon 2.0.

God. What kind of Worm fanfiction bullshit would that be? An SI/OC getting a Trump power from Abaddon's version of Khepri and Eidolon's shards. Maybe if I wasn't too much of a fucking idiot to be a power fantasy fanfic's protagonist, I might've even considered believing it.

A thought occurred to me.

"So, wait, the PRT just got their hands on a spaceship?" I asked.

"Yeah. Think I saw Vista there too. Guess they were too dumb to actually get it to start up so they had to use child labour to move it instead."

Whether or not they could figure out how it worked, I doubt they'd want to activate an unknown piece of tinkertech. That or they couldn't get past the ship's security. To bypass the biometric lock, they'd probably need Shadow Stalker or to phase through the door and open it from the inside.

"What class of ship was it? A smaller Corvette?"

"A Scout," Aeon said, more confidently than I'd expected.

So it had the ship knowledge too? It seemed to know what I was thinking, most of the time, so it made sense.

A Scout-class ship wasn't so bad. They were about as bare-bones as you could get, essentially just the campervan – or RV, since we're in the US – of spaceships. They were still the size of a modern-day space shuttle, so 30-40 metres long, but it could've been much, much worse.

Imagine if it had appeared in the apartment's parking lot instead.

While I knew a lot about designing spaceships, I didn't actually have a very large tech-base, compared to space operas. No lasers, no forcefields, no warp drives, just reinforced hulls and kinetic weapons and such.

If the Scout's design was like the ones in my head, it'd only have a few weapons for emergencies, more focused on speed than combat. Seven parsecs per year really wasn't that much in the grand scheme of things, either. That'd still be, what, two or three months to get to Alpha Centauri?

"Oh boo hoo, your ship only goes twenty-two times the speed of light," Aeon groused.

Maybe later, I'd realise just how crazy that was. Right now, I was spoiled by sci-fi's warp-speed space travel, of being able to make a 15-minute detour halfway across a galaxy for lunch. The idea of even seeing a spaceship still felt like fiction.

The bus ground to a halt at my stop and I hopped off, Aeon hanging from my hoodie's drawstrings.

Back in the apartment, the lizard plugged itself into the wall and closed the shutters on its camera-eyes. I laid down on the sofa and turned on the TV, then pulled out my phone to scroll through Brianne's texting history.

Her contacts list… each contact fell into one of three categories.

The first were people she'd ghosted, who'd stopped texting weeks ago. This was 'Amanda', 'Rey', 'Jackson', etc. From their messages, they seemed to be friends.

The second category were people who hadn't responded to her emotional text messages. 'Mom', 'Dad', and 'James' were in that group, James seeming to be her brother. From the few messages I could bear to read, it was apparent that none of them were still alive.

The third were the people she'd gotten into arguments with recently. This included the Guardian, formerly 'Asshole', and someone labelled as 'Fucker' who seemed to be her social worker.

Brianne's life… it hadn't been that great when I'd arrived, had it?

"Well hey, at least you were already miserable before you became the current you, so it's not like you were taking much away from your other self," Aeon said.

It had sort of occurred to me, too, but I'd derailed that train of thought before it could reach the end.

If only I wasn't the only one from my world who'd ended up here like me. It was a shitty thought to have, but it would at least give me other people going through the same stuff as me to talk to, or maybe even to bounce ideas off of.

…What if I wasn't the only one? It's not like I'd know if there were other people who'd been pulled into this world.

Okay. Search terms. Worm Parahumans. Khepri and Weaver. Gold Morning. Khonsu, Tohu, and Bohu. Echidna. More capes – Defiant, Golem, Imp, anyone I knew who had either triggered later on or changed their name. Wildbow and John Charles McCrae, just to be sure.

All I got from that was that there was a worm-themed cape who'd been killed by the Three Blasphemies some years ago, and that Aisha apparently hadn't checked whether or not Imp was taken before using it herself.

Oh, and the fact that Wildbow had somehow become a successful childrens' book author in this world. 'Maggie Holt', 'Good Simon', and 'Kennet Three' were bestsellers, with the first taking a Harry Potter-like role in Earth Bet's pop culture, minus the author being a transphobe.

That aside, if there weren't any posts about Worm, there's no reason not to make one myself. Just in case. If there wasn't anyone else who knew Worm, it'd just fade into obscurity. If there were others, their search terms should hopefully bring them to that page. I wrote up a post with as many keywords as I could without making it sound janky or too close to describing real life, then settled into bed.

Electric Aeon, who'd apparently finished charging, curled up under my chin. Maybe it would've been cute if its screens hadn't been set to flashing RGB lights.

High school tomorrow wasn't going to be great, but I could deal. I'd gotten this far. These were solvable, achievable problems. Aeon's screens dimmed, leaving the room in more comfortable darkness.

Next week was going to go well. I'd make sure of it.

Welcome to the Parahumans Online message boards.

You are currently logged in, IHaveYesMouth&IMustScream

You are viewing:

• Threads you have replied to

• AND Threads that have new replies

• OR private message conversations with new replies

• Thread OP is displayed.

• Ten posts per page

• Last ten messages in private message history.

• Threads and private messages are ordered chronologically.

Topic: Has anyone heard of a story called Worm?

In: Boards ► Creative Forums ► Creative Writing

IHaveYesMouth&IMustScream (Original Poster)

Posted On Mar 6th 2011:

There's a story I read on the internet years ago called Worm. It's a web serial about capes, released chapter by chapter onto the author's blog iirc. It got pretty dark, but the characters were compelling and the worldbuilding was great. It got a sequel at one point called Ward, which apparently had a slower pace and more of a character focus.

I haven't been able to find it – I lost all the bookmarks on my old computer, I can't remember the URL, and my Google-Fu isn't getting me anything.

Here's some of the details I can remember:

- The final fight was called Gold Morning, where all the characters fought a guy called The Warrior.

- The main character went by both Weaver and Khepri, and she had a bug theme and wore a flight pack with dragonfly wings later in the book. She...

[...]

- ...author's penname was Wildbow. I can't remember his real name – my brain keeps going back to JC McCrae, even though he doesn't publish online.

I think that's it! I'll edit this post if I remember anything else.

(Showing page 3 of 3)

►Coyote-C

Replied On Mar 7th 2011:

Okay, I was definitely thinking of something else. Good luck finding the story, though.

►IHaveYesMouth&IMustScream (Original Poster)

Replied On Mar 7th 2011:

WhedonRipperFan I know villain protagonists aren't for everyone, but I personally think Weaver is a very well characterised protagonist. All of her motivations make sense to her from the inside, even if they're just her justifications. I can totally understand being put off by her, though.

FlippinMad No.

.Coyote-C Thanks anyway! Capes and Candles sounds interesting, I'll have to see if I can find a copy at the library.

►Media_Kingdom_Tsadei (Banned)

Replied On Mar 7th 2011:

[Mod Edit]: Stop. We don't know how you keep getting your account reactivated, but until we figure it out, have another ban.

►FlippinMad

Replied On Mar 7th 2011:

IHaveYesMouth&IMustScream Aww :(

End of Page. 1, 2, 3

Spoiler: Pre-Edit A/N

Spoiler: Perk/s rolled this chapter

Last edited: Jul 15, 2023

231

Lazypika

Mar 12, 2022

View discussion

Threadmarks Chapter 5

View content

Lazypika

Lazypika

Sleepy...

Mar 15, 2022

#60

A/N: This is an edited version of Chapter 5. Ch1-10 have been edited, anything beyond that is being rewritten.

Original Chapter 5 below:

Spoiler: Chapter 5 (OLD)

It was hard to convince myself that school was going to go well when I was on a bus surrounded by strangers, where any of them might've known Brianne. I could walk past her best friend and have no idea until they confronted me with questions I couldn't answer.

At least the last heat had come and gone as I was waking up, instead of starting while I was on the bus again.

Electric Aeon was talking shit about anyone and everyone who came near it and… that actually kinda helped. It was mean, and I felt bad for listening to it, but I couldn't deny that it was a little funny. Maybe I'd feel worse if it wasn't hesitating to insult me, too.

What wasn't helping was the maths homework Aeon had pointed out this morning. It was already half-done, at least, but I had to rush through the last six questions on the bus before 9AM maths class.

"Because first thing in the morning is the best time for learning fucking maths," Aeon griped.

I couldn't talk to it with all these people around, so I typed out a message on my phone, instead. 'You didn't have to come along if you didn't want to be stuck in maths class.'

"Well, I need someone to complain to. It's not like anyone else can hear me."

Sigh.

At least I wouldn't be alone here. That would be an order of magnitude worse – even if my only company was a snarky, invisible lizard-bot, at least there was one person there who was on my side.

I'd left home early, in case I got lost or missed a bus. I hadn't, which left me half an hour early for class. With no phone service thanks to the faraday cage.

At least it gave me time to find my assigned seat. Being in an American classroom was surreal, like I'd just walked into a movie. The desks were all separate, set out in rows and columns instead of pushed into groups. It felt like we were about to take an exam, even if that was just how American classrooms were laid out.

By the time class was starting, I was midway through doodling a spaceship in the margins of my workbook. Low on detail, of course, and a different design from the Scout the PRT had found. I wasn't about to out myself over that.

The teacher stood up from their desk to take the roll.

I'm Brianne. I need to respond to 'Brianne'.

It seemed like the seating order was based on the roll, too, going along the rows and columns of desks.

"Chris?" The teacher called.

Wait, was Kid Win in my class?

The person to my left gave me an odd look.

Shit, and I'd just drawn high-tech spaceships all over my workbook. What if–

"It's not like he's the only dude named Chris in the world." Aeon reminded me.

The person who answered the teacher was tall, with red hair and a confident voice. Almost certainly not Kid Win.

Right. I was an idiot.

"You're an idiot," Aeon agreed.

The teacher worked her way down the list. I had another fright at 'Lisa', who was an African-American girl with a bunny hairpin, and yet another at 'Dean', the athletic boy with light brown hair who was sitting on my left.

"Brianne?" The teacher called.

"Ah, here," I said.

He nodded and moved on.

Class was surprisingly alright. We were just starting on this year's Integrals topic, so we were doing a refresher lesson.

I sped through the work and got back to drawing a galaxy across the worksheet, with blue and green ballpoint ships soaring between the stars.

Thankfully, I'd had the foresight to download the pdf of Arcadia's map before I came into the faraday cage. My sense of direction was piss-poor, and my memory was even worse. I'd nearly missed one of my classes, too – an art class, which made sense from Brianne's skillset.

The art class was in the middle of a topic on portraits. Brianne's project had been half-completed, and I'd spent the hour puzzling through her notes for what she'd planned to do. It was very thoroughly documented, as arcane as some of the notes had been.

The painting was going to be three ghosts having a dinner party in a back alley, blood dripping from the strange wounds in their chests. The piece was named 'Eulogy'.

It was only after I left the classroom that I realised how tight it had been making my own chest feel.

Despite the fact my old high school had more buildings than this one, the ones here were much larger, and Arcadia itself had a student body in the low thousands. The press of bodies in the hallways was hell. My old high school had been a girls-only religious one, and the smell of sweat and deodorant made it clear I'd made the right choice back then.

Physical contact with so many people was making me grind all my teeth. At least Brianne was tall. I'd gotten used to being one of the shortest people in any given group of peers, and if I was still that small, I would've been drowned in the flood of people.

I'd ducked into a bathroom at one point to get Aeon to measure my height with a ruler, and I was clocking in at six feet, which I was pretty certain was in the 99th-percentile of women's heights. The guardian would be about six and a half feet tall, in that case, so he must've gotten the same genes.

The school day ended without fanfare, and I immediately caught a bus straight home. That had been a mistake – all the other Arcadia students had the same idea. I got off that cramped hellbus with an angry lizard clinging to my hair and a new appreciation for what it feels like to be a tinned sardine.

Exhausted, I'd collapsed onto the sofa as soon as I'd gotten back to the apartment, then groaned and got up again when Aeon knocked over a glass of water trying to reach the wall socket as fast as it could.

The guardian had arrived back home at 1:30 in the morning, looking wrung-out, and trudged into his room without a word. As much as I felt bad for the guy, it was a relief not having to talk to him.

Aeon stuck its head up from where it had curled up in my hood and muttered "Bad sleep schedules must run in the family, too."

"Shut it."

"I'll shut it when you get some sleep."

"Fine."

By Friday, I was very, very glad Brianne had got a proper prescription for ADHD medication, because there's no way I would've been able to scrape through the week without it. God knows I would've been ready to just go home without the stuff when I heard the walkway between the fifth floors of the Mantinea and Tegea buildings was closed for construction.

Aeon was happy to curse up a storm for me as I pushed my way through the thicker-than-normal crowd of people who were also crossing over to the Tegea building.

Earth Bet must have it out for me, because it decided that day was perfect for a heatwave, made even worse by the nice winter temperatures we'd had the last few days.

It had been unbearable enough to get me to wear one of the sleeveless tops in Brianne's drawers, something I never thought I'd do. In the throng of students, the excess skin contact and body heat was oppressive.

My powers hadn't gone off since Monday morning, and they didn't seem to be giving me any sort of resistance to external temperatures, just internal ones. Besides, at least my power didn't increase the humidity.

"Jesus fuck," Aeon groaned, "you owe me five litres of ice cream and a bottle of coolant after this."

Wait, did Aeon drink coolant? It wouldn't even work to cool it down – the stuff is meant to be a heat sink, pumped back and forth between a ship's engine and the actual cooling mechanism.

…There'd been an open bottle of coolant in the kitchen yesterday that I'd moved. Did it actually–

"No comment."

God damn it.

There was a commotion up ahead. I tried to peer over, but so was everyone else. I was too far away to properly hear what was going on. Aeon sighed and dropped to the floor, scampering towards whatever was causing the ruckus, leaving me alone in the jostling crowd.

Fingers wrapped around my right wrist.

My head shot up to meet the eyes of a mousy-looking girl with brown hair and the most freckles I'd ever seen on one person. She pushed me out of the crowd and into an empty classroom, then shut the door behind us.

"We need to talk," she hissed.

Crap. Was this one of Brianne's friends I'd accidentally ditched? Or was I about to hit the fallout of some drama she'd gotten involved in?

My power decided that now of all times would be the best time to activate, lava beating through my chest. The girl's eyes widened.

"What the hell happened to you?" She demanded.

As compared to… what? Once again, I was talking to someone who seemed to know me while they refused to give me enough context to function.

"Sorry, I'm a bit sick at the moment," I said. "I'm a bit out of it, and I have a nasty fever that's been on and off all day."

That was wide-reaching enough to cover anything I could think of. The heat? Fever. The reason I'm acting off? Feeling like shit because of a cold. It was still pretty thin, but–

"Your internal body temperature is nearly three-thousand degrees!"

Holy shit. Three thousand? I didn't need to know fahrenheit to know that three thousand was a lot.

I'd been so happy that the mouths could be closed, so my power wouldn't out me as a cape, but I guess it took that as a fucking challenge. Now, this girl knew, and god knows what she'd do with–

Wait. How did she know my internal body temperature?

Oh.

Panacea.

Her power would be able to sense my internal heat. Her appearance matched up with Panacea's description in Worm, though it didn't quite match any of the fanart.

Okay. Not quite as bad. High chance she'd just brushed against me in the hall, noticed the mouths, and pulled me away.

It was strange how willing she was to pull an unknown cape aside, though. She was a Striker with a pretty slow-working power, and she'd just found out my secret identity. If I'd been a villain, or even a paranoid hero…

"It's a bad fever?" I said, trying to lighten the mood.

"Look. I want to help. Just tell me who did this to you. I can fix you, and the other heroes can make sure they can't come after you again."

Who… "did this" to me? Who did what to me? It should be clear this was my power – it's not like she could block off brains from her senses, even if she'd probably like to. There's no way she wasn't seeing my corona pollentia.

Unless she was talking about trigger events…?

"I'll have to go to the PRT with this whether you tell me or not. A bio-cape experimenting on people is a serious matter, and I don't know if you're their only victim." She paused. "And, if you got this stuff willingly, that's nearly as bad."

Experimenting? What the hell was she talking about?

"I genuinely don't know what you're talking about," I said.

"So, what, you just missed all the extra mouths? I can tell you have nerve endings in there."

I raised a hand and opened one of the mouths on the palm. "It's my power."

"Bull. Your corona pollentia is inactive."

…What?

She must've mistook the source of my confusion because she started explaining. "The corona pollentia is the part of the brain that controls–"

"I know what it is. You're saying mine's not working?"

"Yes, exactly. You don't have powers, you have someone fucking with you." She leaned forward. "Please. Come with me, and we'll get this sorted out."

I had powers. Powers that weren't from a shard. If I wasn't being interrogated by a stressed-out biokinetic, I would've collapsed in relief.

Whatever had brought me here, it was outside the realm of the entities. I didn't have a genocidal alien in my head, and I wasn't limited by what shards were willing to give out.

It would explain the spaceship tinker power, as well as the Scout that had turned up in the city. If I didn't have a shard power, anything was fair game.

Unless she was right, and someone had been using a heat-based power to muck with me from afar? But then, why me? Why would they mess with a random person instead of someone they knew?

…The guardian?

No, it wouldn't be. Brianne hadn't had a good relationship with him, as far as I could tell. Why would he give me a bunch of powers?

For now, I'd hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

Panacea was still staring at me, the concern and annoyance on her face not quite masking the fear. I didn't think she was about to accept me saying "I have super special non-Parahuman powers because I fell into a work of fiction!" There were a few bio-capes around, but there were exactly zero other non-parahuman capes, as far as I knew.

Plus, with her personality and power set, seeing someone that looked like a victim of a bio-cape wasn't not going to set her off. The fact she was just trying to help didn't make things any easier.

"I still have no idea what you mean," I insisted. "Nobody's been experimenting with me or anything like that. I just assumed I triggered normally."

"In that case, we're dealing with an unknown Trump – that's a power-manipulating cape – with unknown motivations. What if they start giving powers to assholes? Do you want more villains?"

And if I did that, they'd figure out that I was an imposter, when I wasn't able to give enough details about my life. Between Armsmaster's lie detector, Gallant's power, and any Thinkers they called in from Watchdog, I'd be fucked.

Aeon phased its head through the door, took one look at Panacea, and sighed. It didn't seem surprised. Whatever it was, it was clearly able to read my thoughts.

"Welp," it said, "blackmail time."

I didn't want to blackmail her! She was already in a terrible enough place with her mental health, being a neo-Tattletale was the last thing I wanted to do.

"I have a handle on this," I said. "Seriously. As far as I can tell, I'm just developing my own powers by myself. Maybe capes don't need a corona pollentia to function."

"Even if that was true, it would be the sort of development that would revolutionise parahuman studies," she snapped back. "Occam's Razor – there's a cape fucking with you."

"Blaaaackmaaaaail," Aeon sang.

Shut up, Aeon!

"Look, can you just leave it?" I pleaded. "There are reasons I can't go to the PRT."

"Oh? I'd love to hear them."

"I can't tell you."

Another heat started, but like the last one, it thankfully wasn't intensifying.

"Convenient. Is that because it'll get you in trouble with them, or because it'll get you in trouble with someone else?" She said, and her shrinking patience was audible. "Sounds serious. I should call the authorities."

The worst thing was, she was right to think I was suspicious, even if it was for the wrong reasons. I was an invader from another world who'd essentially killed someone and took their place.

Aeon jumped onto my shoulder, its tail thumping against my back.

"If you out me to the PRT, I'd have to tell them everything I learned from my Thinker power," I said. The words tasted like ash and desperation.

"Like what?"

I took a deep breath.

"Like the fact your power works on brains."

She went still.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she lied.

"The only reason you don't do work on brains is because it'd be easy to mess something up." I paused. "That, and it'd be harder to resist certain temptations."

She punched me in the face.

I fell flat on my ass, blood dripping down my nose. My glasses weren't cracked, but the wire nose-bridge felt like it had bent.

Even as I'd been saying it, I was already regretting it. The horror on Panacea's face just made everything worse. I'd only implied it, but both of us had gotten the message.

"Look," I said, "I really, really don't want to have to say this. You're pushing me into a corner here, and I'm lashing out."

"Bullshit," she growled. "If you didn't want to do it, you wouldn't have done it."

"I know it sounds unbelievable, but there's a reason for why I can't tell you, why I can't tell anyone."

I wasn't standing up. I was barely meeting her eyes. Right now, I didn't want to go for intimidation, not if I didn't have to. If I was on the floor, I'd look smaller, weaker, more pitiable. The necessity of it didn't make it feel any less manipulative.

She scowled, but her eyes were still shining with fear.

"Please. Don't tell my secret to anyone, and I won't tell anyone yours," I begged.

"Hand," she demanded.

Hand?

Oh, right, powers.

I dragged myself to my feet and extended a hand. She took it.

…I'd just threatened her with the fact she could manipulate brains, then basically told her I could ruin her life if I wanted. Like me, she was someone ruled by emotion, and I'd just made her pretty fucking emotional. She had a damn good justification to break her rules.

I fucked up. I fucked up bad.

Satisfaction gleamed in her eyes, punching through the fear. My nose twitched, then stopped dripping blood.

"Oh, uh, thanks," I muttered. I hardly deserved it after what I'd said, but…

"Don't thank me. That wasn't all I did."

My blood ran cold.

"I gave you an infection," she said. "It's benign at the moment, but it'll get worse, a lot worse, if you leave it alone for too long."

She– what?

"Your situation is dangerous. If I can't tell anyone else about you, that means I'll need to keep you in check myself. Meet up with me again in the next couple of weeks, and I'll wind the infection back."

"How long…" I said, heart racing.

"Until something changes, whether it's your situation or your willingness to talk."

I nodded numbly.

"Good, I'm glad you understand. Now, I'm late for class, so I'll see you later." She paused. "Oh, I should mention, no normal doctor will be able to tell the infection is even there, so don't bother getting help for it."

With that, she left me alone with Aeon on my shoulder and terror coiling in my chest.

"Well then," Aeon said, "that could've gone better."

"Oh, you think?" With how awful I was feeling, I couldn't manage to put much vitriol in my quivering voice.

"C'mon, 'the computer virus is there but you'll never find it' is a scam email classic. She was just saying it to freak you out," it said, stretching. "She's done the same kinda thing in canon, remember? She's probably bluffing."

"Probably bluffing," I echoed sarcastically.

"And hey, if it's not, you could just fry the infection out. Do you really think she could make a heat-resistant infection with such a specific effect so quickly, with a power as slow as hers? You're going to be fine."

I tried to make myself believe it.

"Now, clean up and get to your next class, you're late. The guy who fainted up ahead is gone, and the corridor's cleared up."

I nodded.

When I came into the classroom 15 minutes late, the teacher wasn't happy, at least until they saw me wiping blood off my face with my handkerchief. I told them Panacea had healed me after I'd smashed my face into a door frame due to the crowd, and that placated them enough to let me go sit down.

The guy who sits next to me in maths, Dean, silently handed me the notes from the first fifteen minutes of class. I copied them down and drew him a little spaceship on a sticky note as thanks.

