My shaky knowedge of how adoption works aside, I am finding more and more plot ideas I have are limited by my knowledge of American Laws or what differences are between states. Even though Brockton Bay is presumably in America I dunno how laws work there other than through a google search.
Also, sorry if I was unclear last chapter. Basically Amy's passenger is getting a stroke because they figured out Joal's avatar is somehow connected to Negentropy. Yeah, that's toooootally no gonna forshadow something in the future. Amy herself was affected by her shard which of course means she has those urges to biotinker tickled.
Anyway, please enjoy the chapter!
Hooo! That was too many close calls there.
I focused more on my shared memories and mindset I had as the Joal avatar. Since, with the way that power works, unless I want the avatar to be as robotic as a automaton I had to control both my own body and the avatar at the same time.
Let's make a breakdown so I can philosophically proccess this, since with the amount of powers I had increasing my thinking speed and multitasking, actually memorizing it was pretty easy.
Ok, so Amy nearly touched a rat that was in my dumpster. That was bad since I was pretty sure she could identify whether or not a person was mastered or frequently mastered despite not doing brains, I did not want to risk it. I even had to make up a name for said rat on the spot.Second, my gamble fucking failed. I should've known better but my curiosity got the better of me. I never even took the Bad Luck drawback, if I knew i was like this I would've gotten more points...
Third, Carol wanted to adopt me so suddenly?! I knew she was pretty desperate for New Wave to get new capes and that she pulled something similar with a baby Amelia, but that was years ago and when Amelia was a baby, I actually wasn't too sure if the public know Amelia is adopted or not...best not to assume for now.
In response to this surprise event, I asked BB to hack into various stuff to crrate a fake trail of me going through official channels to procure adoption papers, I am absolutely certain of BB's thorough work and validity even if the PRT or perhaps even Cauldron themselves look into it, they would see it as true and official.
I was that certain of her capabilities given her nature as an AI that essentially ran the moon for a time. Plus I promised her headpats I knew she would enjoy but pretend not to.
Actually...what would happen if BB and Theresa, aka Dragon met? Actually, would that end well?...Nah probabaly not. But Armsmaster, Narwhal and Saint's team can deal with it.
Anyway, back onto my current situation.
The Joal avatar was currently bullshitting together a fake timelime, how I met him while I was touring the premises. Things led to one another and that I would adopt him.
To be honest, the most trouble I had setting up a fake account is with Bezerker Raikou's insistance that she wanted to be my mother on paper. But that would never turn out well, especially with Raikou having to be rhe one to deal with all these capes in such a situation, so we settled on Raikou being Jin's mother on paper which delayed me enough until now after a quick Lillith portal into the building and bringing along some of Lillith's children to rapidly clean up and decorate this abandoned warehouse with fake appliances.
Of course, technically I bought it for Lobotomy Corporation's use, with funds gathered through BB's hacking. But didn't have a need for it. Maybe I'll think of something later.
Also, getting a lot of red flags from Amelia here. She's been acting strange ever since she got into contact with Joal. Maybe I made a worse mistake than what I realised. Before I left, I had to ask Kasumi to start looking into Shardspace and Shard research. To be honest, I felt really really bad. Kasumi's been insistant on working more and more. Even with my mandatory rest times these past few days have been...way too productive.
When I asked to look into Shardspace and Entity research she told me something along the lines of:
"Oh oh! I've actually been looking into that quite a bit. I've been working on jailbreaking myself and white boxing myself and you so that our tinkertech can be understood by normal people!"
I sentenced her to play video games in her room for the next 2 hours.
People die by overworking you know? I appreciate the effort and her goodwill but...I feel guilty. Plus nipping workaholic habits at the bud will do good for her in the future.
Ahhh, what a pain!
I've spoken to way too many Earth Bet people today and eveything went so so wrong so quickly.
I want to go back home and do nothing. I've far surpassed my social limit with these folks. The people back home don't count, they help me recharge if anything.
