Dylan dodged his mother. She was trying to get him to help her clean something or other up around the house. He could do that later, when he got back. It was finally time. Time for him to go back to the junkyard.

He wasn’t going to do it the exact same way, this time. Dylan had learned his lesson. He probably could have avoided that whole scenario if he had spotted the man earlier and ran. There was no changing the past, but he could most certainly change the future.

It was a good thing that the man was a non-powered. Dylan's chances of victory would have gone down significantly if that were not the case. At the moment, even the most amateur of brutes could beat him. His arm would allow him to keep up with their strength temporarily, but with a concentrated effort, they could overload it. Plus, he didn’t have an answer for the rest of their limbs.

A fight with someone with a ranged power would go about the same way, if not worse. He had nothing ranged, no way to close the gap, and no way to protect himself from projectiles. Now that he thought about it, he was lucky the man didn’t have a gun. Gun laws were relaxed significantly as the super population grew. People felt like they needed to be able to protect themselves.

Guns were only a danger to lower level supers, but they still helped stop petty crime. Plus, attacking someone with a gun seemed far less appealing when they might be bulletproof and able to rip your arms off your shoulders. That’s not to say it had all been without incident. There was still gun crime, and there had been various major events, but normally, a hero would stop situations before they got too serious. A gun was no match for someone who could run at the speed of sound.

If he planned to be a hero, he would need to develop a solution to this, or at the very least, a countermeasure. The first thing he wanted to complete was his exo suit. It would provide good protection and threat response, and should advance his skills as a Formator.

He didn’t know exactly what he would need to finish it, however. His power didn’t exactly provide him a list, and he didn’t have enough experience with it to properly guess what it needed. He wondered if there even was an exact list. It seemed to work off of what he gave it. Could he create anything with low level items? For example, if he made a really, really good suit, then would it take more materials? Higher quality ones? Did it simply make what he expected it to make?

His problem was he didn’t have an accurate understanding of his limits. It was a problem that most new supers faced. Every few months, you’d hear about someone who had awoken powers dying because they overestimated themselves. Sometimes these newly christened powered fought villains far stronger than them. Other’s, they overestimated what they could do, like one who got crushed by a building he attempted to keep from collapsing.

A famous case of this was when a rookie brute attempted to try and stop a train that the governor of a local city was on, in an attempt to take her hostage. The conductors saw a tall man, dressed in a ski mask, standing in front of the train. He lowered his stance, thrust his arms out, and was promptly pancaked by the ten of thousands of tons train that was barreling down the track towards him. To his credit, he did damage the train (relatively minor damage).

Dylan had no desire to be the one to trigger the next head shaking wave of disappointment from adults who read of his death in the local paper. After he completed his suit, next up was some sort of protection. It didn’t need to be perfect, just enough to let him take cover or run away. Finally, he would need something ranged. With all of that, he should be ready to start his career as a hero.

Dylan waited until his mom had left to walk his new drone out behind his house. Its propellers whirred to life, clearly audible, but far quieter than he would have expected. It lifted off the ground steadily, hovering about 5 feet into the air.

How was he supposed to control it? There was no remote. He didn’t even know how it operated.

“Go up”.

At the command, the drone’s fan’s whirred louder, before rising about a foot into the air.

“Go down”.

The drone dropped down a foot.

That was easy to figure out. It listened to verbal commands. This was certainly very convenient. Not having to remember a controller, or learn the controls, meant that he could start using it right away. It also meant he could do something else while it worked.

That could end up being a problem in a loud environment, though. If it couldn’t hear him, then was he simply completely unable to control it? And what if it was far away? Did he need to always keep it near him? Well, for every benefit, there was a tradeoff, and he would prefer to control the drone this way rather than having to fiddle with a controller.

Could it follow complex instructions? That needed to be tested, asap. If not, it would make Dylan’s plan much more difficult.

“Fly to the other side of the yard, wait 30 seconds, and then come back”.

The drone’s rotors tilted backwards, and it smoothly glided the 20 feet to the fence on the other end of his backyard. Once there, it waited for about 30 seconds, before smoothly gliding back to its original position. Well, hopefully that would work. Time for the true test.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“I’m giving you a primary order, and a mission”.

The drone didn’t respond. The blue light in its center seemed to be staring at him, almost as if it was telling him to get on with it. Dylan cleared his throat.

“Your primary order is to avoid harm at all costs, unless I say otherwise. If you’re in danger, do your best to take evasive action and avoid harm, while losing whatever is attacking you. Once that’s accomplished, make sure you’re not being tracked and return here”.

The drones silence was starting to get unnerving. He hadn’t made it to talk, but he felt odd talking to an object.

“The mission I’m assigning you is to go to the Junkyard I sourced your components from. Once you’re there, wait for me until sundown, staying out of sight while you do. If I don’t show up by sundown, return here. Stay out of sight the entire time”.

The drone continued to hover there. Dylan resolved to see if he could add something that would signal if the drone understood his order or not. Perhaps he could get the “eye” on the front to flash either red or green, depending on whether it could follow his instructions or not.

“You uhh, can go now”.

