(A/N: Another Day, another adventure through the omniverse. This one has fought me. Seriously, Rocky couldn't beat the writer's block ninja my muse has been facing. Enjoy!)
The sound of a car rushing by broke me from my sleep, my mind clouded from what felt like the best rest of my life. I'd been having a weirdly vivid dream, although the more I tried to think about it, the more the details seemed to fade away. The only clear memory from any of it was there was a dragon staring at me. With a slow, stretching pace, I placed my elbows under me and pushed, propping myself up and shielding my eyes from the afternoon sun- the sun?
The realization that I wasn't in my bed jerked me awake, and any thoughts of sleep were banished from my mind. I found myself in a dingy alley with the sun overhead, though that wasn't what held my attention. A bout of panic and unease made itself known in my stomach, quickly spreading through the rest of my mind. However, it wasn't for any of the reasons I would normally be freaking out.
I should be freaking out over the fact I woke up somewhere in the Bay in an alley with no idea how I got there. Perhaps I should find it strange that my clothes were a size too small and from a set of old winter clothes my family had donated years ago. Maybe I should feel relieved there wasn't the constant, debilitating ache in my bones I'd grown up with, or the fact that the last thing I could remember was being incinerated. Any of those thoughts and more should be taking up my mind, but one thing made every other concern seem small.
"Why the hell am I a cat?" I voiced aloud, my voice cracking as if I hadn't spoken in days. "Wha- what? Apple. Lollipop. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," I experimented, finding the words strange in my mouth. Rolling up one sleeve, then the other, I found not human skin but gray, spotted fur like a snow leopard's. Taking off my two-sizes-too-small sneakers, I found my feet thankfully humanlike, despite the weird toenails. Rolling down my sleeves, I discovered that my fingernails could double as makeshift miniature knives, courtesy of the cut I gave myself.
I held a hand in front of my face, holding the wrist of the strange appendage with the other to keep it from shaking. With another "flex" of the fingers, elongated, katana-like claws slid from their sheathes. They weren't heavily curved like a cat's claw, but more elongated and straight. I dropped my hands to my side, retracting the needles and sitting in silence as I tried to process everything.
The last thing I could remember was dying in the fight between Lung and Squealer, caught in the crossfire between the Dragon and Tinker. What series of events could have led me to this alley, in a body that moved in ways I wasn't familiar with, I couldn't fathom. Small mercies my mom would say, considering I somehow wasn't dead, reduced to ash on the street.
Another car whizzed past the entrance of the alleyway, startling me from my growing anxiety. The uncanny valley was really starting to set in as I picked myself up from the ground, the expected pain absent from the motion. Placing one foot in front of the next, I paced to the end of the alley with a hand on the cool brickwork to my right. Reaching the mouth of the alley, a wide street with tall brickwork apartments met my gaze. The unfortunate part of living in a wheelchair was you didn't get around much, leaving me without any idea where I was.
The area reminded me a bit of the vacation my family and I took to Boston one year, touring all the old neighborhoods. Cars were parked along the bustling sidewalk, and all types of people making up the crowd. Too many people, too many who'd see me like… this. I couldn't walk out into the street, they'd think I was a freak! I stepped back from the mouth of the alley, putting furred hands to my face in exasperation, pausing when they stopped shorter than they should've.
I felt around my nose, finding it much longer than it should be. With crossed eyes to look at myself better, I found I didn't have a humanoid face anymore. Where I expected a smallish nose, a snout protruded from my face, whiskers and all. At least that explained why my mouth had felt weird when during my initial explorations. I uncrossed my eyes, laying my head back against the wall as the changes kept on coming. I'd already elected to forget about the tail, whipping about as if it had a mind of its own. Yeah, I wasn't walking on the street looking like this.
I heard a bang at the end of the alley, the gun-like noise being one of the few things that I found familiar. Life in Brockton Bay tended to desensitize you from violence after a while. Looking over to see what made the noise, I laughed as a cat shook itself from its landing and began grooming itself on a trash can lid. Ironic. Above the cat, however, was the solution to my current predicament. Firmly attached to the side of the building was a fire escape going up about five stories. An idea came to mind, crazy to my mind even as I thought it. If the capes could do it, I could. Having my impending mental breakdown on a rooftop would be more preferable to an alley, anyway.
Once more, I marveled at how good it felt to walk painlessly down the alley, around the trash bins, and up to the ladder. Normally, such an action would put so much pressure on my body that my bones would begin to feel like they'd snap. Which, now that I thought of it, seemed strange how I was able to save that little girl in the first place. A run like that should've put me out of commission after the first few steps, let alone nearly across the wide boardwalk street crossing. That is, until I felt my femur snap during my recovery step, unfortunately for me.
With a jump that wouldn't be out of place in the Olympics, I easily caught onto one of the rungs on the fire escape's folded ladder and gripped tightly to the cold metal. With a grunt and not a small amount of effort, I rested my back against the grated floor. Even though I could apparently jump as well as a professional athlete, I still had some work to do on my core and arms. Noted.