I want to go home and do nothing.
I clap my hands together after pocketing the adoption certificate, getting all of their attention.
"So now you know our story!" Thanks to the Orator power I picked up as well as my natural attractiveness in this body (despite being almost unhealthily thin) I was able to likely pull off the eccentric happy and eager tone I've seen in many such characters from anime.
Mei Hatsume, Grace Howard are more modern mainstream examples I pulled from. I could go for the child genius persona but I was an adult in this form.
"So, introductions. I'm Jin Cheon. CEO and founde of Lobotomy Corporation!" I check my back pocket to produce four business cards, handing it out to Amy, Carol, Hana and Kyle respectively.
They all recieve the cards with stunned silence. Good, I can leave quickly at this rate.
"Face the fear. Build the future?" Kyle reads the insignia of the card "Please excuse me, Miss Cheon. I'll have to ask a few questions, ah, not anything official as you seemed to have gone through the official channels, but I would like to understand the situation better. What is it that your company does?"
I give a thumbs up back with a grin "No problem. I appreciate your work ethic and concern for children."
"I'm 16. not a kid." The Joal avatar moves to stand beside me as he looks at me with an unamused expression
Man I got one hell of a case of resting bitch face as a guy.
"Heh. You and I both know you get more benefits for being a kid." I ruffle my own, Joal's hair, this is getting weird "As for what my company does. Well we are similar to a very well established odd jobs agency. Given sufficient clearance and paperwork, we dip our hands into different fields entirely after gaining sufficient qualifications. Think construction, music, food and more."
"I don't believe I've ever heard of your company before..." Carol slightly crumples the card but puts it...somewhere, her costume doesn't have pockets...
"I hope not. We recently got established, so I'd appreciate it if you'd hire us for a job or two. We can do cleaning, help tutoring and most other stuff." I soon move over into an exaggerated whisper pose "Though don't trust us too much, I'm a CEO and movies say we are a shady bunch that can't be trusted. Keep it between us but it's actually a front for a shadow government."
"Oi. This isn't the time to joke around, Jin." Joal nudges me on the side, causing me to straighten up and cough into my hand "Sorry, she's always like this."
"Aw come on Joal. I'm trying to help your case here. Come on in actually, I heard from a little birdie on PHO that someone thought it was a good idea to eat dumpster food despite there being perfectly sanitary and warm food at home?" I slightly lean over Joal with a raised brow.
Yeeeees! We are absolutely nailing the acting!
"I-It was perfectly clean. It was in its packaging and the bag was freshly changed. There was nothing touching the bag either so it was-" Joal looked away as he reminisced of our shared humiliation.
Don't get caught, that's isekai 101. And somehow we keep getting caught.
"Booo. No excuses young man." I bonk Joal on the head lightly "After the adults talk, we are heading to Fugly Bobs. You need some good old American Junk food in you. Plus, Doctor Roman got his hands on some old tapes of the Mouse Protector Cartoon. It'll be all of our first times watching it if I'm right."
"Well...free food and free entertainment?" Joal trails off but nods "Go do your thing. I'm going where Amy went to."
"안녕 (Bye)" I had to throw in a little Korean to sell the idea that I was different to Joal, plus no doubt they were wondering how Joal could speak Japanese when he had no background that woupd require him to do so.
An eccentric CEO who speaks multiple languages on the other hand...let's hope their think tank is smart enough to put two fake puzzle pieces together.
Me and myself wave at one another as the avatar leaves to keep an eye on Amy.
I turn back towards the the other three with a smile. I made sure to not make it strained or too much, so why do they not return the smile? Miss Militia gets a pass due to her mask.
"So, you saw what had happened on PHO then, Cheon." Carol seems to stare me down, it wasn't hard for her considering her height advantage "Then you should realize that the best course of action is to let me have custody of Joal."
She is still going on about that?
"I am aware of the concequences being known as a Cape will have on Joal's daily life. But it's exactly why I think it's best if I take care of him. He needs normalcy in his life." I reply with, still smiling though my arms are crossed.
