Wake 1.3

2010, September 4: Brockton Bay, NH, USA

The first thing I did when I woke up was to disconnect my computer from the internet and connect my external hard drive to the computer. My hard drive linked to my PC with the sound of whirling fans. Then, out of the corner of the screen, came a pastel blue and red duck. It waddled on awkward, trapezoidal limbs as it explored the screen. I put on my modified headphones and connected the miniature mic.

"Hello," I spoke softly. It startled, looking around before ducking behind the Internet Explorer icon. "Can you hear me?" Slowly, its head peaked back above the "e" and looked through the monitor at me. "My name is Bryce Kiley and I'm your trainer. Do you understand?"

I hoped so. The seed data that had developed into a porygon contained a number of directives, including obedience to myself. If it could not understand me, it meant that I'd fucked up the seed somehow. It nodded. 'Good, I wond-'

My thoughts were interrupted when it lunged through the monitor directly at my face. "Ack!" I yelped, tilting back and falling from my chair as what felt like a giant Lego crashed into my head. "Oww…"

"Reee?" it said. Its voice was something between the trill of a bird and the squeak of a mouse, if you put that noise through a digital filter. It sat comfortably on my chest like it belonged there and the impression I got from it was that it was… happy? Curious? A bit of both? A gentle weight settled in my mind and I knew then that the "bond between trainers and pokémon" that Oak talked about wasn't just a bunch of nonsense.

I should have figured. Mega evolution, z-moves, and friendship based evolution paths all pointed at aura playing a role in this bond. The pokémon drew strength from their trainer and their trainer pushed the pokémon to new heights. It was why Ash's pikachu could tangle with some legendary pokémon and come out on top. Whatever that bond might be exactly, it had been forged between this porygon and me.

"Your name is SAINT," I said. I couldn't help myself, JARVIS had to be respected. "You are the Sophisticated Artificially Intelligent Numerative Technopath. And one day, you're going to make the Dragonslayers shit themselves."

"Pory?" the newly named SAINT chirped. It looked around my room with a blank expression that somehow still managed to radiate curiosity.

"Bryce, you okay there?" We were interrupted by my sister's knocking. "We heard shouting."

I stuffed the porygon in my closet and opened the door a tad. "Sorry, Sierra, I stubbed my toe when I got out of bed," I said sheepishly.

"Alright, but come downstairs soon. Mom made pancakes."

She walked away, humming her favorite tune and I closed the door. "SAINT," I spoke softly. "Come." The bond between us pulsed gently as my intentions were carried over. At the moment, SAINT was about as smart as a dog, albeit a very well-trained one. It floated towards my arms, unsteady little feet wriggling in the air.

I held it in my hands and pondered. "I can't keep thinking of you as an 'it,' you're not an object. So, in the great tradition of Samuel Oak, 'Are you a boy or a girl?'"

My new porygon stared at me blankly, completely missing the reference. The bond pulsed with confusion. "Alright, fine, you don't really understand the distinction between male or female. I'm going to call you a 'he' from now on. Okay?"

"Ree." He nodded in the affirmative.

"Great, now your directives are threefold: First, do not be seen or otherwise discovered by any other human, whether physically or digitally. Do you understand?" He nodded. "Second, you are to assist me by learning new moves using the archive of powers I compiled." Another nod. "Good. Third, at some point in the future, you will accompany me in my cape persona. You will be responsible for my protection in the field." A final nod, though I felt some confusion concerning the relevance of a cape persona.

As far as SAINT was concerned, he was a porygon. I was the trainer. He was therefore responsible for my protection, no matter what I wore.

I gently pushed him back into the monitor and opened up my archive. "Excellent. For now, please focus on learning the move Protect." Not being connected to the internet, I would be able to build up my relationship with SAINT before he could be influenced by external factors.

X

That done, I joined my family for breakfast.

"Morning," I yawned. I sat at the table and allowed the aroma of fresh pancakes and scrambled eggs to fill my nostrils. "Smells great, mom."

"Morning," Sierra mumbled through a mouthful of eggs.

"Morning, sweetie," mom smiled and set a plate for me. "Eat up."

I leaned back in my chair to grab the hot sauce and ketchup bottles from the fridge. A healthy dose of both made its way onto my eggs.

"I still have no idea how you eat that," my sister grumbled.

"What? Eggs?"

"Hot sauce with eggs."