With a grunt I continued my ascent up the fire escape, its many steps leaving me somewhat winded at the top. From there… I don't know. Just don't stop and think, just keep moving. The moment I stopped to think, to truly comprehend what was happening, I'd be a crying mess for hours. When that happens, being in an open space or on the street may as well be a death sentence. Some gangster or crackhead could try and stick me up, and I wouldn't be able to defend myself.
Cresting the roof of the building, I took a rest, considering my next course of action. This part of the city wasn't familiar to me, what with life in a wheelchair. I jogged to the other end of the roof, looking north and seeing similar rooftops for another few blocks before dropping off into a suburban neighborhood. The Docks and Boat Graveyard were visible further in the distance. From this information, I gathered I could just walk a couple of miles north and get to my house.
Although that begged the question…did I want to go home? My parents probably thought me dead, I wasn't exactly myself right now, and this whole situation was just so royally fucked. Without a phone to call anyone, as I'd found after patting myself down, I couldn't go out onto the street, couldn't do jack shit! With a scream, I fell to my knees as the freakout I'd been putting off took over, sobs wracking my body as I caught up to reality.
Victoria Dallon, also known as Glory Girl, heroine extraordinaire, was having a good day. She'd just got off from school, smashed in some heads, and maybe totaled a car or two with a dumpster. It was Hookwolf's fault for dodging! Sure, she'd felt sorry and thoroughly apologized for the damages caused. She'd pay for it herself if she could! Unfortunately, parahuman laws sucked and could go get swirlied like that bully she'd dealt with recently.
Vicky was having a good day, until she heard a scream come from somewhere to her right. It wasn't the bloody murder scream of someone dying, or an excited 'I-just-got-an eight-hundred-dollar-Michael-Kors-purse-oh-my-god!' kind of scream either. It was the incoherent scream of someone who was having a very rough day, setting off all of Vicky's social butterfly alarms. With a quick text apologizing for being late, she changed course midflight and began heading south toward the source of the distress.
It didn't take long for the heroine to locate the source of the yell, a sobbing mess of fur on top of an apartment building near the commercial district. With a slow approach, she landed softly on the rooftop, carefully making her way to the cat…person…thing. Vicky had to admit, of all the freakouts she'd had to help this would take the cake for the strangest. Hell, this may even top the time she had to console Armsmaster after his bike had been utterly totalled beyond repair.
"Hello? Are you alright?" she asked tentatively, unintentionally startling the boy. He jerked, whipping around with a scared look on his inhuman face, eyes wide and ears back, his jaws slightly agape. Vicky stepped back, using her aura to project calmness only to fail miserably when a small headache bloomed at the base of her skull. Weirdly, the boy didn't seem affected by her power.
"Please don't- Glory Girl?" he stuttered, the boy's panicked stance softening as he realized who she was. Oddly, the realization itself seemed to calm him down somewhat, his stance loosening.
"Yes, Glory Girl. Enough about me, are you okay? It's not every day I'm flying around and see someone crying on a roof," Vicky asked, concern etching her features. She was still reeling from the fact that he seemed immune to her aura. Very few people could resist it, and every one of them was dangerous.
"I just- how do you think I should react when I should be fucking dead?!" he shouted, shrinking in on himself from the unintended vitriol. "...and last I checked, I had a little less fur," he muttered, burying his hands in his arms. Thankfully, Vicky had been on the receiving end of blunt rejections of help, and she'd ignored every one of them. Of course, she happened to focus more on the first comment than the last.
"What do you mean you're 'supposed to be dead?'" she asked, sitting down with an arm propped up on one leg, exuding nonchalance. The cat boy- she really needed to get his name- just looked at her, an internal war of indecision written all over his surprisingly expressive face.
"Do you know about that fight at the Boardwalk between Squealer and Lung? I was there. Turns out fire's hot," the kid replied, his voice quiet as he recalled the familiar events of two days ago. Vicky hadn't been there, but from what she'd heard it was the most violent the Boardwalk had been in years. She winced at the comment about the fire, not needing a vivid imagination to piece together what happened.
"I do agree, fire is hot. Have to say though, you are rocking that barbecued cat look. A little rare on the edges," she teased, coaxing a laugh from the distraught boy. It didn't go unnoticed that he started to perk up the more they talked.
"Thanks, I try. Still, waking up in an alley with ears and a tail was a bit of a surprise, I'll admit," he said shakily, displaying his inhuman features.
"Hey, all the better to hear me with, and all that. Still, I can't say I can relate to dying. Oh, by the way, do you have a name I could use? I'd rather not keep calling you cat boy in my head," the heroine asked.
"Seeing as I'm stuck like this for the foreseeable future, you can call me Tyler," the now-dubbed Tyler responded, surprising Vicky with his forwardness. She cautiously accepted his hand, questioning his wording.
"Stuck? You mean you can't change back?" she asked, very confused. If he were a Changer, he'd know a way to change back. Then again, come to think of it, if he was freaking out over his body being some humanoid cat thing, then he likely didn't have a way to change back.
