Wake 1.2

2010, August 30: Brockton Bay, NH, USA

Arcadia was honestly better than my old high school by miles. From the air, it'd look like a sideways H, with two large buildings making up the north and south halls and a shorter building connecting the two. The halls were four stories tall, with the cafeteria and gym in the south and the auditorium in the north. The central building was dedicated to administration. The school's two quads were manicured with neatly cut grass and trees that had just begun to change color for the approaching autumn. My sister dropped me off at the north quad and I followed the stream of shuffling students to the auditorium.

I was alone amidst the student body; no one tried to strike up a conversation. There were a few nods from a handful of familiar faces, but I was left mostly to myself. I was that quiet kid who did nothing wrong and bothered no one, but I wondered here if being the aloof loner was the right choice. When I was younger, it was because I struggled with depression and the reality of my own existence in a fictional setting.

Now, now I had power. I could chart my own life as I pleased without fear of being helpless. Arcadia was the "Wards' school." I had no intention of ever joining the Wards, too much regulation for a tinker of fiction to thrive, but would it be worth getting to know them?

'Eh, let the chips fall where they may,' I thought. 'Whatever happens, happens.'

I went to elementary school with Eric Pelham, Shielder, and I was of similar mind even then. I made no attempt to befriend him or "make him a better hero" or whatever. It wasn't as though my worldview changed now that I triggered. As far as I was concerned, I had two priorities: Keep my family safe, and explore my power.

That was it. Beyond mom and Sierra, I didn't care too much about being some noble paragon. Ultimately, I wanted to make things and have fun doing it.

We were packed into the auditorium like sardines. The orientation was as one would expect: introduction of teachers, overview of Arcadia's alternating days and unique vocational schedules, and a generic "We can neither confirm nor deny the presence of Wards at Arcadia. Do not ask. Attempting to unmask a hero is a federal crime."

That, of course, got the students whispering. There is nothing like a taboo to get teenagers excited about a subject. But before we could get too far into the blatantly prohibited guessing game, the student council president stepped up to the podium to address us.

Dean Stansfield. In Worm, he was depicted as the perfect boyfriend and hero: Rich, handsome, and genuinely well-meaning in a way that few people in the setting were. He was Gallant, in both name and deeds, or at least, he tried to live up to that name with an earnestness that really made his interlude stand out to me.

Of course, Brockton wasn't allowed to have nice things by order of Grimlord Wildbow, so he died early on in the Leviathan attack. The hilarious part was that Wildbow himself had little to do with that particular bit of mischief. He rolled for all Leviathan encounters and Dean's die was one of many that came up short.

Fun fact: Had Taylor rolled poorly, Carlos, Aegis, would have become the new protagonist of Worm.

Looking at him now, he was… just a boy. No angels sang his coming, no halo sprouted from his head. He was just some kid whose parents bought him powers. He was handsome enough to have several girls in my row giggling, but nothing truly exceptional stood out to me.

'I think I may have made the Wards out to be a bit larger than life,' I thought ruefully.

Following the orientation, we were all ushered into our second periods, algebra II with Mr. Kalil in my case. Mr. Kalil was a tall, black man with a bit of a beer belly. He wore his beard thick and the most interesting thing about him was his wacky bowtie collection. His words, not mine. Credit where it's due, he did try to make his class engaging. Two other freshmen and I drew some stares for being in an upper level class, but we gamely ignored them.

Then came AP biology with Mrs. Pearce, a rail-thin, no nonsense woman with thick, coke-bottle glasses. She was the sort to just hand out the syllabus, tell us to read it on our own time, then immediately dive into a lecture about cell division. I was the only freshman in this class. Halfway through the class, we were split into pairs to introduce us to our lab partners for the semester. Mine was a pale girl with dyed blonde hair named Chelsea.

"Mrs. Pearce, can I pair up with Stephanie?" she asked.

'One of those people,' I rolled my eyes.

I could see our teacher doing the same. "No, not being able to gossip with your friend for twenty minutes won't kill you. Sit back down and get to work, Ms. Hawthorne. Everything you don't finish becomes homework," she addressed the class.

We tackled our textbooks with much groaning. "So…," Chelsea began," freshie, huh? That's neat."

"Mmhm," I hummed in acknowledgement. I flew through the material. I couldn't claim to have perfect recall of my past life, but I was a physician's assistant. High school biology, AP or otherwise, was frankly insulting.

"What number are you on?"

"Thirteen," I said.

"You work fast."

"Mmhm."

"Not a talker, huh?"

"Mmhm."

"Ugh, fine," she groaned before finally glancing at her own textbook. "What's number three?"

"Cellulose."

"Why?"

"Cellulose is substance that makes up cell walls in plants. It's a complex carbohydrate and makes the plants feel fibrous or rigid."

"Cool, thanks. I'm Chelsea."

