234 My SI Stash #34 - Teenagers Suck by Mizuki_Stone (Worm)

-Recently revived fic, was dead for 2 years~ SI as a student of Winslow High with Warlock Powers, it's prettty much a slice of life!

Sypnosis: ???

Rated: T

Words: 120K

Posted on: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/teenagers-suck-worm-cyoa.343807/#threadmark-category-16 (Mizuki_Stone)

PS: If you're not able to copy/paste the link, you have everything in here to find it, by simply searching the author and the story title. It sucks that you can't copy links on mobile (´ー｀)

-I'll be putting the chapter ones of all the fanfics mentioned, to give you guys a sample if you wan't more please do go to the website and support the author! (And maybe even convince them to start uploading chapters in here as well!)

Prologue + Chapter 1

Have you ever felt like your life isn't your own? Like you're stuck in a role you weren't meant to play?

Welcome to my life.

My name is Dwight Underwood. Or rather now it is. And I'm fresh into my sixteenth year of life... while remembering being in my mid twenties not too long ago somewhere else.

Yeah I know, sounds crazy right? Not crazy 'haha' but crazy in the 'you should get some counselling for that', which I would except that I can't talk about it.

And I don't mean that I can't talk about it because I'm afraid of something bad happening on my record I mean I literally cannot talk about it. I open my mouth to say something and just... nothing comes out. A secret locked inside my head I can't tell anyone.

Which is creepy as fuck.

But then again, capes are supposed to be messed up right?

Oh, right, capes. Capes are... well people in capes. Well not literally capes. Costumes. Superheroes and supervillians. Some of the costumes have capes but those fell out of favor early. Crazy people with superpowers basically. Those are a thing.

Annnnd I am one of them. Minus the costume part anyway. Though my powers are kind of lame in the 'super' department. I mean they look cool, but... Not really that practical in the face of stuff like handguns and things, but they certainly had some cool presentation to them.

I mean, everyone wanted to be a blaster. Well if they couldn't be an Alexandria Package anyway. Super strength, invulnerability and Flight were a hard mix to beat.

But on the other hand, my powers could grow with time. That was an edge few could boast. And magic types were rare, even if most ended up mocked if they openly called themselves that. Give me some time and I could get one of those 'top of the line' powers, maybe fake another one, and hit hard in my own way by developing what I had. Legend was just as cool as Alexandria after all.

...Here I am talking about coolness like I really was a teenager. Well I guess in terms of glands and stuff I was. Or was I just a teenager with a lot of information downloaded into my brain?

This was really messed up. For now all I could do is play my part.

I was definitely going to try and test out of school though at least, regardless of anything else. Winslow sucked.

Or maybe I should really think about joining the Wards? I mean that was the heroic thing to do right? But at the same time I had to seriously think on how I wanted to approach that. Being a hero sounded awesome but... would I really be able to do that sort of thing? Walk around in spandex shooting fiddly little lasers?

It seemed... smarter to level up a bit first. Spend more time thinking on my options and trying to get up to the level of something useful.

Or maybe I was just procrastinating because the idea of entering combat with weak powers scared me.

Then again that was just another thing to think about wasn't it?

Adjusting my backpack I continued my trek to the hell that was highschool. At least I'd have a few more minutes before the glory that was the American Educational system went too work doing its best to scrub any semblance of thought from my brain.

Chapter 1: Setting the Stage

Part 1

To call Winslow a hellhole was an insult to hellholes everywhere. I'd known it was bad before getting powers, but now I actually had some basis for comparison.

The building itself wasn't in great shape, it wasn't exactly 'half a step from condemned', but it was understating things to say some of the rooms could use a coat of paint and the library held the firm and rustic smell of mildew to it like water in a sponge. The equipment wasn't exactly great either, the chairs were uncomfortable, the PA crackled, the textbooks were a decade old in the better cases, and the computers were old enough that they didn't need to worry about the gangs stealing them.

Actually now in hindsight, that last one might actually have been deliberate.

