Wake 1.5

2010, September 6: Brockton Bay, NH, USA

The expected headache from downloading Recover wasn't as bad this time. I wasn't sure if it was because I was quickly adapting to the pressure of the TM Downloader or if the changes that needed to be made to my body had already been made, but I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Taking an exacto-knife, I gave myself a small papercut then focused on what the TM suggested, a mentality focused on rest and recovery without losing concentration or dozing off. Effectively, meditation with a desire to be well. I grinned as the cut closed. It was a slow thing, I wasn't going to be regrowing my arm like Piccolo, but a visibly fast regeneration effect was a godsend in and of itself. There was a brief feeling of tiredness that passed like a breeze. I knew Recover would take a far heavier toll for greater injuries.

I removed the two TM discs, Protect and Recover, and stored them with the blank CDs, hidden in plain sight. I still didn't know if four moves would be my limit, but knowing I could switch out my loadout with a single night's sleep was certainly reassuring. And, barring all else, I could bargain for powers.

Before heading off to school, I made the same deal with SAINT: a new move mastered for a bag of candied almonds.

Although the porygon line could learn an extremely diverse arsenal of moves, I knew that I ought to stick to moves a porygon picked up naturally, by "level up" in game terms.

Two factors influenced SAINT's learning speed as far as I could tell: First, his natural moveset would be faster in the same way a dog can learn to dig much easier than it can learn to balance on a ball. The further a move strayed from what came naturally to SAINT as a porygon, the harder it would be.

Second, types mattered. SAINT could channel some aura, but he had trouble converting it to different flavors. Lock-On would be simple for him because it was both a normal type move and in his natural moveset. Thunder Wave would be a bit more difficult because though SAINT wasn't an electric type, the porygon line had some affinity towards electronics. Ice Beam would be hardest of all because it was both a type he was unaccustomed to and outside his natural moveset.

With this in mind, I had to choose my moves carefully. I had recovery and defense, so I wanted something that would help me escape danger. To that end, I chose Agility over Psybeam. Although having an offensive option appealed to me, if I had to fight, I'd fucked up big time as is and I didn't think I had enough aura at the moment to toss out more than two or three attacks. A crowbar would be about as effective.

Even better, I hoped to accustom my body to psychic energy by using Agility to reinforce my muscles. Hopefully, that would eventually translate to actual psychic powers.

X

Compared to the marvel of suddenly having another superpower, school was downright mundane. I'd never tried very hard to hide my relative intelligence; dumbing myself down when I possessed a postgraduate education in my past life would have driven me spare. Because of that, most of my classes were advanced placements and I seldom saw the majority of my fellow freshmen outside of our daily homeroom.

I nodded to my classmates and took a seat in the far corner.

"Morning," the kid next to me mumbled with his head on his backpack.

"Hey, Jacob."

"Jason," he grumbled.

"Sorry." I'd honestly forgotten. I remembered seeing him around in middle school, but we hadn't had enough classes to get to know each other.

"It's cool." He lifted his head to look at me. He was a pretty stereotypical skater, with a short cruiser he kept under his desk. "Nice bag."

I glanced at the rainbow Legend backpack. "Yeah, the one I used got ruined and hey, it's a limited edition."

He snorted. "Sure, but you look like a fruitcake."

I rolled my eyes. I'd almost forgotten the gay jokes of the mid-2000s. Legend was respected, but that didn't mean kids weren't idiots. Though to be fair, casual homophobic slurs weren't as big a problem in Arcadia thanks to the literal Nazis in the city. No one wanted to seem sympathetic to them and calling someone a "fag" or "dyke" was a surefire way to get a teacher to start paying excessive attention to you. Same for race.

Yep, ironic, I know. The Empire contributed to a culture of tolerance and understanding at Arcadia. That thought always made me giggle.

"Maybe. I still like the bag." That was the end of the conversation as our homeroom teacher, Mr. Maury, walked through the door.

X

I sat with the Dallon sisters and most of the Wards again at lunch.

"Hey, guys," I greeted. Dennis, Dean, and Carlos had gotten to our table before the girls today.

"Hey, Bryce, how's it going?" the cheerful redhead waved.

"Ehh, it's alright. How was your weekend?"

"Pretty great, I got to see the city's dashing white knight get nailed in the head with eggs."

The boy in question groaned good-naturedly. "Can we not talk about this?"

Totally-not-Clockblocker started in on some story of Gallant trying to stop a shoplifter at the local grocer's and landing face first in someone's eggs. It was edited heavily, but the gist aligned vaguely with PHO's version of events I'd read about last night. The story on PHO was that Gallant and Clockblocker were on patrol when a purse snatcher raced past them. Gallant tried to stop him, but was tripped into a tomato stand by an accomplice. He then knocked over someone's cart and landed in the ass-end of a few dozen eggs, a true Jackass moment.