American cafeterias and school lunches were another of those things I'd only ever seen in fiction before now. At my old school, everyone had either brought bagged lunches or bought stuff from the canteen, then just sat in unused classrooms or along the edges of the halls.

If Brianne had friends, and I was beginning to think she just… didn't, they weren't approaching me. I sat alone in the corner of the cafeteria with my lunch, and nobody came over to talk to me.

Well, mostly. The Dean from my maths class sat down next to me, a concerned expression on his face.

"Did you get into a fight with Amy Dallon?" He asked. "You were on edge when you came to class earlier, and she doesn't look any better."

"If that's Gallant and you have to blackmail him too, I'm going to go feral," Aeon said between small, stolen licks of my pudding. I tilted the pudding cup backwards so Dean wouldn't see the grooves being carved into it by the ghost's wire tongue.

"It's…" I sighed. "It's complicated. Poor circumstances and misunderstanding, mostly. It's fine, we sorta worked something out."

"Seriously, Amy looked really upset about it. You look upset about it. Are you sure you worked it out?"

"We worked it out," I reiterated. "It's not perfect, and I don't think either of us is happy with it, but it's probably the best thing we could've settled on."

He didn't seem mollified, but he nodded anyway.

"You seem pretty lonely. I'd offer to let you come over to our table, but I don't exactly think Amy would appreciate that."

"It's okay, I'm fine on my own," I lied.

As objectively good for me as Brianne not having friends was…

I looked back down at my food.

"...Okay. I should go back to my table now, but take care, alright?" He said.

I put on my best smile and gave a thumbs-up.

He started to leave as fire pumped through my veins again. This time, I was available to reset the timer and jot down the results.

Seven seconds after the heat started, it intensified.

And I saw a pair of entities, swimming through the void.

A/N: Returning readers may notice that this is where the timeline-stretching starts to come in - instead of having an eventful first day, Bri has a normal Monday-Thursday and an eventful Friday. Also, her guardian now comes home each day, not just on Saturdays.

Spoiler: Pre-Edit A/N

Spoiler: Perk/s rolled this chapter

Last edited: Jul 15, 2023

230

Lazypika

Mar 15, 2022

View discussion

Threadmarks Chapter 6

View content

Lazypika

Lazypika

Sleepy...

Mar 16, 2022

#106

A/N: This is an edited version of Chapter 6. Ch1-10 have been edited, anything beyond that is being rewritten.

Original Chapter 6 below:

Spoiler: Chapter 6 (OLD)

The entity swam through the void, space warping around it to carry it through the stars.

Forget, it broadcast to its counterpart.

The minds of the host species had close enough parallels to the shards that they could draw information through their bonds upon insinuation. Keeping the information secret was paramount. Should the hosts realise their situation, it would put the cycle in jeopardy.

Agreement, the counterpart acknowledged.

Emotion, the entity continued.

The counterpart's Agreement was distracted, concerningly so.

Despite the counterpart's tone, all still seemed to be on-track. The entity was already beginning to shed the bulk of its shards. The simpler ones were first to go. After that came the ones that required more attention.

Technology databases from the species of cycles past splintered away, carefully regulated to slow any worrying technological developments any future hosts might try to make. Smaller shards first, then larger and larger ones.

One of these larger ones was broken off from the wider cluster of optimisation shards, built for arranging the entity in the most efficient configuration. This one served another purpose when released in the cycle. It would gather information on the technologies of other databases and work to optimise them, alongside field-testing different optimisation techniques.

The optimisation database shard was cast out along with the others, with directions from the entity's precognition shard on how to find the ideal host. It flew down to the assigned planet and set itself upon the largest landmass.

Like with many of the other larger shards, not only had the entity had used its foresight to pick out the ideal host for the database, it had calculated the best time to deepen the connection with him. It established a preliminary link to the young host as soon as it found him, then settled in to wait.

Time passed with the rotations of the planet around its star. The host matured, but never became less alone. His parental figures drifted apart, and the host bounced between them, a footnote in both of their lives.

The host graduated from the host culture's secondary education system, then spent a planetary rotation moving around the country, picking up and leaving whenever things were growing stale.

His situation began to grow worse.

As the host grew more agitated, more battered and paranoid, the database shard started to pay closer attention to him. The entity's predictions were, of course, correct.

Connection.

The host, who'd been searching for meaning, for anything he could care about and hold dear, finally had a solid goal crystallise. He turned himself from an explorer to a soldier, joining a larger group of hosts and being assigned to a strike squad.

He thrived in that environment, and the optimisation database thrived with him. The host rose through the ranks, learning lessons in adversity, until he was assigned his own settlement to act as a guardian over.

The database communicated with other shards, the host's compatriots. The armamentarium shard was ideal to have nearby. It had previously been paired with other technology database shards in past cycles, and it had gathered useful insights into how best they operated.

The cross-analysis shard was useful in a different way. It was similar to how the optimisation database shard in that they were both focused on the technology of other shards. The optimiser optimised others' technology, while the cross-analyser combined the disparate fields.

However, while the optimiser's current configuration focused on optimisation with only a small amount of extra leeway for study compared to other database shards, cross-analysis had narrowed its focus, ignoring its own inbuilt database to force its host to draw from other sources of information.

Their hosts' mutual infatuation, despite cross-analysis' abnormal host, had been happenstance. Both shards had agreed that it was particularly fortunate, and were eager to see things develop further in the future, however that may be.

If the shard had one regret, it was the lack of opportunities to create a bud. Its host's isolation had been a boon, at first, pushing him to focus on conflict, but it had also turned him away from the opportunity to meet or create a suitable candidate for budding.

However, nearly fifteen planetary rotations after the optimisation database had properly connected to the host, an opportunity arose. The shard gleefully took it, sectioning off parts of itself into a bud and linking it to the candidate.

It was a mistake.

Shortly after the preliminary link, unnatural heat bloomed within the database's crystal-flesh. The heat was a virus, warping and changing the shard. It reached out to the warrior hub for help or advice, but the heat cut it off. It attempted to disconnect from the new host, the source of the heat, but it was dragged back in.

The heat was–

The heat–

Heatttttttttttttttttt–

–

Optimiser widened their senses and breathed.

I blinked, pulling back from the memories of Optimis–

The optim–

I'd seen–

…

What had I been thinking about again?

Dean had paused several metres away from my table, as if he was trying to remember something, but he just shook his head and kept moving.

The heat lasted for four more units of time, before petering out. That had been the second longest time an intense heat had lasted. The longest… I still didn't know what I'd gotten from that.

This new thing, however, I could feel. I felt it in the same way a dam felt the water it held back, splashing up against the sides and pushing to escape in a wave that washed away everything in its path. Like holding a stimulant capsule on your tongue, except you couldn't spit it up, only hold it or swallow it, ready to throw yourself into your work.

I reset the timer on my phone, then reset it again as another heat started, not even a minute after the last one. My power must've decided it had fucked me over enough for one day, because the temperature stayed level through the full 14 seconds.

The new sensation lapped against the walls of my mind.

"Well, you won't know what it is until you use it," Aeon said.

I took a breath, then opened the floodgates.

The table was plastic with metal legs. The plastic looks cheap; mostly useless without refinement. The legs, however, looked more useful; the metal would serve well as plating for armour or the base of a polearm. With work, they could alternatively be made into a grappling hook and metal cable to mount onto the weapon.

The windows were in wooden frames; the glass could be used for the screen of a visor, though it would be best to thin it down and reinforce it for a more compact device. Mapping software could be installed on it, paired with a vibration-based radar in the polearm. Slamming the butt of the polearm into the ground would send waves through the ground, similar to echolocation. Harder slams would mean more area mapped, but also more risk of alerting an enemy.

The materials are all very much subpar, but could be refined by– a pause– refined via my stomach. I'd need to test more material combinations to discover the optimal parts from what I have available. Each gathered material would need to be split into smaller fragments to fit into the mouths, however.

The empty lunch tray was cheap plastic as well; useless without better tools. The scraps of food and packaging; useless without better tools. My hands were flesh and blood; useless without better tools, but they could be improved upon. If I could find a good source of supplies, I could remove them piece– piece by piece, sw– switch them– for–

I slammed the floodgates shut, breathing heavily.

Aeon tapped its tail against the table. "Huh. That was something."

I started to respond, realised I'd opened some of the mouths under my clothing, and closed them.

If the spaceship power had just downloaded knowledge into my head in one lump sum, this had hooked me up to the proverbial internet, pop-ups and notifications included.

…Polearms. Visors. Programs for gathering information. Most importantly, an undercurrent of efficient use of space, optimising everything and letting as little go to waste as possible.

Oh. Fuck.

"I don't think you'd look good in a beard," Aeon said, "but we can make do."

This was Armsmaster's power.

Dean wasn't in my afternoon classes, thank god. If he was Gallant, I didn't want him to see me struggling to keep the other state of mind from slipping in, pulling the world apart at the seams and reassembling it into weapons and tools.

The-Lisa-that-wasn't-Tattletale was there, though. She fiddled idly with her bunny hairpin, only sitting up straighter when the World Issues teacher introduced us to the new unit.

The new unit on capes. I could've laughed.

When they announced that we'd be starting group projects in a couple of weeks, any amusement vanished. I was hell at group projects, and my general knowledge of capes was entirely different from what the others would know. It would be like a sociologist trying to keep up with historians.

The rest of the class actually ended up being oddly fun, though. As terrifying as the idea of being stuck in Worm was, being able to hear people talk about capes from the perspective of people who lived with them was fascinating.

The final bell rang, and school ended for the day. Apparently, the sun was feeling spiteful, because the heatwave was worse than it had been before. No way in hell was I getting on a crowded bus in this weather. I pulled out my phone, opened the map, and looked up the nearest library.

Brockton Bay Central Library had absolutely gorgeous architecture.

It was the sort of place that had been built a long time ago, and any repairmen since then had made sure to preserve the original look as best they could. The pillars and grand arches combined with the art lining the hallways ('All paintings made by talented locals!') made it feel like I was walking through a Palace of Knowledge rather than just a 'library'.

The computers were all in use, so I looked around at the books instead. 'The Adventures of Maggie Holt' was joined by 'Capes and Candles', as well as a biography simply titled 'Triumvirate'. I sat down to read the last of those three, occasionally turning the page of Aeon's Electricity for Dummies ('In Full Color!').

'Triumvirate' was fake as shit. Not only did it talk about the 'trigger events' of each of the Cauldron capes, not only did none of the triggers match the powers they actually had, but they were all supposedly 'good' events. Times when they'd gone above and beyond to help people.

Nothing about Rebecca's terminal cancer, about her lying alone in bed and crying about the fact she'd never eat fast food or kiss a boy or watch the movie she'd been looking forward to seeing. Nothing about David's sickness, his wheelchair, his suicide attempt when the army had turned him down. Nothing about… whatever had been up with Keith or Hero.

"You know," Aeon said, looking up from a diagram of an electric motor, "it's a good thing Cauldron doesn't give a shit about you, or else you'd be shoved in a box with The Slug faster than you could say 'But I'm not a Case 53!'"

Thanks, Aeon, I really needed to hear that. Trying to shake the thoughts out of my head, I picked up Capes and Candles instead and cracked open the first page.

When the silent alarm I'd set for 5PM went off, I checked out the books and started the long walk back to the Arcadia bus stop. There were closer stops, but I didn't want to fuck around with a bus schedule I didn't know.

The walk took me out of the nicer area around the library and into the middle of a more decayed-looking part of the city, with water damage and peeling paint obvious on the tall buildings around me.

"Hey," said Aeon, "did you hear that?"

Hear what? I strained my ears.

It was quiet, but I could make it out.

Screaming.

I'd already taken a few steps in the direction of the sound before I actually stopped to think.

What could I even do? I had two tinker powers, a bunch of extra mouths, and an electric ghost-lizard. I didn't even have a mask. Against someone with a weapon, I'd have to get seriously lucky not to get injured or, worse, captured and press-ganged.

"So you're just going to do nothing? Just fucking stand there while someone gets hurt?" Aeon demanded, as another heat hit.

"There's nothing I can do!"

"What do you think would happen if you ran away?"

What if I went and there was someone with a knife? Or a gun? This wasn't a story where everything worked out in the end. It wasn't a game where I could just load my last save. It was real life, where I could die.

"If you ran, you'd never fucking forgive yourself!" Electric Aeon yelled, as if it was trying to shout over the volume of my thoughts. "Every day! Every day, you'd think about what you did, and what you could've done instead!"

I was stuck in place. I wasn't going forward, but I wasn't going back, either.

"The goddamn apocalypse is coming and you won't even deal with a single person who's in danger!" It roared. "Maybe I should jump in front of a bullet, pray I'll come back with a host who's not a useless fucking coward!"

The heat intensified. More knowledge, a minor Tinker power for vehicles. Useless in a fight. What good would I be able to do?

I…

The scream came again. Louder, this time.

Sorry, guardian. I guess I am putting myself in danger.

I ran towards it.

The little good I could do would have to be enough.

Aeon climbed into my hand as I charged. With the other hand, I pulled my school bag off. Damaging library books should've been the last thing I thought of when I was running to stop a mugging. Irrational.

I was running into danger. The whole thing was irrational.

The screaming rang out a third time, just around a corner. I dropped my bag and peered into the alleyway.

Three people, pale with shaved heads, surrounding a girl. Her bunny hair clip had fallen to the ground by the attackers' feet.

A knife gleamed in one of their hands.

For a moment, hesitation gripped me. Just a moment.

I reared back and flung Aeon like a grenade.

Aeon latched onto the left guy's collar and swung its tail into his neck. He yelled and dropped like a sack of potatoes. The throw hadn't hit the Knife-Guy I'd been aiming for. Good enough.

I didn't have a mask, but I did have my mouths. Opening as many of them as I could would obscure my face a bit. People remember big details over small ones. Shoddy, but it'd have to do.

The ground in the alley was littered with trash, but my balance was shockingly good as I dashed in.

The guy on the right froze. Knife-guy didn't.

I'd been distraction enough, apparently, for Aeon to leap at him as he ran forward. Either Knife had felt Aeon hit him, had been tased by it, or had just tripped on trash, because he jolted mid-run. His stab went wide.

He thrust again. I caught the blade in the mouth on the palm of my hand. One kick to the crotch sent him to the ground. The knife went into my pocket as I planted a foot between his shoulder blades.

An eardrum-shattering crack rang out. Something glanced off one of the teeth on my torso and shot down a gullet. I looked up.

Righty was wide-eyed, shaking, and pointing a handgun at me.

Every muscle in my body went taut.

I'd never seen a real gun before then. Water guns, yes. Airsoft guns, yes. Guns on TV, yes.

But this was an actual fucking gun.

"Move!" Aeon yelled, as Righty's finger twitched on the trigger.

There was a loud bang.

Righty collapsed.

The girl they'd cornered was behind him, a rubbish bin lid in her hands.

She was wide-eyed and breathing heavily. It took a moment to register that I was too. Neither of us seemed to be able to speak as the attackers twitched on the ground.

Aeon was pulling at Knife's shoes. Why– oh, shoelaces. It ran over to me, and I tied the laces around Knife's hands and ankles. When he tried to resist, Aeon tased him again.

The other girl kicked Righty's gun, sending it scooting across the ground. Both of us twitched when it bumped into a wall, but it didn't go off. Gun out of the way, she glanced at me, then grabbed Righty's boot laces and tied him up too.

It was only once I'd tied the quivering Lefty up too that I spoke, mouths working in tandem.

"Tha–" my voices cracked. "Thanks."

She let out a startled laugh.

"I'm the one who should be thanking you! Those guys could've…" She trailed off, and I bowed my head. It was only when I tried to adjust my glasses that I realised how badly I was shaking.

"Are you–" "You're not–" we both started at the same time. I went quiet and motioned towards her.

"You're not hurt, are you?"

"No. You?"

She shook her head.

Both of us walked out of the alley, leaving it silent, aside from the sound of Aeon shocking one of the skinheads. I closed my mouths, just in case someone else came by.

Almost unconsciously, I pressed a hand against my side, where a bullet had flown into one of them. It was still there, in my stomach, slowly fusing into the last dregs of the water I'd drank at the library.

If not for that mouth, I would've been hit. From there, I could've died or been sent to the hospital, and going to the hospital meant being found out. One way or another, my life could've ended.

"Um," the girl said, "I'm Lisa. Lisa Medina. You're Brianne, right? From Arcadia? We have a few classes together."

"Mm. I'm– Brianne Steele."

Wait, should I have given out my name so easily? Shit, too late now. Besides, she'd recognised me anyway, so there wasn't much point in trying to lie.

"I should– we should call the PRT, right?" She asked. "They can take care of the guys here."

I started to nod. "I-I don't have a mask, though. I can't really…"

"Oh. Right. Um," she put a hand to her chin. "How about I call them? And you can…"

"The library is nearby, I could just go back there."

"Okay." She took a breath, then squared her shoulders. "See you in a bit?"

"Sure."

I nearly walked away without my school bag, so I had to awkwardly double back to pick it up. It was only when I was at the library doors that I realised I'd left behind Aeon. Probably best for it to stick with Lisa, for now.

The library didn't close until 10 on weekdays, thankfully. Even better was the fact that I was basically the only one around that late. I slumped over onto one of the sofas, still shaking, and pulled out Capes and Candles again.

Half an hour later, I had barely gotten through more than a few more pages of the book, and the shaking still hadn't subsided.

"Looking for inspiration, huh?"

I jolted and looked up. Lisa was standing in front of me, the rabbit pin back in her hair and Aeon riding on her shoulder.

"I– I dunno. I hadn't really been… it was spur-of-the-moment," I admitted. "I was just planning to, y'know… stay in my own lane and live as a normal person. I guess."

She sat down beside me, moving purposefully slowly. While I was shaking, she was stiff, like she was holding everything in place so tightly that barely any movement escaped.

"Oh, you're warm," she commented.

"That's– my power," I said, pulling my phone from my pocket to reset the timer. It took a couple of goes to hit the right buttons. Why wouldn't I stop shivering?

"What's it do?" Lisa asked. Despite how tightly strung she felt, there was a tone of curiosity in her voice, and I couldn't tell if it was fake or genuine. "You wouldn't have pyrokinesis, or else you would've used it, right?"

"I randomly warm up sometimes, and sometimes, I get–" fuck why am I saying this wait now she's looking at me even more curiously shit– "–get a new power out of it."

Aeon glared at me.

Stupid. Why did I just reveal it like that?

"Oh, like Eidolon?" She asked.

"Sorta. I have… five powers, right now? I think?"

I shouldn't be telling her this. But, she'd just saved my life, and I'd saved hers, which meant I could trust her, and…

…

…I was lonely, and she was the first person who'd been nice to me that I wasn't also scared of. That was all it was.

"Five?" She exclaimed, leaning forward. The closeness made me flinch, and my sudden movement made her flinch back too. Her smile flickered for a moment before returning, a little more forced than it had been before.

I rubbed the back of my head. "They're not as strong as the ones Eidolon has. Three tinkery things, the mouths, and the invisible taser-lizard."

"Oi," muttered Aeon. "Also, if you count the one you don't know, you have six."

"And there's a sixth I haven't figured out yet," I added. Fuck, I kept forgetting it existed. What if it turned out to be a radiation-y Shaker power or something? What if it had screwed me over in the fight? What if it had made me too slow, or had put Lisa out of the fight, or caused one of us to be caught and…

"So, what, you're Eidolon except you can have more powers in exchange for making them weaker?" Lisa asked, cutting off that train of thought.

"Well, I, uh, haven't actually had my powers for very long. Just a week. Nothing I've gotten has gone away yet."

She sat back, stunned. "So you're tinker-Eidolon crossed with Dauntless."

Lisa believed it? Just like that? I still hadn't shaken the feeling that, sooner rather than later, the other shoe would drop. The fear that I'd start losing the powers or, worse, get hit with some sort of horrible backlash for holding onto so many at once.

Having shardless powers meant I didn't have an alien poking at the weak points of my psyche, but it also meant there wasn't the safety net of Manton Limits, of a shard wanting to keep its host alive.

"Maybe," I said. "I could run into a limit or a bad side effect or something."

"But, right now, you're super-tinker-Eidolon-Dauntless," she said.

"...Yeah."

"And you were planning to just not use that?" Her voice wasn't accusatory, just curious, the same as before. Or was it an act? I couldn't tell.

"I'm…" I took a shaky breath. "I was scared. Hell, I still am. I could've died. It's not like I'm actually any good at this."

"I mean, you saved me, and you beat two guys twice my size," Lisa smiled.

I looked away. In a small voice, I admitted "I nearly didn't. Save you, I mean. I was about to just leave – I didn't want to get hurt."

There was a pause. I couldn't bear to look her in the eyes.

She wrapped a hand around mine. "You nearly didn't, but you still did anyway, right? You were a hero in the end, and that's the reason I'm here right now."

"It was only because of Aeon – the taser-lizard I mentioned – that I did anything at all. It had to yell at me to make me go."

Aeon glanced up at me, but didn't say anything.

There was another pause.

"Does it matter?" Lisa said, grabbing my other hand. "I'm just as saved as I would've been if you hadn't hesitated at all."

I didn't know how to reply to that.

She was shaking again, but this time, it was from laughter. "This is the opposite of how it's meant to go, isn't it? Usually, it's the hero comforting the damsel in distress, not the other way around."

"Sorry."

She bumped her shoulder into mine, smiling. I didn't flinch, that time.

"Besides," I said, "you weren't exactly a damsel in distress. You saved my life as much as I saved yours."

She grinned. "I guess you could say I'm a damsel of distress."

"Isn't that the name of a villain near Boston?"

"...Of course it is. There go villains, ruining everything I love," she sighed, falling across my lap with a hand pressed against her forehead.

I couldn't help but smile. She beamed in response.

How had she bounced back so quickly? Was she distracting herself with the conversation? 'Act a certain way long enough and you'll become the mask', or however it went. Fake it 'till the trauma of nearly being mauled by three neo-nazis fades into the background.

"So," I asked, "how did things go with the PRT?"

She straightened up, eyes gleaming. "I got to meet Velocity!" A phone was shoved in my face, and I had to pull back to see the selfie she'd taken with the hero. To my chagrin, she had a normal phone, too, unlike my weird oval one.

…Were photo-Lisa's eyes wetter than they were now? What had happened in that half-hour we were apart? When she was alone, a ten-second sprint from an alley filled with tied-up and probably pissed-off nazis?

"Velocity? What was he like?" I asked instead.

"He was super serious." She leaned in and spoke in a faux whisper, "I think he used to be a secret agent."

Robin Swoyer had been a soldier before he became a hero, right? He'd joined the army to learn languages and travel, and when that didn't work out, he triggered. The Protectorate wasn't much better for him, in that regard. He'd had all of one appearance in canon before he died to Leviathan, so I didn't know much else about him.

He'd been one of the two people I'd considered asking after if I were to call the PRT about my meta-knowledge. Since I knew his full name, it'd be a way to immediately get their attention, moreso than asking for a Hannah or an Ethan.

I did also know Triumph's full name – Rory Christner – but since his father was the local mayor, he'd probably be well-known enough that it wouldn't have the same effect.

