Wake 1.6

2010, September 9: Brockton Bay, NH, USA

"Dude, you look like shit," Dennis said as I collapsed at the lunch table.

I raised my head just enough to glare and flipped him the bird. "Thank you, and you look like a soulless ginger."

"Just saying," he held out his palms in mock surrender. "Yeesh, you're as grumpy as Amy."

"What was that about my sister?" came Vicky's threatening growl from behind him.

"Ahahaha… I was just talking about how lovely and charming she is."

"He thinks we're both pissy asshats," I cut in, happy to toss him under the bus.

"Dude!"

"I'm grumpy, remember?" I snarked as I popped open a can of coke. "It's my day to be a dick."

"Seriously, Bryce, you okay?" Carlos asked with obvious concern.

"Yeah, I didn't get to sleep much last night. It won't be a regular thing."

"What were you doing all night?" Chelsea asked, ever the gossip. "Chatting up a girl for homecoming?"

"Yes, how'd you know?"

"Really?"

"No," I replied, tone drier than the desert.

"You suck today," she deflated like a balloon.

"I'm not going to homecoming, Chels."

"Why not? It's your first one!"

I rolled my eyes. "Exactly. Everyone knows freshmen are the bottom of the food chain and I don't feel like bumbling around the dance like a clueless idiot."

"It won't be that bad."

I stopped leaning on the table and dug around for my lunch. "Chels, have you ever seen me hang out with any other freshies?"

"Umm, no? You're always here."

"Exactly," I nodded. "I'm always here because I don't have any friends my own age. You guys are the extent of my social circle."

"What? Why?"

I shrugged. "I've always been a loner. Started when I was in higher year classes in elementary school. No one likes feeling stupid and even if I don't rub it in their faces, everyone knows I'm a nerd. Used to eat lunch in the classroom to avoid bullies and everything."

My isolation was mostly self-imposed and had a lot more to do with my past life's memories than any academic achievement on my part, but school made for an easy scapegoat.

"Aww, Bryce," she cooed and wrapped an arm around me. "Don't worry, we like you."

I gently pried her arm from my shoulder. "That wasn't an invitation to hug me. I'm not lonely. I don't feel like I'm 'missing out' or whatever. I'm just pointing out why I would be miserable at a school function like homecoming. I can't hang with any freshmen because I'm not actually close to any."

"You could hang out with us," Dean tried.

I rolled my eyes and pointed at each of them in turn, starting with Dean and Vicky. "You two will be tickling each other's tonsils." Carlos. "You already said you're not going because of some kind of police cadets thing." Dennis. "You're joining Carlos." Stephanie and Chelsea. "You two will have better things to do than hang with me all night." Amy. "Actually, I don't know what you're doing."

"Not going," she said matter-of-factly.

"What? Ames, we talked about this," her sister squawked.

"No, Vicky," she sighed. "You decided I'm going. I'm not this time. Homecoming is miserable."

"See? She gets it."

"Shut it, Bryce." Vicky's aura flared for a moment before Dean squeezed her hand. "But what are you going to do then?"

"I'll be at the hospital," Amy said.

'Ah, already working herself to death, almost a year before canon,' I thought sadly. 'Does she make money off it like a work study program? I somehow doubt it. I know she'll eventually become an unredeemable monster in Ward, but does a possible future justify her misery now? Like some kind of preemptive punishment? Hell, would she become the titan-making monster she did in canon if someone bothered to unravel a few of her issues?'

I promised myself that I'd let the chips fall where they may, but having Amy eat lunch only a few feet from me was tempting. It was like dangling a steak in front of a dog, a fix-it trope in front of an isekai protagonist.

"Right, Bryce?" Vicky drew me out of my plot-related introspection.

"What? Sure," I mumbled.

She shot me a beaming smile and I had to actively shut down my emotions before Dean noticed. Judging by the forgiving smile he sent me, I failed. "It's decided then."

"No," Amy protested, "nothing's decided. I don't want to go to homecoming."

"Why not, sis? You'll be bored without me and Bryce will be bored without Carlos and Dennis. You two can go and hang out," she chirped.

I leaned in to the large Ward. "What exactly did I agree to?" I whispered.

"You're going to homecoming with Amy," he said with a wry smile. "Congratulations."

'Chips fall where they may… Damn, Vicky is definitely the type to try to play matchmaker, isn't she?' I sighed loudly and clapped for their attention. "Vicky, I appreciate what you're trying to do, but I'm really not that interested in school dances and it looks like Amy isn't either."

"See? Exactly!" our favorite healer shouted, drawing some eyes from nearby tables.

"Oh, come on, Bryce," the blonde pouted. "You should at least try attending one dance before you decide you don't like it."

'I did, four years of homecoming, two proms, and way too many college parties, you brat. I grew out of it.' I felt old just thinking that so instead, I said, "Vicky, not everyone is as bubbly as you are. Some of us really appreciate a quiet evening to ourselves."

"Maybe you should just let those two decide on their own," Dean tried.

"If I do that, Amy will just coop herself up in the hospital. And without me to pick her up, she won't come home until well past midnight," she complained.

I frowned. It was a sobering realization. Vicky wasn't really concerned about Amy attending homecoming, she knew her sister didn't like crowds; she was concerned that her sister would overwork herself. Again.

Maybe Vicky was trying to unravel some of Amy's issues.

"Fine," I conceded and turned to Amy. "Amy Dallon, will you do me the honor of accompanying me to the homecoming dance? As friends? At the very least, a change of pace for one night couldn't hurt, right?"

