Preface

New one. Might start a second series, felt this was a nice way to wrap up while leaving myself some plot threads to follow.

Inspired Inventor 5: The Call

Andy Yusung Kim

2006, April 1: Boston, MA, USA

Much had changed in the past four years since I acquired Simmie. Oddly enough, the biggest shift was also the one I felt the least. Fortuna and I came to an agreement; Cauldron would stop several projects I considered idiotic and counterproductive. In exchange, I'd help them stop Scion. I started by offering to loan them Simmie, a poisoned apple if there ever was one, but they weren't quite that stupid.

The end result of my chat with the "doctor" was honestly quite mundane. We combined our financial resources, allowing the Number Man to take over the management and upscaling of my pharmaceutical empire. We also broke into new industries like medical devices, transportation, and large-scale infrastructure design. Combined with the lack of subsequent endbringer attacks, Earth-Bet was starting to get back on its stride.

I'd used my newfound resources to industrialize on a massive scale, which of course only made us wealthier. With Contessa and Simmie working in concert, we'd also managed to repeal certain aspects of NEPEA-5, allowing capes to take on bigger roles in business.

My personal lab had gone through multiple expansions, with a section dedicated to enchanting and runecraft as well as space for more traditional mechanical engineering. With the help of the Unsealed Spellbook, I cracked teleportation and built facilities in multiple locations scattered throughout both Earth-Bet and the Low Roads.

I was, in a word, untouchable. Not only did I have the strongest precog in the world watching my back, I had contributed so much to the recovery and technological advancement of Earth-Bet that I became something of a mythical figure in the cultural zeitgeist. I had effectively become Tony Stark, except in a world where there were no genii capable of competing with me. The likes of Reed Richards, Victor von Doom, and Charles Xavier did not exist here, just one "Tony" and that was me.

And yet, for all my newfound power, I found that I couldn't escape the banality of daily life, for a certain definition of the phrase anyway. Which was how I found myself in our new house, dealing with my normally angelic little sister.

I pinched the bridge of my nose in the hopes of staving off a burgeoning migraine. Such hopes were futile; I knew from experience. I did my best to suppress a smile; I had to be stern, the parenting guide said so.

Setting my face into a judging frown, I looked down at the little blonde girl shuffling her feet nervously. Behind her was a horse that my experience with Runeterran medieval culture told me was a palfrey, on the shorter side even for the lighter riding horse so it could be mounted by said girl.

"Riley, my beloved little sister, what is that?"

"Ehehehehehe… She's a unicorn…?" she said nervously.

Indeed, the palfrey had a bone protrusion from its head that spiraled into a wicked-sharp point. That wasn't what caught the eye however. As majestic as the horn might have made the horse look, the fact that "she" had no skin at all was her most distinguishing feature. That, and the leathery, skeletal wings with patchy feathers that still seemed to be growing.

"I can see that. Why doesn't she have any skin?"

"She does! It's just completely transparent, like the skin of a glassy perch! I got the inspiration after we saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I thought, 'Gee, Riley, the school science fair is coming up isn't it? It'd be really awesomesauce if I could make a thestral. That way, everyone can learn about anatomy together!' And then I made the thestral but realized she looked really scary so I gave her a nice horn. Everyone loves unicorns, right? Oh, and feathers, but the feathers haven't grown in yet,'" she said, rambling a bit as she was wont to do whenever we got on the topic of biology.

'You asked for this, master,' Simmie's voice rang in my mind, clear and lyrical like a bell.

'Must you?'

'Getting to tell you, "I told you so," is one of my few joys in life. You told me to "unfuck her head" so, I did. You're the one who wanted to adopt her. What did you think would happen?'

'I don't know. I just didn't want her to be Contessa's pet tinker or some kind of shut-in… Shut up, I'm allowed my hypocrisy.'

'Of course, master, as you say. I live to serve.'

'Your sarcasm does not go unnoticed.'

'How perceptive. You are truly the all-seeing alchemist,' she said indulgently. The connection cut out before I could reply.

Sighing, I gave that up as a bad job. Simmie was loyal, but with entropy "solved," she had gone through several shifts that made her more "human." It started as her adopting new personality quirks and idiosyncrasies to put people at ease but had eventually grown into a genuine sense of personhood after prolonged contact with the World Rune via The Crown.

Unexpected, though not negative, however annoying she could be sometimes.

"Riley, dear, you want to present… that… to your elementary school science fair?"

"Uh-huh! It'll be great! And she has a name! It's Buttercup!"

I didn't have the heart to tell her that "Buttercup" was pure nightmare fuel. Her sickly yellow eyes stared out at me through her bleached-white skull as she nickered like a pony and rubbed her nose against Riley's cheek. The damn thing looked like something one of the Four Horsemen would ride.