A picture of his armor covered in the entrails of massacred tomatoes and shattered eggshells was undoubtedly making the rounds on PHO and being memed to hell and back. Somewhere in the middle of the story, the girls arrived to join us.

"Seriously, I swear Dennis has powers," I said with a casual smile. I took some joy in watching the Wards and Dallon sisters freeze.

"W-what do you mean?" he said nervously. I could see Carlos giving him warning looks out of the corner of his eye.

"It's like Dennis has an aura like Vicky. Except instead of the whole 'love me or fear me' thing she has going on, Dennis has a 'rule of funny' aura that lets him pick out all the funny gossip. Either that or something stupid happens to him and it'll still be funny."

"Yeah, nothing like that happens when we're not around Dennis," Stephanie chimed in.

"Right? I need to hang out with Dennis more. I feel like my life would be more interesting then."

"I wouldn't mind a slapstick aura," Dennis recovered. "I mean, then I could make Lung pratfall into the sewer or something. I'd join the Wards and be Jokeman, the Comic Hero."

"You're already a joke so you're halfway there," Amy said as she picked up a French fry.

"Oof, oww." Dennis clutched his heart in mock agony. "You're really not holding back with the snark today, huh, Ames?"

"So pres," Chelsea changed the topic before the two could start trading barbs in earnest, "how's homecoming coming along?"

"It's good," Dean said with a smile that lit up the room. "The student council just decided on a theme over the weekend."

"Ooh, do tell."

"Nope, it's a secret."

"I know~" Vicky sang.

"You're his girlfriend; he tells you everything," Chelsea complained.

"Actually, I didn't tell her. She's also on the homecoming committee."

"Yeah, he doesn't always tell me stuff. I need to put in the work to weasel it out of him sometimes."

"That's ri- You're not helping, Vicky."

Dennis, Carlos, and I collectively rolled our eyes. "So," Dennis began, "got a date for homecoming?"

"You know we're too busy for that," Carlos said.

I nodded along. Poking at them was honestly my favorite pastime in school. "Right, you two have that vocation program, right? What do you do again?"

"Junior police academy. There are a few dozen of us from Arcadia, Immaculata, and Clarendon in the program. Why? Interested?"

"Nah, I'm happy with actually having free time, thanks," I said with a lazy smile. Privately, I thought, 'Besides, the PRT won't use the junior cadets to cover for my cape business. Must be nice, having the system on your side.'

Then, I got an idea. With my new resolution to get stronger, I'd considered looking up the Laborns, particularly Grue's father, so I could get some boxing training. It was almost a cliché for self-inserts to do this after all: Learn to kick ass and get close to the main cast at the same time. I'd tossed the idea because it would be too out of character for me to seek them out, but Carlos was right here. I made a show of poking his bicep. "You do a lot of working out as a junior fuzz, right?"

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

"Yeah, what's up?"

"Can you show me a thing or two?"

He stopped in the middle of dipping his chicken nuggets in a pool of ketchup. "You?" He gave me a visible once over before humming dubiously. "No offense, Bryce, but…"

"I'm a short, scrawny white boy with the complexion and durability of a saltine cracker. I'm aware," I drawled.

"Pff, you're not that bad, Bryce," Stephanie said with a laugh.

"Thanks, Steph."

"He's pretty out of shape, not so much that I'd worry about his health, but he could do with some exercise," Amy contributed.

"Hence the working out. I jog in the morning, but I'm not sure what else I should do if I want to get in shape. Weights? Basketball? Karate? I have no clue."

"Good on you, man," Carlos said. "I can't take time out of cadet stuff though. I could write down my own workout for you if you want."

"Please do."

"Hey, Carlos, maybe not do that. If he tried your workout right away, he might hurt himself. I'll give him some pointers," Dennis added.

I shrugged. "Either one of you would be fine. It'd help if I had a routine to follow."

Dennis texted me his own workout regimen towards the end of lunch. It was honestly much harsher than I expected and he sent a follow-up text telling me not to push myself. 'I guess even the non-brute Wards take their physical training seriously.' I wanted something that would help me with combat directly, like boxing, jujitsu, or muay thai, but I didn't want to push and come off as suspicious. Indirect physical conditioning tips from a Ward would have to suffice for the moment.

X

2010, September 8: Brockton Bay, NH, USA

It took SAINT an extra day to pick up Agility and for me to download it into my own thinky bits.

After that, I was out on the town as soon as I could.

Wednesday night, I went to bed immediately after dinner and locked my door. After a suitable amount of time playing music and messing around with SAINT, I deemed the coast clear and snuck out of the house through my window. There wasn't a convenient tree I could climb down or anything, but a quick use of Protect broke my fall. As for getting back up, I'd just have to stand on top of the garbage bin when I returned.