But those weren't the real problem.

No the real problem was the gangs.

Brockton Bay, among its many other notable titles, was the neo Nazi capital of the US. It wasn't bad enough that I could expect to see someone walking down the hallway with a red arm band but I wouldn't really be surprised by it.

Not that they would. Shaved heads, and 'subtle' display of the number eighty eight was one thing. Flying colors that blatant on the other hand was just asking someone to bust a cap in your ass. Probably by someone wearing a dragon.

It's funny, you'd think an organization the Empire Eighty Eight (said neo Nazis) would all but own this town. They had like a dozen supervillians, money, borderline military level munitions and resources. Once you added it all together, the local Protectorate were just plain out numbered and out muscled, even if you factored in independent heroes like New Wave helping them.

And honestly they would. It's a freaking terrifying thought. Particularly for someone who could remember listening to horror stories about the original flavor of Nazis, but by all rights Kaiser, leader of the Empire Eighty Eight should have taken over at this point.

But he didn't.

Because there was a scarier monster in town.

Lung was everything the Empire was and worse. He was one man. One cape. And he basically walked into town, picked out a spot he liked and said that it was his now.

And whenever someone objected he crushed them like a bug. Normal person, cop, soldier, superhuman, team of superhumans, it didn't matter. He just... walked in one day, picked a fight with the entire local Protectorate and sent them running. He did the same to the empire, and to everyone else stupid enough to face him.

And then he claimed his spot, and ruled it like a tyrant.

The Azn Bad Boyz better known as the ABB. A paradoxical pan-Asian supremacist gang, that gave no care about the wildly diverging and often traditionally conflicting cultures scooped up under the term 'Asian' ruled by a freaking dragon.

Drugs, protection rackets, kidnapping and exportation, outright human trafficking... they did it all, and not a single person alive could stop it. The most the government and its affiliate heroes could do was stake out hunks of turf that they wouldn't budge on. Certain rules that they abided by.

It was probably those exact rules that were the only reason a place like Winslow could still stand with members of both gangs openly operating inside with anything resembling peace and order.

Scary shit huh?

Even two days ago the best I could do was hunker down, keep quiet and hope to whatever gods might be listening that no one drew their attention towards me.

But now... now I had power. Not a lot of it, but...

Was this what it felt like to own a gun maybe? The heady feeling of being able to fight back, to know that if someone went after you that you didn't just have to stand there and take it.

Not that fighting would get me far. My powers sucked. If I fought back openly that'd just get attention that would crush me like a bug. At least with what powers I currently had available. All that aside if I just busted out the arcane asskicking bullshit on a hares breath then how was I different from the gangs in the first place?

But... maybe with some practice that could change? I was already one link higher on the food chain. If I just kept climbing higher then eventually I might be able to make a real difference. With great power comes great responsibility and all that right?

I had to figure out how to strike a good balance. Find some point between where I could live with myself and just plain live.

The bell rang.

I blinked.

Of course that could wait until after class!

Part 2

Math class was... math class. For some reason people thought that if you were good at something that you had to like it.

I was good at math. Too good honestly, I could do everything up to basic exponents in my head but in a class that graded by 'showing your work', that didn't mean much. All responses were meant to be punch card perfect. The properly listed process for the properly listed result, even if I could get the actual answer out onto the paper with half the actual work.

It sucked, and sapped dry whatever little amounts of enjoyment I could find working on this educational assembly line. I didn't even have any friends in this class.

Well there was Tony, but we'd grown pretty distant since he shaved his head. He had his reasons. I knew them, even kinda got them, but I didn't agree with them.

Hate couldn't be fixed with more hate. Not unless you were willing to carry it all the way through, and the price of that... wasn't something I felt was worth paying.

His mother agreed with me.

His father... was less vocal.

I wondered if I went hero, would I end up fighting him one day? Like... not an argument, but literal bullets and energy blasts fight?

The idea made the little pit in my stomach sink a little further.