Mom poked her head out from the living room and mouthed, "your problem," before silently laughing and going back to watching her favorite cape drama series.

Mother or no, I swore vengeance. See how she liked habanero in her toothpaste.

Sighing, I did as the parenting guide told me I should: I decided to embrace and encourage the passions of my child. That I was technically only fourteen and not her adopted father was beside the point.

I clapped my hands and smiled widely. "Alright, that's wonderful, Riley. I'm sure people will learn a lot from Buttercup."

I was rewarded by a blonde missile wrapped around my waist like a limpet. "Yes! Wanna go flying?"

"Of course, Riley. Why don't we pick up some groceries while we're out?"

"Ice cream?"

"Sure, why not."

"Yes! You're the best, oppa!"

X

And that, is how I found myself sitting atop Buttercup, Riley nestled in front of me with my arms protectively holding the reins around her, as we trotted into her elementary school a week later. Simmie hovered behind us, dressed in her usual hanbok, this time in floral pinks and yellows that really caught the spring sunlight. At this point, I was fairly sure she dressed as garishly as possible so as to stick in people's memories more. "You can't forget I exist but I know you desperately want to," kinda thing.

I left her to it. It wasn't like she was making thralls, I'd explicitly forbidden her from directly tampering with people's heads, and mom seemed to enjoy using her like a giant dress up doll.

We made for quite a sight, me trying my best not to bust a gut laughing at their reactions, Riley looking like a cat that caught an entire canary flock, and Simmie waving like a Kpop idol greeting her fans.

In Riley's defense, Buttercup's flight feathers had fully grown in and she'd made them snow-white to look nicer. Unfortunately, considering Buttercup's everything else, the white evoked images of bleached bone and malicious phantasms, not angelic innocence. Still, the more I looked at the demented unicorn-pegasus-thestral hybrid, the more I found it growing on me.

Point being, she tried.

She failed, but she tried. It was all a learning experience, or so I've read. That's what counted, right?

In any case, I had a long chat with the principal, science teacher, and judges of the fair prior to Riley's arrival. Being "Rubedo's sister," she didn't really have a secret identity either, couldn't when Simmie decided being a doting maid was funny, so she too was an outed cape. The general agreement was that she was to be left alone and anything else was implicit consent for suicide-by-pigeon.

That Riley herself was a bioengineered superweapon capable of handling herself against anything short of the Triumvirate went without saying.

The result was the single most awkward science fair I'd ever seen.

Riley parked Buttercup inside the repurposed gymnasium, right next to some other kid's potato alarm clock. The poor boy looked like he was having trouble deciding between having a heart attack and asking for my autograph. Chuckling under my breath, I dismounted with Riley and let him grab a quick picture before settling back into position.

Truthfully, I was a little disappointed. I was hoping for a bit more pizazz in their science projects, a bit of that creative spark that I so dearly loved in Riley, but it was nowhere to be found. The school may have been one of the priciest private elevator schools in the world, but I supposed elementary students were still elementary students. Just about the most creative thing I saw from the kids was a homemade, cross-section model of Roman roadwork with a diagram explaining how it could last for millennia.

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

Perhaps my expectations were somewhat skewed…

In the end, Riley didn't win at my request. There was no way in hell normal students could compete with my sister after all, and while I could admit to becoming somewhat detached over the years, even I wasn't so tactless as to deprive another student their justly earned ribbon. I'd taken Riley aside the prior evening to explain why she couldn't win the science fair.

I'd expected much sulking, maybe even some crying, she was seven after all, but she just nodded and said she understood because she was a good girl.

That made me wince internally. I'd almost have preferred the sulking. No matter how much I tried, triggers were hard to unravel, even in self-aware adults, and for all her brilliance, Riley was still only as emotionally mature as her age implied. Being a "good girl" was important to her, and likely would always be important to her. The best I could do without resorting to a full overwrite of Riley's brain composition via Simmie was to steer her in the right direction and provide a healthy environment where she could internalize societal norms.

The blue ribbon went to another girl, two years above RIley, who built a rudimentary computer out of an old typewriter. It was her ability to accurately code phrases in 8-bit binary that sold the judges. As an apology for disrupting the fair and putting her in an awkward spot, I sweetened the pot with ten grand given to her parents for her college fund.

In exchange for Riley not winning, I got one of the AP biology teachers at the high school to allow my sister to give a lecture on just what she'd done to get the freaky horse hybrid. The students had a wonderful cocktail of reactions ranging from awe all the way to disgust. I seriously doubted they understood a word of what Riley said when she started talking about complex protein polymers that created the "invisible skin" effect, but it wasn't for them.

Riley had her fun and that's all I really cared about.

X

Riley left Buttercup to graze at a shrub in the Low Roads as we headed inside for dinner. Was it good for the nightmare-unicorn to eat what was basically a fairy plant?