"This isn't about having a normal life." Carol doesn't step down "His life is at risk. The fact he does not have any powers will soon be figured out, people will have questions, and some won't wait for you or Joal to answer. Lung has been known to take in half Asians even if their other half isn't Asian and Kaiser stops at nothing to get another potential cape to his side. It isn't just about kidnapping him, they'll try to cause a Trigger event. You can't protect him."
"Such a thing is for Joal to decide. He knows better than most when it comes to seeing through people and avoiding danger. You know his story." I understand her irritation though, I also somewhat knew her story.
All these people...they have roles to fill. They truly don't stray far from their written destinies, do they? Such is the fate of fictional characters. At least with the Servants they can develop and grow. But Wildbow was really good at the reverse of character developmemt, in a good way. I heard the original novel was a great subversion and breakdown of Superhero tropes and a commentary of 2011 society in America. Wasn't my cup of tea so I didn't read though.
"I'll repeat, you can not protect him. You have no idea the responsaility or stress raising capes causes." Carol is beginning to start sounding all Karen to me, let's nip this at the bud.
"Carol. I appreciate the thought." I walk up to her and place a hand on her shoulder "I understand where you are coming from. Why you are worried, what happened to Fleur was not your fault."
Please don't escalate. Please don't escalate. Pleeeeeeeaaaaase don't fucking escalate.
I notice Hana and Kyle both flinch at what I state and slowly turn to look at Carol. I didn't say something that touchy did I? It was a few years since Fleur died so I was banking on the name not causing Carol to grieve in tears.
"This...I, this isn't about her." Carol is able to say after a few seconds, her tone is slightly offended, ok lets ease this off slowly.
"...Of course." I gently remove my hand "Though, please look at it from Joal's perspective. He has known me for quite a while, whereas you hve known him for only a few minutes. You can't force people to like you."
Or, at least you should not.
I have an idea...while it could lead to thins going wrong, it will at least help play damage control for everything that happened so far.
"Hey, think of it like this." I begin again before Carol replies "I am at least pretty sure your family and the Pelhams are the only other open capes in the local area. I am a single mother that runs a company, so my time will be taken up here and there. I'll send Joal to visit you guys if that's fine. Heh, Joal will never pass up the oppertunity I'll tell you that much, so he is probably game."
"...Yes...that...would be an optimal plan given the circumstances." Carol seems depserate to try and keep herself from bursting out with emotion, a mix of anger and stress from what I gathered.
"Right! Well. I'm sure its been a very hectic day for everyone so far. Would you all like to come in for some tea?" I hit them with the reverse psychology strategy.
They were all on the clock! Probably, since they were all in costume or in work clothes, by inviting them for tea, I uphold my social obligations while not seeming like I'm dismissing them, but if they were doing their jobs right now they would have to continue on their way!
It is foolproof! Works 100% of the time, 10% of the time.
Sure enough, my plan worked decently enough, Kyle excused himself, likely having many questions for his own workplace and I invited him to visit again in the future if he had any more questions. Miss Militia had to return to her patrol before heading back to the Rig since everything regarding Joal was considered legal, and as his legal guardian the PRT would have to contact me formally to inquire about Joal's plans in the future. Successful delay!Now if only Carol followed along with those two and did her hero or lawyer thing...
She stuck around for a little, just sort of lookingat me with a poker face, trying desperately to make casual small talk. Likely for appearances. I go along with it but uh.
I probabaly pissed her off.
Oops.
Some awkward few minutes pass before Carol calls Amy and they leave, presumably to either the hospital or back to their home. Noticibly, Amy's doomer expression filld with exasperation and eternal depression...seems a little less depressed?
I turn to the Joal avatar.
"How the fuck did you raise a flag with Amy?" I say more with surprise rather than a lack of not knowing, sharing a mind and all that.
"Unique messy biology. The fact she can't see majority of my insides and biology interests her." Joal sighs slightly "When will I ever meet a girl that likes me for my personality and not my body."