"I know."

"You really don't like talking, huh?"

I scribbled the answer to number twenty and dropped my pencil. "And… done." I turned to her. "I just like to get my work done. I have better things to do at home than this. Bryce Kiley, by the way."

"Yeah, good point. Help me out?"

"Ask if you have any questions, but I'm just going to do my homework from algebra otherwise."

"Nerd," she said, but the jab had no heat behind it.

"Dumb blonde," I shot back.

"I dare you to say that to Vicky."

"Who?" I feigned ignorance.

"Glory Girl? Victoria Dallon? Miss Perfect?"

"Collateral Damage Barbie?" I chuckled. "Sure, why not? I've been meaning to get my face rearranged."

She let out an unladylike snort. "You're alright for a freshie."

"You're alright for… whatever you are."

AP biology ended and we were released to lunch. Before I could shuffle off to eat on my own, Chelsea tapped my shoulder. "Want to eat with us?" she asked. I'd pegged her as one of the vapid girls who never shut up, but it turned out that she was just overly social. She still talked too much, but there was no malice behind it. "Unless you plan to rejoin the freshie flock."

I realized I took too long to answer. "Sorry, spaced out. I was just going to finish my homework."

"Seriously? You need to learn to have fun, Bryce."

"I do have fun," I said flatly, "it's why I'm trying to do my work now."

She looked at me skeptically. "What do you do for fun then?"

"I play music."

"Really?" she perked up. "Do you play in a band?"

"No, just a hobby."

"Lame." She took my hand and dragged me over to her friend. "Steph! I have a freshie!"

"Pffttt, did she kidnap you, little guy?" she cooed. Stephanie was a tall girl, almost six feet tall, with braided brown hair that reached her butt. To my five-two stature, she was practically a giant.

"Yes, please call nine-one-one," I deadpanned.

"Can he sit with us?"

"Sure, Chelsea, I don't care. You sure he doesn't have any of his own friends to sit with though?"

"He doesn't. He was going to spend lunch doing homework," she gasped as though that was the most heinous thing she'd ever heard.

"Is she always like this?" The three of us started walking to the cafeteria in the south hall.

"Yup, Chelsea's a bit of a social butterfly," Stephanie said with an apologetic smile. "She thinks that if you don't have friends, you're automatically unhappy. Sorry if the super extrovert is a bit pushy."

"It's fine. I can tell she means well."

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Instead of long tables arranged into rows, the cafeteria was dotted with circular tables that could seat a maximum of eight with the serving station on one side. Students were also free to eat out in the quad. We took a seat near the center and were soon joined by several more people.

One, a sinuously fit redhead boy, called, "Hey, Steph, Chels, who's the squirt?"

"Hey, Dennis," the girls greeted back. Stephanie waved towards me. "Chelsea's new project."

"Bryce, nice to meet you, Dennis," I said.

"Let me guess, Hurricane Chelsea swept you into this group, right?" came a deeper voice. A tan, Hispanic boy placed his tray down next to mine. "Carlos, by the way."

"I resent that," Chelsea protested. "I'm a fresh breeze to brighten your day, thank you very much."

"She's… She's really peppy," I said diplomatically. "She found me in AP bio and dragged me over."

"Heh, don't mind it. Believe it or not, Chelsea is how a lot of us met. Dennis and I met in an after school program, but Chelsea dragged Dennis here because she thought he was funny."

"Yeah, and this meaty lug just decided to follow yours truly," the redhead chimed in.

"Good to know she's not just kidnapping random freshmen." I gave Dennis and Carlos a once over. Even over their clothes, it was plainly obvious that the two were very fit.

'What are the odds that these are Clockblocker and Aegis?'

I had my answer when Dean Stansfield, the student council president I recognized from orientation, took a seat with his girlfriend. A mousy, brunette shuffled in next to Victoria Dallon.

"Stop being mean to Chelsea," New Wave's golden girl said. "There's nothing wrong with making new friends. Right?" she addressed me directly.

I'm ashamed to say my breath hitched in my throat when her eyes met mine. There was something about her that captivated me. Her eyes seem bluer; her hair looked like spun sunlight. Her voice was music to my ears. Beside me, Carlos coughed lightly and jabbed a finger into my side.

"Eep! Sorry, you're… really pretty," I finished lamely. I could feel my face turn red.

I thought being mentally in my forties would help keep me grounded; it did not. It wasn't just that she was the hottest girl I'd ever met; she inspired awe in ways I didn't know was possible.

"Vicky, aura," Dean said chidingly. There was some disapproval directed towards me, as expected of a guy who just caught someone else eyeing his girlfriend, but it was drowned out by exasperation. He'd been through this song and dance so frequently that it was more of a routine annoyance than something to be truly upset about.