Now who was distracting themself from a traumatic experience by thinking about other things?

"You think he's an ex-spy?"

"Nope!" She said, "I just thought it'd be cool."

I snorted.

"Who's your favourite cape?" She asked. "I'll tell you their secret backstory."

"Uh…" Well, I couldn't say Defiant, so, "Armsmaster."

"This is gonna be good," Aeon muttered.

She cleared her throat, and started to talk in a dramatic voice.

"Blair Marsh was the best detective in the business, solving one mystery after another. He joined at the age of ten, and was one of the highest ranking investigators in the country by the time he was 18."

She stood up with one foot on the table, leaning into her phone as if it was a stage mic, with a confidence I wished I could feel.

"On one fateful day, he was given his hardest case yet. A group of hackers were trying to get into White House security, and he was assigned to find their base of operations and stop them once and for all.

"It was a full week before he had his breakthrough, cracking the secret to making his high-tech gadgets. Eleven hours later, Blair stood victorious. The Protectorate knew they needed his skills, so he was promoted to a superhero on the spot. Thus, Detective Marsh faded into the background, and Armsmaster came to the fore!"

I clapped, and she gave a dramatic bow, adding in a disproportionate number of hand-twirlies. As blatantly inaccurate as it was, it was still fun.

"Can you tell I was in Immaculata's drama club before I changed schools?"

"I dunno, I think a real drama club member would've had more hand-twirlies," Aeon said drily.

I relayed its words to her, and she laughed. "I'll do more next time!"

There was a pause.

"Thanks for all of this," I said. Thanks for saving my life. For being actually, truly enthusiastic to talk to me. For being the one person to just be nice to me, no obligations attached. "For trying to cheer me up," I said instead.

"No problem! I like to cheer people up, even if it… doesn't always work. I'd rather be upbeat than be a downer, if I can. Um, no offence!"

"None taken."

Another pause.

"But, um… do you mind if I be a downer for a moment?" She asked.

"Go ahead, I think you've earned it." God knows I was feeling a lot better after this than I would've otherwise.

"It's a weird question, but do you mind if I spend the night at your place?"

I blinked.

"I mean! I don't want to intrude or anything, it's just…" She looked down at her phone. "Dad's great normally, but he's been acting weird recently. Avoiding me. And I don't wanna be alone right now."

Another heat started as I worked through my reply. "We don't really have a spare bed, I think, just a sofa. If you're fine with that…"

Her head bobbed up and down.

"That's fine! Uncomfortable sleep is better than no sleep."

"Cool. I'll have to check with my guardian, make sure he doesn't mind," I said, fishing my phone from my pocket. "It's getting late, so should we get going soon?"

The last of the tension bled out of her. "Let's."

A/N: Realised in editing that I messed up which school Lisa M came to Arcadia from. She's now an ex-Immaculata student.

Spoiler: Pre-Edit A/N

Spoiler: Perk/s rolled this chapter

Last edited: Jul 15, 2023

226

Lazypika

Mar 16, 2022

View discussion

Threadmarks Chapter 7

View content

Lazypika

Lazypika

Sleepy...

Mar 21, 2022

#160

A/N: This is an edited version of Chapter 7. Ch1-10 have been edited, anything beyond that is being rewritten.

Original Chapter 7 below:

Spoiler: Chapter 7 (OLD)

Aeon held up a phone with the words 'Uno' written into the notes app, and Lisa groaned.

"How is your ghost-lizard so good at this game?" She complained.

"At least it can't read your mind," I said, looking down at the sixteen cards in my hand.

I played a Draw Two, and Lisa, whose turn was next, gave me a flat look.

"Hey, you could get a good card from this and use it on Aeon," I said. "It's just the logical play!"

"It's a good thing I have this, then!" She put another Draw Two on the stack and shot a triumphant look in Aeon's general direction.

One of its eyes was pointed at her, while the other was fixed on the pile. It flipped the final card in its hand around – another Draw Two.

'Thanks, guys,' it typed onto my phone. 'I wouldn't have been able to play that without you :)'

Lisa threw her cards in its direction and it scuttled out of the way, cackling.

Five days had passed since I'd met Lisa and, since then, we'd spent most of our free time together. We shared several classes, and it seemed like she'd started at Arcadia recently enough that she hadn't made any other friends yet either.

We'd ended up sticking together outside of school too. I'd run out of patience with the crowded school buses, and she seemed reluctant to go to her house, so we'd walk to the library and hang out there. Turns out, going through a dangerous situation together really was a great way to connect with people, go figure.

The guardian had been tetchy when I called post-mugging-interference, asking to bring someone over on such short notice. Something about how I sounded must've changed his mind, because he'd sighed and given Lisa permission to stay over.

Once Aeon had thoroughly reamed me out for getting attached to her so quickly, it had started to come around, too. Time spent with her was time I wasn't constantly stressed, sinking into the mire of dread about the idea that someone could find me out and arrest me.

Since it was Wednesday, it was a half-day for everyone at Arcadia. As part of the school's curriculum, a lot of the students spent school hours at internships, workshops, or other learning programmes. It was why the Wards were rumoured to attend Arcadia – they'd been seen patrolling and attending events during school hours, and Arcadia's system was the best way to obfuscate them coming and going.

On a darker note, it was now the 16th of March. Canon start, the Lung fight, Dinah's kidnapping and Bakuda's bombing, they were all approaching at a steady pace, and I hadn't done a thing about it.

Maybe the best course of action would've been to just not interfere, hoping that canon remains intact enough for Khepri to kill Scion. Problem is, there's no way that was going to happen. Panacea was in a worse emotional state now, thanks to me, so the chances of her getting into the exact right circumstances to Kheprify Tayor were going down. I hadn't even seen her at all since Friday.

The infection… I was 70% sure it was at least mostly a bluff. I didn't think she trusted her power or her self-control that much. Besides, it'd be crossing a line she'd be loath to even toe without a whole lot of downwards spiralling first.

(I had been 90% certain, before I'd started getting minor cold symptoms. It was probably that Brianne had allergies or something – it was the right season for it – but the thought still itched at me.)

What's more, Aeon had apparently seen Dean giving me concerned glances when I wasn't looking. The fact he'd been quietly talking to a redhead while doing it was just the icing on the cake.

There was no guarantee that had been about me, but the evidence was building up. I didn't know this Dean's full name, but our maths class was seated in alphabetical order by surname, and 'Stansfield' would be right next to 'Steele'.

The butterfly effect was a bitch and, between my interactions with the Wards and Panacea, the bank robbery would almost certainly go differently, and that's if it happened in the first place.

Even before the bank, the Lung fight happening at all required a string of very specific events. Taylor had to go out on the right day, then go to the right place at the exact right time to misunderstand Lung when he tells his minions to shoot the Undersiders.

That was just on Taylor's side. The Undersiders had probably already pissed Lung off by now, but if they or the ABB tried to have the fight on a different day, or if they took a different route on the dogs, the Lung fight would change.

Armsmaster, too, would've had to be patrolling in that area at the right time to meet Taylor. Her justification for joining the Undersiders had been partially based on him telling her how little he knew about them. There was no way the spaceship appearing hadn't messed up his schedule, so that was going to change, too.

What happened in canon was a one-in-a-million event, fragile enough that any one of the butterflies I'd let loose could easily prevent it. It was that specific event that had set off the Brockton Bay powder keg, so that was going to be different, too.

In a roundabout way, I had free reign to do whatever I wanted without worrying about canon.

It was as terrifying as it was relieving.

"Lost in thought?" Lisa asked.

I nodded. "Thinking about where to go from here."

"Let me go grab the box," she said. "You've gotten everything you could, right?"

I nodded.

'The box' was a big plastic container filled with scavenged electronics and raw materials. I'd been using Armsmaster's power in small doses, just enough to get accustomed to it. The first time had been more intense than I was expecting, but when I was actually ready for it, it was easier to manage.

My body warmed up for the first time since Friday. I'd almost missed having that.

It's not like I'd just been sitting around with Armsmaster's power active, though. I'd gone over the apartment and, later, Lisa's house, taking apart everything electronic and putting them together with less components.

Between my various tinkery powers, it had been intuitive to a degree I'd never really felt before. There were only so many components I could get with this method, especially with subpar tools, but it was enough to make some basic tech.

As for the materials for the casing, I used my stomach. Now that I had an actual Tinker power, I was using my mouths' object-fusion ability for more than just goofing around. Lisa and I had gone to the beach on Tuesday to pick up trash, and I'd gone home and fused it all with different material samples. The less I thought about what that process had been like, the better.

Lisa dropped the box of materials in front of me as the heat intensified.

"I'm getting a new power, watch out," I said.

A grin spread across her face. "What is it? Tinker power? Something else?"

"I dunno. I'm not getting anything right now."

"Another dud?"

I nodded.

The heat died down after one unit of normal heat and three units of intensity, and I still didn't know what I'd gotten.

"Well, full steam ahead, then?" She asked. "I've always wanted to see what it looks like when a tinker does their thing."

"Probably not as interesting as you think," I said. When she furrowed her eyebrows and opened her mouth, I clarified "And this isn't just self-deprecation. It's going to be slow and tedious."

"Still, it's not every day you get to see a cape in action."

I politely didn't mention that she'd seen me 'in action' every day since we'd met. Instead, I unpacked the box and got to work. The earliest I'd seen the guardian come home was at 11PM, and that was when he came home. I had plenty of time to tinker.

I had ADHD-Primarily-Inattentive, though it was still called ADD in 2011 Earth Bet. While near-completely shot my ability to control where my focus went, when I did manage to get into doing something, I got into it. There was nothing better than sitting down to do something fun for hours on end, and tinkering was no different.

As I built, flickers of insight came from my biggest power. Ways to reinforce what I was making, or just ways the power itself was directly making things more durable. Armsmaster's power took these reinforcements and ran with them – if I could safely make these wires and supports thinner, I'd damn well make them thinner, if it had anything to say about it.

Here, I ran into an issue. I wasn't actually able to work on as small a scale as I wanted to. The toolbox Lisa had borrowed from her Dad was hardly suitable for crafting microcircuits, let alone nanocircuits. My power helped me build better tools, but they were still far from ideal.

I had to pack everything away at Lisa's urging when the guardian pulled up outside. Well, mostly everything. I still had my phone on me, so I did the coding overnight, typing away on my phone's tiny keyboard. The guardian left again at half past six in the morning, and I got right back to work.

Something landed on my shoulder, and I looked up blearily from the visor in my hands.

"Hey, school's starting soon, dipshit. Lisa's already ready to go. Pull your head out of your tech and get moving," Aeon snapped.

"Five–" I yawned– "Maybe ten more minutes. I'm nearly done with the visor section."

"Fine, but I'm zapping you once that's up."

Twelve minutes later, I learned that I could apparently run around the house while working on a piece of tech without staggering or misstepping once. A secondary power from something or other? I'd gone from the sort of balance someone would have just after a growth spurt to near-perfect poise.

"Finished!" I exclaimed, raising the helmet in triumph.

Aeon sighed and clambered onto my shoulder while Lisa clapped. "Next time, I'm shocking you half an hour earlier."

We'd moved the operation to the basement of Lisa's house when the delicate, half-built components became too plentiful to hide. Her father didn't seem that bad to me, just a bit distant, with a work schedule nearly as unhealthy as my guardian's.

It was also better for the noise level. I was starting to get paranoid that the neighbours would hear something incriminating through the walls, even if Aeon assured me they didn't give a shit.

Not needing to be as careful not to make a racket also had an unforeseen side effect. To make the outer panelling, I had to get each sheet of metal into roughly the right shape before doing any detail work. That meant I could actually delegate those parts to Lisa.

Her enthusiasm at actually helping to build tinkertech carried her most of the way through the tedium of cutting metal into roughly the right shape. She couldn't do nearly as good a job as I could, but working from something mostly-correct was easier than starting from scratch.

Finally, on the afternoon of Thursday the 17th, everything was ready. I laid out each piece of armour in a line, checking everything was present one final time. Then, I started to assemble them together, letting the suit take form.

I couldn't help but grin to myself. "Done."

The second unknown power triggered.

Quantity/size? It asked.

Wha–

Quantity/size?

It wasn't giving me time to think.

Quantity.

The finished mobility suit jolted and, like a clipping issue in a video game, four more suits exploded out.

…What? What the fuck?

"Can I come in now– uh." Lisa was waiting at the door, a textbook tucked under her arm. "I didn't realise we'd gotten that much done."

"I just learned what that newest power does," I said, head swimming. "Looks like I get extras of whatever I make."

The other option had been size. I snatched a sheet of paper I'd been using to scrawl equations on and folded it into a paper crane.

Quantity/size?

Size.

It grew, becoming thrice as long, thrice as wide, and thrice as tall.

I recognised that power, and not quite in the same way I'd recognised Armsmaster's.

"Oh, motherfucker," Aeon sighed. "We're idiots."

School sucked, but it sucked even more when you were distracted and sleep-deprived. I was barely able to pay attention to anything, constantly on the verge of slipping back into a haze of tiredness and stress.

While I'd designed the suit with the intention of being able to compact it and hide it easily, we had a panic when we realised we'd have to find places for five of the things. For the moment, we'd stashed them in Lisa's house's basement and prayed her father wouldn't find a reason to go down there.

My maths worksheet, thankfully, hadn't multiplied when I'd finished it. It was only after I'd solved the last question and put my pencil to the side that I realised I hadn't gotten the quantity/size prompt. Modification didn't seem to trigger it in the same way making something from scratch did.

That was both good and bad. I wouldn't have to worry as much about the power going off willy-nilly, but it also meant any upgrades I did on already-existing equipment would have to be done multiple times if I wanted to get more than one of them.

…

There was no distracting myself from this any longer. I pulled the paper crane from my pocket and set it down on my worksheet.

Gaining new, seemingly random powers over time, all related to crafting.

Getting items for free with some of the powers, like the Scout ship with my spaceship tinker ability.

Building up some sort of charge – and there goes the heat, speak of the devil – to 'purchase' those powers with, generally getting stronger powers for more energy.

In fact, hadn't I briefly considered that I was getting more heats around things like difficult conversations? I'd thought of it in terms of 'shard rewards for getting into verbal conflict', so I'd dismissed it when I'd learned my powers weren't shard-based.

It wasn't conflict, though, or it wasn't just conflict. 'Anything interesting enough to make it into a story' seemed to be what triggered the heat. I wasn't in a story, of course, but the general idea still fit.

This whole thing was absurd but, without me even realising it, the evidence had stacked up. Once I'd seen it, I couldn't look away again.

The Celestial Forge.

The property it was based on, a sort of story prompt character builder called Jumpchain, was the epitome of power-fantasy wish fulfilment mega-crossovers. The Celestial Forge was a collection of all the best crafting-related powers your character could get, based on hundreds of different works of fiction.

And everything I could think of about my power was pointing towards that.

The duplication power was one of the more distinctive things in that catalogue. 'Workaholic'. From the Sonic the Hedgehog jumpchain document, oddly enough. Whenever you make something, you either get four more of them or the one you made gets three times bigger.

Thing is, there wasn't an off-switch. Not that I could remember from the power's description, and not that I could sense from the power itself. It didn't give a third choice, just Quantity or Size.

I'd never be able to finish making a single thing in front of other people, or they'd see it either have a clipping error or suddenly swell up. I'd need to make sure to complete my art project at home, to make sure it wouldn't spit out a bunch of copies in full view of my entire class. I'd need to be paranoid, to extensively document what counted as creation and what didn't.

Workaholic was one of the few powers I was even going to be able to recgonise at all. There were, what, thousands of powers in the thing? What's more, most of them would be from works of fiction I was utterly unfamiliar with.

The spaceship tinker power was nearly as much about appearance as it was about making the actual ships. There were ten or so different design principles that I knew about, including biologically-grown ships. It reeked of different factions in a video game, but I didn't recognise a single one of the possible ship aesthetics.

The durability power – whether it was based on video game durability systems or ancient technology from an anime, I could pretty safely assume it was generic enough that it didn't matter. There were a lot of generic powers in jumpchain documents, stuff that you didn't need knowledge of the source material to understand. I could only hope I'd be getting more of that sort of thing. I was going to be unfamiliar with most of the series in the CF, and most of them probably didn't even exist on Earth Bet.

The vehicles power was similarly generic, mostly just making machines more intuitive for me to understand, with a focus on things that go zoom. It could be from any number of racing-based series.

Armsmaster's power was one of the ones I recognised, the single Worm power that had gotten into the first version of the Celestial Forge, back when the power-list was in the hundreds and not the thousands.

The mouths, I had even less clue about than the spaceships. At least space travel was an indicator of sci-fi. The mouths could originate in anything from biopunk to high fantasy to cosmic horror.

I hoped it wasn't cosmic horror.

Electric Aeon…

"Welp, I figured that one out," it said, peering down the back of my shirt. "There's a star-shaped birthmark on your upper back."

…Oh. You have got to be kidding– and nobody even noticed before now?

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. In that series, every protagonist had been a member of the same family known for their star-shaped birthmarks. That meant Aeon was something called a Stand – a spiritual entity called forth from the user's soul and powered by their fighting spirit. Classic anime stuff.

The problem here was that Stands tended to be passed along families. If one of them awakened their stand somehow, their family members generally did so as well.

Like the guardian.

Was he related to me closely enough that he'd get one too? The fact I wasn't actually Brianne wouldn't necessarily change that. Someone with a stolen body had manifested stands in that body's descendants in the show.

The guardian would've had it for a couple of weeks now, though, and he hadn't said anything about it. I was pretty sure he suspected I had powers and, since I was almost certainly the only cape he knew, I would've been the first person he'd check with. Assuming he did think I had powers, and I wasn't just misreading the situation.

Fuck.

And I hadn't even gotten to the worst parts of this whole Celestial Forge situation.

Things like learning about the technologies of new species was exactly what shards existed for. Anything I built would be ripe for analysis, for genocidal aliens to pick it apart through their scans and use the principals to improve themselves. Having shard-based powers would've sucked, but at least it wouldn't paint a target on my back.

But the end of the cycle was still a vague, far-off notion. I knew logically that it was a big, awful threat, but since it wasn't right in front of me, my brain was refusing to give it the emotional weight it deserved.

The stuff that could happen to me at any moment, on the other hand, was far more tangible. Getting powers like Workaholic that I couldn't turn off. Receiving unstable or radioactive materials in the same way I'd received the ship, and people getting caught in the crossfire. Having an obvious or dangerous power suddenly manifest in public, outing me or worse.

Maybe if I was still myself, if I still had my mum and dad and friends and everyone I loved there to support me, if I wasn't trapped in a superpowered hellworld on the verge of an apocalypse, I could've made it through. I would've been stoked, even. Except, the situation I was actually in just gave me– so many goddamn problems.

The heat picked that moment to show up. Intense, right from the start. I wanted to cry.

And I still didn't know why the genuine fuck I had been chosen for this, of all people. Shitty, useless, incompetent me, shoved into the living corpse of some background character and given the tinker equivalent of a goddamn thermonuclear bomb to sit on.

I was the last person I would've picked to handle this sort of responsibility! I had the inventiveness of a piece of plastic and the willpower and moral fortitude of a damp paper towel. Even if I didn't fuck up and die, even if I didn't go mad with power, there were so many people who'd be able to do so much better than me with this.

Why not hand this to Dragon? Chevalier? Golem, even? One of the proper heroes who had the guts to actually do things!

The heat dissipated. No new powers that I could feel.

Then, the screaming started.

I shot to my feet like everyone else, looking towards whatever was causing it.

…

You cannot be serious right now.

Him?

If I had the Celestial Forge, why had he showed up? I mean, he was very much implied to be a scientist in the source material, but I could think of at least two more science-y scientists from that series that'd qualify for the 'Assistants' section of the CF.

"I. What? Huh?" Aeon spluttered.

A pair of glowing, pinpoint eyes surveyed the room, sharp in a way that didn't immediately show through in their owner's relaxed posture.

Though he was smiling (not that he could do anything but smile), the one mittened hand that wasn't shoved into a pocket was inches away from the doorknob.

I mean, it made sense, to the fraction of my brain that was still thinking rationally. He'd just been dropped into a room of shouting humans.

His eyes – or eye-sockets, I guess – made contact with mine, lingering for a moment before moving on.

Dean pushed through the throng of students, putting himself between them and the intruder.

"Who are you?" He asked, more gently than I was expecting.

"i guess i caused a bit of a fuss, huh?" The newcomer said. "the name's sans. sans the skeleton."

Aeon let out a muffled cry and slammed its head into the desk.

A/N: For new readers, don't worry, if I didn't have a plan for Sans (story-wise, tone-wise, and crafting-wise), I would've rerolled him. After a later chapter, several people said they'd been worried at first but came around on the idea. If you still don't like it, yeah, that's fair.

For returning readers, I decided to cut out a few freebies that I didn't think were relevant enough to the story. In this case, the freebies from Sonic and Summon Annoying Dog from Undertale. I reserve the right to add any freebies back in if I feel they would benefit the story; right now, I just want to remove some of the chaff.

Spoiler: Pre-Edit A/N

Spoiler: Perk/s rolled this chapter

Last edited: Jul 15, 2023

222

Lazypika

Mar 21, 2022

View discussion

Threadmarks Chapter 8

View content

Lazypika

Lazypika

Sleepy...

Mar 29, 2022

#281

A/N: This is an edited version of Chapter 8. Ch1-10 have been edited, anything beyond that is being rewritten.

Original Chapter 8 below:

Spoiler: Chapter 8 (Old)

"Sans the Skeleton?" Dean repeated, sounding almost as disbelieving as I felt.

The class had gone quiet when Sans had spoken, backing away from the sudden appearance of the distinctly inhuman-looking 'cape'. The teacher took a step towards Sans, put a hand on their pocket, then slipped out their phone.

"Fuck–" –thud– "–fuck–" –thud– "–fuck–" –thud.

Aeon pounded its head against the table one last time, then rolled off my desk and clattered against the floor, where it laid unmoving.

Sans glanced at the lizard, then the mass of students, before looking back at Dean.

"that's me," he confirmed. "so, what's all the fuss? it's like nobody's seen a living, moving skeleton before."

"It's more the fact you appeared in a school without warning," Dean replied. "They're worried you might be a villain, that you might start using your powers."

"nah. i don't fight people," Sans said, digging at a nonexistent wad of earwax with his pinkie. "too much work."

Dean lost some of the tension that had been building up. "Thanks for clarifying. But, that doesn't answer why you're here in the first place."

Sans shrugged. "someone from another world summoned me out of a video game with their magic science powers, and i thought id take a look around the city."

My heart froze.

He was saying it? Just like that?

"I understand if you're trying to lighten the mood, but please, it'd be easier for people to help you if you tell the truth. Do you want to–" Dean glanced at the teacher, who was speaking softly into their phone "–talk to the PRT? They'll get here soon. If the crowd of people is bothering you…"

"Refuge in audacity," Aeon muttered. "He's toying with us, the sly bastard."

"dunno who the prt are," Sans said, "but it sounds better than being back in school. just be warned, i've been told i'm a sly bastard."