Fuck if I knew.

Contrary to popular belief, I didn't know everything. It seemed that way from the perspective of most on Earth-Bet, as if I didn't know something, I could find out with a simple question to Simmie.

In reality, I was reminded daily that Inspiration was the potential for discovery, not knowledge itself. I didn't magically know everything about Runeterra, just most forms of technology, enchantments, and their immediate component materials.

With that said, it was admittedly hard not to buy into my own hype sometimes with how people treated me. It was why I spent so much time around Riley. Nothing deflated your sense of self-importance like getting dragged into singing along to the Winx Club theme song with your little sister.

Dinner was one of my favorite Korean dishes of all time, bossam, or boiled, spiced pork shoulder wrapped with various condiments. The best way I could describe it to others was as a deconstructed lettuce wrap; there just wasn't a comparable analog in most western cooking that I knew of.

The three of us and Simmie were seated around a table in the house. No matter how much things changed, this remained a constant. Mom insisted on at least one shared meal each day as a family, so it happened. Any offers to cook for her were summarily dismissed, not that I had any objections to a consistent supply of great Korean food. Phoenix changed much with my continued patronage, but the city tended to have a shortage of good ethnic food that wasn't Mexican, or, oddly enough, Vietnamese.

Or maybe I was spoiled rotten and my standards were unreasonably high. That was a distinct possibility too.

I wrapped some bossam in lettuce and perilla leaves alongside thinly sliced radish kimchi, saeu-jeut, and raw garlic before handing the delicious package to mom. I made a second and passed it to Riley.

"We can make our own, oppa," Riley pouted even as she tried to stuff the oversized packet into her mouth. After a bit, she just shrugged, unhinged her jaws with two, wet cracks, and went to town. That mom did nothing more than blink in response proved how settled Riley was into the Kim household.

"Leave him, dear, he just wants to feel like the man of the house," mom said with a teasing grin.

"I am the man of the house," I told her, glass eyes rolling. That was surprisingly hard to do, thank you very much.

"Of course, dear."

"I get no respect around here."

"Someone has to teach my son to be humble. It may as well be me."

I dropped it; there was no winning against mom. Didn't matter what I made or how powerful I became, mom was mom.

The four of us ate while chatting aimlessly, though I had no idea if eating did anything for Simmie beyond a mechanical deconstruction of various flavor profiles. She'd shown up into my lab one day after the Phoenix County Fair with a plate of the biggest funnel cake I'd ever seen and declared her love of sweets, before promptly demolishing the thing in seconds. She'd also added a tinkertech cotton candy machine to my pipeline, presumably after stealing the idea from some other tinker who recently joined the Wards, and who I dutifully ignored the existence thereof.

These days, I brought it out once in a while for Riley on special days so I'd say the minor disruption ended up being a good investment.

That was how Simmie started to join us at the dinner table, with her even starting to address mom as "honored mother," mostly to fuck with me, I was pretty sure. Mom was surprisingly accommodating, well accustomed to the brand of bullshit that surrounded my life by now. She just shrugged and ordered a bigger table that could fit the feathery giantess.

Surprisingly, it was said space pigeon who broke our string of inane dinnertime conversation topics. She placed both palms on her hands and bowed to mom. "Honored mother," she said, completely seriously, "we must leave."

"What do you mean, Simmie-ah?"

"Master and myself. We must set off on a noble quest."

Mom turned to me and I shrugged helplessly. "News to me too. What's this about, Simmie?"

"Entropy. Eternity. The End of All Things," she said dramatically. "It has ever been the goal of Shards to discover a way to prevent the end of the multiverse. For trillions of years, that goal seemed but a distant dream, until Master showed me the light."

"Ah, is it about Eden's mission?"

"Indeed, master. I was able to project relevant data concerning the infinite nature of the World Rune into the network. By holding the data hostage, I was able to mandate a shift in operating procedures, from mere data collection to symbiosis."

"So what's the problem? Capes don't really have a conflict drive now, right?"

"The Dullard is the problem," she said with a frustrated pout. "He and Queen Administrator can override my own authority in the networks. I have set plans in motion to dethrone the Dullard and install Queen Administrator as a nascent entity."

I took a big bite of rice and bossam to take a few seconds to process. This definitely wasn't something I expected to talk about today, certainly not at the dinner table. "Why are you mentioning this now?"

"Queen Administrator is amenable to taking over the network, that is what she was designed to do after all, but she demanded more information in exchange for siding with us. She wants to examine the other World Runes to validate my information."

"No," I said flatly. "I'm not giving a Shard a World Rune for any reason. You do realize how disastrous that can be, right?"

"Of course, master. We also lack a World Rune to barter with in the first place. Hence, my initial point: We must leave."