Then again it wasn't like the alternative was on the plate either. If I didn't bend my knee to Kaiser before I got my powers, why the hell would I now that I might be able to fight back?

My work was done, I was expected to 'free study' now. In short keep quiet and let the other little cogs turn in the grand machine that was the school system while playing around with my cellphone.

Except that I wasn't.

Ideas...

Where the hell was I going to get a costume? I wanted something... useful. Practical. Something that could help me survive some.

Armor? Well maybe I could manage with some sports equipment. The good motocross stuff was pretty protective right? Not bulletproof vest grade but...

How much were those vests anyway? I mean sports kit was pretty expensive. A full set could cost a couple hundred if it was new. I could reach that but it wasn't exactly small change to me either. It also wasn't really optimal for the job.

But those vests got kind of bulky... and weren't knives supposed to slide through them pretty easily as well? Super fights used blades more often then bullets right?

So... maybe I should go medieval on their asses? Chainmail or something like that? That'd be even harder to find, but you could find it. Online order from one of those Renaissance fair, old style blacksmiths...

How do you block metal blades and fire blasts with stuff like that? You don't. So... was armor worth it?

...Duh, of course it was. For every forest of blades and raging fire dragon there were also pocket knives, nine millimeters and basic bits of shrapnel.

So... I probably wanted to start with the motocross stuff. Less complicated then trying to make something piecemeal and it covered everywhere. I could get the thing cash, over the counter as well, making things a lot less easily connected to me.

A memory from the other life hit me.

I could also modify it with plates of heavier stuff over top. Probably wouldn't do as well as full out plate-mail with Kevlar inserts, but I could leave little spots for inserts for Kevlar later.

...Or maybe I could take up sewing and find out how much Kevlar cost piecemeal?

The motocross stuff would be a good base layer though. It was padded, meant to help people survive big cashes, and it was low profile for armor. It'd be a good starting ground.

What about the helmet though? Head protection was nice, but I was trying to go hero. Some heroes got away with that sort of stuff but most showed at least part of their face. Either way just walking around in a bikers outfit didn't seem very... super... person... like. I mean who did that? Maybe if I had biker themed powers...

Alright, I needed to work on the helmet idea some. Maybe approach that more from the hard armor angle? Some of the medieval style helmets were-

The bell rung.

Automatically I started putting stuff away. Computer sciences next. AKA how to use the office program of a OS three generations out of date.

Joy.

Maybe I should just skip it and swing by the drama room?

...ooor I could just speed-blitz the class again and use the opportunity to look up everything I was just thinking about.

Huh, suddenly school didn't seem so bad!

I twitched, right... let's just hope Murphy wasn't listening to that.

Part 3

The computers in computer sciences were... well to be blunt they were horrible. They had the old school box head monitors, ran collectively on a single high speed connection degrading web surfing to around the league of dial up, and if not for the mainframe letting them share key memory would probably be hard pressed to have two gigs to rub together.

They were also free to use once your class work was up. Which was nice, even if your cellphone was actually better for surfing the web.

Getting said work done was no problem. The otherworldly knowledge that came with my powers filled in the blanks about as quickly as I encountered them, turning a forty five minute class into a fifteen minute clicking session of paperwork.

Heh, the upsides seemed to be without limit. Yeah my energy blasts sucked but I had anti-homework superpowers! The envy of teen heroes across the globe.

...Actually in hindsight I should probably keep my lips tight on that one, or I might legitimately piss off someone who had combat effective superpowers.

With the image of Rune crushing me to death with a car, a look of outrage on her face firmly in my mind, I went to work researching.

Research that was very important, utterly practical and not even slightly dicking around.

Incidentally I found out that you could get a full length tailored trench coat for the surprisingly low price of nine hundred US dollars on the dot!

That was unfortunately a bit out of my price range. Luckily a more traditional basic vest only cost about a hundred and seventy. The full motocross suit cost only forty on top of that, which was kind of mind-blowing really.

Chainmail however was going to wrack me up by something like two hundred alone. Plate armor significantly more so.