Dean gave a relieved smile, then turned to the teacher, even as my heart rate doubled. "Can I–"

They passed the phone over, and Dean handed it over to Sans. 10 minutes later, PRT vans were arriving outside.

On the way out the door, Sans looked around the classroom one last time.

"hey, maybe I'll see some of you guys again later," he said with a wink. I didn't miss the fact his eyes had stopped on me again for a brief moment. "seeya."

"So– give me a moment," Lisa rubbed her temples. "The video game magic science thing was real?"

"'Magic is real' is pretty out there, but yeah. He's from an obscure game called Undertale," I said. It felt strange calling Undertale obscure, but if I was one of the two people in the world who knew about it, that would count, right? "He's from a race of benevolent monsters who were sealed underground by humans."

"And you summoned him with this Ethereal Forge thing."

"Accidentally. I don't get to pick what or who I get. And it's the Celestial Forge, not the Ethereal Forge."

She hummed and nodded.

After class, we'd found an empty classroom that we could have a private discussion in. I'd explained everything– mostly everything– to her. Not the possession thing and the Worm thing – those weren't things I was ready to tell anyone about just yet – but the Celestial Forge was something I needed to get off my chest.

A whole lot of power had just been dumped on me, and there was no way in hell I was going to have enough responsibility to manage it on my own. What was the saying? Do what the law says and do what you think is right, and if there's a conflict between the two, get a second opinion? I couldn't exactly go to the law here, so Lisa would have to be my second opinion.

Was I putting too much trust into a person I'd only just met? Yes, I absolutely the fuck was. In a few weeks or months, there was a very good chance I could become the most powerful person on the planet. A random high-schooler I knew basically nothing about wasn't the worst I could do, but it was pretty far from optimal.

Did I regret telling her? Not yet, and that was good enough for me.

Aeon was curled up on the floor, oddly silent. I'd set my phone down next to it, in case it wanted to be able to type a message to Lisa, but it hadn't touched it at all. It looked almost dazed, as much as a robot lizard could be. Honestly, I felt the same. How was I supposed to react to my power summoning a live person, much less Sans?

"So," Lisa grinned, "I was right about you being super-tinker-Eidolon-Dauntless. It's just that your powers are based on fiction, too."

"I know, I know, I should be more confident in myself. It's just… suspension of disbelief, you know? Who would actually listen to me if I said that without something to back it up?" Not just the Celestial Forge. I'd sound like a conspiracy theorist if I tried to talk about Cauldron or Scion.

"You know, I think someone might actually be convinced not to believe you if you keep talking about how unbelievable it is."

Aeon finally moved, typing a message letter by letter. 'Maybe you should only shit on yourself every third sentence instead of every second one.'

The heat – the roll – came and went without issue. Two units of time, each representing 100 'Choice Points'. Not that I had much choice in any of this.

"Besides," Lisa continued, "it's not like Scion or Eidolon came from nowhere. They probably woke up with powers one day and had to convince people that yeah, they're just as strong as they say they are."

I opened my mouth to retort, but she covered it with a finger.

"Shoosh. We're being confident, today."

I closed my mouth again.

"So," she asked, "are you still planning to go out caping on the weekend? Or did seeing that skeleton guy… rattle you too much?"

Aeon groaned.

"I'll probably still go out," I said, ignoring the pun. "The more I put it off, the less likely I'll be to eventually do it."

"Can I come too?" She asked, eyes gleaming. "You have four extra suits, right? I could use one of them."

"Well, I'd need to refit one of them for you, and you'd need to practise with it first, but sure. You can go out with me."

Her eyes flickered to the door, and a wide smile spread across her face. She grabbed my hands. "Then it's a date! I promise, you won't regret it!"

"...Am I interrupting something?" Someone asked.

I whipped around.

Panacea was standing in the doorway, arms folded.

"You– it's not–" I stammered.

"Nope!" Said Lisa, pulling me into a one-armed hug. "We were just talking about our weekend plans. We're thinking of going out around town, having a good time. You know?"

She was telling the full truth about what we'd been planning, of course. It didn't stop me from ducking my head, blushing at the implication.

"I need to talk to–" she paused "–Brianne alone, alright?"

…Did she not remember my name? Maybe I would've been more offended if I hadn't just stolen the name from someone else.

"Okay~" Lisa said, "just don't do anything untoward to my partner, okay?"

I covered my face with my hands. It was a good cover, and it would stop Panacea from thinking she was my cape partner, but…

"I… won't," Panacea muttered.

Lisa beamed at her and skipped out of the room.

"You wanted to talk?" I asked.

"Just give me your hand," she snapped.

"Holding hands?" Aeon said, radiating an aura of smugness. "I can't believe you're already cheating on your girlfriend."

If Panacea wasn't here, I would've thrown something at it. Instead, I just extended my hand, and she took it.

She went still.

"What the hell…?" She murmured.

I ran down the list of my powers, trying to figure out which one could cause a reaction like that. Nothing I could think of.

"What's wrong?" I asked, pulling my hand back.

"How did you activate your corona pollentia?" She demanded.

Oh. The Armsmaster power. Duh.

Which meant I did have a shard in my head, mucking with my emotions. Great. Just what I needed.

"I told you, the mouths and stuff are parahuman powers," I lied. "I'm a cape."

"Your corona pollentia was not active before."

"How do you know that wasn't some sort of weird stranger power? I'm mainly a tinker, but I have a few unrelated minor powers too, and there's no guarantee I know what any given thing does."

Her eyebrows furrowed. "So you're saying you're one of those grab-bag capes?"

An excuse. I nodded.

"How do I know the bio-cape didn't cause you to trigger?"

"Is there any indication of that? Other than the corona pollentia, has anything else changed?" I asked. She still didn't look swayed, so I swallowed past the lump in my throat and continued. "Besides, if it were true, what event around that time would've caused them to panic and treat me in a way that'd cause a 'trigger event'?"

She clenched her jaw and looked away, the implication hanging over her like a guillotine. "...You said you couldn't go to the PRT. Is that because of your cluster-mates?"

Panacea knew what a 'cluster-mate' was? Though, with Victoria 'Cape-Nerd' Dallon for a sister, maybe it would've been more surprising if she hadn't.

"Short answer, yes," I said. Lying to the person who can sense neurology was dumb, but she'd need to be in contact with me to notice it. Lying about a hypothetical cluster was probably even dumber, especially if it started a search for the 'cluster-mates'.

Personality bleed from hypothetical cluster members was at least an excuse for why I was acting so weird. It probably wouldn't cover memory loss – I'd have to look into cluster bleed-through in known clusters – but it'd give me an easy excuse to throw off suspicion.

"I still think you're underselling how much the PRT can help," she said.

"Trust me, they can't." They won't help, when they realise what I am.

She looked like she wanted to protest, but she didn't.

"Um, if it makes you feel better, you're not the only one I have dirt on," I said.

She grimaced. Shit. I should've probably just tried not to remind her of that. Sleep deprivation wasn't fun.

"Sorry," I finished meekly.

"I'll be blunt. I don't trust you. I'm going to leave you alone for now, since you're blackmailing me–"

"Sorry."

"–but, I'm not going to fuck you over like you're threatening to fuck me over."

"We're doing this because you threatened to fuck us over," Aeon hissed.

I didn't relay what it said.

"The infection won't flare up for another week, so you can check back with me again then."

I nodded. I'd already messed up enough with her. The least I could do was to play by her rules, check in with her every once in a while. It'd keep her placated, if nothing else.

"Doormat," said Aeon.

Basic decency.

"Door. Mat."

"Is that all?" I asked, ignoring Aeon.

"That's all. You can go back to your girlfriend or whatever."

My cheeks heated up at the same time the molten-metal feeling heated up my chest. I mumbled something vaguely affirmative and shuffled out of the room.

After I took a power-nap at Lisa's house, we'd set to work refitting one of the suits for her to wear. Even though most of the work was already done, it took until the late afternoon to finish it. As good as Armsmaster's power was, it had a serious downside. When it came to modifying my tech, I had to basically rebuild half the systems since they were so thoroughly interconnected. Resizing a suit didn't take too long, but anything much bigger than that would be hell.

"Alright, ready to take these for a ride, partner-mine?" Lisa teased.

I laughed awkwardly.

"Oh, am I making you uncomfortable? Sorry. I know we just met, and I dunno if you're into girls, but…"

"It's fine," I replied. "It was a good cover. Quick thinking and good acting on your part."

"Like I said, drama club. I'm great at acting."

"Also, I'm not really into anyone."

She raised an eyebrow. "You're aromantic?"

"And asexual," I clarified. I was surprised she knew the term, but wasn't Earth bet more LGBT+ friendly than my Earth? "My bisexual childhood friend stole all of my attraction, and I refused to accept it back."

She snorted at the joke, but mentioning my friend just made bittersweet feelings boil up in my chest. I was never going to see her again, listen to her talk about VsBattles or watch her stream a game over Discord late into the night.

I'd never do any more roleplaying with my other friends over discord, either, making stupid inside jokes about rats or getting a bit too enthusiastic about putting our characters through horrible things.

Lisa's face fell, too, as my mood darkened.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I remember what our homeroom teacher said when she introduced you."

I looked away. "...I don't."

"You… don't?"

I took a breath. Saying that had been spur of the moment, but even just ten second later, I already regretted it. Did I want to lie to her? No. But, could I tell her the truth?

"To… to oversimplify," I said, wringing my hands, "you know how sometimes, powers make people… act different? Like Labyrinth or Bi– Hellhound."

"Or Cinereal, right?"

Who? The name sounded familiar but I couldn't place it offhand, so I just nodded.

"In essence, when I got my powers, I lost a lot of my long-term memory in exchange for other stuff." Technically true, but misleading enough that it felt like acid on my tongue.

She stared at me, eyes wide and pitying. "I'm… I'm sorry."

I forced the corners of my mouth up into a smile. "It's okay, I mostly can't miss what I mostly don't remember." My voice stayed mostly light.

"And hey, you were kinda bitchy before, so I'd say it's an improvement," she said.

It really wasn't. Even if Brianne was 'bitchy', she didn't deserve to be erased. Being irritable after your whole family dies is hardly grounds for a death sentence.

"I guess so," I said instead.

We lapsed into silence for a few moments.

"So!" Lisa clapped her hands. "Mobility suits. Let's bring these outside and we can watch each other trip over ourselves."

I smiled and, this time, it was genuine.

Spoiler: Pre-Edit A/N

Spoiler: (No) Perk/s rolled this chapter

Last edited: Jul 15, 2023

175

Lazypika

Mar 29, 2022

View discussion

Threadmarks Chapter 9

View content

Lazypika

Lazypika

Sleepy...

Apr 1, 2022

#304

A/N: This is an edited version of Chapter 9. Ch1-10 have been edited, anything beyond that is being rewritten.

Original Chapter 9 below:

Spoiler: Chapter 9 (OLD)

Lisa whooped as she careened through the air, her flight pack humming. I followed her, ready to catch her if need be. There shouldn't be a need, hopefully, since the mobility suits were made with safety in mind.

My durability power meant that nothing could damage them. We couldn't test the suits with anything more than pounding them with a sledgehammer or just slamming them into the ground, neither of which even scratched the paint jobs. Even when I'd made thinner and thinner wires for checking the durability, neither of us had been able to damage even the slimmest, flimsiest ones.

Just that alone wouldn't be enough protection, though. Hermetic seals and oxygen recycling were still in the works, so we'd need to watch out for gases or air deprivation. Indestructibility didn't make the suits non-conductive, so electricity and extreme temperatures would still be issues.

The insides of the armour had shock absorbers, but only basic ones. In the same way an indestructible skull wouldn't prevent brain damage, we were still squishy humans. Getting pile-driven would still hurt.

The shock absorbers would mitigate that, even using the excess kinetic energy to add a bit of charge to the suit, but we weren't Alexandria by any means. Even starting or stopping too fast could do serious damage.

Lisa kicked off the old tanker's funnel, sending her hurtling towards the deck. She smashed her hands into the ground in a clumsy handspring, leaving scorch marks on the corroded metal, and launched herself feet-first into the air again. I followed with much more careful movements, catching one of Lisa's flailing hands before she crashed into the water.

"Is this what it's like to be on the moon?" She asked, the suit's speakers only barely capturing her breathlessness.

"More like what it'd be if we were spaceships. These suits are essentially miniaturised ones, after all."

"Coooool," she said.

"Not cool, scary," Aeon gasped out. It had insisted on coming, so it could, quote, 'watch us belly flop like idiots'. So far, all it had done was cling to the back of my suit and scream in a voice so high it sounded like Hatsune Miku had become a soprano in a choir.

"So, what else can these do?" Lisa asked, and I could imagine the goofy grin under her helmet.

"Honestly, the flight and the durability are the main things," I explained. "There's the comms system and basic sensors, of course, and there's the movement-assist neural net, but these are pretty basic. The best way to use these to damage anything would be to just use the flight for extra momentum."

"Still! That's super cool. We're flying around in spaceship suits." She paused. "Wait, could we go into space, once you add the air tanks?"

"Yes, but it'd probably attract far more attention than we'd want." Whether it's from Earth's agencies or something scarier.

She harrumphed, but nodded anyway.

My suit registered an increase in my body heat and pinged my phone, automatically resetting the timer and logging the result. I'd miss that particular function once I took the suit off again.

Was there even a point to doing that any more? I'd almost certainly discovered the pattern. Doing new or interesting things would contribute to heatups. Well, I guess I'd just delete the tracking function if I needed the space.

Lisa took my hand and, slower than her previous pace, led me back over to the ship to sit down. The piloting-assist hadn't learned enough to figure out how to let us sit stably in the air yet, if it even could.

Apparently, us stopping was the signal someone had been waiting for to approach us.

"Oh hey," Aeon said, "it's the guy whose power grows over time and the tinker with ADHD and low self-esteem. Now, where have I heard that one before?"

Dauntless was standing in the air a few metres off the edge of the scuttled ship, and Kid Win was hovering next to him, the bottom of his hoverboard glowing cherry-red.

How did it work? Anti-gravity? I knew enough about artificial gravity to apply it to the inside of a ship, but I had jack and squat on how to use it for anything else. The flight-packs and stabilisers on the suits were more like omnidirectional jetpacks, propelling us with blasts of flame.

I'd nixed most of the danger of having fire shooting out of our limbs and backs, at the cost of the vast majority of the speed. Of course, when the spaceships' top speed was several times the speed of light, even a fraction of it was still damn fast. In my safety lecture to Lisa, I'd been very clear about how much damage they could do up-close.

…With the way she'd been flying, I should probably give her another safety lecture before we tried this anywhere other than the Boat Graveyard.

"...newest heroes!" Lisa said, striking a pose. Wait, had they been talking? Whatever she'd said, it apparently convinced the heroes to land on the boat too.

"Hey, it's always good to see some new heroes on the block," Dauntless said. I caught a glimpse of a warm smile under his helmet.

"I'm getting debuffs from his aura of dad," Aeon grumbled.

"This is our first time going out in costume," Lisa explained. "It's a test drive of the suits we made."

She did a little twirl, showing off the paint-job. The suits were… well, they weren't not aesthetically appealing, but they were a rush job, and most of my aesthetic knowledge was in spaceships, not humanoids. They were painted nicely, sure, but the paint wasn't made for application to metal, so even if it wouldn't peel, it still looked uneven.

Kid Win's armour, on the other hand, looked like it had been designed by a team and then built from the ground up with the intent of looking good. The gold parts of his armour were embossed, gleaming in the sun, and there were several aesthetically-matched guns strapped to his belt.

Dauntless, of course, had empowered equipment that looked like it was made out of solidified lightning, which was just objectively cool as shit.

"Good job on those," said Kid Win. "Most Tinkers' first equipment is usually kludged together from whatever they can salvage."

"Oh, resources weren't really a problem for me. It's more the build times that are holding me back at the moment," I explained, speaking through one of the deeper-voiced mouths on my stomach. The suit's comms system, which I'd spread throughout the suit, picked up the audio and projected it out of my helmet. 6' tall guys were a lot more common than 6' tall girls, after all.

Lisa struck another, more dramatic pose.

"Here we go," sighed Aeon.

"As brother and sister, twin heirs to a Fortune 500 company, we'd had everything we could want from the day we were born. There was nothing we couldn't get, whether it was toys, holidays, or even knowledge," she narrated.

From what I could see of Kid Win's face, he was very, very confused. The hint of Dauntless' mouth I could make out past his helmet was twitching in amusement.

"One day, though, we wanted something money couldn't buy. We wanted to become top scientists, lead our future company from the front. That was the first time we ran into a limit, and by god, we were going to push past it."

Aeon's head was buried in the crook of my neck, groaning, but I couldn't help but smile.

"And so, we studied. For a hundred days and a hundred nights, we locked ourselves in our study-workshop with nothing but books, tools, and an internet connection. Three and a half months later, we emerged, like butterflies from a cocoon, ready to spread our wings and take flight!"

She threw her arms to the sides and raised into the air, wavered, and flipped upside down. I grabbed her and pulled her back upright again.

"So yeah! That's our super secret backstory," she finished.

"How much of it was actually true?" Dauntless asked, bemused.

"I made it up on the spot!" Lisa said cheerily. "We're not even related."

He snorted.

"Hey, if build time is a problem, joining the Wards or Protectorate would give you two access to a good workshop," Kid Win said. "Having high-quality tools can make a serious difference in how fast you can make things, I can tell you from experience."

If not for my situation, the offer would've been very tempting. Unfortunately, it wasn't an option until I somehow learned enough about the original Brianne to answer any questions the PRT would ask.

"Sorry," I said, "I– we– have personal reasons for not wanting to join."

Lisa nodded. "If she joined the Wards, I won't have my partner in un-crime anymore!"

That too. The extra suits would probably be given to PRT troopers, not the random civilian friend I'd made less than a fortnight ago.

Kid Win nodded. "I won't pry but, if things change for you, it'd be great to have a couple more teammates to talk shop with."

"Gallant and Armsmaster aren't enough, huh?" Lisa teased. "Keep going like that and, soon, the local team will just be half Tinkers."

Ignoring the fact that only three of the five people they were referring to were actually tinkers.

I didn't know if a Tinker-only team would be a dream or a nightmare. On one hand, being able to collaborate with a bunch of people and go to them for advice when you have a problem would be fantastic. On the other hand, sharing tools, space, and resources would suck, not to mention the arguments that would break out.

My suit logged 'Heat – Intense – Four units'.

It was another information one. Several disparate fields hit me at once. Sifting. Life support. Warp dust. Crucibles. Soulless clones. Dimensional anchors.

Though I didn't recognise the 'spare bodies' tech or the 'teleportation pillar'... device, I very much recognised what the from-nothing material-gathering techniques were.

It was called Ex Nihilo. A goddamn Minecraft mod. Right after Sans, too. I was going to go feral over shit like this, one of these days.

Only after the heat faded did I realise I'd nearly fallen over, and that Lisa was supporting me.

"Are you alright?" Dauntless asked, worried.

"I– yeah. Power thing," I replied.

This wasn't going to be great if something like this hit me during a fight. Four units of power was nearly half a minute. I'd be able to struggle through something more intense than this casual conversation, but it would suck.

"I was going to ask if the two of you wanted to come on our patrol, spend some time with some more experienced heroes, but if your power is making you feel ill, I won't push," Dauntless said.

"I should be fine, now. If something happens, I trust–" shit, neither of us had cape names yet "–my partner to help." The arm wrapped around my shoulders squeezed me tighter.

"I'm getting the hang of my suit, so I think I'm ready to graduate to flying around the city."

"So, if you'll have us…"

Dauntless nodded. "We'd be happy to have you along."

The patrol was remarkably action-free. It seemed like Dauntless and Kid Win had been doing some sort of mentoring thingy, something that most members of the Protectorate apparently did, and they'd been on a safer route.

Lisa had carried most of the conversation, talking about this and that cape thing, coming up with skits or more fake backstories for the various heroes and villains around the town.

After another hour or two, the patrol came to a close. Lisa and I slipped off to a secluded area to pack our suits away.

They were full-body suits of hardened armour, but when they were properly taken apart and packed up, they weren't much bigger than a basketball. Lisa had struggled to set up and pack hers down; I had to remind myself that it was only so intuitive to me because of my powers.

When we went back to her house, I'd done the work of disassembling two of the other three suits, breaking them back down into their base components. After that, I'd left two suits with Lisa and brought the other one on the bus back to the apartment with me.

Thing is, I was left with nearly twice the materials I'd started with. They were going to fit into the box just fine, for now, but if I made anything else, I'd have to contend with either having five of them floating about or an excess of spare parts to deal with.

Most Tinkers had to deal with not having enough parts, not having too many.

There was a third option. If I made something 3x smaller, I could use Workaholic's other option to scale it back up to the proper size. The problem with that was, while I had a power that was perfectly suited for that, I wasn't at a place in my tinker cycle where I could do precision work on that level.

This would all be a bit less of a problem if I didn't have the durability power. If my stuff wasn't going to break down, that meant anyone who got ahold of it would be able to use it, not just any tinker who could keep it running. Even if my tech level was going to be getting better and better over time, obsolete stuff would still very much be able to cause damage.

Until I had a better place to store stuff than Lisa's basement or my underwear drawer, I'd need to be careful in what I did and didn't make. The last heat had given me something like that, stone obelisks that people could teleport between. If I could get one in a secluded enough place, we'd be able to come and go as we pleased.

The obelisks themselves, however, were 1m square on each side, and I'd need to get into Ex Nihilo's matter creation to get the base materials to make it. I could probably shrink it down with Armsmaster's power, but there was only so much I could do when trying to apply a tech power to a…

…

It was magic. These things were actual, literal magic. I couldn't deny it. They were magical pillars that used dimensional magic to magically shift people through space.

The Celestial Forge, after all, was about crafting. That included magical crafting, not just technology. Enchanted items, materials with mystical properties, alchemy… even magic-using 'assistants', like Sans.

And here I was, in a world that leaned more towards sci-fi than anything. The closest Worm came to magic was in Wildbow's brainstorming for its first draft, but even before the character Runechild was scrapped, her powers had been relegated to the realm of "seems like magic but actually isn't".

I hopped off the bus. Nobody had noticed I had tinkertech in my bag and, duh, of course they wouldn't, it was inside my zipped-up bag. But, having my costume on my person was like having a bunch of hard cash in your wallet. It's not like anyone's going to realise you have that much money, but you can't help but be paranoid.

Today would be the first time in a few days I hadn't spent the night with Lisa. As much as it made me feel bad, I was a bit relieved. She was a great friend, for the short time I'd known her, but I only had so much social battery. Plus, she was coming on a little strong.

"You were really just that lonely, huh?" Aeon said dryly. "First person you meet, you latch on and tell all your secrets to."

Well… yeah, but…

Lisa was just a genuinely nice person and supportive friend. She was always enthusiastic, picking up the slack in conversations where I didn't have anything to say. She was willing to listen to me, to help, even with things like the hours of mobility suit crafting we'd done.

