Chapter 3: 1-3 Call

Call 1.3

2000, May 9: Phoenix, AZ, USA

I sat in the back seat of Agent Morrison's car. He was, for all intents and purposes, my handler. Mom had been busy ever since we moved out here, not that I held it against her. If anything, it was somewhat of a relief; I didn't think I could act like an immature eight year old under close scrutiny so I wasn't trying very hard.

She was a professional musician, classically trained in piano and violin. Apparently, she'd studied abroad in Munich when she was young thanks to a wealthy uncle, where she learned both German and smatterings of English. She used her rudimentary language skills to get a job as a maid during the day and managed to arrange a gig as part of a live band in some fancy restaurant at night. I suspected the PRT had a role in the latter.

When the PRT found out about a crippled tinker with a largely absentee mother with poor language skills, you'd better believe they jumped on that faster than a lion on a legless zebra. We got the standard Wards contract adjusted for tinkers read to us by a Korean lawyer. To be fair to feds, they were quite generous. They paid for my physical therapy and even offered my mom a monthly income. Her pride wouldn't let her accept and she insisted that all of it be dumped into a stipend for me.

'That's just how some parents are,' I sighed. 'She'd rather work two jobs and run herself into the ground than take a single dollar from me.'

So, that's how Field Agent Vincent Morrison became my handler. It wasn't random by any means. When Director Lyons heard about my situation, she'd shanghaied him specifically for the job. He was responsible for getting me to and from home, school, HQ, and wherever else I needed to be. He was already doing it for his son David after all, so she saw no real harm in adding another.

The car came to a stop in front of my apartment and I extended my walking stick with a snap of the wrist.

"Agent Morrison, thank you for the ride," I said with a deep bow. It never hurt to be polite and my dad, this world's version, would have accepted nothing less.

"No problem, kid," he tussled my hair. He spoke with an old country drawl that made me think of summertime barbeque. "You sure you don't need help getting up the stairs?"

"I'm okay, sir. Thanks for asking."

"Alright, but if you need anything at your after school program, you tell David, you hear? That lazy son of mine might be a layabout, but his heart's in the right place."

"Yes, sir. He seemed like a good man. I'm sure you're proud of him."

"Shucks, how's a little fellow like you talking like a grownup? All adult-like and no accent."

"I guess I just learn quickly."

"Alright, I'm going to let you head on up." He leaned forward to whisper. "If you feel the urge to… play around, try to remember exactly what you're making and how you're doing it. Director Lyons thinks you might be onto something."

"Yes, sir," I smiled, glad that even this early on, tinker fugues were well-documented. Given that I was an "alchemical tinker," at least as far as they knew, I could work with relatively cheap equipment.

Policy regarding tinkertech and experimentation was still being written. There was significant discussion on whether it was safe to allow children to tinker in their homes, or at least, whether it was safer than letting a fugue build up into a straight-up panic. This was good for me because Director Lyons was firmly in the camp that said I should be permitted to tinker in my home, at least in small doses. I expected that to change as the PRT evolved, but for now, I had much more freedom than someone like Kid Win would have in the future.

I took a sip of my elixir but made a show of tapping the stairs with my walking stick. Mom and I were situated on the edge of the good side of Phoenix. Our neighborhood lacked the opulence of the newer districts, but patrols were common here and crime rates were minimal. That said, this was inland US in a world where all countries were forced into pseudo-isolationist policies by Leviathan. Two Korean immigrants stuck out like sore thumbs, especially when one had a giant strip of crimson scar tissue instead of eyes.

The neighbors weren't hostile or anything, but they certainly weren't friends. Children avoided me like the plague and my mom wasn't able to connect with them in any meaningful way, a difference in life experiences and language to blame.

I arrived in my apartment unmolested and fished the key out of a ring looped to my belt. The moment I was inside, I collapsed the walking stick and hung it on a hook by the door. There was no one else to pretend for. I made my way to the kitchen and fixed myself a quick sandwich before plugging in a prerecorded headset. It came with a book, one written in braille to teach the blind their letters.

"A… B…" the recording droned rhythmically as my finger traced the appropriate bumps. Each accompanying page was made so I could trace the corresponding letters from left to right, moving on to the next letter every five seconds. I may have adapted quickly to walking and maneuvering without sight, but that wasn't to say my reading comprehension had caught up. My fingers still weren't delicate enough and I stumbled over some letters, even after so many months. It was only the pericognition of the Oracle's that saved me.