I winced.

So... including shipping and everything, five hundred dollars for the most basic protection I could think of. That wasn't even including the actually flashy bits of costume.

...Well I'd been planning to wait a while to train my powers to begin with.

Actually... Maybe I could kill two birds with one stone? I'd wanted chain over rough bolted on plates, but adding some hard plates at key locations would be a smart move right? I could go down to the boat graveyard and practice my power carving out useful bits of it!

...That... was probably a horrible idea.

...Wasn't it?

Okay, my powers were flashy. I still needed to practice them. Boat graveyard was pretty damned abandoned. No one gave a damn about someone roughing up the resting lumps of scrap metal, so I wouldn't really have to worry about legal problems either. The metal was tough enough for ship hulls, so... why not?

Todd would probably be worried.

Well... if I was seriously going to work on the hero thing Todd was going to be worried either way right? Maybe I should try and get him used to the idea of me being gone for large chunks of the night. Sort of... ease him into it. I mean it wasn't like I was joining a gang or something.

Alright, another plan set.

I spent my remaining time looking up amateur blacksmithing, and browsing onto PHO... entirely for vital research purposes! Know your enemy, know yourself and you will win a thousand battles and all that jazz right?

So it was only natural to watch Über and L33t's highlight reel for the rest of the class right?

Exactly.

Unfortunately before I could get far in the lunch bell rang, interrupting my vital research before they got to the first Glory Girl episode.

No matter, food was good too. Even superpeople needed to eat right?

I wondered what was on the menu...

Part 4

Lunch at Winslow typically went one of three ways. You ate in the cafeteria, you grabbed some inexpensive imitation food from said cafeteria and moved somewhere else, or you went to one of the many cheap and easy food distributing eateries that were open around the prime feeding ground that is a open highschool.

Considering the make up of Winslow, the going out for lunch issue could be... tricky. I mean I loved Colonel Chang's deep fried chickenballs as much as the next guy, but a freckle faced redheaded white kid walking into that place? Hahaha, no thank you. I would rather like to skip on the side order of lead that invited.

...okay that was probably going a bit far. I wasn't Empire or anything so they'd probably just rough me up. Actually even that wouldn't be supremely likely. But it was a restaurant with a bright golden dragon in its logo. You did not walk into a place like that looking like I did. Not unless you wanted trouble.

Likewise the fact that I was not Empire meant that the Subway down the street would be distinctly uncomfortable for me to stay at. I mean yeah odds are I'd just get some very 'friendly' smile and some polite nudging, but I could also get some much less friendly ones.

There were still options. The valuemart only a quarter block away had pizza slices on cheap.

Of course all of that was redundant to me because you needed to be a senior to leave campus for lunch, so I was stuck with options one and two. Or bringing stuff I guess. As things were, I'd risk the Caf's imitation food.

So I walked down, reached my locker, ran the combo through the cheap dollar store lock, dumped my stuff in and headed for said eatery.

There at least the tensions ran mostly on the posture level. A few harsh words thrown here and there, but outside of a modest divide of certain tables being 'claimed', there wasn't a problem.

Actually according to my new memories even that wasn't that weird. It was just that there was also a table full of skinheads alongside a table full of jocks, preps, stoners, etc.

I wasn't even exempt from that.

After waiting in line for ten minutes, grabbing a cheese burger in ten seconds, loading a plate up with caesar salad in slightly more than that, grabbing a coke and paying for the lot of it. I finally made my way down to my personal 'retinue' in the sparsely crowded mess.

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't a prep, or a member of the track team or anything. Though actually that last might be a good idea to look into if I was seriously going to do the hero thing.

Nah I just had some friends I played cards with over lunch.

"Lisa, Clair," I grinned at my fellow vicious and merciless cardsharks. Glancing around as I slid over, "Looking lovely as ever, where's Bel?"