"Don't we know it? Hey, sorry for putting you through all this these past few days. How about we switch for Thursday and Friday? If there are girls that like us for being us...well let's just say summoning Servants is just as good as I imagined." I chuckle slightly.
"...Holy shit. Was there mana transfer?" Joal spoke, stunned."N-Not yet. I don't want it to feel ingenuine or that I only want to share such an intimite moment with them for their body either. Now that they are real and...I dunno how to explain it exactly." I reply with as I open the door to the warehouse and we both wak inside.
"Well. I don't want to treat them as, things. Since we are the same person..." Joal says as he lets our new rat named Jane onto a table.
"More or less. I want to take it at least a little slow so they can learn who I am rather than that ideal Master. We are such pussies." I sigh gently.
"Well, one of us is right now. But hey, better to have integrity about it, I'd say." Joal moves to sit on a chair "Hide away until we are confident enough to do something? Sounds about right."
"Mhh, glad to see I'm just the same as I was in life. Even kept that habit of talking to myself. Just with extra steps." I say "By the way. Turns out everyone in the pocket dimension wanted to have a home cooked meal from me as a reward of sorts and a welcome..."
"I think I see where Edelweiss gets her verbal tic from. Say no more, that explains all the rice, eggs and other stuff. Lillith's group brought them in?" Joal starts to wash his hands.
"Yeah, but instead of cooking I want you to look over Kasumi's byproducts from her time dilatation research. Well it's more akin to manipulation at this point. She is currently speedrunning cryogenics." I reply with "I want to do this myself. No powers, so I'll be here a while."
"Yeah I got ya. Though with how much you gotta make, I guess its a midnight feast. I'll guess the stuff I should check out are upstairs." Joal then moves to dry his hands before he takes the stairs up, notably, the rat he placed on the table jumped onto his clothes and climbed up his shoulder, despite none of us using any of our rat control abilities.
Hm...
I, the Joal avatar, decided to get the cool ass job of checking out new trinkets and gadets from Kasumi's research and development.
Before me laid multiple different random devices and tools, immdiately the first thing that stood out was these sets of smaller handguns alongside a theme of longer rifles of some kind. Alongside it was a sheet of paper.
"Well since I am in America, let's check out the guns first." I took a hold of a flintlock pistol that was paired with a flintlock rifle I left on the table.
A glance to the paper beside it, it stated that these pairs of guns were based on Kurumi Tokisaki's abilities, a spirit with time manipulation powers from the show Date A Live, in my previous life I played the Spirit Pledge gacha for a while so she must have gotten the idea from that game, either that or she asked Cole for more details. A fusion of her learning from alternate realities where she had various specialties mixed together. These gun pairs were named 'Temporal Guns' generally, but the command phrase for initial set up was 'Zaphkiel' rather than Kurumi's 'Zafkiel'.
There was a basic explanation on what it does, Kasumi made the gun easily accessible but also user friendly to certain extent since these pairs of guns were all prototype models she could get rid of now that she figured out they worked.
Anybody can put their hands on these guns and use them as mundane variants, so none capes could still use them as normal guns. It was when someone had a form of internal energy of some kind where things got interesting. These energies can be supplied by most forms of esoteric energy mastery. There was a brief influx of memories presumably from Joal prime of him observing Cole attepmting to use different energies from ki, chakra, nen and more with Kasumi taking notes nearby.
"Hmm...voice commands. So flashy, I like that system." I'm an anime watcher, what do you expect? I make a dramatic pose as I lower my octave and have a serious expression "Your time has come. Zaphkiel."
A grand golden clock larger than myself materialises behind me.
"Aiyah, that was so cheesy." I curl up a little and subconsiously move my head to look around to see if anyone saw...Lillith defilently saw "Right...says here on the paper that the clock itself is a physical thing."