After a half hour of this, I moved onto an actual storybook, one meant for children so I could grasp the tale even through bumbling fingertips. It was funny; I'd grown up reading Korean translations of Aesop's fables in my past life and here I was doing the same in braille.

My mom came home after another hour of this, a bag of takeout in hand. I stood from the dining room table and bowed at the waist. I'd spent my entire previous life greeting my parents this way and I wasn't about to stop now.

"Welcome home, mom," I said in Korean.

She smiled a tired smile and leaned in to hug me. It felt strange. My old parents were never very affectionate, certainly not past the age of twelve. I hadn't had a hug from my mother in sixteen years. That wasn't to say my previous parents didn't love me, far from it, but they subscribed to the stoic, disciplinarian style of parenting so common among Asian cultures. This, this put me on the back foot, though not in a bad way. If I had to rely on my own shitty psychoanalysis, I would guess that she latched on to me, her only surviving family, more than she otherwise would have. Or perhaps, she was just more empathetic in general being a musician and all.

"I'm home," she whispered into my hair.

We talked briefly about our days over a simple dinner of rice, kimchi, and Spam. It was nostalgic: Back when my family moved to Los Angeles in my previous life, my parents likewise worked late and could only afford things like this. 'The more things change,' I chuckled.

"Is something funny, son?"

"Just something that Masked Bandit said," I said. I told her about the Wards and how I would be the youngest there. I talked about their individual quirks, of Hat Trick's devil-may-care attitude and Ranchero's easygoing grin, Stingray's big sister energy and Masked Bandit's accidental kleptomania.

"Be careful. I don't want you to get hurt." Her eyes were full of concern. "You're the youngest and… What if you have to fight a villain?"

"Wards don't fight villains," I repeated the brochure by rote. "Joining the Wards isn't about going out and fighting bad guys, mom; it's about learning to control our powers so we can live normal lives with normal childhoods. Besides, I'm a tinker and tinkers are very valuable because we can give other people powers too."

"I know, Rhee-ssi explained it all but I'm your mother. It's my job to worry."

"If you worry so much, you're going to get gray hairs," I joked. "And then how will you be a popular musician?"

She swatted my knuckles with a spoon and I suckled on my fingers in mock pain. "Brat."

"Really, mom. If you want me to stay away from any fighting, the best way for me to do that is to be more valuable in the base than out on the streets. How about I go ahead and make some new potions recipes so I can impress the director? That way, she'll give me a fancy lab and have me make potions instead of throwing me at a villain."

"As if people would say you're not Namjoon's son," she clicked her tongue but gave me a warm smile. "You're a lot like your father, you know. He was always like this too, always thinking about the next steps forward, a military man with military thinking."

"I'm a lot like you too, mom. I love music."

"Haha, yes, yes you are, Yusung." We laughed together for a minute before she brought up tinkering again. "Son, what can I do to help you tinker?"

"I could use more glass cleaner," I said truthfully. "Do we have more of that?"

She smiled. "Yes, yes we do. The PRT gave us a card to use on materials so I can always run to the market."

I balked at that, years of reading fanfiction told me that'd be a terrible idea, the easiest way to out ourselves as a house with a tinker. Then I remembered that this was years before shit hit the fan and we weren't in Brockton Bay. There was no rage dragon here to kidnap my mom, nor any Nazis to kill her off for "being a gook."

"That sounds great, mom. Let me give you a full shopping list."

X

I'd given mom a list while I set up a small brewing station in the living room. It wasn't like we could afford a TV anyway, so having a dedicated station, away from sight of the doorway of course, was natural. It could barely be called a lab station in truth. It was just a few beakers, two hot plates, and a blender, hardly professional. I was promised something more official back in HQ once they had an idea of what I wanted.

Though it was nice to putter about the apartment on my own and I really did need more ingredients, the real reason for sending my mom away was so I could have some peace and quiet while I meditated. I couldn't visit the constellation that represented the World Rune while I was awake, but I could draw on a portion of its power.

I pulled one of the dining chairs over and sat in front of the beakers, breathing in and out in a rough approximation of the breathing exercises my old taekwondo master showed me oh so many years ago. It was faint, but the World Rune answered and mana trickled forth from my soul like water from a hidden spring. The first time I tried this, almost six months ago, I could barely feel the World Rune before I lost contact. It was much like grasping at smoke. I'd persisted largely because there was only so much physical therapy I could go through and I had a lot of time to myself.