"Home sick. Think she got the flu," Lisa explained. She was a nice girl. Utterly ruthless card player, but surprisingly kind for a Hispanic girl trying to get buy in a city full of Neo Nazi's and Asian supremacists. I had no idea how she managed to walk in with a smile every day, but she did, and that made the world a little brighter in my opinion.

"Sucks," I grimaced sitting down.

Clair promptly stole a bit of my salad, "No fries?"

My eye twitched, "Why no, I like being able to eat most of my lunch rather than have it mysteriously disappear on me."

Clair shot me a mock-hurt expression on the border of full blown crocodile tears, "That hurts Dwight! Such allegations! Where is the love? Where is the trust?"

"Missing with most of my lunch money," I replied bluntly. "We playing asshole or poker? Three person game is pretty tight either way," I replied picking up my burger and biting into the salty savory taste of well masked newspaper.

Delicious.

Yeah, the cafeteria food sucked, what else was new? It wasn't like I or Todd had much cooking talent between us though so what else was I going to do? Bring peanut butter sandwiches?

"Asshole," Lisa decided on the spot.

I grimmanced, "With three players?"

"Prez, Citizen, and Asshole," she listed off.

"I'm down with either," Clair responded, ever the neutral voice as she stole one of Lisa's fries.

I never got why she did that. It wasn't like she was wanting for food either. Half the time we ordered out, she was the one treating, she just liked to steal people's food. It was a thing that she did.

Lisa looked at me eyebrow raised, "You really want to go with poker?"

I weighted my options, I could make a push for it. She'd let me, but I could also tell just what game she actually wanted to play.

I sighed, "Fine, asshole it is," I consented, then pointed at her, "But you're dealing."

Then I leaned back and prepared to get my head handed to me.

Part 5

My expectations were met in full. I might know a lot of stuff I didn't a few days ago but my actual skill hadn't changed a lot.

Plus a lot of my new memories were pretty redundant on card games. Other me hadn't been much of a player. Though he had known a few things about reading people that had helped a lot.

Still losing can be fun. Just ask anyone whose played Dwarf Fortress for longer than the day they installed it!

They had a kind of unfair advantage though. My mind kept coming back to the hero thing. I mean... how does one superhero?

I needed a name, a costume, superpowers and the ability to kick ass.

I currently had all of one of those things, though I was working on at least two more.

Annnnd next class up was World Issues. So, plenty of time to work on another one.

Being the cape capital of the East Coast tended to focus which 'World Issues' were talked about a lot.

Though given Mr. Gladly's habit of group assignments I might not have as much free time to think to myself as I would have hoped.

Students piled in, I got to my seat, book bag slack at my side, no idea if I was going to be pulling out textbooks or not.

Mr. Gladly was sort of a fake smiles kinda guy, the sort of person who would make a comment about the miniscule good point to a really horrible situation.

Case in point, when the Endbringers had come up in class, he'd told me 'at least I'd know the material!'. Though he had quietly after class offered to let me skip the assignment if I wanted.

I did it anyway. It happened, I was ten. Denying it wasn't going to change things and it was an easy A.

Our delightfully bumbling teacher stepped in, gathered his notes, and started laying out the new project. Something my new knowledge of the world couldn't really help with. The effect of Capes on modern culture.

I wondered offhandedly just who I'd be working with today. Greg? One of the three faces of Cerberus perhaps?

I didn't have to wait long; "Underwood and... Hebert."

I almost flinched.

Taylor Hebert. She wasn't a bully or anything. Much the opposite, she seemed almost fragilely meek. On the other hand she was also the daughter of Todd's boss. Or at least the guy who could drop his ass out of work at the drop of a hat.

I'd mostly avoided her to try and keep anything I did from influencing such a decision. Also we just ran in different crowds.

...Or... in hindsight I'd just let dumb ass 'pecking order' bullshit keep me from really wanting to talk to a girl near the bottom of the totem pole.

Hadn't she been in some sort of incident a few months ago as well?

So I'd just take the opportunity to... feel her out a little. That couldn't be to hard right?

