Omen 6.7

2001, December 4: Washington, DC

Perfect Timing did exactly as I remembered: It gave me a Commencing Stopwatch. Or rather, it taught me how I could enchant one.

My immediate thought was to build as many as I could by cleaning out every antique shop of every pocketwatch ever made. Even if it only worked for three seconds, that was a three second safety net that could handle absolute anything, Scion included. Perhaps I could wear a dozen of them in a jury-rigged ammo belt?

I snorted at the ridiculous image. As funny as that could be, it wasn't feasible.

The artifact was called the Commencing Stopwatch because that's exactly what it was: the beginning. It was the World Rune's boon to me, inviolable and immutable. Also, utterly unique. Once I made it, that was it. It was as unbreakable as the Ymelo, its integrity guaranteed by a fragment of infinity.

Unlike most of my creations, this watch had a direct connection to the World Rune. I wished I could describe the physics of exiting time and what made this golden trinket so much better than Grey Boy's power, but I couldn't. I couldn't not because I failed to understand dimensional physics or concepts of relativity, but because there just wasn't any physical law that the watch corresponded to.

The watch was, after all, a cessation of progress in every form. It was what happened when the World Rune told the universe to take a breather. There wasn't an explanation because this was a smaller, bastardized form of the signature spell of perhaps the most powerful of Aspects. This was Bard's Tempered Fate in miniature, a sample of what lay beyond my fingertips.

It was also the first lesson, the start of a whole new school of magic. How curious, that as I wrestled with the possibility of eternity, I also gained something to stop time in its tracks, if only for a single breath.

If I had to be honest with myself, it scared me as much as it excited me.

The morning after igniting the lesser rune, I locked myself in my workstation, hunched over a familiar pocketwatch. Not for the first time, I wondered if Inspiration gave me Perfect Timing as a response to this specific watch.

Could it be telling me that no matter the eternity that stretched before me, I should take care to treasure the loved ones I had? That I ought to save a memento of them forever in time?

'Nah,' I let out a snort coupled with a mental scoff. 'Probably not. Then again…'

Then again, the enchantment came easier. I wasn't sure if this was because I felt personally invested in the birthday gift or because the Commencing Stopwatch was something directly provided by the World Rune, but I was glad for it.

It was still eleven in the morning when I leaned back with a satisfied smile. There was no need to examine the watch, but I found my gaze drawn to it anyway. Somewhere along the line, it had changed color to warm gold. The face of the analog clock had been rearranged, moving it to the top of the clamshell lid.

I knew that no matter where I was or what I put this thing through, its blue face would always tell me the local time accurately.

Inside the pocketwatch were two pictures. The first was a photo of the Phoenix Wards, the one they included in their gift. The second was of course, of mom.

I was brought out of my musings by a beeping sound that came from my laptop. It was a notification bell we all had for non-emergency matters. In this case, it was a request asking me to head down to the mailroom to pick up the supplies I'd ordered.

As I was walking downstairs, I ran into a tall, big-boned woman in an ice-blue suit of armor. It wasn't quite power armor, there was no exoskeleton that made her stronger, but it was well made. I glanced at the gun on her hip. It had both a beam setting that formed a layer of ice over whatever it hit and a snowball setting that crystalized the water molecules around the muzzle before launching it at a target.

"Hey, Glace," I called with a chipper grin on my face. "You look tired. What's up?"

She shot me an annoyed frown but fell in step with me. "I just spent three hours showing off for a bunch of middle schoolers."

I winced in sympathy. "School tour?"

"School tour. How come you don't have to do one of these?"

"I'm busy."

She raised a skeptical brow. "You?"

It annoyed me, but I had to remind myself that she had no idea how much work I actually put in. As far as most of the others were concerned, I was a Ward and therefore didn't put in the hours at the Madhouse that they did. I didn't think they held it against me, I was a recently turned ten year old to them, but they did tend to expect less of me.

Understandable, if frustrating.

The only ones who treated me like an adult were Eugene, who knew the truth, and Colin, who seemed to accept that I was an anomaly and sparred with me as a serious opponent.

"Is it that surprising to find I have demands on my time?"

"Maybe not, but we're all busy."