"Having a friend is good for you, but don't you think you've been a little too gung-ho about it?" It continued. "You don't know what kinda baggage she's keeping under the surface."

"Sure! But-!" I'd needed someone who'd be able to help me, and Lisa had. She could give a second opinion on anything I wanted to do. Wasn't it logical to want that?

"Stop trying to justify it. You were just lonely, and she was nice to you," Aeon said.

I didn't have a response to that.

Intense heat came and left, leaving me with no idea what I'd just gotten. Again. Still, only one unit of power meant it shouldn't be that major.

"You got a spaceship for that much, remember?" Aeon said.

…Shit. Right, I couldn't let my guard down.

I pulled open the apartment door, ready to just lie in bed and scroll through PHO or Tumblr (because I refused to use Facebook) for a while. Maybe I could finally crack open Brianne's computer, or see if I could get into the guardian's room, find out more about him. I still didn't even know his name.

"hey, is there any normal milk in here?" Sans asked from where he was lounging on the sofa.

…

What.

"...Uh. No, sorry. Both the people who live here are lactose-intolerant." Which had SUCKED to learn. Dairy products were objectively some of humanity's greatest inventions. Now, I couldn't have more than a little bit of any of them without getting a stomach ache. "Sans, why are you in my house?"

The skeleton winked. "what can i say? i'm great at 'befriending' legal guardians."

He didn't follow that up in any way, just continued to watch TV.

"So, uh…" What could I even say? How could I begin to ask about the fact I'd brought him here?

"don't worry, i didn't exactly come from a nice place," he said. "sucks to leave alphys by herself, but eh. nothin' either of us coulda done."

Just Alphys? Not his brother, not his joke-sharing friend, not the bartender or his boss or any of his neighbours, just the person who was implied to be friends with him at the end of the game?

The game where you could kill or spare major characters during your playthrough.

Oh.

He scratched his ass. "welp, if you don't have milk, do you have any burgs? i could use a good burg right about now."

Still wildly out of my depth, I just nodded.

When I went to make the burger, all the ingredients were already set out. If that wasn't strange enough, the patty only took a few seconds to cook through. All in all, it had taken about thirty seconds to make. Was that from the one-unit power I just got? Hopefully – the alternative was that someone was fucking with me.

Only a minute after he'd asked, I sat down next to him and handed him the burger.

"woah, quick service and a big burg," he said. "thanks, kid. i owe you one."

"No problem," I muttered. Which wasn't correct. Of course there was a problem.

Not only had I already possessed and essentially killed someone, not only had I probably fucked up Panacea's mental health, but now I was a kidnapper, too. What right did I have to take someone away from their home for, what, having him help me build stuff?

"Not your fault, dumbass. None of this is your fault," Aeon murmured into my ear. "Other than the Panacea thing, that was all you."

Thanks, Aeon.

"yeah, the lizard's right," Sans added. "sometimes, you just gotta stop caring about these things, ya know?"

"So you can see it too?" Normally, only people with stands could see other stands.

"yep. it didn't seem happy to see me, though, heh," he said, and did not elaborate on how he could see and hear it.

Neither me nor Aeon had a reply to the rest of his remark. How do you explain to someone that, in another world, they're a meme-status character?

"You never answered her question. How did you get here?" Aeon demanded instead.

"i'm good at finding shortcuts."

Aeon vibrated in annoyance, like the buzzing of a phone. "Why are you here?"

"why? you want me to leave?" He said.

"No– I– argh!" Aeon jumped from my shoulder and stormed off. If it was more than a foot long, maybe it would've had more effect.

"Sorry, Aeon's kinda… yeah," I said.

He waved a gloved hand. "eh, fuhgeddaboudit."

We lapsed into silence again. Several minutes later, he started to snore. Looks like that conversation wasn't continuing any time soon.

I'd gotten distracted, hadn't I? I put my plate on the table and went to my room, where Aeon was sulking on the bed.

Tinker knowledge made the computer pathetically easy to break into. Why hadn't I done this sooner? There were a lot of files on it, most of them useless. It'd take ages to sort through, so I might as well get started now. I put them in reverse chronological order – older files would be less relevant to me.

After half an hour of searching, I silently shut down the computer. If it had just been boring, I could've dealt with that with time, music, and medication.

Instead, I had to read through the cherished memories of a dead girl.

It was informative. I couldn't deny that. But after one too many photos of a slightly younger Brianne hanging out with her friends or hugging her now-dead family…

Feeling ill, I moved away from the computer. I'd finish looking through it later.

Breaking into the guardian's room probably wasn't the best thing to do when I was already feeling shitty, but if I was going to keep my cover, I couldn't afford not to snoop.

The lock was easy to pick. It was a simple mechanism, especially when I knew how to make hyper-advanced security systems.

I'd gotten a glimpse of it before, but now that I could look around it from the inside, I could see exactly how spartan it was. There was a bed, a messy desk with a computer to one side, a set of mostly-empty shelves, a closet, and a stack of cardboard boxes. Had he just moved in or something?

"There's dust on the boxes," Aeon pointed out from my shoulder. "They've been here a while, even if there's handprints in the dust."

Had he just not gotten around to unpacking them for that long? I could relate.

"You look through them, I'll check the desk drawers," Aeon said as heat came and went. I nodded and got to work, careful to disturb as little dust as I could.

There wasn't anything interesting in them. Practical clothes, more tools, some dog-eared books… Unlike the shelf of knick-knacks in Brianne's room, there wasn't a single thing I could see that would have sentimental value. Even the books were all college-level psychology textbooks.

I put everything back, with the photos I'd taken during the process as reference to make sure I left it how I found it. However well the guardian remembered exactly how his stuff organised, I didn't want to risk it.

"Hey," called Aeon. "I found something." It was skimming through a letter, phrases appearing on its screens as it read. "It's about you. Apparently, your guardian – your cousin – agreed to take you in until you turned 18 after your family was killed."

Killed?

"Does it mention how they died?"

"Killed by a cape," it said. "Doesn't say which one, just that it was a mugging gone wrong."

Killed by a cape.

I shivered.

"The cape was sent to prison, apparently," it added.

"I guess that's one less thing to worry about."

"Do NOT," Aeon snapped, "taunt Murphy."

Wasn't it also taunting Murphy by saying that?

"Shut. I'm still reading."

It skimmed to the bottom of the letter, then flipped it back over to start from the top again.

Then, it froze, its screens going blank.

"What? What is it?" I asked. Did it mention the villain at the top? Was it one I knew? Was there something weird about the date or, even worse, an indicator that Brianne had triggered?

Silently, it flipped the letter around.

The bottom of my stomach dropped out.

There at the top, the guardian's name was written, with no room for misinterpretation.

Colin Wallis.

A/N: Bri and Lisa M now test the mobility suits on the wrecked ship in the Boat Graveyard instead of leaving scorch marks all over the city proper. I also swapped out Simple Void World for Waystones and removed the Jumper has Voted freebie.

Spoiler: Pre-Edit A/N

Spoiler: Perk/s rolled this chapter

Last edited: Jul 15, 2023

220

Lazypika

Apr 1, 2022

View discussion

Threadmarks Imposter Syndrome - Orientation 1.x (Interlude; The Man Who Would Be King)

View content

Lazypika

Lazypika

Sleepy...

Apr 9, 2022

#371

A/N: This is an edited version of Chapter 10 Orientation 1.x. Ch1-10 have been edited, anything beyond that is being rewritten.

Original Chapter 10 Orientation 1.x below:

Spoiler: Chapter 10/Orientation 1.x (OLD)

This was a mistake. Why had he come here?

The sound of murmuring rose as the service ended and people filed out in groups of two or three. He was one of the first to leave, quietly slipping through the doors to head to the parking lot.

How many years had it been since he'd last been in a church? His mother's funeral had been… '09? So, two years, give or take a few months.

He had nearly skipped that one too.

Out of the crowd, he was the only one who hadn't brought a car for the procession. All he had was his personal motorbike. It was sturdy and reliable, even if it had accumulated damage over the years. Eventually it'd be replaced by a newer model, but for now, it was his.

The procession stopped. There were very few parking spots left, but after a few circles of the area, he found one between two wider cars that he could fit in. He flipped the bike's kickstand and walked to where the rest of the group had gathered.

There was someone wailing near the head of the group. He grimaced. There were other people who could deal with her better than he could, at least right at that moment–he was going to be doing what he could to assist later.

It didn't make the horrible feeling of helplessness sting less.

A creaking sound approached him, and he turned. James–a different James from the one being rolled out of the hearse–wheeled up to him.

"James. It's been a while," he said in lieu of a greeting.

The other man gave a pained smile. "It's been a long time since you last called me 'Dad'."

"We're both adults, now," he replied. "If you wanted to be my father, you should've started when I was ten years old, alone at home, with nobody to talk to but my journal."

James looked away, the remnants of the attempted smile dropping from his face. "You're making the same mistakes I did, though, aren't you? You're, what, thirty-four now? And you already have white hairs growing in."

"Thirty-five," he corrected, "and putting my job first is part of the reason I didn't try to start a family."

Were those tears glistening in James' eyes? He turned away to let the man preserve some dignity.

"At least if you did," James said, "when you're a broken-down old man like me, you'd have a child to talk to."

"And that child would be just as distant from me as I am from you," he replied.

James sighed, and his wheelchair creaked as he leaned back in it. "I'm guessing that this is absolutely vital work that you can't ease up on without serious consequences?" Rhetorical question. Even if the other man didn't know his son, he knew himself, and he knew the traits he would've passed down.

"I'm an investigator and Watchdog liaison for the PRT." Lie. He'd wanted a cover as a PRT technician, but he'd done a criminal psychology degree, not an engineering one.

James just sighed again, sounding as tired as he felt.

"If I slacked off, people would die. Innocent people." Truth. Every hour he didn't spend at work was one more possible tragedy he could've prevented, one more horrible aftermath he'd have to stand in the wake of, unable to do a goddamn thing.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw James rubbing his eye with the heel of his hand. "And one day, Colin, you'll be-"

"-A broken-down old man like you," he interrupted, "but at least I'd be a broken-down old man in a slightly better world." More lies. Even if he somehow survived to be an old man, there wasn't some mythical point where the monsters would stop attacking, where everything would reach a peaceful utopia and all the world's problems would be fixed.

James just shook his head, silent.

The distant sobbing turned to shrieking, and James twitched as the girl cried out for the boy who'd been named after him. "That poor young lady," he muttered. "Her whole family…"

Killed by a villain.

Echolalia, who'd traveled to Boston from Brockton Bay only months before. A petty thief.

He couldn't have known to do anything. Her group hadn't been killers. Prioritizing attacks on the Empire 88 had been the logical move.

This was one of the other reasons he hadn't bothered trying to start a family. Easier to stay objective about things, this way. Less to use against him.

The crowd undulated as several people pulled a screaming, thrashing girl back from where the coffins were being lowered into the ground. It took several minutes for her shouting to break back down into weeping.

This was a mistake. He shouldn't have come here. He couldn't be the one who dealt with this. All he'd do was hurt her more.

But he was going to have to be. Even if James–the girl's uncle–had been in a position to take care of a child, he didn't think he'd have a choice then, either.

Too many times, he'd been stuck in the fallout of a catastrophe, the inability to help burning him from the inside out.

He'd be damned if he was going to let it happen again.

He'd had doubts since the moment he'd made his decision, and the look on the social worker's–Mary Silver's–face was only making them stronger.

"I do wish there was someone better for this, but…" she trailed off.

"I know that I'm far from an ideal caregiver, but I'm both her closest able-bodied relative and the one who lives nearest to her. Besides, with her 18th birthday so soon, she wouldn't need to stay with me for very long."

The girl's parents had left her both their house and enough money to live on for a few years, so he'd hardly be throwing her in the deep end when she moved out again. He'd been able to make do with less.

"If she enrolls in a new school in Brockton Bay to finish her education-"

"-Then I'd be able to house her until the end of the school year."

Her face grew a little sadder. "Please, don't look at this like a puzzle to be solved. Ms Steele is a child, a grieving one. She doesn't just need a place to stay, she needs support, someone who can help her through these difficult times."

"Like you said, there's no better option. With her outbursts, she can't stay with James Wallis, and you said yourself that she'd do poorly in foster care. It's only a small improvement, but it's the best we're going to get."

He knew the benefits of small improvements better than anyone. Of facing down an insurmountable enemy and being just a little bit faster, having gear that's just a little bit better than it could've been.

"I know, I know, but…" Ms Silver rubbed one temple. "I just fear for Brianne's wellbeing."

"So do I," he said. He also knew better than anyone that he'd make a poor parental figure.

She sighed and stood up. "I suppose you'd better get the chance to speak to her."

He stood too and followed her through the building's unfamiliar halls.

Brianne Steele swiped an arm across her eyes as they walked into the room. It didn't hide the fact that her face was blotchy, or the fact that the hand holding her phone was shaking.

"Miss Steele," Ms Silver said gently, "this is Mr Wallis. He's going to be your caregiver for the next few months."

Brianne glared up at him, and he met her eyes. After several seconds, she looked away again.

"I can't say that I'll be as supportive as others might've been," he said, "but I can give you a place to stay until you're ready to move out on your own."

More time passed, half a minute or so, before she gave a tight nod.

Hannah had been kind enough to help him set up the spare room in his apartment for Brianne's use. He'd moved his boxes into his own bedroom and set up some flat-packed furniture in the ex-storage room.

He adjusted his backpack as Brianne looked around the room.

"It's small," she said.

"It's what I have."

She grit her teeth and started to unpack her belongings.

It was clear that she wasn't happy with the situation. That was a no-brainer. If Hannah were still over, would she be able to cheer the girl up? Maybe, maybe not. Point was, he certainly didn't know how, not when she was in such a delicate state.

Brianne fumbled with her computer, trying to get everything plugged in to the right places.

"Need any help with that?" He asked. If nothing else, tech was something he knew.

"No. Go away," she snapped.

"Fine," he said, walking out of the room.

"And don't come back! I don't want to fucking be here, and the less I have to see your stupid face, the better!" She yelled after him.

"You'd prefer to be in foster care?" He asked. There was no response. "If you don't want me around, fine. I've been over the laws surrounding this, and while I'll need to be present most days, I'll be leaving early and coming home late."

"I'll make sure to sleep in, then," she said.

"That's fine." So long as he still met the legal requirements, he'd try to give her space.

In fact, that was a relief. He didn't have to make anything more than minor changes in his schedule, so there'd be much less risk of a crisis starting while he was occupied with her. Best of both worlds - the trolley had been moved onto a third track, so to speak.

"I-"

He turned back to Brianne, who'd taken a step towards him. "Hm? Do you need something?"

Her eyes narrowed and she turned away. "I need you to leave."

"I am."

He left the apartment, feeling Brianne's gaze on his back. The backpack was left unopened, until he arrived back at the PHQ and put the helmet inside back on its armor stand.

Even if she hadn't been so hostile, telling her about his other identity would've been a bad idea, anyway. Her family had been killed by a Tinker, and she'd probably blame him for not stopping the villain as much as he blamed himself.

Colin balled up the plastic bags and dropped them in the trash.

"You're not keeping those?" Brianne needled.

"Why would I?" He asked. "There's no reason to have them take up space just on the off chance I'll need them."

"Come on, what kind of an adult are you if you don't have a plastic bag filled with other plastic bags? My parents had, like, three of those things."

"I'm not your parents. I don't like to hang onto things I don't need anymore."

"You aren't my parents," she snarled, "because my parents would've at least tried to sympathize, or give me some support, or something."

This was going to go swimmingly, he was sure.

"If you wanted support, why didn't you just ask?" Not that he would've been any good at giving it, but he could've tried.

"Fucking when? You're never around!"

"At your request," he ground out. "You were the one who asked me to go away, remember?"

She set her jaw and looked away.

When she didn't reply, he took a breath and continued. "You're being irrational. You're expecting one thing while asking for another."

"Well- I- I'm allowed to be irrational! I'm allowed to want my family to not be fucking dead!"

"And that won't be allowed forever," he said. "It was a terrible thing that happened, but you're going to have to get over it eventually. You don't need your parents to become someone worthwhile."

Wrong thing to say.

Brianne's eyes went wild with fury, and she charged at him, screaming something unintelligible. As dour as the thought was, at least he knew how to deal with this. He dodged her first wild swing and caught her arm, pushing her onto the ground in an armlock.

"I would recommend not doing that again," he snapped. "Right now, my patience is wearing thin. I'm doing you a favor by letting you stay here. Don't squander it."

No. He should at least try to be the bigger person here. He stood up, and she shot to the other side of the room, breathing hard.

"Do you want me to stay or leave?" He asked, trying to keep his voice calm.

"Fuck off," she panted.

"And you do mean it this time?"

"I mean it! Fuck off!"

He did.

One of the neighbors, who'd heard the shouting, was standing outside. A brief explanation of the situation made the man leave, shooting one last worried look towards his apartment. He felt the same, if for different reasons.

He shouldn't have done this, and now, it was too late to go back on it.

Dragon tapped her chin. "It sounds like you tried to approach things from a more logical point of view when what she needed was an emotional one."

"Everything I said was true," he spoke around the wrench in his mouth as he screwed the last panel back into place. "You think I should've lied to her?"

"I think you should've approached things more softly," she said. "From what I can tell, she was too proud to admit to a stranger that she did actually want someone to comfort her. You barged right through that, hit her directly in the dignity."

If she didn't want me to do that, she should've used a more logical argument, he didn't say. Even he knew that wouldn't go over well.

"You can't relate to that at all?" She asked.

He put down his screwdriver, pulled the wrench from his mouth, and carefully started tightening the bolts. "That's different. She's a woman, she's allowed to be vulnerable."

"Colin! That's-" Dragon took a breath. "...Something we'll talk about later. We're talking about your cousin, right now."

"What? It's what society expects of-"

"Later."

He sighed. 'Later' wasn't going to be a fun conversation to have.

"Does she have any friends at school?" Dragon asked.

"I don't know," he admitted. "I've tried to be hands-off, like she asked. I didn't want to pry when she clearly didn't- when she didn't seem to want to talk to me."

"So, in the worst-case scenario, she has no support system at all, right now. She tried reaching out to you to get what she was missing, and you rebuffed her."

"Not on purpose. She-"

"-hadn't communicated her issues well enough, I know. But, from her perspective, she tried to reach out, and you rejected it."

Hell of a way to 'reach out'. He didn't say that one, either.

"What should I do, then?" He asked instead.

"You know I'm not exactly a people-person either. I'm probably not the best person to ask about this."

He looked over his halberd. Everything seemed to be in order there, at least, so he put it back on the rack with the others. Dragon gave him a look when he swept his tools onto the floor and kicked his feet up on his workbench.

"I'd be surprised if you were a people-person–you wouldn't exactly have much experience talking to people in person."

He regretted saying that even before she gave an awkward half-smile.

"Geez, I'm sorry," he muttered. Good job, Colin.

"It's fine, really," she said, not that it made things fine.

"Either way," he said, pulling away from that topic, "I trust your judgment. It'd take a lot to be worse than I am at interpersonal stuff."

She snorted.

"Well," she said, "I think you should just try to follow her lead on this. If she doesn't want to bring the argument up, don't bring it up. If she does, apologize. Try to sympathize with her."

"Trying to follow her lead is what got me into this situation."

"See what I mean about not being a people person?" Dragon joked.

"Well, it's better than whatever I would've come up with."

There was a lull in the conversation.

"So," Dragon spoke up, "how is that nanobranch disintegration technology coming along?"

"Well, I've been having a bit of an issue with…"

Brianne flinched when he entered the kitchen, which was an excellent sign about how this was going to go.

"Morning," he said.

Her replying "Morning" was flat, emotionless, a stark contrast to the anger that had been simmering under the surface every time he'd seen her previously.

"You planning to put away the shopping?" He asked after a moment. Stupid question, of course she was. Why else would she be putting away the shopping as they spoke?

"Mm."

As he spoke, at least.

What should he say, though? What could he say that wouldn't make things worse?

"You have any homework to do?" He tried.

She shook her head and got back to sorting out the groceries. With no better ideas, he just watched her from the kitchen doorway. She didn't seem to want to broach the topic of the argument, so he didn't either.

Brianne turned to the refrigerator to put the carrots in the vegetable drawer. Her face looked oddly red. Was she embarrassed? Probably not that - she seemed more jumpy, if anything.

"Everything alright?" He asked. "You look a bit flushed."

"'M fine," she muttered.

Was she sick? He touched a hand to her forehead. Warm, much warmer than regular body heat.

She flinched away from him. Did she think he was going to fight her again? He'd only done that because she'd tried to attack him first. All he'd done was de-escalate.

"Brianne, you're feverish," he clarified. "Did you catch something?"

Finally, she turned to look at him, staring at his face for several seconds. Assessing him to see if he was a threat? Her expression, like her voice, was deliberately flat. The glimmer of fear in her eyes was still obvious.

"Do you have any other symptoms?" He added.

"Tiredness?" Her voice came out as a question rather than a statement, like she was asking even herself if it was true.

Something had happened, whether it was the argument or whatever was going on with her at school. Something had happened, and now, she was acting differently. Acting scared, as if she was expecting to have to bolt at any moment.

Why had she reacted like that? What could've caused-

He remembered the helmet he'd neglected to show her, the explanation he'd been planning to give about serial powers and second generation capes.

…Oh.

Shit.

And if the argument–if he–had been the one to cause it…

"I see," he said, his throat dry. "In that case, get some bed rest, and I'll check back on you tomorrow." Ideally, she'd take the concern as proof he wasn't planning to restart the argument.

As for the day-long break… he needed time to think. Research. He still had access to those Parahuman Studies PDFs, didn't he?

"Thanks," she murmured, relieved. Good, things were going… not as poorly as they could've been.

This had all been a terrible idea.

If his fears were right, then there was a very real chance of her going out to pick a fight, whether as a hero or as...

Or to scavenge for parts, if she'd gotten a variation of his power.

"Thank me by looking after yourself," he said.

Should he call her out? His guess might not even be correct. She hadn't been checked for a corona pollentia–as notoriously difficult as it was to tell the difference between an active one and an inactive one with regular technology, it'd be important to know if she even just had the potential to trigger. Hell, she'd only lived with him for a couple of months, and they'd only interacted for a sum total of a few hours, maybe. This was all just conjecture.

He'd keep it vague, then–she was definitely using the tiredness as an excuse for something, so he could work with that.

"And," he said, "if you want to tell me what's actually going on, I'd be ready to hear you out."

She went still. Bullseye, it seemed.

There wasn't anything he could think of saying that he didn't suspect wouldn't make things worse, so he just walked out of the room, a storm of worries spinning through his mind.

He'd been planning to relax over the weekend. Give his body time to recover, catch up on the shows he hadn't had time to watch during the past few weeks. The city's villain elements had been in a lull of activity, so it was time he could afford himself.

With the realization that he could've been a major factor in a trigger event… There wasn't much he could do other than throw himself into his work, let the altered state of mind his power brought distract him from his worries.

Procrastination through Tinker stuff. At least it was a productive sort of procrastination, as much of an oxymoron as that was.