At the sound of Dylan’s uncertain proclamation, the drone lifted off into the sky, getting higher and higher until it was barely a dot. Dylan hoped that it knew where he wanted it to go. It would be vexing if it ended up at the wrong place. Would it even know what a junkyard was? How much could it understand? Dylan didn’t know how smart he had made it, a major disadvantage of blacking out when his power active.

He grabbed a new sack, just in case the drone didn’t show up. If that was the case, at least this trip wouldn’t have been for nothing. He left his house, shutting the front door behind him. There was no neighbor to greet him this time, but that was honestly preferable. If people kept seeing him leaving his house with bags and coming back hours later with them full, covered in dirt or blood, they would probably report it to his parents. That would make his life a lot more difficult.

Dylan’s walk was interrupted, when, while walking past a convenience store, a skinny young man ran out with a bag full of items and pockets stuff with cash. He turned, running down the sidewalk towards Dylan.

“Get out of the way!” The young man shouted. As he ran past, Dylan instinctively stuck his arm out, gently hitting the man in the face, extremely mindful of the strength his arm possessed, fulling intending to send the man sprawling. He deserved at least that much, for robbing the store.

However, instead of going off of his feet like Dylan had intended, the man stumbled to a stop. His momentum sent Dylan stumbling backwards, arms wheeling in an attempt to keep his balance.

Dylan, who had resolved not to let the man get away, realized he may have gotten in over his head. The man had some sort of power. Probably not a strong one, judging by how he reacted when Dylan hit him in the face, but that still represented a substantial threat. Was this really worth it?

Visions of brightly clad figures clashing in the sky filled his mind. They stood, mentally unbroken but physically battered, after risking it all for others. Every time a hero fought a villain, and vice versa, they put their physical wellbeing and lives on the line, for the sake of their goals or ideals. He would face danger if he wanted to be a hero. Likely, he would face danger much greater than this.

With a new resolve, Dylan lunged forwards, throwing a blow with more strength than the last. The man awkwardly stumbled back, barely avoiding the strike. Dylan threw another attack. This once connected, sending the man’s head snapping back.

“Stop, man, relax!”

Dylan didn’t relax, choosing to hit him again, this time in the stomach. The man doubled over, bag dropped by his feet. Seeing as his past blows had been in-effective, Dylan lashed out with his full strength this time, once again targeting the man's face.

This time, the effect was far more dramatic, a small boom and wince accompanying the blow. Dylan laid onto the man, pummeling him until he fell onto the ground, where he proceeded to slam the man’s head into the concrete until he lost consciousness.

Dylan was doubled over, breathing heavily. The skinny man had been durable, far more so than expected. Every one of those hits would have severely hurt or even killed a normal person. Had he actually fought back instead of taking the blows, Dylan likely would have been done for.

He lifted the mask off the man's head, revealing a face that was far younger than Dylan had expected. The “man” was in fact a teen, who wasn’t much older than Dylan, from the looks of it. He dropped the mask on the ground, before removing the cash from the teen's pockets and stuffing it in the bag of stolen items. He was in the process of bringing it back to the store when he heard a shout from behind him.

Whipping his head around, he saw a man dressed in a tight, bright red outfit, made of some unordinary material. Dylan didn’t recognize him. He must have been a new super, or at least newly transferred. That didn’t stop Dylan from panicking.

He dropped the bag, barely noticing as the money scattered all over the street, before sprinting away as fast as he could.

“Stop, stop!”.

Dylan ignored the shouts from behind him, instead content to try and get as far away as possible. He turned into an alley, and pressed his back against the wall, waiting for the hero to round the corner. Nobody came. He waited for his heartbeat to start dropping before he dared to check to see if he was being followed.

Cautiously tiptoeing to the mouth of the alley, he peaked out, looking for any signs of pursuit. There were none. The hero must have chosen not to follow him, for some reason. Maybe he knew that Dylan was simply stopping a theft. He was in the right.

After calming down for a few more minutes, Dylan took his phone out of his pocket, googling directions to the junkyard. He had gone off of his route in his mad rush to escape, and as a result, was completely lost. Luckily enough, he wasn’t far too far from a path to his destination.

It was another 30 minutes before he arrived at the perimeter of the junkyard. He searched around for the hole he had made, After 5 minutes of looking, Dylan found it. Sliding under it, he realized that he had left his bag at the scene of the fight.

“Fuck!” he swore under his breath. Luckily enough, both hands were covered by gloves, in order to keep the trash off of his fingers, but that could have been bad.

His mood was foul when he entered the junkyard. The drone was nowhere to be seen. Now, he had no means to carry anything he had gathered back to his house, unless he wanted to stuff it in his pockets or hold it in his hands the entire time.

He started looking around for items to salvage, but his heart wasn’t in it. He wouldn’t be able to bring back anything impactful today, after all. Just as he was about to settle on only taking a watch with him, he heard a faint buzzing sound.

Looking behind him, he saw a faint outline against the sky. It slowly grew larger as it approached. Dylan clenched his fist. With an ever present buzz, his drone descended from the sky.