I turn around to place my hand on the clock, it was solid and I know a few times, sounds solid and kind of dense. The paper stated that the clock itself was bullet proof to high caliber sniper rounds, but is still susceptible to damage. Similar to Kurumi, a damaged clock can be desummoned and resummoned, when this happens all damage is reverted. There is a field of 2 metres around a holder of one of these guns. There was a set force threshold, I dunno the science behind it, but it calculates both the mass and velocity of something within this field and automaticaly summons the clock to intervene, plus a feature that allows the user to mentally and telepathically control the position of this 2 ton clock?
Quality of life features have somehow been weaponized and I'm all for it.
"...Persona 3 always was my personal favourite out of the franchise." I place the end of the barrel of the gun towards my right temple.
...I know what I got to do.
It was a bit strange, putting a gun to my head. I shot guns before and it was going against my base instincts to do such a thing. Despite my Fatal Shield ability, despite knowing it won't actually hurt when I shoot myself with a Aleph bullet.
I move the gun away from my head...I release a breath I did not know I was holding.
"Shit...come on man, I'm not that much of a coward am I?..." I turn to a proxy firing range that as set up, I moved the barrel towards that general area and began practice shots. I was half afraid of the bullets going through or past the magically enhanced dummy due to my amateur aiming skills.
I admit it was also a little fueled by my frustration towards myself at being unable to shoot myself and test out the time abilities, the thing that actually matters in this test.
I decide not to think about it too much as I continue shooting, the rounds were not bullets and used up no rounds. There was energy that acted as a substitute to the bullets, a dark shadowy energy that formed in the barrel and shot out whenever the trigger was pulled, so despite the flintlock pistol being flintlock, a user did not have to use the entire reloading process, this applied to the other guns.
Notably, this energy is rooted from the energy my shard provides. Kasumi speculated that other Parahumans could also use the gun's special features, however would use up their shard's energy as it would use powers. These were just the prototypes, so more secure tracking methods and user identification were being developed for future models by Kasumi, she even planned to input a gun's miniature self-perpetuating energy source which can be transferred to other projects of her's in the future.
Currently the gun's energy consumption was really stupidly innefficient, apparently using some high end time bullets takes as much energy as Eidolon using his ability for hours at a time, using Yod Aleph or Yod Bet would use up an entire shard's energy depending on how far one wants to go. But thanks to my perk Negentrophy giving me infinite energy, me and those I fuel with my energy including thr Friendbringers and Servants can use it as many times as they want.
One of the main reasons why all the available prototypes were sent to me was because servants kept steaing and using them to prank one another.
That sound's about right.
"Alright...the gun's firepower is decent, and I'm just gonna assume the larger variants of these handguns pack a bigger punch. Better not fire the larger ons while still in Earth Bet. If there are holes in the walls, I don't want Carol or the PRT on my ass for potential tinkertech weapons." I look at the gun again for a few seconds in silence "Ugh...I still need to test out the time manipulation properties but got no live targets."
I hear a squeak coming from my shoulder, I forgot Jane was here.
The rat somehow seemed to have stayed on my shoulder and didn't fall off while I tested out things, she didn't even get spooked when I as firing a gun, I wasn't even mind controlling them with my rat abilities.
Hmm...I needed a live target that can move and-
"No no no. What am I even thinking." I sigh to myself.
If I use Aleph on myself, I wasn't sure if it would apply to Jane, so if I moved around she would probabaly fall. I decided to move over towards the table and place Jane onto it before stepping back and going back to the testing area.
I wasn't an avid animal rights person and I defilently loved eating meat, I was not opposed to using lab rats or other animals such as apes in experiments in the past or dissuaded anyone from abstaining in using the rats in the Pocket Dimension for tests. Call it hypocritical but I didn't think that much into it, I just didn't want to hurt Jane because I didn't.
"Aleph." Energy seemed to secrete from the roman numeral number 1 from the golden clock that seeped into the gun's chamber, once more I placed the end of the barrel to my temple again, I swallow "Ok...this is surprisingly more harder then I first thought it would be haha..."