"It's good, you should try some." I held my fork out for her.

"Nope, that's weird. Eggs should be eaten with just salt and pepper, maybe some cheese. Ketchup is forgivable. Hot sauce is not."

"Lies. You lack my refined taste buds."

"Right, refined. That's what you call it. Hot sauce on eggs, pineapples on pizza, ranch dressing on hot dogs, teriyaki sauce on burgers…"

I took a sip of orange juice. "They're all delicious, way better than your bland palette."

"Children," mom chided.

"I'm twenty, mom," Sierra huffed.

"Then act like it. Must you two bicker every meal?"

Our eyes met. "Yes," we replied in unison.

"What am I going to do with you two?"

"It's how we bond," I said.

"Yeah, this is how we show affection," my sister added.

"Well you can also bond over chores. Sierra, do the dishes. Bryce, take out the trash."

"How is that bonding?" I protested. "We're not even in the same room together."

"You can bond over your shared misery," she said smugly.

After breakfast, I checked up on SAINT's progress. According to the data, he'd gotten the basic gist of putting up a barrier in front of him but simulations indicated that it wouldn't even stop a punch.

"SAINT," I spoke into the mic, "how long do you think it'll take for you to learn Protect?" A small window popped up on my monitor. It was a standard Windows loading screen, with green dots filling a white, horizontal bar. A miniature porygon waddled across the green dots. It was less than a fifth of the way full. "That long, huh? Thank you for your hard work, pal."

I changed into a pair of basketball shorts and walked back downstairs.

"Going somewhere, sweetheart?"

"Yeah, mom, I was going to take out the trash then go running."

"Bryce, are you okay?" she asked.

"Why would me going running mean I'm not okay?"

"Because it's you doing the running," Sierra chimed in. "You don't exercise, Bryce. You're a skinny beanpole."

"Ooh, doing wonders for my self-esteem, sis."

"Sierra!"

"What, mom? It's true. You were thinking it too."

"Well…"

"Well, I decided that I'm going to exercise from now on," I said. "New school, new me." 'And I need to get fit quickly if I want to be able to protect myself,' I added mentally.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"Alright, take care of yourself, Bryce."

"Will do, mom."

"Carry your phone."

"I have it," I held it out for her benefit. "Relax, I'm going to jog to the Boardwalk and back, maybe circle my school or something."

"Have fun, baby bro," my sister waved.

X

The jog to the Boardwalk was fine. I was breathing heavily, but the distance wasn't so large that I felt overwhelmed. I was walking along the shoreline to cool off when I heard a loud bang coming from the very end of the Boardwalk.

The noise came from a gas station that doubled as a general store and tourist trap. They sold coffee for the 'rents and Protectorate action figures for the kids. One of the propane tanks set aside for the summer grilling season had exploded into shrapnel, rupturing a gas pump and starting an oil fire that was quickly spreading. People screamed as do-gooders and Boardwalk enforcers unfortunate enough to be on the dawn shift rushed to the scene.

I froze, stuck between the fleeing crowds and my own fear.

Brockton Bay wasn't safe. I knew that, everyone did, but my parents had sheltered me from the worst of it. All I'd ever experienced of the dangers of this city was taken from the news. It was always someone else's problem, someone else's tragedy. So when a gas station blew up less than a block away from me, my idiot hind-brain chose neither fight nor flight. It chose "deer meets train."

Then, a slim figure in gold and red tights jumped out of the smoke. They wore a mask that looked like the Muse of Comedy in that Greek tragedy-comedy pairing that everyone used to represent theater as a whole. A matching jester's hat, split with twin tails capped with jangling bells, completed the image. They did a full summersault and landed with their hands in the air in a perfect "Y" pose.

Someone swore like a sailor and several more bangs were heard, this time of gunfire. Before I could even flinch back from the noise, the cape swung their arms out in a short, crisp arc. A large sledgehammer decorated with bells and streamers materialized out of thin air halfway through the swing, just in time for optimal momentum, and deflected the bullets.

'Holy shit, discount Harley Quinn blocked bullets with a hammer,' I thought, mouth agape. 'Can they can see the bullets somehow? Are they reacting to the noise faster than a bullet can travel? Or do they have some kind of danger-sense?

My mind ran a mile a second, but it wasn't until an enforcer roughly pulled me away that I thought to step out of the line of fire.