Then, ever so slowly, that smoke became like a single strand of hair, oiled and slippery. That was the first real success, if I could call it that. That hair thickened with time to be like dental floss, then thread, then yarn, then rope. There, I reached a bottleneck. I pulled and pulled over a month; it was like trying to pull a mountain. Nothing I did worked, until I had an epiphany: Of course I couldn't drag mana from my soul. It was too "big" and I was too "small," conceptually speaking.

I stopped imagining myself pulling an impossible burden and instead pictured our relationship like a well to be drawn from and widened. I dug deeper with each meditation, wider, until I could finally receive a steady flow of mana. The well was infinite, but the flow was limited. I got the distinct impression that for the moment, it was best that I kept it that way.

As I sat there deep in the recesses of my own mind, I took a small amount of mana and cupped it in my hands, bringing it to my lips. As I drank, my eyes opened to the real world and the azure glow of mana suffused my body. It was a heady feeling. When I first managed this, I felt like I could do anything. I stubbed my toe against the wall, knocked down a clock, and made a giant nuisance of myself while I learned to contain the energy. Experience had tempered my reaction, but nothing could quell the immense desire to create that burned in me.

The next step was simple. I channeled the mana into my hands, forming a single sphere the size of a basketball. Then, bit by bit, I started to compress. I found that if I compressed mana enough, I would eventually force it to take solid shape, arranging itself into a crystalline structure. This was the Mana Crystal and from what I could tell through touch and the Oracle's Elixir, it looked exactly like the ones I could buy in-game. This too, I discovered almost entirely on accident while I was messing about when my mom was asleep.

By the time mom came back with the materials I'd requested, I had a small basket full of a dozen blue, hexagonal crystals. Clustered in the straw basket, they looked like the world's most expensive Easter eggs with glowing blue cores and edges of a lighter blue. The Oracle's Elixir had run out halfway through and I'd had to take another mouthful to keep myself functioning.

"What do those do?" mom asked with thinly veiled interest. As much as she claimed she enjoyed her mundane, uninvolved life, she couldn't hide her curiosity from me. She put the grocery bags down next to my work station and began to arrange the purchases.

"They're concentrations of energy," I said, framing it in a way as to minimalize any conversations about actual magic. Sure, I called them Mana Crystals, but everyone assumed it was a quirk of branding or the whims of a child than honest truth. "They're solid energy that I can use to infuse anything I make. They're how I make the Oracle's Elixir and how I'll make everything else. I don't think it's possible for me to build anything unless I have one of these."

That wasn't strictly true. It wasn't possible to build anything and enchant supernatural effects without an infusion of mana from the World Rune. The crystals just happened to be how I imagined mana to work, a function of my time playing the game rather than a true limitation.

"So one of these can turn glass cleaner into something drinkable?"

"And so much more."

As far as the PRT understood it, my power gave me a well of energy I could draw on, which I could form into crystals then infuse into potions. That was how it was explained to my mom and me. It was a little grating for mom to repeatedly ask the same question, especially because I knew she remembered and was humoring an eight year old, but I ignored the feeling with practiced ease.

I reached for a bottle of glass cleaner and poured it into a saucepan before heating it on a hotplate. Once heated, I'd combine it with a Mana Crystal and the crystal would dissolve somehow, rendering into an Oracle's Elixir. It was deceptively simple, though when a scientist tried it during testing, the crystal remained inert, something about a unique energy wavelength that responded to me alone.

"Okay, Yusung. You let me know if you need any help," she said before heading into her room.

"Yes, mom," I replied dutifully, but my attention was already on the rest of the bottles she'd left by the table. "Thanks again for the grocery run."

"Anything for my son."

My work station was full of an eclectic array of bottles. Complete nutrition powdered shakes, iron supplements, protein supplements, cough medicine, and more. If the Oracle's Elixir taught me anything, it was that the World Rune functioned off of concepts and desires. It would take a mundane analog and use the Mana Crystals I had on hand to reinforce a concept, in this case "seeing clearly," to create what I envisioned. That vision had to be inspired by something or someone from Runeterra, but even with that limitation, I couldn't be happier with my power. It was bullshit, pure categorical bullshit even beyond that of most tinkers. It was the kind of bullshit that transmuted mundane glass cleaner into something consumable, and more importantly, magic. I didn't know if the PRT fully understood the implications of my power. Hell, I wasn't sure I understood the implications of my power.

I grinned toothily and cracked my knuckles. "Let's get started."