“Hmm…” Calvin hummed as he watched dawn break through the sky from atop the castle walls of the hero dorms. He was lying on his back, hands lazily resting above his head, alone on the ramparts, enjoying the view, skipping his usual exercise routine in favour of a different one. “Hmm… Inner peace…”
After a moment of weird humming and muttering, his right hand formed a fist before it shot forward, wrist twisting as if he was throwing something— because he was.
His eyes glanced to the side, letting out a tsk in annoyance, ‘Okay, so inner peace does not work. Outer rage it is.’ “Why is it so hard to get fucking right? Fuck!”
Super Help
Jumper - Path of Repulsion
75/10,000 objects thrown
43/500 objects thrown beyond 100 meters
0/250 objects thrown beyond 500 meters
0/50 objects thrown beyond 1 kilometre
Super Help
Jumper - Path of Control
11/1000 two consecutive jumps of equal strength
1/500 three consecutive jumps of equal strength
0/100 four consecutive jumps of equal strength
0/10 five consecutive jumps of equal strength
0/10 remain out of contact with any surface for ten seconds
0/1 remain out of contact with any surface for thirty seconds
It’s been three hours since he started. It was obvious to anyone who saw it, not that anyone else could see the panels, that he wasn’t having any luck with triggering any of the requirements.
To be precise, luck was the one helping him the most. The few times he successfully threw something using [Jumper], at least throws that the system acknowledged, were too arbitrary to fully figure out what he was doing wrong. Sometimes he could figure a probable cause, but sometimes he was sure he did it exactly the same way as the previous one that worked.
Even the simpler requirement was mainly raising due to luck, it was borderline miraculous that he somehow managed to get to double digits with the requirement of using [Jumper] twice in a row with the same exact power, and it was nearly improbable that he did it thrice in a row.
Of course, Calvin knew it needed time and practice. He only had a day so far. But still, it’s been three hours, and Calvin was far from being a saint of patience, “fucking…”
He reached to the side with both hands and grabbed something from thin air before going back to position. Just like before, he triggered [Jumper] behind his hands, albeit with much more passion and anger this time around.
Surprisingly, two counters incremented.
Super Help
Jumper - Path of Repulsion
77/10,000 objects thrown
45/500 objects thrown beyond 100 meters
0/250 objects thrown beyond 500 meters
0/50 objects thrown beyond 1 kilometre
Super Help
Jumper - Path of Control
12/1000 two consecutive jumps of equal strength
1/500 three consecutive jumps of equal strength
0/100 four consecutive jumps of equal strength
0/10 five consecutive jumps of equal strength
0/10 remain out of contact with any surface for ten seconds
0/1 remain out of contact with any surface for thirty seconds
“Gah!“ He yelped in frustration despite the success. 'I swear to god it’s fucking random.’
From what little he could gather, what the system counts as 'throwing’ should only ever use the momentum generated from the superpower itself. He has to release it perfectly, without any extra force nor deviation from the initial throw, at least without any that come from him.
In other words, he can’t— or shouldn’t— add any strength to his throws, even if it means simply nudging the object whenever he opens his hand to let go, which is what happens. All the time.
But that wasn’t all there was to it. There’s some other 'thing’ he couldn’t figure out. At least not in the time he’d been trying.
“So much for evolution,” he muttered to himself, bumping his head to the brick as he relaxed. “Can’t cook perfect. Can’t throw perfect. Can’t even do anything perfect.”
After a few more seconds of grumbling to himself, he finally stopped to sit up and calm down, turning his attention to the only good thing he’d done so far. He reached over to the side, grabbed a piece of what he was throwing earlier, and pulled on the superpower [Colour Control] to reveal its true appearance.
A pebble.
Grey. And ugly.
Not like his [Impervious Pebble]s, these were mundane. Worse than mundane. But still, good enough to throw, and small enough to turn invisible so no one knew he was throwing pebbles five hundred meters across the campus.
'Sometimes my genius is terrifying,’ he thought as he played around with the pebble for a moment before turning it invisible and throwing it. 'Ah— I forgot to use [Jumper]. Well, whatever. I’ll continue tomorrow. Or tonight.’
Having decided to stop throwing pebbles, he raised his wrist to turn his attention to the next thing on his agenda.