"True," I acquiesced, "maybe Mr. Powell doesn't want me to host the guided tours because I look too young. If they see the most junior member, someone who's even younger than the students, they might think that we don't value their time."

She grunted at that. Glace was a taciturn woman, though she was typically friendlier than this. Whereas Just-Ice made his persona off terrible puns and corny one-liners, Glace had the traditional "ice queen" demeanor down pat. Ever since her Ward days, she was constantly paired with Pyrotechnical so she was always cast as the straight-man of the pair.

"So what happened to Warptek?" I asked. He was a former member of the Madhouse who was tapped for leadership in Milwaukee. That was before my arrival, but he'd designed a network of teleportation plates that made moving materials and machinery around the compound a breeze. This was actually the first time I'd been down to the mail room because I'd never needed to before now.

"He passed away," she replied, tone more gentle now. "He volunteered in Hyderabad for relief operations."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"Shit, I'm sorry. I didn't know things got that bad."

"It wasn't. I was there too. It was just a freak accident. A fresh trigger knocked him out and no one knew to look for him before he… There's a lot of water."

I could draw the conclusions. A trigger event disabled any and all capes in an area. It was also the kind of event that was just chaotic enough to lose someone in for a few minutes. And if said disabled cape happened to crash face-first into water…

It wasn't the noblest way to die, but this world didn't give much of a damn about that.

"Weren't you building some kind of long-range gun?" she asked in a blatant bid to change the subject. I let her.

"I'm finished. I just need a final test… kind of. I'm certain the gun works as planned, but said range is two miles. I'm going to figure out a way to see that far away."

"A really good scope?"

"I'm thinking more a drone," I admitted. A scope wouldn't help me anyway, not with the way my eyes worked. Instead, I wanted to make a hextech drone of some sort. Then, I could tie it to my eyes as my familiar. I left room in the rune matrices for this reason after all. "What do you think? A mecha-hawk sounds cool, right?"

"A hawk?"

"Yeah, too cliché maybe. Besides, avian wing designs aren't good for hovering. Maybe a dragonfly? That way, I could have more than one hovering around me to expand my visual range."

"Sure, Hyunmu. You do you," Glace said, well-used to my eccentricity by now. "Say, mind if I get more of that True Ice?"

"I don't mind, but why?"

"Because it's the single weirdest substance I've ever seen. Every single scan tells me it's water, but it's obviously not. It has a standing temperature colder than liquid nitrogen, somehow does not melt, yet transfers the sensation of cold, which implies that it's absorbing heat. Just touching it for a few seconds was enough to give me frostbite even through my gloves. I've been using a drone to manipulate it since. I don't know if my power's missing something, but I can't make heads or tails of it."

"Good, you know it's dangerous. So why do you want more of it?"

"I'm having a lot of fun playing around with it," she said, smiling. She looked a bit more energetic at the prospect of the mystery substance. "Who knows? Maybe if I get Pyro to help out, we can melt it for real. I'm thinking about running an experiment. I'll keep one out as control and a few more samples in different conditions to see if anything changes."

I nodded affably. When I first gave her a snowball's worth of True Ice, I was excited at the possibility of her building some kind of super freeze ray, not that I had any idea what that might look like. It turned out that she was as limited as Fortuna when it came to metaphysical concepts. I should have expected as much. Even Armsmaster, though he made a tranquilizer dart out of Petricite Elixir, hadn't really changed the elixir in any way, merely added it to a solution in varying ratios until he got what he wanted.

It had become something of a game among the tinkers of the Madhouse to figure out ways to use the things I made. Metalmaru and Neo-Petricite didn't count for similar reasons as Armsmaster's tranquilizers.

The two of us shot the breeze in the mailroom for a bit before I picked up the delivery of magnesium and silicon carbide. This wasn't the first time I'd considered expanding my vision and I heard from Metalmaru that some of the hardest but lightest alloys could be made from magnesium.

X

I laid down in my bed, flipping through my phone. It still caught me off guard how quickly tech on Earth-Bet advanced. In the world I remembered, iPhones came out in 2007, kickstarting the age of smartphones. Here, smartphones arrived a full decade sooner thanks to the prevalence of tinkers. While most tinkertech was black-boxed by the Shards, enough trickled through to jumpstart innovation.

