Dylan’s skin went cold. How much did she know? His palms felt sweaty. His chest started to tingle. His breath started to come in spurts.

Dylan hadn’t done anything too bad. The only thing he could think of, in fact, was attacking that guard. His mother couldn’t have found out already, could she have? Unless she was a super? Or a hero had flown back here and told her.. The guard shouldn’t have regained consciousness fast enough to report to anybody… And if a hero had seen and recognized him, then why hadn’t they apprehended him. Did they wait until he was back with his family to try and pacify him? Dylan didn’t know what they were playing at.

Unless it was something else. Could his mother have found out about his vigilante heroism? That shouldn’t land him in too much trouble, should it? It was extremely common for supers, especially those who would go on to become heroes, to start out as vigilantes. He certainly hadn’t handled his one heroic encounter earlier particularly well. Ideally, he could have resolved it far less violently. But, it was his first time in that sort of situation, and the man had superpowers.

Maybe someone had connected him to the body in the scrapyard? It wasn’t impossible. He didn’t think there was anybody in the city with a power that would let them find it out, especially not right now, but there was always the chance there was a civilian with that power, or that one of the reserved supers had it. If that was the case, he wasn’t worried. It had been self-defense. Any super with a truth telling power would be able to easily verify that.

While self-defense rules could change when the so-called defender had certain power sets, Dylan definitely didn’t fall into that category. Physically, he was just a normal person. A knife to the guy would kill him just as well as it would any other 14-year-old. Still, what if there wasn’t a truth teller around? What if he spent months in jail, or they never even bothered to check if what he was saying was true?

Dylan felt like he was on the verge of hyperventilating. There might be another reason for his mother to stop him. What if he had broken some law he didn’t know about, or someone else with a similar power set was mistaken for him? Some criminal.

Steeling himself, took the plunge.

“What do you need to ask me?”

His mother scanned him up and down.

“Have you registered your power with the local agency yet? I can take you later today, or tomorrow, if you want me to.”

Dylan nearly collapsed with relief. The only thing that kept him on his feet is that his mother would surely notice the unusual reaction. Instead, he worked for a reply that wouldn’t reveal his rapidly changing mood.

“I can go by myself, if you give me the address. I’ll do it sometime in the next few days”.

His mother seemed satisfied with his promise, and didn’t push for any more commitment. Normally, that would be surprising. She generally wanted to be involved in everything he did. Since his father had left on his business trip at the start of the week, however, she had been more distant.

He brushed it off. Likely, she was worried about her husband. Being on a business trip during one of the largest super-related crises in the last decade had to be nerve wracking. Dylan figured his father would be ok. He was level-headed enough to get out of most jams.

As for what was actually going on in this emergency, Dylan had no clue. While the news coverage was constant, actual details were sparse. All he knew was that a lot of supers went into a zone simply labeled as “emergency zone”, and that several would get wheeled out to medical facilities every day. The situation certainly seemed serious, but at the very least it was very well contained.

After his conversation with his mother, Dylan decided to head up to bed. Hopefully his drone would continue it’s work throughout the night. If it got damaged, he had no way to replace it, and he was not eager to start hauling things back himself.

Dylan hid his arm under his bed, before going downstairs to heat up something for dinner. Hmm. He really needed to clean his exo arm. There was blood and trash and everything else nasty on the end of it. He shuttered to think of everything that caked its surface. He needed to hose it down and then sanitize it, asap. Dylan did not want to catch some sort of freaky blood-borne disease because he refused to clean up his equipment. Brawlers had it so much easier. They just had to clean themselves. No need to worry about pulped flesh getting into the joints of your delicate machinery when you were a human powerhouse.

Shaking his head, Dylan turned his thoughts elsewhere, enjoying his microwaved mac and cheese in silence. After he was finished, he tried his best to shower off the day's grime before heading to bed. He almost danced a jig in excitement. He finally had the materials to finish the rest of his suit. He had been waiting for so long. One arm was great, but he couldn’t stop crime with it. Not real crime, anyways. Not when he could be taken out like a normal person if the criminal just paid mind to avoid his right side.

He eventually fell into a semi-peaceful sleep. The nightmares were less frequent than they had been before, but they still occasionally flashed into Dylan’s mind as he slept.

Waking up the next morning, Dylan shot into the air. He was bursting with energy. Not literally, of course. He didn’t have any sort of energy based powers. No, the energy he had was one far more common in humans: Raw, unadulterated excitement.

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He could barely restrain himself from rushing down the stairs and out into the backyard. Instead of following that impulse, he managed to restrain himself (barely). He put on his clothes, ate breakfast, and even managed to brush his teeth before he found his feet carrying him out into the yard. Dylan had neither will nor reason to restrain himself any longer.

He gulped when he saw the pile of junk peeking out from behind the shed. From the house, it was barely hidden, but as soon as you stepped out into the backyard it was clear visible, a pile of mechanical trash spilling out from the back of the old shed. Hopefully it would be less visible once he started to deplete its contents to finish his exosuit.

Rounding the back of the shed, Dylan saw his drone resting on top of the scrap mound. The glowing eye in the center was dark, and it wasn’t moving. Hopefully it was just turned off, and not broken.