> Batty sent an image
>
> Batty sent an image
>
> Batty sent an image
>
> Batty sent an image
>
> Batty sent an image
>
> Batty: h
>
> Me: h?
>
> Me: What’s that?
Calvin frowned, it’s been three hours and she hadn’t replied yet.
Granted, it was the break of dawn at the moment, and most people, under normal circumstances, wouldn’t be conscious enough to reply. Still, she wasn’t most people. And these weren’t normal circumstances.
“What even are these?” He asked, opening the first image.
He’d checked the first image out earlier when he just woke up, but his state of early morning deliriousness had dismissed the images to be some form of butt-dial in combination with butt-image-taking— and not the good kind.
“It’s just black,” he described the first image.
It wasn’t literally a simple black image. It was 'dark’— like 'bad-movie-hiding-bad-CGI’ dark— and was somehow blurry despite the darkness. He could still see some outlines and artefacts, but it was nearly impossible to make out what it was.
He swiped to the next image, making his brows lighten up and a chuckle escape his lips, “Hello useless red circle. It seems you came here as I did. You brought your friend too, unhelpful red arrow.”
That was literally it. A red circle, and a red arrow pointing to the red circle. The rest of the image was white— or transparent.
He sighed and lazily swiped, all apprehension bleeding away from him, “Please don’t tell me it’s another— huh, a blueprint of…”
Breath held still, eyes wide open, pupils dilated. Calvin stopped moving for a second as his eyes were glued to the screen.
The image was somewhat crunchy, with blurry artefacts here and there that obscured much of the symbols on the image, but the main subject was clear. His thoughts started whirring into a torrent of conclusions and theories as soon as he realized what he was looking at.
“…a gold beetle.” He finished his words, pinching the watch to make the image bigger.
From his first impression, it looks like Batty took a picture of the blueprint from a distance. With a shitty camera at that. Still, it was enough that even a layman, which Calvin’s expertise with anything regarding engineering and tinkering lies well below, could figure out in a snap that it was a prototype of the very same thing that one of the terrorists use— the golden scarab.
It wasn’t, in fact, gold. Just gold-plated, but the structure was similar. It had a bug-like appearance with clockwork internals that could be seen through a glass carapace. It had every indication of a prototype, largely due to the big readable writing on top saying 'PROTOTYPE’ followed by a string of random numbers.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
In addition to the blueprint, there seem to be doodles and notes on the side that, although largely unintelligible, hint at the fact that the beetle was a work in progress.
Additional modules, like larger pincers, longer legs, and laser-firing eyes were also drawn 'cutely’. Stickmen wearing capes were getting beheaded, pierced, and dismembered by beetles using the various module ideas, appearing as if doodled by a child.
'Did she get caught? But… why would the terrorist target her specifically? Do they know that I know her? Dox?! Fuck, I should—’, as his heart rate spiked, saner heads started whirring to life, '—calm down. Think, Calvin. How would they know? Not unless Dox or Sebastien suddenly became dumb and made their conversations unsecure. No… there has to be a reason. A reason why she sent this…’
Despite racking his brain for a good minute, he couldn’t come up with a reasonable conclusion with how little he knew. Instead, he moved on to something more productive: getting more data.
'Actually, maybe I should do this back in the dorm,’ he thought as common sense finally prevailed against his panic.
Calvin got up and started coming down the ramparts, summoning [Impervious Pebble]s as footholds. He’d gotten really good at balancing himself on tiny stones, a skill he never expected he’d need in any of his lifetimes.
As he was on his way down, a gust of wind hit his back, followed by an actual projectile hitting his back. He wordlessly stopped his face from getting smashed to the ground using [Jumper] before shaking off the offending attacker.
“You’re heavier than your ball, you know that?” Calvin grumbled as he got up.
“Rude!” The girl sounded offended before pausing as she looked at him. “How’d you know it was me?”
“No one else is inhumane enough.”
“You… hah… are you okay, Calvin?” Another person asked, although no concern could be detected in her haggard voice. “Helena’s heavy ass broke your back yet?”
“You wish,” Helena snorted.
“Alex,” he greeted with a nod as he stood back up. “You still running with her?”
“'Running’, pft. More like dying,” Helena jeered. “Two for zero, loser.”