"Oh, sorry," she apologized. And suddenly, she was much more human: still pretty, but not so breathtaking that I couldn't look away from her. She seemed sincere, though I could tell that a part of her appreciated the attention. "I forget that it's really hard to resist if you've never felt my aura before."

"No, that's alright. I just… didn't expect it to be that strong."

Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Amy giving me the stink eye. 'Welp, talk about starting off with a negative reputation.'

"You knew about her aura?" Chelsea asked.

I thought about how to respond. "Ah… Yeah, kind of. I'm a bit of a cape geek."

"Favorite hero?" Dennis asked. Around the table, I could see Dennis, Carlos, Dean, and Victoria perk up. Amy, perhaps expectedly, didn't seem to give a damn. Somewhere along the way, she'd pulled out a book to read and started to tune out the conversation.

"Dragon or Panacea," I replied easily.

"Ooh! Hear that, Ames?" Vicky nudged her sister. "You've got a fan."

"Joy." She looked at me with the tired glare of a surgeon who hadn't slept in two days. It was the glare that said, "If that coffee isn't for me, fuck off before I castrate you with a scalpel." I'd seen it plenty during my PA days. "You need something fixed?"

"Nope," I popped the 'p.' "I'm in good health, thanks. And before you ask, so is my family." I briefly thought of dad but didn't let it get me down. "I mean it; you really are my favorite hero. I'm not saying that just to get you to look at something for me."

"Why?" Stephanie asked. She quailed at Vicky's disapproval. "Not that Amy's not amazing, but most people go with Legend or one of the other Triumvirate."

"He is the most charismatic Triumvirate member for sure," I agreed diplomatically, not quite willing to tell them exactly why I hated the other two. "But let me ask you something: How do you measure the worth of a hero?"

"You can't," Carlos said as he chewed through a bite of his lunch. "There isn't an easy metric you can used to compare heroes so it's all subjective."

"Partially true, but at the end of the day, a hero is someone who saves lives," I replied. "You can couch heroics in whatever flavor you want, but that's what it comes down to. And Amy's hands down the best at it. And Dragon? She's just plain cool."

"See? He gets it." Vicky offered me a fist bump. "Anyone who can recognize Amy's awesomeness deserves to be here. You're alright, new guy."

"Joy," I said flatly. I poked my microwaved burrito with a fork. It bled a clear, gel-like liquid. "Is this supposed to leak so much?"

"It wouldn't if you stopped poking holes in it," Stephanie pointed out. "For the record, the pizza and chicken sandwiches are pretty good if you're buying in the school. I still recommend you bring your own though."

"Noted, thanks." I munched my mediocre burrito. The cheese had melted and mixed with the gooey beans, leaving a sloppy mess barely held together by soggy tortillas. If nothing else, this presented an opportunity to try some Pokémon world cooking. Maybe Brock's infamous "donuts?" "What about you guys? Any heroes you follow?"

"The Wards, obviously," Stephanie said, almost squealing. Around me, the three actual Wards at our table looked distinctly uncomfortable. "Like, Aegis is so hot. Have you seen those abs?"

"I'm straight, but I can see the appeal. Are you sure he's not just strong because of his powers though? He could be wearing a padded costume," I teased.

"No, he's actually got redundant biology." Surprisingly, it was Amy who spoke. She placed her book to the side and took a sip of chocolate milk. "His power lets him be strong, breathe through his skin, or whatever else."

"Huh, that's pretty cool, but are you supposed to tell us that?"

She shrugged. "It's not a secret. Aegis isn't a brute because he has a force field like Vicky. He's a brute because he's got better muscles than a human should be able to develop."

"See?" Stephanie said. "Muscles."

"She's had a crush on him since he first debuted," Chelsea chimed in. "And on Velocity. Like seriously, does that guy's costume really need to be that tight?"

Next to me, I could feel Carlos squirm in his seat. I decided to take the mickey out of the guy.

"Like him?" I poked his impressive biceps. "Carlos is pretty buff too. Pretty sure he's the buffest high schooler I've ever seen actually."

"Nah, no way," Stephanie denied with a snort. "Aegis is more toned. I think he's a bit taller, too."

"You really like the guy, huh?"

"What's not to like? He's buff, strong, a great leader, and has that awesome husky growl in his voice," the brunette swooned.

"Ugh, leave us out of your fantasizing," Amy grumbled.

I couldn't suppress a grin. If the look Dennis was shooting Carlos' way said anything, the Wards wouldn't stop giving him shit for this anytime soon. Dean expertly steered the conversation back to more mundane topics after that.

X

That night, I started to build an Upgrade, the item that would turn my porygon into a porygon-2. It was a complicated bit of code, as expected of something designed to fundamentally change and improve every aspect of an AI, and would take me several days to develop.