I lower the gun again with another held breath released.
I then hear a distressed chain of squeaks from Jane. Who was at the edge of the table, well. More accurately I zoned the hell out and didn't notice the squeaking until now when I wasn't focused on the gun. I know rats were probably one of more smarter creatures in the world, and from what I would see if I were Jane that this stick thingy just made holes in a human shaped dummy, and now said human is putting the weird, loud kill stick to their own head. But that initial guess was reliant on the idea that.
Jane cares? Why?
"...Hahaha!" I burst out laughing soon, to be honest I wasn't sure why "Hey, hey. Calm down. Can you even understand me when I am not using my Rat King ability?"
I walk back towards the table for the distressed rat and pet and rub their fur, I figured I should keep going until their eyes bulge. I think that means they were content and happy. Of course, at my question I just got a bunch of squeaks in response, but they lessened in harshness and frequency in response of the pats.
"Hey...thanks for the confidence boost. Even if you didn't mean to." I suddenly place the gun to my head once more and pulled the trigger "Huh...there really wasn't any force or pain."
I took a glance to the clock, it had continued to tick as normal but the world was, a little strange. Everything was the same, there was no visual hue change, but there was changes to sound. I took a few steps around but there was no sound.
"Aleph. This bullet increases one's external time. I have no idea what that actually means but I guess I'm in something similar to Flash Time." Seems like my voice is normal and somehow isn't delayed?
Time fuckery is weird.
I look at Jane, who is still- no, actually she is just moving extremely extremely slowly. I move over to the fence and look over it, I see Joal prime is also semingly frozen.
"Hmm...the pranking potential of this alone is immense. I unerstand why they loved abusing it so much." I say to myself.
Suddenly, time resumes to normal speeds.
"Ah...Seems to last about a minute." Not like I could use a timer to check the specifics.
I hear rapid squeaking again.
I rush back to the table "Sorry sorry. I'm good. I'm fine yeah?"
I resume petting the distressed animal. Seriously, when did she get so attched and wha in the world did I do for this to occur? Seems more like a golden retriever at this rate.
"Ok. Lets see what else these guns can do." Using my left hand to continue soothing Jane, I used my right to place down the gun and get that sheet of paper once more.
Ok, seems like these things can convert and imprint themselves into other accessories or clothes. They follow a theme, the flintlock ones convert into the typical Kurumi dress, thankfully I didn't use it. This followed onto the other pairs, the modern looking ones turn into a generic military uniform, the Wild West looking revolver and rifle into a cowboy or cowgirl outfit and so on. Seems like Kasumi had fun with the costumes as some pairs were obvious cosplay allusions. Though it didn't have to be the entire outfit, it can be an accessory like shades or a hair clip. As usual, command words are used to turn them to and from.
"That's enough testing for today...it was way too hectic. I wanna play games and laze around." I sit on the couch nearby, Jane on my shoulder again.
Call me egoistic, but I have been followed by the curse of gacha to this very day, I took out a custom made phone by the R and D department of the Pocket Dimension started up the app, Fate Impact.
To be honest, since we summoned a bunch of new servants and allies, we all collectively focused in redoing a bunch of models and code since uh...name dropping our weakesses, strength and powers onto a mobile game of all things would not do very good.
Thankfully, we had no marketing, and our thumnail and such on the app store was generic, since the gane was released literary days ago, no one played it just yet since no one knew it existed, so updates here and there and hopefully everything works out ok. Lillith has been on watch duty with her Clairvoyant abilities and mind wiping people that would be aware. Of course, this was done through Lillith's minions in black suits, sunglasses and such.
We settled for original characters, but had to keep in the same names for the historical figures. For this, Joal Prime actually discussed with the individual servants what they wished for their namesakes to be like.
Well, enough history, ironicaly enough. I am here to play games and relax. So relax I shall!
I spent the whole night playing the game I made as a f2p account. I fell asleep at 4AM on the couch.
This is nice.