Dragon had been disappointed that their plans to watch the latest episode of C.R.U.X together had fallen through, but he hadn't been able to bring himself to tell her why.

It had just been the practical decision to make, not telling her. If it came out that he had contributed to a new cape's trigger event, that would be disastrous for him. That's why he didn't say anything.

(If there had been a tightness in his chest at the thought of admitting it to her, it was just because of the potential PR trouble. That was all.)

Even after losing track of time and spending the entire night working, the next day came all too soon.

Despite the fact he'd trained himself to push past his hesitation a long time ago, combat was a whole different ball game compared to social interaction. Still, he turned the key and walked into the apartment after only a short pause.

Brianne was as jumpy as she had been the previous day. She'd frozen when he'd taken her temperature, and she'd kept her distance from him as much as she'd been able to without making it obvious. He'd let her move away–experience and PR seminars had taught him that he shouldn't crowd her if she was feeling distressed or threatened.

He hadn't apologized yesterday, and he regretted letting it slip his mind. Should he do it now? Save it until she seemed ready to talk about it? It's not like he knew what 'seemed ready to talk about it' would even look like. Right now would have to do.

He'd have to be careful about this. Charging straight ahead without putting more than a moment's thought into what he was saying wasn't going to work out.

Best to start simple.

"I'm sorry," he said.

She blinked. It seemed she hadn't expected him to apologize.

When it became apparent that she didn't have anything to say, he continued. "I've been thinking about what I said last week. While I still stand by the points I made, I worded them poorly, and some of the things I said weren't necessary at all."

There. That was the truth. No excuses or justifications.

Brianne stared at the floor, chewing over her words. She eventually settled on mumbling "S'fine. Rather not think about it."

Fuck.

Fifteen years ago, he hadn't wanted to think about things, either.

(He still didn't.)

There was a chance this was confirmation bias. Trauma was hardly exclusive to capes, no matter how much it felt like it with the company he tended to keep. Still, with that chance becoming slimmer and slimmer, he wasn't going to risk that.

"If what we said was so bad to you that you can't even think about it a week later, then it's exactly the sort of thing I'm worried about."

She winced, still not meeting his eyes. What had he done? Was it the tone? He thought he was trying to express sympathy, show that he'd been worried for her. Had that not come across, or did she just not want it?

Did she think he was lying?

Damnation. This was why he tried to avoid this sort of situation.

She shook her head. "Save it?" She asked, with a horrible pleading tone that made him want to leave the apartment and bury himself in Tinker work again.

But, she was trying to put things off. To avoid explaining. That meant she had something to hide. If that something was a power, then the chance she'd run off to start using it was very, very high.

If everything went well, she'd join the Wards, and she'd get the backup she'd need to avoid making a stupid mistake and getting killed. Or, Protectorate, rather–her 18th birthday was in less than two months.

Things weren't going well, though.

The helmet in his backpack felt like a ball of lead.

He'd save the explanation for later.

"On one condition. Don't put yourself in danger." It was the best he was going to get.

"...I won't."

"You promise?"

"I promise."

Good. There was no guarantee she'd keep her word, of course, but it was better than nothing.

"Just…" he said, then stopped. He'd have to think through his words carefully, here. Dragon had advised him to sympathize with her. He could do that, or at least try.

What would he have wanted to hear, fifteen years ago?

"Things get better," he said, "even if it doesn't feel like it. I was never particularly close with my own parents, so I don't know what it's like, but I think I know enough to get a general picture."

Finally, she looked up at him, attentive. She was listening. Did that make it better or worse?

"It's not easy," he continued, "but you find ways to get away from it. Ways to become the sort of person that'll never be in a situation like that again."

In a way, she had it easier than him. Echolalia was in prison and, if she ever broke out again, Brianne could legally beat the shit out of her.

Not that he'd say that to her in those words, of course.

For the first time since he saw her at the funeral, she smiled. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it."

Good. Good. Things hadn't gone south. If she'd come out of this resenting him, her living in his house would be the least of his worries.

Things moved to less dangerous topics from there and, soon, he was out the door. His backpack, once again, hadn't been opened until he was back in his workshop.

Colin stared at his reflection, sweat dripping down his brow. Not out of vanity, even if he knew he was conventionally attractive enough for an outsider to make that mistake.

There was more gray in his hair than he remembered. While he had a bottle of hair dye for his beard, he'd never bothered to use it anywhere else. No point, really, with how few people would be seeing it.

Graying generally started in a person's thirties, but not to that degree. Was it just stress, or was there a genetic component? Knowing his parents, he could hardly use them as a control group, either.

Scars, too, were something he'd accumulated over time. He could see half a dozen of them and, if he turned around, he'd see a dozen more.

The one curving down from behind his ear was from his early days, before he'd upgraded to a helmet from just his visor. In fact, that had been the reason why–both to avoid future blows like that and to preserve his image as an unshakeable, reliable hero. None of the scars he'd accumulated since then were on his lower face, as luck would have it.

There was a claw mark that ran along his collar bone. A pair of horizontal surgical scars, older than the rest, one under each pectoral. An uneven scar along his upper left arm from when one of his pauldrons had shattered–he'd spent the next several hours with jagged metal stabbing into his arm before he got medical assistance.

As much as some of the other veterans in this war against villainy took pride in their scars, all they were to him was a constant physical reminder that he hadn't been good enough, that other people would see them and know that he hadn't been good enough as well.

Panacea had never healed them, or even offered to. Most likely, she thought he was one of the former type of veterans rather than the latter. He could've requested it himself, and she would've done it, he suspected, but asking would've been too much of a blow to his pride to consider.

He stepped away from the mirror and into the shower to wash off the sweat from his workout. Since it was a Sunday morning, he'd been doing upper body strength workouts–curls, pullups, deadlifting, etcetera. He'd had another shot at beating his weight record for deadlifting, but he hadn't succeeded.

The record had been stagnant for three years and four months, now.

While he technically wasn't that far from it, that distance was growing, not shrinking. Time was marching onward. His physical prime was behind him, and his tech was stagnating, too.

When the explosive growth at the beginning of his career had started to slow, he'd turned to working on his own body, finding his own fighting style instead of relying on his tech to emulate higher skill levels. He'd started on a more rigorous workout routine and stuck to it.

It was only a small gap between what he used to be able to do and what he could do now. But, a gap was still a gap, and it was only going to get wider.

He turned off the shower, toweled off, and pulled on a t-shirt and jeans. Ironically, the shirt was an Armsmaster-brand one from the gift shop that Assault had gotten him as a joke, but he wasn't about to turn down a free shirt.

The clothing tag scratched at the back of his neck, so he stuck a hand back to readjust it. His fingers brushed against a raised patch of skin on the back of his left shoulder, which was strange, because he knew he didn't have a scar there. What-

His work phone started to ring. Urgent call.

Colin picked it up and listened. Three minutes later, Armsmaster rushed out the door.

If someone had crossed a beige RV with a particularly brutalist-looking building and turned it into a spaceship, it might look something like what was sitting in front of him. The thing was over half the length of a football field, large enough that the entirety of the Statue of Liberty could fit inside from toe to torch if the ship was hollowed out.

There were guns mounted on the front–simple ballistic weaponry, from a cursory investigation–and thrusters on the back and sides. Neither showed any signs of being used, whether for testing or actually moving the damned thing over to where they'd found it.

In fact, it looked newly made, as if it was fresh from a factory. Not a single scuff had marred the ship's hull, not even where the landing gear should've scraped against the concrete when it set down. The only marks on it were from the PRT's handling of it, barely noticeable micro-scratches.

None of the detritus around the ship had been disturbed, either - no cracks in the ground from its landing, no pebbles blown away by the air currents, nothing. It had been moved into a hastily hired-out warehouse since, with Vista shrinking it enough for a PRT van to carry it, but he'd seen it at the original site.

So, there were three options. The first was that a group of Tinkers had somehow snuck bulk amounts of tools and materials through a public area for weeks, slowly building a giant fucking spaceship while not a single person noticed.

The two other, much less implausible options were that it had either been created wholesale by a power or transported here through other means. While a teleporter accident was technically possible, Armsmaster was leaning towards it being artificially made–the ship had no signs of the scuffs or abrasions that would've happened if it had been constructed normally.

Unfortunately, conjecture was conjecture, and the PRT had rules about not disassembling technology made by unknown Tinkers unless the tinker was confirmed dead or the tech was dangerous. The rule was logical in most cases, put in place to avoid alienating new capes due to an overzealous hero taking apart their stuff. In this case, it was doing more harm than good.

"ETA?" He asked.

"Twenty-six minutes until the Cawthorne arrives. If I hadn't loaded it down with tools, I'd be here in twelve," Dragon replied.

It was rare for him to get the chance to spend time with Dragon in person, and even rarer that it would be outside an Endbringer battle or the like. He was looking forward to it, even if there'd be several feet of metal and technology between her and the outside world.

"And Cache?"

"He'll be boarding a plane from New York the day after next. He should arrive shortly after the moratorium on captured Tinker technology ends."

It was a shame that he wouldn't have the time to properly look into the ship. From the few non-destructive scans he'd been able to do, the thing was loaded down with advanced machinery. It didn't have the markers of parahuman-generated materials, either, which was a point against the theory that a cape had materialized it from nothing.

By the time 48 hours had passed and he'd be allowed to start pulling the thing apart, Cache would be there to take it to a remote location, where Tinkers with more fitting specializations would look at it.

While he could've and had collaborated with other tinkers on larger projects, his power tended more towards personal combat equipment. Being the highest-ranked Tinker in the Protectorate and the person who's city the ship had appeared in didn't mean he'd be the best one to work on it.

A faint scrabbling sound from his left pulled him from his thoughts.

"Hey, Halbeard," a high-pitched, synthesized voice spoke. "Nice dick compensator."

He spun to face the voice, weapon in hand.

A robotic chameleon, ten or so inches in length, was strutting towards the ship. On the screens that covered most of its body, it displayed patterns that resembled the uniform of a Japanese ninja. Its tail was tipped with an electrical plug, which was dragging across the ground behind it.

He'd taken two steps towards it when one of its eyes swiveled to meet his. It squawked and bolted, screeching "I take it back WoG said your dick is fine!"

The grappling hook he fired at the robot barely missed it, but he was still hot on its heels. It was a slippery fucker, swerving past him whenever he thought he nearly had it cornered.

Damn it all, why was his combat analyser being so useless?

Snarling, he swung his halberd at it. The hit landed more than a foot from the creature.

A wireframe bec de corbin–an elongated spear-hammer–hit the ground an inch from the lizard's power plug tail.

What the hell?

In his distraction, the lizard had escaped, scampering away while nobody else even attempted to stop it.

He looked down. A second pair of arms made from the same green, glowing wireframe hovered just over his normal arms. He could feel each of them, the faint wind blowing through the gaps in the new armored hands. When he lifted the bec de corbin from the hole it had left in the ground, the hammer head was filled in with concrete.

More and more of the wireframe pulled forth from his body, unspooling into a silhouette. His vision doubled, one pair of eyes staring at the apparition's draconic helm, while the other gazed back at his own shocked expression. One pair of feet remained planted on the ground, while the other hovered just above it, claw-tips scraping against the floor.

People were staring. At him, or at the head of the weapon, but none of them were looking directly at the apparition itself.

"Who-" he swallowed and straightened up. "Identify yourself."

He felt the apparition open its mouth of its own accord, inhaling with invisible lungs. With a foreign tongue and lips, it spoke.

"The Man Who Would Be King."

Electricity sensors–nothing. Heat vision–nothing. Infrared or ultraviolet–nothing. Spatial distortion, radiation, even gravity–nothing. No dice. The only thing other than his own eyes that had been able to sense 'The Man Who Would Be King' was a psionic sensor he'd cobbled together out of frustration.

Dragon had been mostly occupied with the ship, but she'd occasionally chipped in with advice on psychic emissions when she was free. The scanner he'd ended up with had been unconventional for a psionics detector, but it had worked.

Even more irritating than that was the fact that, apparently, he'd been the only one who could see the lizard too, which is why his combat analyser had failed. Despite its appearance, it was probably some sort of psychic construct as well.

It and 'The Man Who Would Be King' weren't the only things only he had been able to see–he'd used scans of the latter to make a prototype psionic emitter, and he'd been able to see the emissions from that, too.

Beyond the lizard, there was no leads for what the hell had happened, or why the apparition had connected to him. It certainly wasn't volunteering any answers–even when he tried to relinquish control over it, it refused to move on its own again.

Demanding information from it felt like demanding information from his arm or leg. There'd be no point, since they were a part of him.

Despite that, Master–Stranger protocols were still in place. The chances of this being benign were low. More likely for it to be a very strange Stranger trying to gather information, or a Master/Trump along the lines of Teacher or Pastor. He was to be under watch at all times he wasn't at his apartment, and Miss Militia would be acting head of the Protectorate ENE until the mystery was solved.

It was as necessary as it was galling.

Even with that, however, he'd tentatively been allowed back near the ship. The Man Who Would Be King's presence, as worrying as it was, was something he was determined to put to use. Though the ship was locked, he'd been able to phase the apparition through one of the walls and unlock it from the inside.

There'd been concern about him sending a potential enemy inside the piece of mostly unknown Tinker technology, but he'd been looking at scans of the thing anyway, so the apparition had almost certainly gotten details on it already. Still, he'd been allowed to explore deeper inside, as long as Dragon's drones followed him in.

The inside of the ship was practical, prioritizing utility over comfort, not dissimilar to his quarters back at the PHQ. It was definitely a living space, too–there was a bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen, even a small garden. If someone were to be trapped on the ship, they could've survived almost indefinitely.

In addition to the living and storage areas, there was the cockpit. While the ship's systems were still on lockdown, even the smallest lever or button had a physical label on it. If they were to be believed, his earlier comparison of this thing to a spaceship was right on the money. This vessel was built for long voyages through space, even if it didn't seem to have seen any use.

Yet.

Armsmaster stood in front of the door to the only room they hadn't investigated. The engine room. The door opened easily, and he and Dragon entered.

The engine room was the biggest on the ship, and yet had the least space to maneuver around in. Two giant machines took up the space–one with dozens of wires flowing out of it and one at the very back of the ship.

Him and Dragon set to work investigating the first of the two. There was only so much they could do, while destructive investigation was off the table, but that didn't mean they couldn't scan through the outer casing to get an idea of what was inside.

It was a fusion reactor, bigger than the ones he'd seen in other people's tech. A strangely built one, but not indecipherable. Like learning a language that had no shared roots with English or Vietnamese, but one that was far simpler than either of them.

Dragon seemed to notice the strangeness, too, because she was becoming more and more focused on her work as time went on.

"Something wrong?" He asked, turning to her drones.

He could imagine her standing there instead, looking at the machine with a furrowed brow. She wasn't about to leave her suit, not with her condition, no matter how much he would've liked to speak with her face-to-face. Her mental health came first.

When she spoke, her voice came through the speakers in his helmet. "It's hard to describe. If anything, it's like… when I first got my powers."

A red icon appeared in the top-right of his visor.

'Lie'.

…

Dragon deserved her privacy, no matter how curious he was. He surreptitiously turned the lie detector off and continued to listen.

"Before I had my breakthrough on how to reverse-engineer Tinker-made technology, I used regular technology as the basis of my suits. The way this power plant is constructed… it reminds me more of that than anything."

He raised an eyebrow. "So, what, you're saying this wasn't made by Tinkers?"

"I don't know. I can't figure out how it works from so little information, I was just going off how it was constructed. There's certain patterns, certain blind spots in Tinker tech that don't seem to be in this."

"So far, at least," he replied. "They could just be further in, or the Tinkers could've used normal technology for the outer layers of the reactor to cut down on the amount of building they needed to do."

She didn't reply. Her drones just kept circling around the reactor. He shrugged and moved on to the engine.

As his scans came in, though, he only grew more and more concerned. If he was understanding the engine right, then this ship wasn't just made for interplanetary journeys. It was for interstellar journeys.

This ship could go faster than light.

Armsmaster had just opened his mouth to say as much when the floor disappeared.

More on instinct than anything, he extended The Man Who Would Be King's legs beneath him to cushion the fall. Dragon's drones fell several feet before their propulsion systems caught up and pushed them back into a steady hover.

He looked around. The ship had vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.

Finding the ship again had been as easy as looking in the place it had first been found. It was back again, with not a single indication that it had ever been moved. When the PRT tried to move it a second time, it just teleported back again 24 hours later. By that time, the 48-hour moratorium on the ship had passed, but he wasn't allowed back into it quite yet.

Time manipulation? No, the hatch was apparently still unlocked. If it had been wound back to a previous position and state, the hatch should've been closed, too. Spatial warping? Neither him nor Dragon had picked up on anything like that at the time.

In fact, neither of them had noticed any indicator that the ship had been about to teleport. It had been there one moment and gone the next. Had they missed it? They'd both been distracted when it had vanished.

As well as the teleporting effect, if the ship or anything that came with it was broken, they were repaired after 24 hours as well. That meant any and all destructive reverse-engineering was on the board, as long as they didn't set off any hidden countermeasures. Dragon seemed to be enjoying that, at least.

He didn't think the apparition had triggered the teleportation feature—he hadn't felt it do anything, not that it had even been summoned at the time. The PRT had been skeptical enough to ban him from the ship, at least until they were sure it was moving back on its own.

Speaking of the apparition, not using The Man Who Would Be King's extra hands was proving to be more of a nuisance than Armsmaster would've liked. It felt like just another part of his body, so keeping it unsummoned was like keeping one arm held behind his back at all times.

Beyond the potential threat it might pose, though, there was also the task of keeping it hidden while he was in his civilian identity. He'd already had one close call while he was at his favorite hole-in-the-wall café, where he'd grabbed for his phone while already holding his knife and fork. Small mercy that he was the only one who could see the wireframe arm reaching across the table.

"I'm going back inside," he decided. "The teleportation couldn't have happened out of nowhere. There has to be something I missed."

Dragon turned to him. The Cawthorne's face didn't show any emotion, unlike her 3D-rendered avatar. "Be careful. If the ship teleports again and takes you with it…"

So far, the ship had only teleported back to the spot it had come from, and that was only if it was moved from that area. The Man Who Would Be King had only appeared when he'd been near it, though it could've also been the lizard's fault.

Whatever was happening to him, he had the suspicion he'd find some sort of answer onboard.

"I'll be fine."

"Are you sure? We both know you have the tendency to get too focused on things."

If he'd been a more sentimental man, maybe he would've walked up to the mech's chest, put a hand over where he knew Dragon would be entombed. Instead, he looked into the Cawthorne's eyes, meeting hers through the cameras.

"Trust me," he said. "I know what I'm doing, and what I'm doing is going back in."

The Cawthorne just nodded with a whirr of machinery.

There were no changes in the engine room, he verified. No changes in the cockpit, any sort of indication that the teleportation was done from inside the ship. No changes in the bedroom, the bathroom, the kitchen, the garden…

Walking out of the storage area, he-

Optimizer needed to work quickly. The warrior hub, previously their greatest ally, was now their biggest threat. They wouldn't die if it found them out, of course–even if they were corrupted, there was too much useful information to be extracted from them to be destroyed.

The threat was to their host. Their secondary host, if such a being could be called 'secondary'.

The warrior itself was in a state of ennui, left without a purpose in a dead cycle. If it found out about their host, whether through the network or simply by having its avatar come close enough to her, its purpose of managing unforeseen elements in the cycle would be returned, and it would return to a more active state. Unideal.

Firstly, they minimized their connection with the hub. Not so much that they would draw attention, but enough to cut off any extraneous data that could give them and their host away. Any excess energy usage was instead pulled from the host's own intrinsic power.

Secondly, they pinged the Heat for an overview of the host's abilities and how they presented. It was simple to then rework their own expression, covering for the abilities of both of their hosts. If another shard got too curious about either of them, they would only see that Optimizer was granting them the abilities. It wouldn't protect from a full investigation from the hub, or even from the stronger noble shards, but it would be better than nothing.

Thirdly, they put more of their processing power into viewing the shards around their hosts. If one of them caught on, or if the Heat co-opted them too, Optimizer would need to be ready to act.

It would be ideal if they didn't have to take action, but there was no guarantee. For now, they would continue to operate mostly as normal.

And that meant that-

-that-

He'd been thinking about something. Reminiscing? What had it-

Shit. He knew that feeling. It's something he'd felt enough times to recognise immediately.

Trigger event.

"You feel that too?" He barked into his comms.

Dragon's voice was confused. "Feel what?"

What?

Even if she'd never been near someone when they triggered, which was very likely given her proclivities, she would've at least noticed that something had happened. Her suit wasn't that far from where he was.

Armsmaster opened his mouth, ready to answer, but he caught something in the corner of his eye first. He turned around to get a better look.

That's- what? How?

Dazed, he walked back inside the storage room. He'd tentatively ruled out time manipulation earlier but, right then, he felt like he was walking into the past.

Wall to wall, the room was covered with his old gear and tools.

To an outside observer, they might not have been able to notice the similarities between the slightly-too-small silver and purple armor and his own, or between the rack of quarterstaves and his halberds.

To him, though, he knew his tech better than the back of his hand. After all, he hadn't spent hours upon hours of time and focus each week with the flesh on the back of his hand splayed open, trying to find a way to make everything just a little more compact so he could fit in a fifth or sixth function.

And this? This was his tech.

The moment of disorientation—had the ship read information from his power, somehow? Or had it targeted what he had on his person, extrapolated from those? No, or the tech here would be more up-to-date.

He was already certain that this was copied from his own tech, but he still sat down and pulled one of the purple visors from a rack. It was almost completely identical to the ones he'd tried giving out to his strike squad back when he'd been more active in making and maintaining tech for other people. Other than the color and the comms frequency, it could've been something he'd made with his own hands. The rest was all of a similar caliber. Tech he could've made in the first five or so years of his career.

Well, there was a difference, one that became more apparent as he searched. Each piece of tech just had more crammed into it. While his current equipment was more advanced from the years of development that had gone into it, nearly everything in the armory had him beat at his own game.

Whatever the ship had done, it had plagiarized from him, and it had done it better than him. He took a deep breath and unclenched his jaw before it could give him a tension headache. As much as he wanted to shout and rage and break every goddamn copy in this place, he didn't.

He still got some measure of satisfaction from stepping on the disassembled visor on the way out. For the next several hours, he tore into the ship's innards with Dragon. Nothing related to teleportation or power-scanning or tech-fabrication in there.

Life was (for once) kind enough to put his civilian-side crisis on hold for the time being, at least. Brianne seemed to be doing better, as little as he'd been seeing her. Her body language had gone from 'don't look at me' to 'poses fit for a photoshoot', which he supposed indicated increased confidence.

Brianne had even brought home a friend from school. He'd been pissed at first–having an unknown civilian poking around his house was a serious risk–but he could just remove anything incriminating. He couldn't afford to fuck over Brianne like that, not when he'd already messed up enough.

One week later, on a Friday morning, there was yet another incident. Armsmaster had only learned about it several hours after the fact, but according to Gallant, a completely unknown cape had teleported into his classroom.