“I’ll win… haah… tomorrow. You’ll see.”
“Oh? Double or nothing again? You’re racking up a debt.”
“You’ll see.” She glared at her before turning to Calvin. “How much for you to break her legs?”
He answered immediately by raising a single finger.
“One thousand?” Alex grumbled. “Friend discount?”
“Really?” Helena crossed her arms, looking between the two.
Calvin shook his head, “One credit.”
“Hey!” She got to a fighting stance. “Don’t—”
“Done,” the dying little girl raised her arm and gave him the thumbs up. “Kill!”
“Sorry, credits are credits,” he smirked, cracking his neck and slowly walking towards her.
“Two credits and you don’t actually break my leg— stop!”
A short tussle later, Calvin was sitting on top of Helena while looking at his holowatch. Not a moment afterwards, two small dings rang out as a transfer of three credits in total arrived in his account.
“Pleasure doing business,” He patted Helena’s head before heading to Alex to help her up.
“Double dipper,” Alex grumbled, taking his hand to get up from the grass.
“Ow… by the way, are you okay?” Helena suddenly asked, despite being the one covered in dirt.
Calvin looked at her, confused. “Yeah? Why?”
“Nothing, it’s just… you’ve been 'off’ since yesterday. Is something wrong?”
'What isn’t wrong these days?’ Calvin wanted to answer but shook his head lightly instead. “Just tired. Too much math, I guess.”
“Ugh…” Alex groaned at the mention of math.
She narrowed her eyes as she scanned him up and down, “Are you sure? Nothing’s going on with you?”
“Well, we have CQC today, so it’s something,” Calvin dodged the question.
“Ah,” she chuckled, knowing what he was insinuating. “Alex will bite your ankles for that.”
“I’m right here,” she punched her, albeit far too weakly to matter. “And yes, I will.”
“Do it now, maybe I can skip class,” he joked before nodding to the two of them, “anyway, I gotta go take a bath. See you two in class.”
“Make sure your knuckles are extra clean! Don’t want Alex’s idol to get dirt on his face when you punch— fuck! That’s my ankle!”
----------------------------------------
Despite his best efforts, Calvin had no time to himself to check on the other images sent to him. Classes, lunch, and secret missions by a certain pink-haired girl were eating up his time. And, unfortunately, his attention.
Even at the moment, despite doing nothing but sitting, he was too un-alone and preoccupied to check.
“What are we doing?” Calvin asked, looking towards Quinn who had her eyes glued to a pair of binoculars.
“I told you, looking for Lonnie,” she answered. “He should be here already.”
The two of them are on a rooftop on one of the buildings, somewhere near the centre of the academy. Quinn had called him to the location a few minutes earlier, assumedly to talk about their current situation. Like always, he assumed wrongly.
“But what are we doing?” He reiterated.
Quinn turned to him and asked a question instead. “You got his location yet?”
“I’m still installing that app you sent me,” He raised his holowatch, showing a progress bar with barely a trickle on it. “What does it do anyway?”
“Tracks locations of holowatches in the current network,” she answered promptly.
“That’s…”
“Invasive?”
“Extremely.”
“It is,” she agreed with a nod, “but that’s just how it is. It’s not normally available— actually, it’s something new. Not a lot of people know it exists. And, well, it’s not legally available to anyone below a certain rank.”
“How’d you get it?” He looked suspiciously towards her.
“I threatened someone above a certain rank,” she smirked. “Don’t worry, it’s safe. It’s still in development and it doesn’t even work with our watch’s models.”
He chuckled darkly, “And you’re just giving it to me.”
“It’s made for rescue missions and whatever. If you don’t want it, just remove it. I found him anyway,” Quinn pointed towards a direction while handing him another pair of binoculars.
“I thought we were going to talk about it before doing something like this?” Calvin refocused.
“We can do both,” she said, pushing the binoculars against him.
Calvin sighed and grabbed the binoculars, mildly surprised that they weren’t tinker tech, before looking towards where she pointed. It didn’t take long before he saw the boy in question, walking normally through the park. Mysteriously, he was clutching an unmarked cardboard box the size of a shoe.
Or a bomb, as his intrusive thoughts would worm itself in and shout at his ears.
“Where’s he going?” He muttered, trying to trace his path.