"Thanks," I mumbled to the burly man.

He grunted something incoherent before snapping open a walkie-talkie. "Circus sighted. Shopkeeper just ran out with a gun. ETA on Protectorate?"

"Militia inbound. Two minutes," came the response through muffling static.

The enforcer turned to me and gave me a firm shove away. "Get somewhere safe, kid," he insisted.

"Y-yeah, thanks again," I stammered out before I started a light jog down an alley.

A street away, I saw Miss Militia's telltale motorcycle zoom past. Less than a minute later, Circus jumped between rooftops, sank into another alley across the street from me, and summoned a gymnast's ribbon from somewhere that they used to tangle onto a fire escape to divert her course. In seconds, they were gone.

As I jogged away from the Circus heist, I couldn't suppress the feeling of inadequacy.

Was I strange?

I'd always known just how dangerous Earth-Bet could be. Was I strange for freezing up like that? Did personal experience make such a big difference? Fear was irrational and though Circus was nowhere near me, though they were a minor villain barely worth mentioning, the gas explosion paralyzed me like a deer caught in the headlights. Instead of acting, I stood there wondering about the mechanics of their powers like I was Izuku fucking Midoriya.

Worse, I fucking knew their powers. Pocket space. Minor pyrokinetic. Enhanced agility and balance. Now that I was away from danger, the list of their powers sprang to mind as though I had the wiki entry in front of me. But in that moment, I froze, mind as well as body. I was always more of a thinker than a doer and it seemed that a new life hadn't changed that in the slightest.

'I need to be stronger,' I thought. I'd told myself those exact words dozens, hundreds, of times, but they'd lacked substance until now. They'd lacked a means until now. Honestly, I was ashamed of myself. I felt like a coward.

Freezing might have been the normal response, but I couldn't be normal. Normal got capes killed.

X

When I got home, I opened my phone and logged on to PHO. Surprisingly, Circus was on the site defending themselves.

According to them, they'd robbed the gas station when the owner picked up a hunting rifle from behind the counter. They deflected a bullet, only for it to nail one of the propane tanks that the owner had yet to put away. Things only escalated from there. Admittedly, Circus wasn't typically this destructive in their heists, but that didn't make them any less of a criminal, something the keyboard warriors on PHO were more than happy to point out.

I checked up on SAINT's progress; Protect was twenty-six percent mastered.

Watching Circus pull a giant mallet out of their ass did remind me of one thing that Pokémon had: expanded bags. I wouldn't get a pocket space like they had, but I could mimic a bag of holding. And as a tinker, what I could carry into battle was what I had to fight with. Seeing how I wouldn't be able to take my digital storage system into battle, this was the next best alternative.

Before I knew it, I sank into a tinker fugue. I woke up from my trance three hours later with my school bag transformed into a discount bag of holding. The vacuum cleaner in my closet was also suspiciously dismantled. The expanded bag looked like my old schoolbag, a generic navy blue with a tan, faux leather bottom, but with a carrying capacity of six hundred pounds, this bag was far from ordinary.

'Guess I'll be using my old bag from now on,' I thought ruefully. If and when I chose to go out as a cape, I couldn't carry the same expanded bag as I was using at school. I dug in my closet to find what I was looking for: A limited time Protectorate backpack styled after Legend, rainbows and all, that I used up to middle school until I decided that it looked a little too childish.

After a light caprese sandwich for lunch, I worked on the digital storage system for a while. Even allowing my power to assist me with a fugue, there was a mountain's worth of code to write. I eventually realized that the fastest way for me to make it would be to make the framework, a skeleton, and let SAINT build the meat of the system. After all, no matter how superhumanly fast I was, I wasn't an AI.

A few hours of coding later, I sat on my favorite beanbag chair, dad's guitar in hand and strumming the afternoon away. My mind was drowning in ideas, but the simple truth was that I was running low on materials. I could and would turn my phone into a PokéNav hybrid and the second pair of headphones I bought from Keys & Notes could become a wireless communicator, but I'd eventually have to brave the city if I wanted to progress.

The worst part was that I would still be squishy. Protect was great, nearly unbreakable for capes in Brockton Bay, but it wasn't automatic. With SAINT fighting for me, I could have him use Sharpen and Tackle to deal some serious damage to non-brutes. But that wasn't survivability and the thought of going out with so little made me feel nervous. What I needed was a way to react to threats quickly, something that could help me use my new moves efficiently…

My woolgathering was interrupted by Sierra.