The unknown cape, 'Sans', had thankfully been cooperative. Well, mostly–apparently, he was convinced that he was a video game character. Whether he was insane, lying, or a power-construct made by a fan of that game was still up for debate.

Other people had done most of the talking with him, but Armsmaster was now being called in to use his lie detector. He'd read through the previous interview transcripts beforehand, and he had a list of questions to verify.

He walked into the room and sat down in front of the skeleton. Sans was a skeleton in the same way a dog was a wolf. His proportions were off, the shape of his skull too cartoonish. There were heavy bags under his eye sockets and, when he blinked, his bone moved like flesh.

"You'd be Sans the Skeleton?" Armsmaster asked.

Sans was reclining in the interview chair, one arm slung over the back, but his eyes (eyesockets?) were sharp.

"that's me. so, what's got you looking so blue?" The skeleton winked.

"I'm Armsmaster, leader of the local Protectorate branch," he said, ignoring the joke. "I'm here to ask you a few questions."

"well, i guess you do have a greater-than-average number of arms."

Was he talking about The M- no, the average number of arms would be less than two, thanks to amputees. Armsmaster gave him a flat look.

"tough crowd," Sans muttered.

Instead of responding, Armsmaster held up his phone, a video already playing on it.

The light in Sans' eyes flickered out for a moment, then returned. "yep."

"Do you have a place to stay?"

"nope." Truth. "mind if I stay at yours?"

"That's fine." The PHQ was hardly lacking in spare living quarters. With that out of the way, Armsmaster started asking questions.

"You believe you're from the video game 'Undertale', right? That you're the character 'Sans the Skeleton' and that you lived his life before arriving on Earth Bet."

"that's me." Truth.

Or, at least he believed it was. The lie detector didn't have access to some database of universal truths, it just used facial expression and speech patterns to determine how confident a person was in the truth of their words. Sans' face and voice were close enough to human that he had no reason to suspect it shouldn't work on him.

"And you were brought here through, quote, 'someone summoning you with their magic science powers'."

"yep." Truth.

"Can you elaborate?"

"i can."

Armsmaster waited for several seconds.

"Elaborate, then," he asked.

"so there's a person in this world. and they have magic science powers. and they used them to summon me here." Truth.

Was he being intentionally frustrating? Almost certainly.

"Does the person in question have a cape identity?"

"well, they don't moonlight as a piece of cloth. unless you count doormats? heh." Truth.

"I'll be blunt. How much information are you going to be willing to tell me about them?"

"eh, their business is their business. i'm not about to tattle on them if they don't want it." Truth.

"Even though they, from your perspective, kidnapped you?"

"ehh, sorta. not like they can control their power." True, and deeply concerning. "besides, if i wouldn't have agreed to coming along, the power would've found a version of me that did."

So, this power could bring fictional characters to life, but the user didn't have any control over who it took.

…Or what it took?

"Do you know who or what else they summoned?" Sans took a breath, and Armsmaster interrupted before he could speak. "Don't bother if you're not willing to tell me."

"sure, i love being asked not to do things." Truth, not that it was very useful.

"But, hypothetically, if the power attempted to summon an object instead of a character…"

"i can give you that one. yep, they can grab items too." Truth.

"And if I asked if they summoned, say, a spaceship?"

"i'd make a joke instead of giving a straight answer." Truth. But the fact he'd evaded the question was telling. It wasn't definitive proof that he and the ship were connected by any means, of course, but the pieces fit together.

"If the person who summoned you can't control their power, what happens if they get something dangerous?" Armsmaster asked, leaning forward. "People can and will get hurt. You claim that you're not human, but can you stand by when people are at risk of dying?"

"buddy," Sans sighed and ran a gloved hand over where his scalp should be. "i've already done that. i stood by and watched as a human killed nearly everyone i knew because of a promise i made. they killed my brother, and i still couldn't bring myself to act because they left a few people alive when they could've killed 'em." Truth.

"You just did nothing?" Armsmaster asked, disbelieving. "And you're just going to do it again?" How the hell anyone could just stand by while innocents were getting hurt and not be a monster was beyond him.

"sometimes it's just hard to care about things, yanno?" Sans answered. Truth. The bags under his eyes seemed deeper than they had been before. "i'm glad you can get worked up enough to do something, but that ain't me. guess that's why i shouldn't make promises, huh?"

Armsmaster grit his teeth. "If you were scared, maybe I could understand that. But this? How could you sleep at night, knowing you let a tragedy happen and didn't do anything because you just didn't care enough? Because you made a 'promise'? If you think you're a good person, you might want to reconsider."

"how about you? do you think you're a good person?"

…What?

"What?" He hissed.

He was about to keep going, to launch into a righteous fury, when Sans spoke again.

"maybe i should rephrase." The light in Sans' eyes vanished, leaving only dark, empty sockets. " d?"

Armsmaster blinked. He had killed people, of course. The start of his career was defined by being sent out to arrest or eliminate some of the worse threats the country had to offer. Was the skeleton a Thinker, or was it just throwing shit at the wall in an attempt to find something that got under his skin?

"I killed because it was necessary," he snapped. "Because it would make the world a better place. Maybe if you'd done the same, less of your species would've died."

"probably," Sans shrugged, his eyes lighting up again. "i'm not saying you don't need to kill sometimes. heck, my old boss killed a few people. monsterkind was planning to go to war." Truth.

Was he delusional enough to want to continue a fictional war? Ideally, no. He didn't seem to have any interest in fighting, for better or for worse, and that would include fighting the rest of humanity.

He continued. "just… watch out. the more you kill, the easier it is to kill again, yanno? a level of violence of six ain't looking too good for you." Truth, or at least an indication that he believed what he was saying. His eyes went dark. "How long until 'necessary' goes from 'necessary to protect people' to 'necessary for your own self-benefit'? Until 'making the world a better place' becomes 'making your world a better place'?"

"Unless you have experience in making the hard decisions," Armsmaster snarled, "I would advise you to listen to the people who do. If you weren't apparently too fucking apathetic to care, maybe I'd talk about innocent people dying."

The skeleton didn't answer. He just watched.

"About," Armsmaster continued, his voice getting louder, "over and over again, watching the news, seeing people dying in my city, gunned down by the crossfire of a gang conflict or killed for someone's initiation into a white supremacist group. About seeing civilians pop like rotten balloons because of someone who could turn into a living plague. About a villain holding up the mangled corpse of a seven-year-old boy like a fucking trophy, and putting her down before she could kill again. You think you can fucking talk?!"

To punctuate his words, he slammed his hands on the desk.

A wall of artificially symmetrical bones shot up from the floor.

"woah there, pal, careful. i'm fragile." Truth. Sans' posture was relaxed as always, but his ever-present grin was forced, and his eyes had a wariness to them.

Armsmaster put space between him and the monster, keeping one pair of eyes fixed on him while the other glanced around the room for any hidden attacks ready to spear him.

"funky-looking soul you got there," Sans commented, looking behind him.

Soul? He turned halfway around, enough to keep the monster in his peripheral vision. The Man Who Would Be King was hovering behind him, surveying the room. Inside its chest was a purple heart the size of a softball, linked by thin strings to the rest of its wireframe body.

"(guess it's my job to give you a tutorial, huh?) that heart is your soul, the very culmination of your being," Sans explained. "its what monsters target with our attacks. dunno what the rest is, but it's also part of your soul." Truth.

'Soul' must be his name for some sort of psychic construct, then. Armsmaster had enough experience decoding Myrddin-ese to guess that much. There were other capes like that–Voodoo, Breakpoint–who'd create something to serve as a weak spot on their victims.

"You gonna fight me?" Armsmaster asked, slowly drawing his halberd from his back.

"hey, you were the one who got violent first," Sans said. Truth. "s'not like i have game mechanics protecting me any more. i can't just set up a shop to avoid being hurt."

Armsmaster peeled his hand from his weapon. "So, you can see this thing? But you don't know what it is."

"yep," Sans said. "it's part of you, like the rest of your body, so you don't gotta look so scared about it." Truth.

"Do you know who gave it to me, then?"

"nah, i wouldn't have any ideas you weren't already thinking. it's just part of you now, so even if i had my old lab equipment, i wouldn't be able to do magical traceback on it or anything."

Truth.

Shit.

A Trump had targeted him, most likely the same cape who'd brought Sans here, who'd also probably summoned the spaceship. Someone whose power was completely out of their control.

Not a Trump like Teacher was. One like Pastor from Freedom, California or Golden Goose from Flint, Michigan. Permanent power-granters. Except, this one was a permanent power-granter that worked on people who were already capes.

Freedom and Flint had both been quarantined.

If this was going to keep happening, what about Brockton Bay?

While the PRT HQ's main cape-only space was the underground Wards base, nearly the entire west tower of the Protectorate HQ was reserved for the parahumans who worked there.

The rooms were a mix of utility and leisure. Even if Colin used the former far more often, he knew the latter were still useful to the others for recharging after a long day. Personally, he'd never found sitting in a jacuzzi or knocking balls around on a pool table relaxing, not when he could be getting something productive done, but it worked for his subordinates. The small cinema room was a bit better—movies and shows were engaging enough that he wouldn't end up stuck in his own head, and it'd leave his hands free if he wanted to multitask.

If the PHQ's food had been worse, or if they had to share the space with PRT staff, he might've thought of the Protectorate cafeteria as a utility-only room. In practice, it straddled the line between utility and leisure. It gave the heroes a place to relax and take in much-needed raw calories without needing to worry about eating with masks on. A bridge to the cafeteria in the central tower meant they didn't even need to worry about chefs coming and going.

He did need to worry about Robin sitting behind him, muttering Chinese from a language workbook, but that's what headphones and music were for.

Since Colin left Sans' interview room, he'd been scrounging up every relevant detail he could find on the skeleton. It was unlikely that he'd be the one to get Sans to cough up anything useful, but he could at least try to see if there were any connecting threads between Sans, the spaceship, and whoever summoned them.

Midway through trying to find Arcadia's elevation, someone tapped his shoulder. He paused his music (Ur-sound by Bad Canary, Dragon's recommendation) and looked up.

"Hey," said Robin, "is your back injured or something? I can see a red mark through your shirt."

What was it now? This had better just be a stain or something.

"It shouldn't be. Where's the mark?"

Robin poked the back of one of Colin's shoulder blades. No pain, so probably not an injury. He summoned The Man Who Would Be King to get a better angle, then pulled down his shirt collar with one clawed wireframe gauntlet.

Robin recoiled. "What- you're kidding."

It was a stain, technically.

A port-wine-stain birthmark.

The shape was far from natural, a star with straight lines and sharp points entirely too well-defined compared to the splotchy birthmarks he'd pulled up on Google. The slightly pebbly texture seemed normal, at least, and-

He remembered that texture. Right before he'd been called about the spaceship appearing, he'd noticed an odd raised patch in a place where there shouldn't have been a scar. That was twelve days ago. Had he really had this thing for nearly two weeks without noticing?

"Hold on, I needtochecksomething," Robin said, his power active before he could finish speaking.

Colin shifted his phone over to his other hands to take photos of the birthmark while he waited for the other man. For some reason, Robin had gone to his box of language books to fetch some sort of comic. He'd dropped a paperweight on each side of the cover so he could flip through the pages at super-speed.

"Here." Robin held up the comic. Under the post-its packed with translation notes, there were three characters with star-shaped marks on their necks or backs.

"I suppose it looks the same, but there'd be a match for any parahuman power if you look through enough obscure comics."

"No, it's more than that. You have that weird ghost guy, right? King something?" Robin flipped to another page. A muscular shaman in a loincloth was swinging an oversized anchor at a helmet-wearing bird-man while two more normal-looking people stared at each other.

Colin felt like he'd just learned something about his subordinate he wasn't sure he needed to know.

"The stands - the powers - are different between the Earth Bet version and the other one, but the principles are the same. Ghostly projections manifested from your fighting spirit. Only stand users can see other stands, only stands can touch other stands, and injuries are shared between the stand and the user."

That was a little harder to deny. Only he could see The Man Who Would Be King. He could technically touch the spirit, but only when it made contact first - it could hi-five him and he'd feel it, but he couldn't initiate the hi-five himself.

Injuries…

Well, with the sudden appearance of the birthmark, he'd be wanting to get ahold of Panacea anyway. He hooked one of the spirit's claws behind a segment of wireframe and scraped it. Pain welled up on both his right hands, a cut in the flesh one mirroring the scratched wire on the spectral one.

Sans claimed to be from a video game.

"What's the series called again?"

"Qiáo Qiáo de Qímiào Màoxiǎn in Mandarin. 'JoJo's Wonderful Adventure' in English, I think. Not sure what the Japanese name is."

He used his left hand to search the internet while The Man Who Would Be King bandaged his right hand. The only English translation he could find of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure was on the MKT website, which would have to do.

Irritatingly, these 'stands' didn't even show up until the 13th volume, according to the summaries. Volume 13 seemed to use a new setting and cast, at least, so he wasn't completely lost. The story seemed to have an almost nostalgic 80s campiness, from his quick skim, though it was clear the story was written in a world without Earth Bet's cape culture.

Colin stopped skimming on the page with the three star-birthmarked characters.

It was a good thing he did.

According to the story, the protagonist had manifested his powers through familial connection, the same as his mother and grandfather.

Shit. If that part was accurate too, this problem wasn't just stopping with him.

He nearly stopped reading there. If there was a chance that Brianne or, god forbid, his father were caught up in this, that took precedence over anything else. This had started nearly two weeks ago, though, and nothing drastic had happened. Better to go in with more knowledge instead of rushing in head first. Just had to skim through more fighting, and–

The protagonist's mother collapsed.

Her power had become a sickness, her personality too docile to muster up the 'fighting spirit' to control it. Thorny vines crept across her back, inflicting her with a…

Fever.

Brianne.

A/N: For returning readers, due to the stretched-out timeline, I had to jumble events around a bit, in addition to tacking an extra scene onto the end. It also means, since Colin has spent more time around Brianne, he noticed her unconscious posing.

I decided against rolling for perks during interludes, but I decided to keep the "interludes give half as much CP per word" rule. Sidenote, I've also added CP counts to the Perks List post in the Informational threadmarks. A/N: This is a rewritten version of Chapter 11. Ch1-10 have been edited, anything beyond that has been rewritten. The original version of Chapter 11 is threadmarked under Apocrypha. (There's also a new scene at the end of the interlude.) I'll be rolling new perks for the new chapters, though I'll be interspersing completely fresh rolls with rolls from the original chapters' series.

The two most notable changes in the edited chapters are that the timeline of events has been stretched out (now starting on the 5th of March, with Chapter 9 and the interlude ending on the 18th of March) and that Brianne's guardian comes home to the apartment every day, not just on weekends.

Since it's, uh, been a while since the last chapter, here's a refresher for returning readers:

Spoiler: Refresher

Armsmaster.

Fuck. Out of all the characters it could've been, it had to be him.

There were worse options. This was better than one of the villains; if I'd ended up with Thomas Calvert or something I probably would've just skipped town, and Coil wasn't even one of the actual neo-Nazis.

Still. Armsmaster was the leader of the local heroes and the 7th most prominent member of the Protectorate. He was their highest-ranked Tinker, too, with fifteen years of experience under his belt. Despite his lacking interpersonal skills, he was still actually above average at reading people, tunnel vision allowing.

Aeon hopped up onto my shoulder. "And you'll be trying to hide a Tinker power from him while living a life you know nothing about."

"My Tinker powers that get stronger over time. No way he won't resent me if he finds out."

"Well, silver lining, at least he doesn't carry his lie detector around everywhere."

Oh god, what if he got suspicious and snuck his lie detector in? When Legend had used it at a Cauldron meeting, none of the other members had noticed at all. If Armsmaster wanted to use it on me, he'd definitely be able to get the hardware small enough that I'd have no idea it was in play.

Hinges creaked behind me.

I whipped around, trying to claw together an excuse for why I'd broken into Armsmaster's room.

There was no need to bother; it was Sans who was leaning against the door frame, hands in his pockets. "somethin' wrong?"

"I just…" …learned something about my legal guardian which spells certain doom for my chances of keeping my secrets hidden. My very dangerous secrets.

"We just realised we're super boned," Aeon finished.

"want some help?" Sans winked. "i have some experience in being boned."

I ignored the pun. "I'm not actually the original occupant of this body, and my legal guardian is a big-name superhero. I'm worried he'll find out and throw me in jail or something for impersonating a family member."

"Or that he'll find out about her wonky powers," Aeon added. "If he sees you here, there's no way he won't make the connection."

"nah, s'fine. he said i could stay at his place."

That didn't sound in-character for Armsmaster, but there was probably some context I was missing.

"'sides, you don't sound all that happy about this, either. if this wasn't your fault, armsguy would be a pretty bad hero if he threw you in the slammer over it."

I took a breath. "Have you heard of someone called Canary?"

"Or Paige McAbee, or Bad Canary," Aeon chipped in.

"i knew a little yellow bird, but i dont think he's the one youre talking about."

"Long story short, she has a mind control power. She'd been careful with it, but she misspoke during an argument with her ex and he ended up hurting himself. She's been on trial for nearly a year by now, and she's going to get an irreversible life sentence in the highest-security prison in the world."

"sheesh. i guess without monsters to go to war with, the humans turned on each other," Sans muttered. "they kinda suck, huh?"

Aeon nodded vigorously.

"so. how long have you had wonky memories?"

I pulled out my phone and looked over my calendar. "Thirteen days."

"that's thirteen days armsman hasn't noticed anything, right? just because you learned something about him doesn't mean anything else has changed."

Despite everything, I relaxed a bit. I wasn't boned just yet, and if things kept going like they had, I wouldn't be boned until… I didn't even know. When I got a perk that I couldn't hide, I guess, or if I just slipped up. It's not like I even spoke with him much.

I took a deep breath, then managed a smile. "Thanks. I was kinda panicking, there."

"no prob. if there's one thing i'm good at, it's relaxing. want a live demonstration?"

I was about to reply, but a feeling in my gut stopped me. Instead, I closed the bedroom door, relocked it, and went to peer out a window. On the street below, someone on a worn-down motorcycle skidded into a parking space. As if he could sense my presence, Armsmaster looked up at me.

Then, he rushed into the building.

Fuck. That couldn't be anything good.

"hey, relax. if stuff goes bad, i'll just get you out of here," Sans said.

My power heated up. Was it reassuring me, or was it warning me about things to come? No, that was personifying it too much. There's no mind behind it, so any potentially disastrous timing was purely bad luck.

Aeon opened its mouth, paused, then scrambled under the couch. Why? Sans and I are the only ones who can see it, so-

The front door burst open, and the guardian - Armsmaster - strode in, expression taut.

He knows everything.

No, shut up anxiety, it's probably not that. He could be stressed about anything, like Sans' sudden appearance in a school (my fault) or Aeon snooping on him earlier (my fault) or the giant spaceship the heroes had cordoned off (my fault).

Maybe one of the Empire thugs who'd attacked Lisa had identified me, and if I was outed, what if someone came after him and he blamed me? The Empire had a track record of that - I'd looked into it, and Fleur's killer had been welcomed back with open arms.

My power hadn't cooled down either, so if he touched me, there's no way he wouldn't realise there was something up.

"Are you-" Armsmaster started, before his accusatory gaze refocused on something behind me.

Sans waved.

"Skeleton. Why are you here?"

"you said i could stay at your place," Sans shrugged. "sweet kid, by the by. makes a damn good burg."

Armsmaster stormed past me, putting himself between me and the skeleton, then thundered "That isn't what I meant and you know it. How did you get here anyway?"

"i knew a good shortcut."

"Fucking Movers," Armsmaster rumbled. Then, louder, "If anyone sees you here, you'll be putting us in danger, you know. You might as well be putting up a sign saying 'A cape lives here'."

"dont worry, i have a perfect disguise." Sans rummaged through his pockets, then pulled out a cheap-looking skull mask. When he tried to put it on, it just slid down his earless head and hung around his neck. "nobody would never suspect a thing."

What is Sans doing? Pissing off the already-angry superhero seems like the worst course of action to take here. Was he just not able to help himself? My power – still running hot – intensified in agreement, because that's what I needed right then. It must've been an entire minute since it started, why was it running on for so long?

When Armsmaster took a threatening step forward, Sans held his hands up in front of his chest. "hey, just makin' a joke. i might not have a brain, but im not dumb. nobody saw me come in other than that kid youre so protective of."

'Protective of'? Those words pierced through the haze of stress, chemical formulae, and chalk circles that were crowding my mind.

"Out. Now. We'll talk about this later."

"welp. seeya, kid. nice meeting ya." Sans winked, then trotted into the bathroom and shut the door. When Armsmaster threw it open again, there wasn't anyone inside.

By the time he turned towards me again, the heat had finally shut off. Just in time, too, because the next words out of his mouth were "I need to take your temperature."

Oh. Sans had been stalling, waiting for my power to calm down. Seems like he was one step ahead of me there.

I accepted the offered thermometer, then let him press a hand against my forehead.

Not quite satisfied yet, he pulled away. "Have you been feverish recently?"

When I shook my head he finally, finally relaxed.

"Good. Alright." Then, "Are you okay? Did the skeleton do anything?"

"He just, um, showed up and asked for a burger."

"Could've been worse." He let his backpack clunk to the ground, then collapsed onto the sofa and kicked his feet up on the coffee table.

I took a seat over at the dining table, pressed my hands flat against the surface, and stared at them. The conversation had mostly distracted me from the new power, but now that I had time to think, I could very easily recognise it. Specialised circles and arrays that used tectonic energy to induce chemical changes.

Alchemy. Fullmetal Alchemist. Incredibly useful, up until you break one of the rules of alchemy and get your arm torn off for your trouble. But no pressure.

"So," Armsmaster's voice jolted me out of my reverie. "I should explain."

"Yes please."

He opened his backpack, hesitated, then tossed something round and dark over to me. This body's hand-eye coordination must've been better than mine, because I caught it more deftly than I expected. I turned it over in my hands.

Ah. Well, I won't have to worry about slipping up and calling the guardian 'Armsmaster' by mistake.

The silver of the V-shaped visor was striking against the dark blue of the helmet. Much heavier than a motorcycle helmet, it was undoubtedly packed full of technology. Barely-noticeable dings and scratches on the paint made it very clear that this was something that saw real use, not some cosplay prop.

What was inside the helmet? Intuition told me the suit's main computer would be in the chest or lower back, not in here. Vision modes? Shadow Stalker had electrovision in her mask courtesy of Armsmaster, but did he use that tech himself? He must've, if he apparently saw Aeon near the spaceship. Actually, if Shadow Stalker could use that tech in her shadow state, it must be something that doesn't use electricity, right? What would that look like.

"Don't pull it apart," Armsmaster said.

I jolted and set the helmet down on the table, cheeks heating up. He didn't sound mad, at least. Just… tired. Understanding, but tired.

"So you're…" I trailed off.

"Armsmaster. Yes. I'm sorry I kept it from you, but there was never a good time to bring it up."

Unsure how to respond, I just settled for tossing the helmet back over. He glanced out the window, checking for snoopers, then hid the helmet away again.