“The cafeteria,” Quinn surprisingly answered. “He does this every other day. Just carries a box of something to the cafeteria. I tried to look at the cafeteria’s records, but there’s no mention of him or his box anywhere.”
“Curious,” He whispered, attention turning to what Lonnie was carrying. “Box of something?”
“I don’t know what’s inside.”
“But you know the cafeteria’s records?”
“Records are on the network,” she tapped her watch and opened a file.
“I’m just going to take your word for it,” he didn’t want to bother looking at the egregious amount of groceries he stole from the campus using the fridge. “So, you’re not giving up on this, huh?”
“We have one lead, Cal.”
“One 'assumption-borderlining-coincidence’.”
“It’s better to be safe.”
“Safe,” he chuckled, not really knowing what the word means now. “So what do you want us to do? Steal the box or something?”
“You can’t?” Quinn dropped her binoculars to look at him with a raised brow.
He knew what she was doing, but he was also curious, “I can. I need to know where it is, though.”
“I don’t have access to the cameras, but he drops it off at the kitchen.”
“Then today’s operation will be strictly surveillance only. We’ll make our move the next time he comes with the package.”
She glanced at him and chuckled, “Stop talking like that and take this seriously.”
“That wasn’t serious enough for you, ma’am?”
“Don’t call me ma’am. It’s weird.”
“Fine, miss. Ow.”
While Quinn continued surveilling the suspected terrorist’s journey through the 'perilous’ open field of the Academy, Calvin fidgeted as his anxiety grew and the thoughts filled with Batty’s situation continued gnawing at him. It didn’t take long before he couldn’t help it anymore and started checking the image.
His eyes glanced at Quinn, making sure she was occupied first, before opening the fourth image that the woman sent him.
'Another blueprint,’ he thought to himself. 'A building?’
It was much clearer and more obviously not a photo, unlike the prior two. At least, it didn’t look like it was taken by a disposable camera from a hundred meters away in the middle of the night. No, it was a scanned document of a single page of a blueprint that, from Calvin’s ignorant and unenlightened eyes, looked more like a cross-section of a cake than a building.
Symbols littered the blueprint, as any old blueprint does, but he couldn’t make heads nor tails on what they meant. All he could understand was that the rooms were big, and the building was ginormous, at least judging from the numbers on the side.
Twelve layers in total, each one nearly twice as large as the one above it, with the topmost layer spanning a size not any smaller than a regular classroom.
'Is this where she went? Or got kidnapped?’ Calvin started theorizing. 'It might be the terrorist’s base. I mean, golden scarabs for gadgets? A pyramid for a base? It certainly fits a theme. But then… how did she get a hold of this? Moreover… why?’
He couldn’t understand what happened to Batty even with the fourth photo. He had an inkling, an assumption, but it was too dangerously pessimistic at the moment that he had to push it away.
At least until he had no more clues.
'Last photo,’ he opened the final image and immediately felt his heart drop. 'There it is. Coffin nail.’
It was Batty herself, similarly blurred, uniquely manic. It was a photo obviously taken while getting chased, the chaser much too blurry to see definitively. However, the vague shadow clearly had the visage of a beetle. A large beetle.
“Fuck…” he muttered out loud. 'I need to get a hold of Dox. And find out what that first image is—’
“You okay there, Cal?” Quinn jolted him back to reality with a question.
“Huh? Uh, yeah—”, he immediately panic-swiped as she glanced to his watch, “—just looking at some stuff.”
“Stuff? What, a black screen?” She looked at him with narrowed eyes.
“Black?” He looked at his watch which was showing the first image. He was about to close the screen when the watch dinged, showing the app he was installing earlier was finished. “Actually, Quinn, do you have any software or app that can brighten images?”
“Brighten?” She asked, tilting her head in thought. “Why?”
“Just— someone… a friend sent me an image. It’s too dark to see anything.”
“A friend?” She crossed her arms. “That’s suspicious.”
“Rude,” he chuckled, rolling his eyes at her, “so? Do you?”
“I do, but it’ll cost you,” she said.
It was his turn to narrow his eyes at her, “what do you have in mind?”
“Do 'one’ thing for me,” she said, raising a finger. “No questions asked.”
“And that one thing is…?”
“You’ll find out later. That’s the price.”
