Dylan felt the sunlight through his eyelids. He wished he hadn’t because it immediately gave him a pounding headache. He groaned, and reached to shut the blinds that he had neglected to close the night before. The movement turned him over, sending a deep pulse of dull pain down his side.
Dylan yelped, and then looked down to try and identify the source of the pain. There was a large, dark bruise near the source of the ache. He also identified the rest of his bruises, which were numerous. They dotted his torso, leaving him more purple than human. His palms were also bruised, which he noticed when they scream at him as he tried to push himself out of bed.
Dylan staggered over to the small mirror hanging on his wall. He had tried to walk, but his legs felt weak and unsteady. He had a large bruise around his eye, but other than that, nothing else was on his face. Dylan sighed in relief. If his had had looked like his torso did, it would have been impossible to hide from his mother. As it was, he would have to wear baggy clothes and make up something about his eye.
Throwing on a too large T-Shirt, Dylan headed downstairs, seeking out some form of over the counter pill he could imbibe in order to dull his raging headache, along with all the various other pains he felt.
Just going down the stairs left Dylan out of breath and dizzy. He groaned. This was going to be a whole thing, wasn’t it?
Dylan hoped he wouldn’t feel this bad after every battle. He supposed he had been lucky enough to emerge from all of his early scraps unscathed, but he might have to seriously reconsider his approach if it felt like he got jumped every time.
A startling thought occurred. He had won. If this was what it felt like to taste victory, then what was defeat like? Shuddering to himself, Dylan resolved to never lose. He didn’t feel like getting hospitalized.
He eventually found the medicine bottle, and grabbed a glass of water. Why did the pill have to be so big? With an uncomfortable feeling of his throat exploding, Dylan managed to choke it down.
Unfortunately, it would take some time for it to go into effect, so Dylan sought a distraction while he waited. Ultimately, he ended up reflecting on his performance the day before.
First, he really should have dealt with those two thugs quicker. If he had managed that, then he very likely wouldn’t have taken such a huge beating. He should have been more aggressive at the start. They were criminals. Knocking all of those guys teeth out wasn’t intentional, and he aimed to avoid repeating that particular scenario in the future, but like... better them than him.
Second, he needed to be careful when using the legs of his suit. He had learned his lesson about the power contained in the arms, but the legs were of a whole different sort of problem. The mobility they could provide was exceptional, and one of his biggest advantages. On the other hand, his body couldn’t handle the pressure. Dylan suspected that a large amount of his maladies were caused by that alone.
Maybe he could try and use less of the suit's strength when he did it. It wasn’t like he had to go all or nothing. Dylan had done it before, at least with the arms, but the legs might be a different story. It was hard to track how hard you were jumping when you were fighting for your life.
Dylan really didn’t want to give it up, but he also didn’t want to die 20 years early because he obliterated his internal organs a little bit more every time he went out heroing. He supposed he could always practice with it, and if he still couldn’t control it, he could limit it to emergencies. It sucked that something so cool was so limited.
After taking the pills, Dylan walked over to the couch, and turned the TV on. It was on a local news channel. The anchor was a middle-aged man, wearing a clean gray suit.
“The event in Northern Africa is still ongoing. A large, pitch black dome surrounds the site, meaning that there is no way to see what’s going on from the outside. The hero’s guild, when asked to comment on the matter, simply said that the situation was under control, and to let the heroes work. Local law enforcement is collaborating with the Hero’s guild to keep all civilians away from the area. An insider at a local hospital, who asked not to be named, said that there are frequent medical evacuations…”
Dylan tuned out the reporter. The situation was unusual. Global emergencies weren’t exactly uncommon, but for one to last this long ... It had already been a week. The fact that they weren’t telling anybody what actually was going on was also suspicious. Usually somebody would have information about an event like this.
Dylan felt his eyelids starting to droop. Letting out a yawn, he leaned back onto the couch, drifting off.
He saw flashes of his recent fight, the blood. He felt himself getting beaten on, only thin metal sheets protecting him from having his skull caved in. He remembered the man with the knife from the junkyard, the wheezes he made while he died.
Dylan woke up to his mother asking him what had happened to him. Dazed, it took him a moment to realize that she was talking about the bruise on his face. What would be a good excuse for that?
“I uhhh, fell over?”
Dylan’s mother gave him a weird look, but, with a tired sigh, accepted his explanation, leaving him to his business.
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Over the course of the next week, Dylan slowly recovered from the beating he had taken. The bruises started to fade, he stopped running out of breath so quickly, and he started to feel stronger.
His appetite noticeably increased over that time period, to the point where he was a little concerned. Had Derelict beaten an eating disorder into him? He didn’t notice any changes or adverse effects, so he eventually filled it to the back of his mind, but Dylan resolved to keep an eye on it. He didn’t want to end up becoming overweight, or salt out his liver. That would make a lot of things more difficult. Fitting in his armor, for one.
Dylan also got around to cleaning his armor. Waiting for his mother to leave, he crept outside, and tried to hose it off. While that got some of the gunk off, it wasn’t enough to get the bulk of it off. He regretted letting it dry on in the first place.