"No, I can't. As I said, the last thing I can recall was helping a little girl get away from Lung's fire and dying in the process. People don't just walk off being dead like it's a cramp," he explained, further confirming Vicky's suspicion.
To her, it seemed like he was one of those monster capes the PRT sometimes found. While she hadn't met one herself, she'd been told what to do if she ever found one. One thing in particular bugged her, though.
"So, Tyler, you know your name, right? Do you remember anything else about your life?" she asked, figuring if he had his memory intact, either the endemic amnesia Case 53s had wasn't present, or she had a very strange case on her hands. One she most certainly wasn't qualified to handle.
"I mean, yeah? Why wouldn't I?" he responded, his eyes narrowing in confusion.
"Sorry, just checking something. So, a quick word since you know who you are, try not to just be giving out your name to people, since you still have a secretish identity to protect," Vicky advised, hoping to keep herself out of trouble more than anything.
"Why? It's not like I'll be going out and fighting crime or anything. I've already read up on the unwritten rules too, what with my pastime as SleuthorDare," Tyler said, the nonchalant revelation causing Vicky's brain to short out for a moment.
"You're SleuthorDare?!" she exclaimed, the irony of her meeting a celebrity lost in the moment.
"It's not a big deal-"
"Not a big deal?! Ok, you know what, I'm shutting this down here, or else I'm going to freak out," the heroine cut off, deciding not to pursue this train of thought this instant. It was one thing to console someone in distress, and entirely another to meet one of the most infamous PHO users in the flesh.
"Fair enough. There's a reason I don't post any personal info on PHO anyway, not that I'll be doing that anytime soon," he said, accepting the end of the topic.
"Still, you said you couldn't go out and fight crime. Why not? You have a power now don't you? Don't you?" Vicky asked, finally processing his strange phrasing.
"Ha! Funny thing, that. See, I always dreamed of being a hero even though it was impossible. Turns out, being born in the small percentage of people without a Corona Pollentia puts a pin in those dreams. I could never trigger," he said, a sad look crossing his features as he slumped again.
"Weh?" was all Glory Girl could stammer, her brain halting as she processed what he said.
As Glory Girl- the Glory Girl- continued her mental blue screen, I thanked whatever higher beings were out there that someone had enough pity to come help me. Most people in this city would just as likely rob me and leave me bleeding in an alley than help me as she did. For that, no thanks would ever be enough, hero or not. Of course, her asking about my having powers did bring something else into question.
Hypothetically, let's say I did somehow trigger and get powers, changing my body into a cat-human hybrid. I'd read about monster capes before in my long internet career, but the common theme was an omega tattoo and acute dissociative and retrograde amnesia. Since I didn't have any of those, I likely wasn't a true monster cape, as it had happened to every single documented instance. Whatever process made them wouldn't have an outlier at this point, not with such a concise track record. This begged the question, if I didn't actually trigger and I don't have a power that I intrinsically know how to use, was I even technically a parahuman? Sure, I had sharp claws and apparently enhanced agility, senses, and all the other positive things of being part cat.
A voice broke me from my ruminations, Glory Girl finally processing what I'd said to her. She looked at me expectantly, as if waiting for a response.
"Sorry, I didn't catch that, what did you say?" I asked, sheepishly looking away. You don't just ignore superheroes, especially not someone with maybe one or twenty too many action figures lining their shelves.
"I said, 'Do you have anyone you can call to come pick you up?'" the heroine repeated, now standing up and putting her hands on her hips with a satisfied look.
"Funny thing, that. I…don't have a phone on me. Or any sort of identification, actually. Whatever happened gave me my clothes from about a year or two ago," I muttered, standing up to match her and scratching the back of my head. I noticed the sun had begun to set a little more, reaching near the mountaintops in the distance.
"Eh, that's fine. Here, borrow mine and dial whoever. You do have someone you can call, right?" she offered, tossing me her phone as I fumbled with it for a few moments. The old flip phone sat in my hand for a few moments, held almost reverently as I stared between her and the device. She smirked, making a 'go on' gesture. "I don't have anything to hide. Literally. My identity is open, whoever wants to hurt me can come and try," she boasted, lifting her arms in a comical flex and looking to the side.
"Thanks, gimme a sec. I think…I think I'll call my dad. I don't know how he'll react but…" I paused my thumb over the call button. My dad's work number was entered into the display, waiting for the final press. I didn't know what would happen, whether he would just immediately hang up or deny my existence. A million and one possibilities flitted through my mind, holding my thumb above the button. Even still, I couldn't do nothing. Doing nothing causes entropy, and entropy kills all progress. My mom's favorite phrase to parrot.
Without waiting further, my thumb pressed the dial button, and the phone began to ring. Whatever happens next, I just hope I won't regret it…
(A/N: I'll be honest, I was halfway through writing this chapter when I realized I might get Taylor and Tyler confused down the line. I didn't even consider that when I was naming the MC. See you next time, folks!)