“Sure. Why not?” he answered immediately with a shrug.
Quinn’s eyes widened, “just like that?”
“Just like that,” he nodded.
“You don’t even know what I want you to do?”
“Yeah, I trust you,” he smiled brightly towards her.
Her eyes narrowed after seeing that, “you’re guilt-tripping me so I don’t make you do something ridiculous.”
“Yes I am,” He admitted honestly.
“Not bad,” She nodded proudly. “Won’t work on me, unfortunately.”
She then started tapping at her holowatch, making Calvin’s vibrate as another app started downloading and installing. This one took only a few seconds to finish.
“Remember. One thing. No questions.” She smiled maliciously towards him.
Calvin felt a tremble in his spine, 'Hero stuff. It’s for hero stuff.’
----------------------------------------
Having decided to continue his investigation after the stalking operation, Calvin stayed with Quinn until their target finally went out of sight and hopefully out of mind. It wasn’t until after their final class, which was coincidentally about the morality of a hero’s actions to save people, did Calvin finally get time alone.
He collapsed on his bed, mentally drained and physically exhausted thanks to the [Severe Fatigue] condition, and massaged his temples to alleviate the migraine threatening to make even the end of his day worse.
“Okay, first off,” he opened his messages.
> Me: Batty might be in danger.
>
> Me: Dox?
>
> Me: Sebastien?
>
> Me: Hello?
> Batty sent an image
>
> Batty sent an image
>
> Batty sent an image
>
> Batty sent an image
>
> Batty sent an image
>
> Batty: h
>
> Me: h?
>
> Me: What’s that?
>
> Me: Are you in danger?
“Still no reply from all three of them. Figures,” Calvin groaned. “I can’t do anything about that… so I’ll do something about this.”
He opened the app Quinn sent and started fiddling.
It took a good part of an hour of studying the app and its controls, due to the unfortunate lack of internet video tutorials, but he was able to roughly brighten the image. He was sure there was a better and much cleaner way, but this was enough for now.
“A random-ass bridge,” he described the photo out loud.
A brick footbridge, in the middle of god-knows-where, underneath a starless and moonless sky. The bridge itself was dilapidated, as were its surroundings which were just as unmaintained.
He calmed his annoyance and started observing the photo more closely, noting the series of sewer drains on the bottom of the bridge, letting flow a river of muck and underbrush from a couple of grates.
“This is as unhelpful as the red— wait a minute,” he opened the second image right beside the edited one.
Looking between the two, Calvin confirmed his suspicion by layering the two and showing the circle’s intended subject— a sewer drain hidden underneath the underbrush. It was hard to make out, even with the red circle showing its exact location, but it’s there.
“Not as useless as I thought. Sorry, red circle,” he nodded in recognition of its duty fulfilled, “not you, arrow. You’re still useless.”
Out of context, it was just a random sewer drain. But with the pyramid-like blueprint, it wasn’t too far off to assume that it was the entrance to some sort of lair. It could also be a hideout, one Batty was using right now, but that was too optimistic to be the case.
Five images, and a multitudinous amount of dots connecting them to him, Batty, and the terrorist.
'Last time she messaged me, she said she was going to check things out on her end. That’s probably why and how she got a hold of the blueprints… but why would she go this far? Why go to the actual lair? She didn’t seem that dumb… she knew Dox was having her episode. So why?’ Calvin pursed his lips, his head likely visibly smoking as the metaphorical gears inside started running out of grease. “Fuck me… it’s not like I can do anything about it either. Not from here. Ugh…”
He stared at the ceiling, trying to clear his trains of thought that were starting to drag him down to a dark place.
“It’s not your fault,” he muttered, trying to convince himself, “damn it. If I didn’t tell her anything— fuck, I just told her what happened. I didn’t tell her to go and actually confront the goddamn terrorist. That’s hero stuff… ugh.”
He started massaging his temples again, this time out of habit as he was about to make a decision he knew he was going to regret. After a few moments, he raised his arm and started typing a note to himself.
Notepad
Find a way out
1. Official way? Get a permit or something?
2. Pretend a loved one died
3. Jump the fence(at least try)
4. Open the 'vending machine'
He scratched his chin, pausing to think of more ways to get out. A memory came back to him, making him smirk as he added it to the list.
5. Find a fridge