He eventually went back inside and grabbed a sponge and some dish soap, determined to get a full clean in. Even with the tools, he had to scrub harder than he was expecting. It took nearly 10 minutes of work per stain, and there were several on the armor.
The very worst thing to clean was the gauntlets. They were sealed, but there were still places under the plates where blood could seep in. Considering how much he used the hands for, well, punching people, they were pretty dirty. He spent nearly an hour per hand, trying to jam the sponge into the small gaps. And it seemed like whenever he thought he’d fully cleaned a section, a new speck of reddish brown would show up, invalidating his efforts. Dylan ended up having to replace the first sponge once it got too stained, and when he had finally finished cleaning everything, he realized that returning a sponge to the kitchen, to be used on dishes that they ate off of, while still covered in bits of people that should stay on the inside, might be a bad idea.
Dylan threw the sponge away, but when he went to look for a new one, he realized that they were out. Dylan fully intended to ignore the situation. Surely nobody would notice.
While he was laying the armor out to dry (hidden behind the shed, of course. He still didn’t want his parents to find it), he heard someone shouting his name from inside the house.
“Dylan! Dylan! Get in here, now!”
The tone brooked no argument. He hurried to comply, scuttling into the house, attempting to contort his face into the Platonic concept of innocence.
Dylan’s mother was either a physic, or he didn’t get the power to alter his appearance, because she seemed to think it was his fault the instant she saw him.
“What did you do with the sponges?” she asked, arms crossed.
Dylan took a moment to think about his reply.
“I… can’t remember.”
For some reason, this didn’t work.
“You will not do this again, or you will be paying to replace them!” his mother snapped.
Dylan frowned, taken aback. Even if he got into trouble, she normally wasn’t so snippy. He figured that she must be stressed out. He nodded in agreement, at which point he was made to repeat an agreement twice verbally before he was let loose.
The following day, he got to work on his armor. First, he had to get the dents out. That was a relatively simple process, one that didn’t even involve him blacking out. He ran his hands over the armor, and gently pulled, the material warping back to its original state. Dylan couldn’t say why, but he felt that those spots were at least as strong as they had been before they were damaged, if not stronger. Hopefully, that seemingly supernatural intuition was from his power, and not from his clueless human instincts.
There was only one dent that he couldn’t fix like this. It was a large one on the chest. He had to use a hammer to remove it, and his memory surrounding that part of the repairs was hazy.
Dylan looked at the pile of scrap sitting behind the shed. He had used a fair amount of it, but there was still quite a bit left. That was good. Dylan planned to add armor to the limbs, and make them able to output more force.
During the battle in the store, Dylan realized just how vulnerable his limbs were. Sure, he could quickly take out a normal person, but a lucky strike could easily do serious damage. The man with the gun could have killed him, had he shot an artery. Or if the men with the bats had realized that his limbs were mostly unarmored, they could have struck him there. A bat would easily break his arm if it didn’t hit the thin metal barriers that the suit currently provided.
Additionally, it wasn’t strong enough for his needs. Maybe his first super encounter should have made that obvious, but he couldn’t dish out any significant damage to super durable opponents. He couldn’t even make the first man bleed, and the only villain he had fought had tired himself out, allowing himself to be hurt. And these guys were low level. Dylan didn’t expect to make it into the big leagues immediately, but not having a means to deal with some of the weakest supers out there was an issue.
These upgrades, while more difficult than the repairs, weren’t all that difficult, at least compared to making the suit in the first place. Once he was done, the arms were also coated in the same style of metal as the chest, although the plating was significantly thinner in most areas. Putting it on, he felt like the arm's max speed was faster, hopefully testifying that he had indeed made it able to output more force, but Dylan was unable to say anything for certain. He didn’t have anything to test on, really, which could be a problem. If he had made the suit stronger, the next time he hit a normal person, he might put too much strength into the blow and accidentally kill them. That would be inconvenient, and he really wanted to clean as little blood off of (and out of) the suit as possible. He had recently found out what a pain it was. Plus, he was out of sponges to clean out the small joints.
Dylan also wanted to see if he could make some sort of weapon for his drone. Having one installed could have saved him a lot of trouble during his fight with Derelict. When he was getting pummeled into the wall, for example, he could have had the drone shoot his opponent in the back with something, like a supped up stun gun, to distract them.
When he tried to enter the Formens flow state, he realized that he would have to put off the modifications for another day. Dylan felt a headache start to come on, and quickly abandoned the attempt. There wasn’t much that could convince him to take the full brunt of his power induced headache.
The good news was that he felt almost back at 100% by now, which was good. He was almost ready to go back out again, hopefully as a more effective hero. Also, one who wouldn’t get beat up as badly.
Dylan headed back inside, trying to avoid the balmy summer heat. He had a lot to do tomorrow, but for now, he would relax.
He did wonder where his father was. It had been 2 weeks since he’d left on his business trip, and he still hadn’t returned, nor sent any news that Dylan was aware of. Maybe his father was still corresponding with his mother. The first business trip his father takes in 6 years happened to be a multi-weeked monster. Hmm. Maybe he would be getting promoted soon. They might actually be able to afford to get Dylan components then.