"I'm sure you're aware that powers run in families," he said, still looking down at his bag. "Which is an oversimplification, it's- but that's beside the point."

I stayed silent.

After several seconds of silence, he looked over again, gaze boring into mine. "Do you have powers?"

As if in response, my powers heated up again.

What could I say to that? If I said yes, he'd probably push me into the Wards. He'd played very softball with Taylor in their canon first meeting, but I was his legal ward and a Tinker. Letting me stay independent would put both me and him in potential jeopardy.

Conversely, if I said no, would he even believe me? Normal people don't generally stare at tinker tech like a dog watching a thick slab of steak. Besides, he almost certainly already believed I was a cape. It wasn't a question of whether he knew I had powers, it was a question of whether he thought I was a liar.

Well, fuck. Whatever happens, happens, I guess.

I nodded.

"That's what I was worried about." He leaned back, eyes screwed shut, and dragged a hand down his face. I waited for him to continue, but he was the one staying quiet this time. My power's heat intensified.

The silence dragged on.

"I haven't done much yet," I blurted out. "Me and my partner made mobility suits and flew around the Boat Graveyard a bit, but that's it. Haven't even picked names."

He jolts upright. "Partner?" Then, "That girl. Medina."

"Mm. Lisa Medina. She's from school. We worked on the suits together."

"Where'd you get the materials?"

"Refined from garbage we picked up from the beach, mostly," I said, trying not to think about how I'd done the refining. "Plus a few scavenged parts."

"Scavenged from where?"

"Um… Make sure you don't leave the oven on for too long." When he stood up, I hastened to add "It still works! Just not as… safely."

He sighed.

"Sorry."

My power cooled down. Four units of heat.

"Well, you didn't start buying out the stock of electronics shops or, worse, robbing them," he said. "This is about the safest way you could've done that, short of joining the Wards."

The Wards.

Fuck.

Here we go.

Armsmaster spoke up before I could. "You turn eighteen in a month, right?"

"Yeah," I said with more confidence than I felt. My birthday was on my ID card, but I hadn't actually memorised it yet.

"If you wanted to join the Wards now, you'd probably be stuck there until the end of summer break to mask your real age. Alternatively, you could either graduate high school early or wait until the end of May to join the Protectorate."

Yes! An out! "Sounds good."

"Good. Just- like I said before, don't get into trouble before then. Don't try to suppress your power, though. And if you need help - materials, information, or advice - just ask."

"I will." To my surprise, I actually meant it.

He muttered something too quietly for me to catch the words, but the relief in his voice was still clearly audible.

"So, um…" I tried to figure out how to defuse the tension. "Do you want burgers?"

"If you don't mind, that'd-" he stops. "The skeleton."

Ah. Sans. "So, um, you know him?"

"Long story short, there's a new cape in town who's uncontrollably summoning stuff from fiction," he said. "And I think they or their power are targeting me."

"Huh?" I didn't have to fake my disbelief. First of all, how'd he know about the fiction thing? And secondly, 'targeting him'? Had there been stuff appearing around the apartment while I wasn't there or something?

Glowing green threads lit up over his skin, then lifted away. The outline of a figure stood up from where Armsmaster was sitting. In one of its gauntleted hands, a polearm formed from the same green threads, a cross between a halberd and a hammer. Two draconic wings were folded at its back like a cloak, and in place of boots it had two clawed feet.

It looks very, very close to how Defiant was described in Worm.

"I call it 'The King'." Armsmaster followed my gaze. "And you can see it too."

There wasn't electrovision in his helmet. He'd been able to see Aeon because he'd manifested a Stand as well. I squashed the urge to touch the star birthmark on my upper back.

"Apparently, the unknown cape can give people powers from fiction too." Him and The King both watched me. "In the story, these 'Stand' abilities follow family lines, and only 'Stand Users' can see other Stands."

There I was, sitting in an apartment that Sans the Skeleton had just left, listening to Armsmaster explain JoJo lore to me. I choked back a disbelieving laugh before it could escape my mouths.

"Chances are, you also have a power like this." He unsummoned The King. "Already, the skeleton's invited himself in here. That's twice you've been pulled into my problems, and it'd be a happy surprise if that was the limit."

If he thought Sans was connected to the fiction thing, did he know about Undertale? No, wait, Sans knew about Undertale, and he wasn't very secretive about the 'magic science powers' thing when he first appeared.

"Right. I'll watch out for stuff like that. Um, thanks for warning me."

"Thank me by-" he stopped himself. "You're welcome, Brianne."

He leaned back, going quiet again. I waited for a response, and got one - quiet snoring. Makes sense, I doubt this whole situation would be good for keeping to a healthy sleep schedule.

Aeon took the cue to scamper up from its hiding spot under the sofa, muttering "First Sans falls asleep on that sofa mid-conversation, then Armsmaster. You must be cursed."

I scooped it up and retreated back to my room.

"You should dust under the sofa," it grouses. "If you were less of a nerd, maybe I'd be a normal chameleon, and I'd have proper camouflage instead of RGB gamer screens. Maybe then I wouldn't have to hide in Dust Hell."

Despite the closed door, I could tell Armsmaster was still sleeping in the other room. Another quirk from JoJo - family members could sometimes sense each other's presence. Hopefully we wouldn't get the part where family members would sometimes share injuries.

"Well, good news, we're not being shoved into the Wards and he hasn't figured out we're the ficto-cape yet," Aeon said.

"Bad news," I picked up, "it's only a matter of time before he realises it's me and figures out who I am. And he's actively looking into the matter."

"Think Sans knows a shortcut to Hawaii? I hear it's nice and warm this time of year."

"If anything's warm, it's my power," I muttered, counting down the duration of the new heat. Two units normal, then four units intense, same as the last one. When it finished, I had no idea what it did, also the same as the last one. So those were some ticking time bombs for me to enjoy.

I just hoped they were harmless.

A/N:

Spoiler: Author's Note

Perks rolled this chapter:

Spoiler: New Perks

137

Lazypika

Dec 31, 2023

View discussion

Threadmarks Chapter 12 (Rewrite)

View content

Lazypika

Lazypika

Sleepy...

Jan 6, 2024

#532

A/N: This is a rewritten version of Chapter 12. Ch1-10 have been edited, anything beyond that has been rewritten. The original version of Chapter 12 is threadmarked under Apocrypha. The original Chapters 11 and 12 covered the Armsmaster conversation, but since that's now condensed into a single chapter in the rewrite, it's new content from here on out.

"Sounds like he took things well, at least," Lisa tried to console me.

I adjusted one of the thrusters on my mobility suit instead of looking her way. "For now, at least. No guarantees he won't change his mind."

"Better than how Dad would react if I ever told him about this stuff. Mr Wallis even said he'd share his cool PRT Officer secrets with you, right?"

"PRT Investigator." Armsmaster had told me his cover job over breakfast, after I told him I was planning to hang out with Lisa today. "And it's just advice and stuff, no classified information."

"That's still pretty awesome though, right?"

"And in a few months, his advice will be 'join the Protectorate', and I doubt they'd be okay with me loaning tech out to my civilian buddy."

She didn't have a response to that one. I couldn't even see her expression under the mobility suit's helmet, but I could make a guess.

Strangely, she didn't seem to have made any other friends since coming to Arcadia; I was the only friend she had. With how outgoing and easy to get along with she was, it's not something she should have trouble with, so there had to be another reason for it.

"Well, the Protectorate is a problem for later." I stood up. "Our problem right now is that we're not having a blast practising with the suits."

Lisa's grin was hidden by her helmet, but it came out in her voice. "Now that's what I want to hear!"

We both took off. Lisa was a lot better with the suit than she was yesterday, alternating between different flight modes to avoid leaving scorch marks on every surface she touched. If I didn't have Tinker-intuition, I doubted I'd be half as good.

Aeon's voice squeaked up from the deck of the half-sunk ship, too far away to hear. Probably something condescending about my self-condescension. It squeaked again, which I interpreted as confirmation.

"Race you to the red ship with the crates on it!" Lisa calls, already accelerating towards the boat in question. I crank up my engines and follow. We both had the same flight tech, so with her head start and smaller build, she landed several seconds before I did, stumbling slightly.

"Now that's a proper superhero landing," she crowed at me. "Pose and everything!"

"You too?" I murmured. "I'm not posing. I'm just moving normally."

She stared. "Wait, it's not on purpose? You're kidding, right?" Which was very reassuring to hear from the overdramatic theatre kid.

"It's not a joke. And don't worry, my guardian already gave me a lecture on body language and secret identities." Because, apparently, moving in a perfectly normal way was 'very distinctive' and 'could give me away if I wasn't careful'.

"Right, well, something to practise. Actually, you said you wanted to practise something else before lunch, right?"

"Yeah, a matter-reshaping power. Different from the mouths one. Let me fetch the chalk."

It was a short flight back to the boat we'd left our stuff on (and a few quick shakes to dislodge Aeon from the phone battery it had pilfered). I pulled a box of pavement chalk from my bag and began to sketch a transmutation array on the boat's tarnished deck.

I explained as I drew."The deck of this boat looks like it's made of industrial-grade aluminium."

"Alum-i-num," Lisa whispered. Aeon shot a disgusted look at her.

"Al-u-min-i-um corrodes as the atoms on the surface react to the oxygen in the air and turn into aluminium oxide. This array should reverse that reaction, purifying the metal and releasing the oxygen as gas."

Lisa nodded. "I know how oxidation works, don't worry. Basic high school chemistry."

I pressed my hands to the array, reciting the chemical reaction in my head like a prayer.

"Write a swear word," Aeon suggested.

I'm not doing that.

"Draw a dick."

Shut.

White-blue energy crackled outwards. As if wiping away a layer of dust, the tarnished boat deck reverted back into shiny metal. I'm kinda glad it worked, I would've looked silly otherwise.

Lisa whistled appreciatively. "That's a bit nicer than the vandalism the ships normally get. Like reverse-vandalism."

"I just wish it was more useful in a fight," I said. "I doubt villains will let me take half a minute to draw a pretty chalk circle and then walk right into it so I could trap them."

"It's such a shame, all it can do is drastically speed up your lab work," Lisa sighed dramatically, swooning over with one hand pressed to her forehead. "I'm feeling a little obsolete."

"I could teach you some alchemy if you wanted?"

Lisa goes still. "Run that one by me again?"

"You take chemistry classes, right? That's probably enough groundwork for me to teach you a bit of alchemy."

"You can do that?"

"I'm pretty sure, yeah. Uh, maybe don't tell anyone else about this if it works."

Luckily for us, there were plenty of bits of scrap that scavengers hadn't seen any worth in, and they made perfect alchemy fodder. Lisa was a quick learner, too, despite a heat distracting me partway through. By lunchtime, she was kneeling in front of a perfectly-drawn alchemy circle.

"Now, feel the cyclical flow of energy around the rim of the circle like I told you. Focus on the chemical change you want to induce."

Lisa took a breath. The small pile of scrap metal sat at the centre of the circle, waiting.

There was a crackle. Sparks of blue-white energy licked over the metal.

"Looks like it worked," I said. "Nice job."

No reply.

"Lisa?"

She's staring at the centre of the circle, deaf to me. Slowly, she reaches in and picks up one of the shiny chunks of metal. Was she shaking slightly? Hard to tell with the suit on.

"Brianne?"

"Yeah?"

Lisa pulls off her helmet. There's steel in her eyes.

"I definitely want to learn more."

Between school, alchemy study, and tinkering, my schedule should've been more packed than it was.

It probably helped that my power trivialised half my classes. Maths was a breeze. Physics was more a matter of trying to remember how exactly different concepts were being dumbed down. In Art, my worst enemy was Workaholic, forcing me to take bathroom breaks to put the finishing touches on each piece and flushing the extra copies.

As for the tinkering, now that I had some proper tools and a wealth of spare parts, it seemed to go much quicker. Oddly so. I could only assume I'd gotten a building-speed booster somewhere along the way. At least Aeon didn't have to chase me into bed at midnight any more.

Flashy as alchemy could be, Lisa was probably expecting something a bit more exciting than safety lectures, but it's dangerous if done wrong. The potential danger made it all the more worrying to me how unnaturally quickly she seemed to be absorbing information.

"You're just a good teacher," Lisa insisted.

"And you've only been learning alchemy for five days, but you already have the basics down pat. I've helped my friends study before, and I assure you, this isn't coming from me."

"What if you got a super teaching power?"

"My powers are all crafting-themed. Why would I get something like that?"

She grabbed a blank piece of paper to practise another circle on. "No harm in testing it out, right? We can work on the math assignment together."

The assignment was piss-easy, just some horribly basic calculus. It was far from rocket science, and I was saying that as an actual rocket scientist. Or maybe my perception was skewed a bit. Maybe not, since Lisa didn't have much trouble with it either.

"That wasn't hard," I said. "Don't know why we got a whole week to do it, but I'm not complaining."

"Because they normally do take a whole week to do, on top of the rest of the homework we have to do," Lisa countered. "You're just a genius, and I have a genius tutor with a teaching power."

"Really? You're sure?" I was familiar enough with the original Celestial Forge document to know that there shouldn't be anything like this in it.

"Remember how bad I was at flying last Friday? And how good I was on Saturday? And how you have two unknown powers?"

As much as it didn't make sense, the evidence was piling up. But why? The closest the original CF document came to teaching skills was a short list of companions who could help make tech. How did this help improve my own crafting skill? I could train assistants to help me, sure, but at that rate I might as well get pyrokinesis for blacksmithing or flight to help find materials.

"Automation," Aeon said.

Automation?

"If it was just about making higher-quality tech, why would stuff like mass production or speed-boosters be on the table? Factories don't run themselves."

Oh.

I swallowed. "Enhanced teaching might make sense if my power sees people as tools."

"Well, do you see people as tools?" Lisa asked.

"No, but-"

"So there's no issue, right? It's a great power, let's just enjoy all the good stuff it can do."

No issue with this power, at least, other than the fact I'll have to avoid teaching anyone else if I don't want to risk outing myself.

But what if I got something that forced people to be loyal to me? Or something that made them fine with working in a factory every waking moment? Or horrible dark magic, or a bottle of world-ending plagues, or a bomb production facility, or…

"So, hey, you said before that it should be illegal to transmute stuff into gold, right?" Lisa asked. "But The Law of Natural Providence says that stuff can only be transmuted into stuff with the same makeup and properties. What's that about?"

She's obviously trying to distract me from my thoughts, but I take the bait anyway. "That's getting into nuclear transmutation, which is much riskier than standard transmutation. It involves tightly controlled radiation, which has some obvious health hazards if things go wrong…"

Armsmaster raised an eyebrow at my shopping bag. "Plywood?"

"And string. And sand. I'm making a sieve," I answered.

"Can't imagine what you'd need one for."

Sans' voice floated over from the sofa. "dont strain yourself trying to figure it out."

Armsmaster's brow twitched, but he didn't deign the skeleton with a reply. I had no idea how Sans managed to talk his way into hanging out in the apartment, but he'd managed it. That or he just kept showing up until Armsmaster had gotten tired of telling him no.

"Long story short, I'll be treating the string in a specific way that'll let me extract certain materials from sand or gravel," I explained. "I'll probably do the woodworking bits when it's not 10PM." Rather, I'll make them when I have the privacy to use alchemy without prompting any dangerous questions.

Minecraft's Ex Nihilo mod was made to let players manufacture resources from the starting point of a single tree. Since my alchemy knowledge only covered normal materials, an Ex Nihilo sieve was my only way of getting Minecraft-only resources like redstone.

To my horror, Armsmaster shut the lid of his laptop, swivelled his chair around, and said "You've got my attention."

Attention was the last thing I wanted. I tried not to let it show as he sat on the floor across from me.

The sieve mesh wasn't hard to make. Weaving it took longer than actually treating the string did. I stretched the mesh out over a bucket with a rubber band to hold it in place. Ignoring the heat kicking in, I carefully poured the beach-sand over the mesh and shook it.

"I see a few chunks of metal in there," Armsmaster said. "Tin?"

"Looks like tin to me." I pushed the bucket over with a foot. "Not much, but it's something."

"More work than just buying ready-made tin components or salvaging tin from a junkyard, but it's cheaper and safer, at least."

Sans poked his head over the couch's armrest as the heat intensified. "huh. never woulda thought of using purple magic like that. tuffet effect, right?"

"No 'magic', just applied Ingram fields, as far as I can tell," Armsaster bit back.

"buddy, i know magic when i see it, and thats definitely magic. id show you on a manameter if i had one."

"Unlike you, I do have scanners set up in my workshop, and I doubt they'll show any kinds of powers involved here."

"sure." Sans winks at us as the heat died down, leaving my head filled with information on aesthetics and functional design.

Armsmaster sighed and turned back to me. "That aside, I'm interested to see where this project of yours goes. I might make one of these myself-" -shit- "-if only because it's so cheap. Not sure I'd get much use out of it, but it'd be nice if a material shipment got delayed." Phew, he's just trying to be nice.

"Someone's in a rotten mood this morning," Panacea said, sounding a bit too satisfied about that fact. "Class hasn't even started yet. Got some power problems?"

"Surprisingly, no. Just an unpleasant email."

Maybe 'unpleasant' was the wrong word when it had been worded so politely. I'd emailed the Dockworker's Association yesterday about the Boat Graveyard, asking if they were interested in Parahuman assistance in clearing it out.

Their lawyer had replied to say: Thanks, but there's a lot of regulations around scrapping ships that old and that large, even before adding powers to the mix. Half their interest in the Boat Graveyard was around getting jobs for the dockworkers, since blue collar work was increasingly scarce as Brockton Bay's economy shifted further into tech, medicine, and banking sectors.

I was planning to draft a reply asking about the ferry, but I doubted that would go any better. Joke's on me for being fanonbrained, I guess, but it's probably for the best that people can't just hire any old overconfident tinker or telekinetic or whatever to move skyscraper-sized ships.

Panacea let go of my hand. "Well, your body didn't get any more fucked up over the week, if you were wondering."

"Right, thanks."

I turned to leave the empty classroom, just as a pair of people walked in. One was Dean, and by the way Panacea's expression brightened at the other one's arrival, I could guess who the blonde girl was.

She had what looked like a well-worn book on PRT protocol tucked under one arm, edges overgrown with colour-coded sticky notes. Aeon eyed the manual. "Fucking nerd. I bet that book could kill someone if it fell on them."

For all that fans hyped up her aura, I didn't notice any major emotional changes. Maybe it made her seem a bit cooler in person, but that was it. Makes sense that she'd have, y'know, basic control over her power in non-fight settings, even if she couldn't turn it all the way off.

"Brianne," Dean greeted. "How's the Integrals assignment been treating you?"

"I got it done yesterday." The thing about talking to an emotion sensor is that you get stressed about what emotions he might be seeing, then getting stressed about that stress. I tried not to get caught in that cycle.

His eyebrows raised. "Already? I've looked over it, and it doesn't seem easy. Mind giving me a few pointers?"

Part of me wanted to sit him down and run through the assignment with him, but I squashed the impulse. With the teaching power, I couldn't afford to help people like that.

But if it's just a few pointers…

"Sure thing."

Glory Girl left, Panacea trailing behind her. Now, instead of being alone with three superheroes, I was alone with one, and it was the Thinker. Gallant hadn't had much of a showing in canon, but Cherish had, and she was a prime example of how good an emotion-sensor's insight could be.

I tried to recentre my thoughts as I grabbed the assignment from my bag. It was an active struggle to not get drawn into overexplaining things. For better or for worse, Dean seemed to notice, changing the topic whenever I was in danger of starting to ramble.

"Thanks a bunch. Some of these questions are actually starting to look approachable now," Dean said.

"No problem."

"By the way, are you doing okay? You seem a bit stressed out."

Please don't dig. Please realise I don't want you to dig and respect my boundaries. "It's normal, I'm fine. Just personal issues."

"I don't want to pry-" -yes you do, and I wish you didn't- "-but I have a gut feeling you need some support right now."

"Was the Cauldron vial Daddy Dearest bought for you called 'Gut Feeling'?" Aeon said.

I ignored the lizard. "Don't worry, I have a friend who's helping me out already. Lisa Medina, sits a couple rows ahead of us in Maths class."

"I'm glad to hear it." Gallant stopped talking for long enough that I was about to leave, but he continued: "You know, my girlfriend told me a while back that capes will feel disoriented if someone nearby triggers with powers."

Fuck. He'd been nearby when I'd gotten the Armsmaster power, right? Did he have a trigger visions from that? Since he'd been there for Glory Girl's trigger event, he'd know what one would feel like too, even if only in hindsight.

Wait, didn't that roll happen when he was leaving my table? Did he think I'd triggered because he'd walked away after I said I was alright? Okay, that'd explain why he was pushing so hard now. He thinks he's helping when he's actually doing the exact opposite.

As if I didn't have enough on my plate already, another heat kicked in.

"Whatever you think happened, I'm pretty sure it's just a misunderstanding." Hopefully, my emotions would back me up here. "I didn't trigger in front of you or anything."

"Why do you think I meant that specifically?" There wasn't any accusation or suspicion in his voice, just the sort of gentleness you'd use when talking to a scared stray animal. I don't know if that made it better or worse.

"Isn't that what you meant?"

"It was, I'm just wondering why you thought of that moment in particular if nothing happened then."

"First thing I thought of. We haven't really talked much otherwise." Wait, will he take that as an accusation that he's not doing enough? Please don't. "Besides, if you were disoriented, it could've been anyone in the cafeteria who triggered. Or maybe it was just the heat wave."

"Idiot!" Hissed Aeon.

Gallant's brow furrowed. "If I was disoriented? Do you think I'm a cape too?"

Fuck. Idiot! Watch your mouth, you fucking moron!

"Right, sorry, I meant Glory Girl," I lied, very aware that he could see my guilty panic.

"I know it's hypocritical of me to say this, but secret identities are very important. Whether or not I really am a cape, if you convince the wrong person that I'm one, you'd be putting me in danger."

Aeon glared. "Yeah, it is hypocritical, Richie Rich."

I wanted so badly to just run off, but that'd probably cause him to panic and tell people about me. Damage control. And not the blackmail kind.

"Look…" I tried to find the words. "Sorry about my Thinker power, Gallant, I can't really help it. I'll keep your secret if you keep mine? I don't want anyone knowing about me until I'm ready."

He nodded, relaxing. "That's fine. Sorry for prying like that, but I couldn't just let it go again."

"I really didn't trigger in the cafeteria,for the record, my powers are just weird. Sorry for the, uh, scare."

"That's fine. I'm glad we've sorted this out. Do you have any plans for cape stuff yet? Or have you not thought about it?"

"I've already talked to Armsmaster about hero stuff. I'm turning eighteen soon, so he recommended that I just directly join the Protectorate after I graduate."

"That's a relief. I'm glad you're on the right path," he smiled. "If you learn anything important with your Thinker power, you can always bring it to me, okay? I won't tell anyone where I learned it from if you don't want me to."

Actually, that was potentially very useful. I already wanted to get information over to the heroes, right? And Gallant's offer might be the best way to do it.

"Thanks, I will."