The simple fact that humans could build teleporters, ray guns, and hovercars stirred the hopes and dreams of mundane inventors and investors. Back when Hero first stepped onto the scene, there were dozens of startups claiming they'd be the first to "crack tinkertech" and "usher in a technological utopia" or somesuch.

Such dreams evaporated like the morning mist with the arrival of Leviathan and the collapse of global shipping, but there were still some who were stubborn enough to invest in mundane startups that aimed to rival tinkertech through plain science and human grit. These days, most of them focused on a futuristic aesthetic to ape tinkertech, but some had real substance.

It was why Rubedo's mass production of potions was such a big deal, and how smartphones were already a thing six years before the iPhone.

When shitposting on PHO as He Who Inspires and arguing with myself using multiple accounts got boring, I started to thumb through the emails I didn't get around to reading. If emails from Powell got overlooked for a day or five because I was in a fugue, who could correct me? After all, the compulsion was just a part of my power. If it was truly important, Hero would give me a heads up.

That was my story and I was sticking to it.

Unfortunately, the intentional distance I placed between myself and PRT operations meant I didn't always get the chance to veto something I didn't like. Case in point:

To: hyunmu protectorate_

From: prt_

Date: November 19, 2001

Subject: Holiday Merchandising Opportunities

Hyunmu,

It has come to my attention that you have been suspended from patrols indefinitely. This comes at an unfortunate time in the public relations cycle of a hero. Heroes who market themselves well, particularly through leveraging the holiday season, show quantifiably better results in public perception polls. I do not believe I need to tell you why this is important.

Unfortunately, Chief Director Costa-Brown has not seen fit to overturn her decision despite my urgings. And this even in light of your online popularity. Videos of your speech and fight against the now defunct Stage Crew are still being distributed regularly. Well done. In a single evening, you have achieved what many marketing professionals strive to accomplish over the course of months and years: organic growth.

Thanks to your online popularity, I believe that it is prudent to develop a list of marketable merchandise for the holiday season. Even with your lack of patrols, I have reason to believe they will sell respectably well. And of course, Rubedo will get his own merchandise.

I have taken the liberty of including the ideas our department has come up with. See them below and provide feedback as you deem necessary.

Isolde-shaped scissors: Self-explanatory, though I still feel that naming your weapon of choice after an Arthurian princess is too off-brand compared to the rest of your aesthetic. Really, why scissors? Have you considered your own line of art supplies? How are you at origami?

Cloud-brand hiking boots: We've partnered with an athletic footwear company to make hiking boots modeled after your shoes. "To the Skies!" is the name of the marketing campaign. Say it as a slogan when you can.

LED light-up shield: The footage of your EMP blast is perfect. It's flashy, causes minimal collateral damage, and highly effective. It's also easily marketable to children. We made Christmas toys out of your shield. It can also be thrown like a frisbee. You can do that, right?

Turtle-brand apparel: We've got jackets, sweaters, and skiing gear to go with your ice theme. Of course, since turtles invoke a sense of protection, we've also commissioned helmets, deodorant, and feminine hygiene products.

…

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Regards,

Travis Powell

Director of Public Relations

PS: If I do not receive a response in a week, I will go ahead and greenlight the projects with the assumption of approval.

I paled as I read through the contents of the list. Then I checked the date, then the post script.

"Son of a bitch!"

Author's Note

Filler chapter is filler. Magnesium silicon carbide really is up there as far as light, sturdy shit goes though. I just thought it'd be a fun plug. Yes, I'm that much of a nerd.

Did I write a scene just to make fun of Armsmaster's logo on Taylor's crotch? Yes, because I have the humor of a twelve year old.

In lieu of plot development, have an animal fact: Beaver teeth are orange because of iron. Yes, that's right. Beavers are good at cutting trees because their incisors are literal ax heads. They organically form iron deposits in the front layer of their incisors. This means that when the gnaw on things, the back layer of the incisor wears down faster than the front (because it's partly metal), naturally wearing down the incisors into a wedge shape and sharpening them.

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 them all on my Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/fabled.webs.