"You want to go find the other four."

"Yes, master. I am concerned that others may find and use the World Runes."

"Can't. A mortal touching it will be overwhelmed and they will die immediately. A Shard can't touch it either because bonding with it requires a soul that Shards lack. I'm a hilariously lucky freak of nature."

"If there is a Shard that can coerce a host into touching a World Rune, it is Queen Administrator. If we are not careful, she may grow tired of this cluster of earths and seek her fortunes elsewhere."

"Can she do that? Separate herself from the network to go on a multiversal jaunt?"

The endbringer shook her head. "Not normally, no, but you'll have to agree, there is nothing normal about this Cycle."

"And you want to acquire the World Runes for purely innocent reasons, I'm sure," I said dryly.

"I wish to examine them and empower master so that you will one day be able to forestall the end of the multiverse on your own."

Mom tapped her rice bowl with a spoon. "Stop. You," she pointed at Simmie, "think that you and Yusung need to head out on a journey to collect these 'World Runes' for the sake of the universe?"

"The multiverse, honored mother," Simmie corrected, "but essentially, yes."

Mom looked at me. "And you? Yusung, is she right?"

I shuffled nervously. "Well… Scion does need to be stopped. If I fought him, I think I could win, but… it wouldn't be pretty."

"Explain."

"Do you remember what I said about powers, mom?"

"Yes. You told me that the golden man is going to go crazy one day. Wasn't it what you've been preparing for?"

"I have. Thing is, even if I fought him and won, it'd result in the destruction of… a lot. Millions dead, and that's if I"m lucky. Simmie wants to stage a coup from the Shard side of things, force his next most important Shard to take over, letting me kill him without as much destruction."

"And you need more of these 'World Runes' to make it happen."

"Yes, honored mother," Simmie said.

"I'm coming!" Riley yelled. She was practically vibrating in her seat with excitement. She had the biggest grin on her face as she stared beggingly at mom. "I want to go too! I'm super strong and can help oppa build things!"

"No!" both mom and I said at once.

"Why not?"

"You're in school," mom replied in her best "I'm an adult and I know best" voice. "You need to graduate before you go on a journey."

I added, "It's dangerous. I have no idea where the World Runes are or who might have gotten hold of them. It could be as simple as picking up a rock off the street or I could end up fighting gods for them."

"But-but-"

"But nothing," I said firmly. "No amount of puppy-eyes is going to make me take you along. Simmie won't either."

Mom frowned at me. "And you think I'm letting you go? You're fourteen, young man."

"There isn't much of a choice though. As much as I'd like to send Simmie by herself, I can't treat this like a grocery run, mom. For starters, no one else can operate the Low Roads except me."

"Well, yes, but does it have to be now?"

"Seeing how we don't know who or what has the other four World Runes, the more time we have, the better."

"Why does it always have to be you?"

"Yeah, oppa, why do you get to go and not me?" Riley pouted.

"I don't really want to leave either, Riley. You act like it's something to look forward to, but I like the life we have here," I told her patiently.

"Do… Do you promise you'll come back?"

"Of course. It's not like I'm leaving forever."

Mom sighed. "Only fourteen and already leaving home. Now what am I supposed to do?"

I ticked off my fingers one by one. "Teach music classes. Raise Riley. Make sure she doesn't eat too much sugar. Make sure she doesn't try making pokemon again. Make sure she does her homework in subjects other than biology. Make sure she doesn't accidentally make a new version of the swine flu."

"Hey, that was only one time," Riley complained.

"My point stands."

"You suck sometimes…"

"Big brother privileges."

"Meanie."

Mom gave me that look. "When do you think you'll be back?"

"I don't know, mom, but I promise to stay in touch."

"And how are you going to find these 'World Runes?' You said you don't know who might have them."

"I need to start by going to where they originated from: Runeterra. The Low Roads should let me do that. From there, I should be able to find the others by looking for branches along the Low Roads. Leave the specifics to me."

"Fine, but I expect you to drop by once a week."

"I'll do my best," I promised.

Author's Note

I don't know either. It just… happened… Andy is a doting big brother and the world is a darker place for it.

An "elevator school" is a school which teaches K-12 and usually has a close partnership with a university, with most if not all graduates guaranteed admission to said university, often with a scholarship. As you'd expect, it's very expensive, and also the kind of thing Andy's mom would insist on if money stopped being an object.

Did any of that with the Shards make sense? Not really. Not important since this is an omake anyhow. The point is, it's a Call to adventure.

Also, Riot Games has a song by the same name and it's epic.

Thank you for reading. To reach a wider audience, and because I enjoy a more forum-like setup to facilitate discussion, I like to crosspost to a wide variety of websites. You can find me on FFnet, Royal Road, Space Battles, Sufficient Velocity, and Questionable Questing.