It was about eleven at night when I left. As soon as I was a few blocks away from my house, I ducked into an alley and pulled out an old sweater from the expanded bag. I wrapped it around my neck and tied the sleeves around my face in the same way a kid does when he wants to be a ninja. Not the most glamorous of first costumes, but it did the job.

The downside of living in the reasonably safe part of town near the Boardwalk: all the desirable targets were far away. I wasn't fool enough to rob a shop near my own house or target the Boardwalk or Hillside, both would invite the kind of cape response I wasn't equipped to handle yet, so that left the north end of town. It took me an hour to get to my first destination: Good Neighbor.

Good Neighbor operated out of a warehouse just off the north end of the Boardwalk and a bit more inland. It was a nonprofit that bought up all the clothes that didn't sell at Hillside and gave them out for bargain prices to the lower income families on the other side of the tracks. The warehouse itself was large, probably taking up more than one acre like a Costco. It used to belong to a shipping company and was one of the few buildings from that era that still saw proper use.

I must have looked sketchy as hell, some scrawny figure with a hoodie wrapped around his head. I approached the warehouse door with a pair of bolt cutters from my grandpa's toolkit. It was older than me, hell, likely older than him, with splotches of brown rust along the frames. Still, the jaws were sharp and I got the chain off the warehouse door with minimal fuss.

I slid the bolt cutters back into my expanded bag and made my way inside. The teenage part of me wanted to explore a bit, look around and see if there was anything interesting to find, but robbing a charity already made me feel more than a little scummy so I promised to take only what I absolutely needed for tinkering.

Half an hour later, I reemerged with a pair of fabric sheers, a pair of biker boots, two pairs of heavy-duty canvas work pants, a set of used motorcycle leathers, and a helmet that I made sure was slightly too big for my head after checking and double checking for cameras. Even after promising myself to limit my stealing, a part of me couldn't help myself. This would become the core of my new costume moving forward.

It was when I snuck outside again that I first ran into trouble. I hadn't been as discreet about my breaking and entering as I'd thought. I was halfway across the parking lot when a flashlight was shone my way.

"Oi, there he is," a gruff, male voice shouted. "I told you, Lyles, some asshole's robbing Good Neighbor!"

"Fuck," I swore under my breath. I started running inland, towards what would become ABB territory in three blocks.

I heard heavy footsteps behind me, gaining. My short, fourteen year old legs couldn't keep up with the pace for long. Panicking, I wheezed out under my breath, "Agility!"

Blue aura coated my body and suddenly, I was twice as fast as I should be. It was far, far too slow by cape standards, but more than enough to outrun a random do-gooder.

"Hey, punk, get back here!"

'Does anyone ever stop running when you shout that?' I thought raggedly.

I tried to lose the man in the maze of alleys but he was clearly a local, he knew the area better than me. Less than two minutes after I began running, he'd herded me into an alley with only one way out, a brick wall as high as my head behind me.

Seeing no other way, I kicked off one building and jumped, clinging by my fingers from the high fence.

"SAINT, boost me up," I said. I could hear the man about to turn.

SAINT emerged from the PokéNav and shoved me from below, easily lifting me over the fence.

I hadn't counted on landing on my ass though and I heard a cracking noise as a sharp spike of agony shot straight up my ass.

"Fuck!" I swore.

"Pory?" he trilled in concern. He made to hover back over the fence, likely to fight the random guy, but I stopped him. There was no point in showing him off this soon.

"Stay. Ow, fuck, just had to break my ass on my first night out," I groaned. Way back in my old life, I remembered my friend James who cracked his tailbone after a fall during a snowboarding trip. That Sunday, everyone in church slapped his ass. I felt a bit more sympathy for the guy now. "Recover."

I stumbled to my feet as aura repaired my fractured tailbone.

"He's on the other side, Lyles," the first man shouted. "Go around!"

I pumped Agility and started running. I only stopped four blocks later.

A part of me wanted to head back home. The guilty, self-conscious part of me said I should just call it quits for the night. It was also the part I ruthlessly squashed. The Pokémon specialization was a godsend as a beginner and I didn't know how many rotations I'd have to live through before I saw it again. I had to make use of every night to the best of my abilities.

Despite the toll on my morale, it was only two in the morning.

Thankfully, my second destination wouldn't take much time to get to as it was also on the north end of town.

My destination was the local junkyard and landfill. It was risky as hell, being here as a new tinker, but I couldn't think of any other place where I could get dozens of pounds of industrial-grade wires, old computers, and car batteries all in one place.

"'Step into my parlor,' the spider said to the fly," I muttered under my breath.

This one, I didn't mind breaking into as much.