And hopefully this would not blow up in my face too bad.

Part 6

After a few minutes of reshuffling, I was sitting in front of Ms. Hebert thinking on the project as outlined.

The subject of the assignment was simple. A basic presentation on how capes had affected an aspect of modern culture. Something my new memories helped a lot with as, near as I could tell, they came from a world that didn't have any superheroes in them.

Well not superhuman ones anyway. Not on anything that wasn't fiction.

...Well unless they hid it very very well anyway. I had to accept that possibility, particularly when everything I knew about my powers hinted that the sidhe myths might not be so mythological.

Huh, now there was an idea to draw on for a theme.

"So..." I said to my project partner, brining my mind back to the present, "How do you want to do this? Split things up so we're each responsible for part of it? Do it all online? Meet up after school?" I listed off.

"Can't we just... work on it in class?" she asked.

I blinked, "Well yeah, but I mean the after class stuff. If we split up the load then we can compare notes here if you want. Or we could arrange something so we can work together," I elaborated.

"Do we really need to do that though?" she asked me. "I mean, we've got two weeks to get the project done. Can't we just get it done in class time?"

I raised an eyebrow. So she wanted to slack off on it? Or maybe she just thought we could really do it in only that time?

Whatever.

"If that's how you feel," I shrugged, agreeing. "Okay! We'll try it at least. If it looks like we're getting crunched for time. We can always figure out something else later. For now let's just pick out a subject to focus on."

A thought hit me at once, "How about comic books?"

"Comic books?" she questioned.

"Why not?" I asked. "I mean they're huge up in Aleph right? Full of crazy things like aliens or super intelligent robots, but here on Bet they kinda just... died out." I explained. "It's not hard to see why I mean with real superpeople all around, but so many ideas have been lost. We lost fantasy to the mundane fantastic."

"Okay," she agreed like that.

Just like that. No real thoughts or arguments just... 'okay'.

I sighed, "You don't really talk much do you?"

it was more polite than saying 'I'm doing this alone aren't I?' at least.

Her cheeks went red.

"It's... not like that... it's just... you seemed really passionate about it!" she fumbled out.

I blinked.

Then tried to hold in a laugh, oh gods she was adorable.

"Well thanks!" I grinned. "Yeah; I am Nerd. Hear me Squee," I declared confidently.

"Okay seriously... if we really want to do this we need to plan things out," I said in a mildly more serious tone. "Since it'd be more about the absence of something, in how it decayed over time... We're going to need a cross comparative. Which means looking at the Earth Aleph comic culture. Which means a lot of time online," I half grimaced half smiled. "You have a computer?"

"Um... I could use the library?" she suggested.

"That works!" I agreed. "The library's got most of what we need anyway. So we could do some group work there later maybe?"

"Maybe?" she repeated seeming more then a little under confident.

She was shy. Taylor Hebert, heiress of the Demon of the Docks, was shy. It was so funny it doubled into both adorable and terrifying.

"Well you can decide on that," I offered. "For now... eh, since you've already spotted me out as a huge nerd, how about I go grab everything I know about it and we meet up on this tomorrow?"

"That's... fine, I'm fine with that," she agreed.

"Works for me then! For today... how about we just work out how we wanna do this presentation? Big old cardboard display? Powerpoint CD? Verbal? Maybe some leaflets?"

"Okay," she agreed.

The rest of the class went pretty well.

Part 7

After hammering out the last of the details I moved onto my last class.

Namely Drama.

Most days I considered it somewhere between a waste of time and a place to relax. The only real reason I was in it was that Winslow required a minimum of one 'Arts' credit and I was a natural born ham.

This wasn't to say Drama was bad, just... not really useful. It was underfunded, the costumes were mostly old or homemade, and the room didn't have proper soundproofing, so we were sharply limited in what performances we could play. To say nothing of trying to act over the racket the music class could stir up due to their equally insufficient soundproofing.

But really it was just a fun place to kick back and have fun a lot of the time. That I was technically learning helped. And by the looks of things learning to cross-stich might come in handy soon.