As soon as the thought crossed his mind, the drone’s eye lit up, blue light spilling across the shadow cast by the shed. Its blades slowly whirred to life, and it lifted into the air.

Well, that answered that question. Now, where to build the rest of his suit? His room would probably be the best place, but how would he get everything up there? His drone could probably carry it, but could he get it in through the window?

A cold shock went down his spine. He ran back inside, flinging open the back door, before barging onto the front patio. His mother’s car was missing from the driveway. Dylan breathed a sigh of relief. Hopefully, she wouldn’t come back in time to see what he was doing. Even if she did, what was she going to do about it? It’s not like she was really able to stop him. He needed to do this, for the sake of his future.

Returning to his backyard, he felt his consciousness start to fade as ideas raced through his mind. He took a step forwards, before blackness engulfed his vision.

Dylan came to several times during the process, although never for long. The first time, he found himself in the middle of assembling the left arm for his suit. Scraps of metal, screws, washers, and other various components littered the ground around him. He watched as his hands stretched a piece of metal like taffy, lengthening it until it matched his arm. Following the instructions that were appearing in his head, he reached down for some sort of joint like apparatus besides him. As he was bending over to pick it up, he blacked out again.

The next time, he briefly caught sight of a thin exo arm about 5 feet away from him. It looked similar to his first one, with minor differences in material and correlation. In his hands, he was fitting a metal plate onto a steel rib cage. Glowing lines ran through the inside. He reached to touch one and -

Dylan briefly awoke one final time. He was in the middle of fitting a leg onto the torso, which was now nearly completely covered in plating. Socketing it, he-

Dylan was sprawled out on the ground when he fully came out of his fugue state, if it could even be called that. It ways almost more like the flow state except… way more concerning. Dylan resolved to try and get a handle on the whole loosing consciousness part of his power if he could. It would help him significantly to actually know what he was doing.

Lifting his head from the ground, Dylan saw his new exosuit standing there. Its limbs were mostly thin, like the first exo arm he had made (there suit was missing an arm), being mostly a shallow support beam leading down to a glove or boot meant to cover the end of a limb. Despite their appearance, he knew better than to doubt their power. The torso was different, being comprised of a dull gray plating. There was a similarly colored helmet, which roundish, spotting two bright red lenses on the front.

Dylan frowned. The suit looked ominous. More like something a villain would wear, as opposed to a hero. That wouldn’t do. He was supposed to be an inspiring, uplifting sight. The suit’s current appearance would just inspire fear.

He started to activate his power, intent on correcting the appearance of his new suit, when he was struck by a searing pain in his head. His vision flashed white as he doubled over. Dylan let out a muttered string of curses. He had completely forgotten that his power was limited. In fact, he was surprised it even let him get through making the suit. It seemed that making it look more palatable would have to wait for a later day, however.

Once the pain passed, and he could stand up straight again, Dylan ran back upstairs to grab his cellphone. Swiping it off of his dresser, he downloaded a police scanner from the app store. He also grabbed the exo-arm stashed under his bed. Taking it back downstairs, he once again checked to see if his mother was home.

There was no car in the driveway, so she was still out. Breathing a sigh of relief, he walked back into his yard, returning to the new suit of power armor. He slid his exo-arm into the hole in the right side of the torso piece, where it cleanly slid in with a satisfying click.

Now, Dylan was prompted with a new question. How did he get in? Similarly to the drone, there weren’t any buttons on the outside, nor any visible ways to open up the frame. He tried to slide his fingers under a seam and see if it was supposed to pry open, he quickly found that that was no bueno. It just hurt his hands.

Finally, Dylan tried his trump card. Stepping up close to the suit, he opened his mouth to give a command.

“Suit, open”.

He felt pain in his head as the helmet popped off the top, falling forwards before landing directly on his cranium. His hands flew up to his aching skull. Shit. He took a few reeling steps backwards as the torso section of the suit hissed, panels unfolding to reveal the cavity within.

Blinking the tears from his eyes, Dylan scanned the interior, fully intending to be aware of what he was walking into. The inside appeared to be some sort of synthetic leather, and fairly padded. There were little fans for breathability.

Excitedly, Dylan turned around, stepping into the suit. It fit him like a glove. Like it was made for him, which he supposed it had been.

Moving around, he felt a little slower than normal, but with enough effort he would move faster. He tried jumping, and let out a short scream as he was sent a dozen feet into the air. His arms windmilling around himself, he desperately sought balance as the ground started to grow larger.

With a muffled thump, he hit the ground, knees bending to absorb the impact. His suit handled most of it, although he still felt a jolt traveling up his legs. Taking a moment to steady himself, he appreciated the fact that he didn’t just break his legs.

Just as he started to move into more testing, his phone buzzed. With a command, he popped out of his suit, he ran over to it. He had a new notification from the police scanner app. A robbery was occurring a few blocks away, and they suspected that a super was involved.

Dylan grinned to himself. What better way to test his new invention than with the real deal? He had already stopped one super. He was far more prepared now, and ready for his second.

With a whir, his suit closed around him, before he vaulted over the fence and strode out into the street.