On the plus side, it confirmed something vital to me: My porygon, or anything else I made, couldn't be hacked. At least, not by any casuals. I was coding using KSB, Kantoan Standard Binary. Besides the obvious of it being a form of binary, it had absolutely nothing in common with Earth-Bet's programming languages like JavaScript or C#.

My computer spoke Swahili and everyone else spoke Italian.

I knew intellectually that my ability to program new software was head and shoulders beyond anything a normal human could hope to replicate. My progress was comparable to the likes of Bill who developed the Pokémon Storage System. Even so, my progress felt exceedingly slow to my impatient self.

X

2010, September 3: Brockton Bay, NH, USA

By the end of the week, I'd fully joined their circle of friends. I said at the start that I'd let events happen as they may, but I certainly didn't expect to be dragged into contact with the Wards so soon.

Surprisingly, Chris had his own circle of friends. He and Dennis seemed friendly with each other, but Chris ate with a different group. If they were besties as Wards, they didn't let it show in their civilian personas. Not that either of them cared about cliques, but their interests just differed too much.

When I wasn't busy with school or the Upgrade, I compiled a collection of videos of capes using their powers and arranged them by the type of move I'd like my porygon to develop through watching them. Bastion, Lady Photon, Shielder, Narwhal, and the like went into a small folder for Protect. Manpower and a cape named Statik in San Diego went into a folder for Thunder Wave.

Over the past five days, my archive had grown to include close to two hundred videos. Legend, with his seemingly unending arsenal of bullshit lasers, was a frequent contributor.

I finished my porygon's Upgrade and set it aside in a separate USB drive.

From what my power was telling me, all pokémon developed at an exponential rate during their infancy. It was why many pokémon that evolved using evolution stones did not learn any more moves naturally and had to rely on TMs or arduous training regimens.

Porygon were a bit different. Being made of code, they could be edited as necessary, but that didn't mean that a porygon-2's growth rate was the same as a standard porygon's. Like hardened clay, a porygon-2 would have a harder time learning new moves or integrating new information into its programming. In exchange, it would become incredibly durable, both physically and in cyberspace.

I couldn't wait to troll Lung by tossing a Protect-spamming, Recover-abusing, near indestructible balloon duck at him.

After finishing my Upgrade, I immediately got to work on my own version of the Pokémon Storage System. Not that I needed it for pokémon.

In the games, if you looked into the PC in your room, you could find a potion. In other words, just as pokéballs could be digitally transferred from a pokémon center to Professor Oak's lab by Ash, the potion could be digitized into a packet of data for later retrieval. It obviously needed a standing system and not a simple laptop, but a way to digitally store matter sounded phenomenal.

Finally, I also looked into what it'd take to make an eviolite.

In the series, it was an item that greatly amplified a pokémon's defenses so long as that pokémon had yet to fully evolve. Seeing how I intended for my porygon to be my mobile barricade, it was the perfect item. Even better, tinkering with a fist-sized ball of purple quartz would draw far less attention than tinkering with a living being. I went online and ordered myself a ball of polished, purple agate, a type of quartz, for only twelve dollars. If anyone asked, it was for a friend's birthday.

Once I couldn't stand to look at a computer screen for a moment longer, I pulled out a sketchpad and started to draw blueprints of what might one day become a PokéNav.

Then, satisfied with my preparations, I went to bed knowing I had some all-nighters ahead of me.

Author's Note

I know, this chapter made half the Worm fandom wince with sympathetic cringe. Immediate Wards encounter? New Wave? Of course. Cue the eye-rolls. But in my defense, I did warn you. This fic won't be nearly as serious as LT and the goal isn't necessarily to write a good story from a mechanics or narrative point of view as it is to write a fun story.

I've decided that Bryce isn't allowed to stay impartial. The almighty hand of destiny (author) will drag his ass into the plot one way or another.

Also, the donut comment is a dig at 4Kids. They had this hilarious episode where Brock pulls out snacks during their journey and they're clearly onigiri rice balls, but 4Kids, in their infinite wisdom, decided to translate them as donuts because I guess they're more relatable to children or something. Binging with Babish even did an episode on them.

My headcanon in Pokémon is that everything works with aura. Humans call it different things, psychics specifically, but at the end of the day, every pokémon uses aura to perform their moves.

Humans have aura too, as seen by Sir Aaron, Ash, Riley, Red, Yellow, Sapphire, etc. Sometimes, what I'm broadly calling aura manifests as more than empathic powers though. Sabrina was able to turn people into dolls. There was a girl who made a "magic potion" that switched Ash and Pikachu's consciousness.

The TM Interface edits Earth-Bet's definition of "human" to be in line with the pokémon world's, giving the user the potential to use aura. The Downloader then makes it possible for some moves to be usable by humans.

It's all just bullshit headcanon, but one based off the lore from games, anime, and manga. I'm sticking to it.

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.