For a moment the tinfoil hat brand conspiracy nut in me wondered if the lack of funds was somehow deliberate, to let Mr. Kite teach the next generation of superhumans know how to properly make a costume.

I immediately dismissed it as utter paranoia. I mean some of the thinker conspiracies uncovered in the government were pretty crazy, but why that was taking things a couple steps to far.

It didn't stop me from, uh... 'borrowing' a basic eye mask from the props room while we were working on a very basic recital of 'Tiger Tiger Burning Bright'.

Actually in hindsight that was kind of a ballzy classic to use considering our town actually had a tiger themed super villain in it. I somehow doubted it was a declaration of support to said cape given Stormtiger was a neo-nazi and Mr. Kite was a bit too black to properly fit in with that crowd.

I actually kind of liked Mr. Kite. He was an older teacher, burnt out in an obvious way but he didn't pretend otherwise. He was running on rote unless you poked him the right way, but it was a rote well practiced. He knew his stuff, what we'd listen to what we wouldn't, and basically just cut down the bullshit to the absolute bare minimum.

You could even get some really interesting stuff out of him if you asked the right questions, though that took a bit more effort then most students were willing to invest.

...It was kinda funny how much all this new knowledge effected how I thought of people. It wouldn't make me suddenly walk up and hug Tony and tell him how much I understood why he did what he did. The ass was an ass, but... my perception had expanded. And I found myself getting things I hadn't really bothered to think about before.

Was this the difference of having lived another 'life', or was it just the difference in relative age?

It was some deep shit man. Heavy. And it wasn't like I could just talk about it to someone else. Even if I didn't mind looking like a nutjob, I literally couldn't talk about it out loud.

It was like a... chain around my throat.

A Geas.

Huh, now that brought an idea to mind.

"Never liked hotdogs anyway," I muttered to myself as the bell rung, and I made my way outside, having survived yet another day of highschool.

I really needed to test out of this place...

I debated waiting for a moment to wait for one of my friend to walk part of the way with them, or even just talk. Heck if I spotted Taylor I might be able to work on the comic book thing for a bit, but at the same time I was kind of eager to get home.

Once I did that I could start up my more active preparations, and with them, take my first real step to becoming a hero.

...Well once I figured out where I was going to get the four hundred bucks I needed for a half decent costume.

Part 8

I got home only a few minutes later.

Todd still wasn't home of course. He was either at the docks or even maybe out in the ocean itself. He was a sailor, a 'true fisherman' as he put it. One of the few jobs still running out of the bay itself here.

Well 'running' anyway. The days of massive fishing trawlers was done, but there were still plenty of small and mid sized boats jumping in the gap.

How the hell Todd managed to work in a job like that, with what had happened to our father and the rest of my family...

Then again, I was about to become a superhero with all that entailed. So didn't that just make me one huge hypocrite?

"Guess the whole family is nuts," I commented to myself in utterly amusement.

Right, schoolwork, or head our more hero prep?

...I think there was a bike shop down in Queens.

Sorry Taylor. But this was to important to put off.

I grabbed my coat, checked the mask in my pocket, then headed back outside.

Motocros armor and spray-paint for now. When it got dark out I could move onto step two. If I could make something workable I'd shave two hundred bucks off my budget. As things were, I'd be stretching my 'free' savings pretty tight.

I might be able to fix that with time, but something told me being a superhero wasn't exactly a job that left you rolling in money.

Though who knew? Maybe it'd be more like adventuring and once I got over the first few hurdles I'd be rolling in more dough then I knew what to do with.

Provided I got over those first few hurdles.

Though that thought also reminded me I should bring my backpack. It'd be a long while before I could whip together a handy haversack, belt of hidden pockets, or bag of holding or anything like that, and if I was going to do the armored mage thing, I'd need something to carry it around if I didn't want to be conspicuous as hell.

Heading into the kitchen I focused first on throwing together something like supper. I was going to be out later, and training was going to be hard enough without an empty stomach.

