Darion sat at his desk in his old room and stared at the ... the thing, in front of him.
It is been 2 weeks since he graduated from the army and almost as a present by the system, he gained an Attribute point in one of his stats.
Congratulations! Due to your diligence, you are able to increase your MIND attributes by 1.
Current MIND: 2
Congratulations! Due to your diligence, you are able to meet the new requirements for your current skill level in one of your abilities, and your stats adjusted accordingly.
TELEKINESIS increase by 1.
Requirements: MIND 2
Current telekinesis level: 6
Now that he is a fully registered street hero, Darion has access to the hero auction system, which, despite being at the lowest level as a junior street hero, he already has access to massive techs and materials normally not available to ordinary people.
High-end blueprints for androids and robotic armors are, of course, out of the question at the moment, since each one costs in the millions, but he can afford to buy the latest customized machine shop.
He then used this machine to create an even more advanced workshop that he customized by himself to so much more.
With high-quality plating and a little bit of creative wiring, Darion could basically build anything he wanted, and combined with his unbelievable new technical know-how capability, the only limit is his imagination.
After reading the machine-shop manual for ten minutes, reading a mechanical engineering book for another 40 minutes, and then surfing the internet for specific technical questions, which took another 45 minutes, he finally started building his first mechanical project.
There was a bit of delay since he needed to order a few more boranium plating and a customized battery set, a batch of N-type silicon wafer, and a lithography machine. With priority shipping, he received all of this in a matter of hours. The entire material and delivery cost him a total of $240K.
Half of the cost was part of his first salary payment and the rest was reward money for being the valedictorian of their batch. The rest was loaned to him by his dad.
Darion worked throughout the night by feel alone, and just before dawn, Darion has a working prototype assembled. It was a spider-like machine with eight legs but only needed 4 to stay erect. The other four served as arms to manipulate various tools needed to do, well, a lot of things. It was the size of a standard football, but the damn thing moves fast for its weight.
After writing and downloading the main operating system, coupled with customized algorithms, and then attaching the automaton to its own wireless receiver and power input, the tiny robot was placed in several pre-prepared testing programs that Darion envisioned.
Everything works with flying colors after some minor adjustments had been made. Once that is ready, Darion rump up the production and build more. The plating and circuitry that he has left were just enough to create 11 more for a total of 12 spider bots.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
After thinking about it, he uploaded the picture for the spider bots in the auction. Darion went through the process of registering his work to ISSUE before he started to auction 6 of them with a starting price of about $120K each.
Darion crammed the other six bots in a bag and then set them aside under his bed. He then waited for the drone delivery bots to arrived and he needed to give them possession of the remaining six. The hero auction house needed access to the product before their auction registry is finalized. When that is finally done, he looked at the wall clock and realized that it was just about time for dinner.
When he walked down the stairs, His sister Janiya and his dad were in a mild debate about the chances of Malayan tigers in the qualifiers.
"The what now?" Darion asked blankly.
"The Howling tigers of Malaysia in this year's qualifying games," Janiya repeated as if that is more than enough to explain everything.
Darion sat down on the table and sighed. "One of these days, someone has to explain to me what this Heroball is all about, or I'm going to shoot myself."
Chagrined, Janiya, with a little help from her dad, slowly explained the mechanics of the game to a complete noob like Darion.
Hero ball starts in February, and the first month or so is scheduled for what the fans call the qualifier season. "Basically, hundreds of teams are made and try to qualify for the next phase of the hero ball, the Echo phase."
Darion leaned over his chair. "You mean to tell me hundreds of empowered people play this shit?" He asked incredulously.
Janiya and their dad gave him an inscrutable look. "Not hundreds of empowered individuals," She replied. "But hundreds of empowered teams. Each team is made up of anywhere to 20-30 heroes."
Darion just stared at her.
"Now, each of these teams will play qualifying matches designed by ISSUE personnel until they get enough points to be qualified on the next round. The traditional strong teams are also officially recognized as qualified at this time."
"The traditional teams?"
The teams that did great in last year's hero ball. If they reach, say the national champion of their country, then they are exempt until the playoffs.
Janiya explained even more, but by the next 5 minutes, Darion's mind already shut off. He was simply not that interested in the country's new pastime.
He raised his hands in surrender, saying that he heard everything he wanted to hear about Heroball for the night, and he will now eat dinner. Both Janiya and his dad were a bit perplexed that someone is not interested in their game. But all of that is forgotten as something triggered a new debate between them, and they happily discuss the pros and cons of a tinkerer meeting a brawler in an open field.
Darion instead, talked to his Mom about when he expected to meet the ISSUE representative tomorrow and if there is anything he needed to prepare for before the meeting.
His mom eyed him for a moment and then asked matter-of-factly, "Have you molested anyone lately?"
"What?! No!"
"Have you robbed anyone?" His dad chirped in.
"No," Darion said, now getting irritated.
"Have you killed anyone?" Janiya also added.
Darion eyed his sister menacingly. "Not yet," he said in a grating voice.
"Then I don't think you will have any problems with tomorrow's interview," His mom said confidently.
"Think of it more as a way for them in giving you an option of how you want to run your life in the future," His dad reassured him.
"Oh, and if they asked you to join Heroball, you know what to tell them, right?" Janiya asked.
"That I rather kill myself?"
"Join first, before you kill yourself," Janiya said, ignoring her brother's jibe at her new passion. "So that I can say I have a professional ballplayer for a brother."
Darion imagines what it will be like if he can use his powers to squeeze his little sister's head like a watermelon. Then he smiled.
Janiya stared at him suspiciously. "Dad," she said. "Darion is thinking about doing something bad to me."
Darion smiled even more evilly.
'Knock it off, Darion Libinski," His mom said instead.
Janiya gave him a raspberry, which promptly got a scowling from her mom as well. Darion gave her the "I'm looking at you,” sign signal which Janiya promptly copied back. Darion snorted when Janiya left.
His dad stared at him. Both of them. His real dad is sipping coffee while the other is massaging his back.
"So, you finish with that monstrosity you bought?"
Darion smiled at him. "Yes dad, I'm done for the week."
"What did you build anyway?"
Darion shrugged. "Some sort of robot spider."
His mom made a face. "Why spiders? Can you not build a robot bunny or something?"
"But then Janiya will steal it."
Both parents thought about it and both nodded slowly at the same time. "You have a point," his mom said, reluctantly.
"Anyway, I'm going out for a while, since it's my day off and such. I'll be back for dinner."
Both parents showed disappointment but nodded to him. Ever since he graduated 2 weeks ago, Darion spends most of his time in the county of Bainbridge, hanging out with beefy men of the 2nd district fire and emergency services in an old 2 story dilapidated building. Four superheroes were stationed there, including Darion, in a 2-day shift.
Most of his free time is spent with his family but now and then, Darion went out and did his own thing.
So that night, Darion waited for the bus and watched as he enters the heart of the town which is the plaza.