I took a quick walk around the interior of the junkyard before making a beeline for the wires in the office building. Even outside of the obvious tinker-bait, copper wires could get pricey and were often stripped down and stored separately from the useless junk.

My bag could store a maximum of six hundred pounds without me noticing the weight and considering that the only things I had in there were some clothes and tools, I had plenty of room. All the copper wires I saw went inside. Steel, too. I was hoping for gold, but that was wistful thinking. After more than eighty pounds in raw metal, I decided to look elsewhere.

Once again, I was marked as soon as I stepped outside, proving that Murphy had it out for me.

"Hey, how's it going, junkrat?" came a boyish voice.

I whirled. My hand fell to my hip, where I'd stashed the fabric sheers as an impromptu weapon. There, atop a ruined husk of a car, was Newter in all his orange glory. He wore a mischievous grin, pants, and literally nothing else. His tail flicked back and forth like a cat's. His eyes fell to the scissors I clutched like a dagger.

"Didn't anyone tell you not to play with scissors?"

"Didn't anyone tell you not to sneak up on people?"

"Dunno," he shrugged. "Probably, but I wouldn't remember."

"Oh. Shit… sorry."

"Ehh, it's not all bad," he waved me off with a lazy grin. "I don't much care for trying to guess who I was. That way lies madness, y'know?"

"Right." I put away the scissors and approached. Still on guard, but willing to show him that I wasn't carrying a weapon. I remembered Faultline's Crew. They were professionals who avoided all conflict they weren't being paid for. "What's up?"

"Not much. We're new in town." He gave me an exaggerated once-over. "And judging by your… costume… so are you. Let me guess, tinker?"

"Yeah, guess that much is obvious. What about you? What're you doing out here?"

"Faultline, that's our boss, told me to take a look around the neighborhood. I figured I'd check out the creepy piles of unused trash here."

I nodded along. That meant the Palanquin was now under new management. This area was on the very edge of both ABB and Merchant territory, though Merchants tended to care more about the area because the ABB lacked a tinker at the moment. "Your boss wants to hold territory in Brockton?" I quirked an eyebrow. "He could do a lot better than this dump of a city."

"She," he corrected, "and we're here because Brockton's a dump." I pretended to be confused. "We're mercenaries and we'll mostly be taking jobs out of town, which means it's good that the city is so flush with capes. The local Protectorate will have too much on their plate to deal with little ol' us."

"Should you really be telling me your boss' strategy like this?"

"I don't know, but I don't think she'll care. It's not like this is some big secret," he shrugged. "Hey, I'm Newter, what's your name?"

"I don't have one yet, but you can just call me Tinker for now."

"Sweet. Hey, I know! Why don't I help you out?"

"Oh?"

"You're looking for stuff in all this mess, right? I'll help you out by bringing you things. That's cool, right?"

I thought about it. It was plain to see what he was doing. Faultline may not fight unless provoked or paid, but she wasn't the sort to ignore an obvious asset either. Newter could even be reaching out a hand because he thought of how Faultline recruited him from the sewers. "Sure, it never hurts to be friendly with the new neighbors," I said.

"Exactly!"

The two of us got to work. I sent Newter on a scavenger hunt for any computer chips or other pieces of tech while I looked for old power tools I could turn into better versions of themselves. The old adage was true: A tinker made tools to make better tools to make better tools. By the time I was done, he was staring at my bag like I was Doraemon.

"Just how much can you fit in that backpack?"

"Six hundred pounds or so," I said proudly. "Why? Interested in buying?"

"Hell yes. If this is what you can make with just a backpack and whatever you had lying around the house, I think my boss would like to meet you."

I hummed with indifference. "I don't know. I'm not looking to join anyone right now, especially not some new guys I don't know anything about. No offense."

He waved me off. "None taken, man. I get it. Look, can I give you the boss' number? You can give her a call yourself whenever you want. If you meet her, then she won't be someone you know, right?"

"Sure, I'll do that. I appreciate it." And I did. Newter was willing to let the new tinker take initiative rather than try to force a commitment here and now.

The two of us parted on good terms and I made it back home by four-thirty. All around, it was an excellent night, the moral quandary of robbing one of the few good businesses in Brockton offset by the high of an amazing haul and a potential ally.

Author's Note

I'm very new to D&D, but I decided to roll a d20 for Bryce's outing. I decided that Bryce would visit two places for clothes and junk to tinker with. He rolled a 5 at the clothing giveaway and a 19 at the junkyard.

1 to 5: Hostile encounter, severity depends on roll. He lucked out with the five because he's really not equipped for a fight.

6 to 15: No encounter, everything goes according to plan.

16 to 20: Positive encounter, boons depend on roll. He got to meet the least hostile cape faction in the city while they were still building their base, a massive opportunity.

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.