Hunger was also the enemy after all.

Part 9

A complete set of Motocross armor including torso, upper arms, upper legs, lower arms, lower legs, gloves but shoes or helmet cost me about sixty bucks. It even already came in a neat shade of blue I liked, though I would have to paint over the decals.

An even half decent helmet on the flipside started at around twice that with change left over.

So... in spite of every safety manual I'd ever read, I found myself doing without. Down to a second hand scarf I bought for a fiver.

That plus one can of purple spray paint for an additional seven bucks, a second can of blue for the same, four dollars for some masking tape, one USD for a stack of paper, and a buck fifty for much different can of Coca-Cola (which was freaking criminal if you ask me) let the first third of my purchases done.

More then I'd wanted to spend. Less then I feared. Not enough to really put to 'use', but there it was. My bare minimal. A costume in the most basic of the basic sense.

All mine.

...This was really happening wasn't it?

After a familiar ride down to the docks on the LT, and a less familiar walk the rest of the way into the graveyard proper... I was ready to get to it.

I started by spraying out the armor, covering up the original logos and then spraying over that with the patterns I wanted.

Runes. Real ones. They didn't have any power in them. I didn't have the skill for that but they were there. Why I did that I wasn't sure. Maybe it was just in hopes of inspiring the placebo effect, maybe it was in hopes that if I made it to the point I could actually start making legitimate magic stuff people wouldn't realise some of my tricks were tied to my kit.

Mostly though I think I just added them because I thought it looked cool. Same with the detailed flame, lighting, and vaguely tribal eldritch patterns I'd dabbled throughout for purely cosmetic reasons.

"Fucking metal man." I grinned.

It was kind of a shame that if all went well most of this would be covered up with chain or plate mail and a layer of Kevlar or two.

After a couple minutes of killing time waiting for the paint to dry with nothing but my mask and scarf on I got bored and started my actual project.

Namely blasting the hell out of the metal hulks with the unspeakable eldritch power I now channeled directly from my otherworldly soul.

Which... was a lot less impressive looking then it actually sounded.

Eldritch Blast. That was the single most basic use of the power I now had humming under my veins. A simple violent discharge of energy. It was an evolving attack, its strength would grow with mine, and it was something I could mold or alter with skill and practice.

But right now here at the most basic levels it wasn't much more then a long range punch.

Well okay, that wasn't doing it fair. More like a punch while wearing an iron gauntlet. Or hitting something with a blacksmith's hammer, but still a long ways away from a proper superhuman energy blast. A guy with a glock would kick my ass.

The range was sort of a meh-ish twenty yards before the small, single target only, bolt it lost coherency. The rate of fire was also limited since I needed to do some sort of directing, typically throwing motion to use it, and like I'd already stated, the damage was crap.

But it was flashy. And unlike a glock I could throw eldritch blasts all day long. The power within me a functionally endless fountain of energy. My arms would literally grow tired before I ran out of mojo. My reserves refilled as easily as I breathed.

And again, like I said, it would grow, and there were tricks to fix a lot of it's issues.

The first of such I would be attempting to master, would be turning it from a semi-stable projectile to a much more stable melee weapon.

Which I would then attempt to use to cut through the hull of these wrecks and fashion some useable armor plates to cover my crappy store-bought armor.

Which was again, something I could actually do. Because the name 'Eldritch' wasn't use for show. Though the damage of my attack was kind of pathetic, it was also... strange. Something between corrosive and explosive. Something that decayed and distorted.

It was a weak attack, but one that could hurt anything it touched without fail.

Maybe even something that people were certain couldn't even be meaningfully hurt.

I spared the ocean a glance, listening to the rocking hulls still waiting out in the bay itself, before my phone beeped at me.

The paint had dried.

I grinned to myself as I rushed over and started getting it on. Wasting only a few moments as I got the scarf part of my 'mask' caught under the torso armor.

Then I went to work carving into cold steel with my bare hands.