"Sounds good, baby bro." She stood in the doorway with a book in hand. "You try to edit any music yet?"

"Not yet," I said. "I bought all this stuff, but I'm not sure how to get started. It's a bit daunting."

"It's like that any time you start something new, you know? Sometimes, you just have to dive in."

"Yeah, thanks." I smiled, then turned the conversation away from my hardware. I had no intention of showing Sierra just what all this "recording equipment" had become. "What's up? Not going to go drink your troubles away?"

She made a face. "Don't say that out loud, you idiot." She nudged the door closed with her butt after making sure mom wouldn't rush in here in an indignant rage. "I'm not an alcoholic."

"Day drinking is a sign…"

"Shut up, I had a glass of wine with some friends, okay? Besides, I wasn't the only one drinking to forget."

I put my guitar back in its stand and leaned into the cushy chair. "Hmm? Do tell."

"A friend of mine just has a pushy admirer is all." She flopped down onto my bed with an aggravated groan. We often did this, come into each other's' room to vent.

"Isn't Brockton College a big place? She can just avoid him right?"

"Not that simple, baby bro. The creep's her lab assistant."

"A lab assistant's the person from a higher year who helps a professor, right?" I asked for the sake of having her "fill me in."

"Right. She literally can't get away from him unless she drops her major."

I winced in sympathy. "Campus security? Or maybe the professor?"

"The professor's distant and it's her word against his. Why can't men just fuck off?"

I rolled my eyes. "You don't mean that. You've been trying to get a date for… six months now?"

A pillow collided with my face. "Shut up. Why can't this man fuck off?"

"She's going to have to be the one to shut him down," I advised. "If you try to interject yourself, he's going to tell you to mind your own business."

"That's the problem!" She flipped over, arms flailing in frustration. "I want to help her, but she's too nice to tell him to go fuck himself."

"That's rough."

"Yeah… I don't know what to do."

"Coach her through it," I said gently. "Maybe be there with her when she confronts him?"

"I'll try," she sighed. "Let's talk about something else. How's high school, bro? You got a crush already?"

"I don't," I said flatly, ignoring the blush creeping over my face.

"You're blushing."

"Yes, because I'm a teenager with hormones."

"Nope," she sang, "it's not just that. You know what I think? I think you want to impress a girl. Why else would you start running?"

'Because I want to survive being a cape,' I thought sardonically. Instead, I said, "Because I want to not look like a scrawny stick anymore? Really, I don't have a crush. Or friends."

"What about those kids I saw you say hi to when I dropped you off? The buff, Latino boy and that cute girl with dyed blonde hair."

"I eat lunch with them, that's all. The buff boy's Puerto Rican and his name is Carlos. The blonde is Chelsea and she's the type of social butterfly that drags everyone into her pace."

"Ohoho, so that's the girl that's gotten our dear Bryce out of his shell, hmm?" She said with a mischievous grin. "She's cute."

"She's an annoyance that I could do without."

"Then why do you eat with her?"

'Because having a way to keep tabs on the Wards is invaluable,' I thought. "Because she'll hound me incessantly and drag me back to their table if I don't."

"Sounds like she likes you."

"Sounds like she's a pain."

"Bryce," Sierra reached over to plant a hand on my shoulder, "you know you can count on big sis for any advice about girls, right?"

I made a gagging noise. "No thanks, I have porn for that."

It was her turn to gag. "I didn't need to hear that."

"You also don't need to be in my room," I pointed out.

She got up with a huff. "You know what? Fine. I, your lovely big sister, dropped in to spend time with her darling baby bro and this is how you treat me?"

"You came here to vent, the same as we always do."

"Well, consider me vented." She stormed off but I could spy a hint of a smile on her face.

Author's Note

Short chapter, but very relevant.

SAINT is live! I originally planned to have him start learning every move available, but that seemed OP, too far too fast, so I settled on what I would prioritize in this scenario: Protect. Survival trumps everything else.

Also, Circus has enhanced aim, balance, and agility. They can do a very good job of aping Spidey-sense. I don't often see them show up in fics so I thought I'd give them a cool moment before the story really kicks off.

Sierra's personality is a mix of canon and a friend who was the "mom-friend" in my group back in high school.

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.