"Yes!" she cheered.

Amy looked at me with a sour glare before she glanced at her beaming sister. I could practically see her mulish resistance crumbling at the force of Vicky's smile. "Fine," she huffed, "as friends."

And so my fate was sealed.

X

I took a quick nap when I got home. When I woke up, I finished the digital storage system, DSS for short. Even working on it off and on over the course of several days, I was able to finish it so quickly thanks to SAINT's cooperation. When he wasn't learning a new move from the archive, he was filling in code in order to get this up and running. Ultimately, what I had was the bare bones, a bit like the most basic version of a word processor without all the bells and whistles Microsoft released with every updated version. Functional, but hardly groundbreaking by the standards of the Pokémon world.

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

I returned after dinner and got to sorting the previous night's haul. Six hundred pounds of old hard drives, wires, and car batteries weren't much, they certainly wouldn't let me build a mecha or anything, but they were a good start for a tinker with only a single outing to his name. I moved everything to the DSS over the course of the evening and arranged my new inventory to best reflect my pipeline.

The real prize however, was the phone number recorded into my PokéNav: Faultline's number.

'Do I call her now? But that implies desperation, right?' I rolled the idea around in my head before tossing my phone to the side. 'Who cares? I'll call her when I have a costume and a name ready. I'm acting like a boy who just got his crush's number.'

Thus the conversation with Faultline was turned into tomorrow-Bryce's problem. That just left the matter of my costume.

I planned to make the Expansion Suit, the same worn by Emma in Kalos. That was why the work clothes, leather, and wires were so important to me. Originally, the suit was made by Dr. Xerosic, the chief scientist of Team Flare, with the goal of developing a suit that could allow even normal people to battle like an elite.

Emma, an orphan living in the alleys of Lumiose City, volunteered for a series of experiments that would turn her into Essentia, a powerful masked thief who challenged trainers to battles before stealing their pokémon. She also robbed a museum to test the suit's hacking suite if I remembered correctly.

Following a series of incidents, Essentia joined Looker as a superheroine protecting her city.

The backstory aside, the Expansion Suit was honestly an incredible piece of hardware by modern Earth standards, even if it fell short of anything built by the likes of Tony Stark. It increased Emma's physical abilities, particularly reaction time, and carried with it an AI software that could help her battle like a member of the Elite Four. It could also override the programming of pokéballs with a ranged hacking suite and contained an advanced texturing function that let Emma disguise herself as other people.

Xerosic also showed that he could use the suit's systems to shut off Emma's consciousness, allowing him to pilot her body like a doll.

I wouldn't be including that particular function obviously, but everything else sounded amazing. The AI in question would of course be SAINT in my case, and rather than a hibernation mode, I would build a user interface designed to mesh our abilities together. That was the reason I looked for a motorcycle helmet a bit larger than my head, to include all the necessary hardware.

I checked in on my mom and Sierra to make sure they wouldn't be back until dinner. Mom's chiropractor clinic was doing pretty well, but she needed to work a bit later than usual if she wanted to catch clients who were just finishing up their own jobs. Sierra was in class, something about an evening course. Left to my own devices, I locked the door anyway and allowed myself to be dragged into a fugue.

Four short hours later, my alarm rang and all eighty-plus pounds of SAINT jumped on my back to knock me out of my fugue. I stared at my own version of the Expansion Suit. Or rather, the frame of what would eventually become the Expansion Suit.

It was a set of motorcycle leathers with lines of padding, wires, and bits of tech running throughout the full outfit. The suit was layered with the canvas work clothes on the inside and a softer lining after that to prevent chafing. At the moment, it was little more than a tricked out body suit; I would need to work on the helmet for it to be complete.

I folded the heavy material as best as I could and tucked it beneath my bed. I wouldn't be starting on the helmet until tomorrow.

With Protect, Recover, and Agility under my belt, I had SAINT start on Thunder Wave. It would take another three days, but I considered the nonlethal offensive option well worth the wait.

X

2010, September 10: Brockton Bay, NH, USA

I panted as I stumbled back into the house after my morning run. In the shower, I took the chance to practice Recover. With it healing the wear and tear of my muscles, I hoped I could see results faster because right now, even something moderate like two miles felt like a mountaintop hike.

At first, there was no outward sign of a move being used. Then, when the aura fully circulated through my body, I started to glow a dull white. I sighed with relief as the burning in my lungs diminished.

'It's not a cure-all,' I realized as I shook off the fatigue from the move. 'I don't magically regenerate half my health, whatever that might mean for a normal human body.'

From what my power was telling me, Recover sent a stream of aura through my body, diagnosing wounds and performing triage before targeting the major wounds first. It would keep me from bleeding out and heal me over time, but the aura cost was steep. Even if I was using aura to heal myself in the same way a pokémon like SAINT did, the simple truth was that my human body was not as robust and so the healing not as effective.

The dull glow faded and I trudged back to bed, exhausted with even that simple use of the move. It'd get easier, my power said, but for now, I just wanted to go back to bed.

My attempt to go back to sleep was ruined by an overeager duck. I'd told him to keep me from getting too lazy and he was hell-bent on obeying.

"Alright, I got it, I'm up," I complained.

Grudgingly, I gave up my powernap and got ready for school.

X

Before I could go get lunch, I felt a hand grab me in a vice grip, tugging me under the stairs. I whirled around to find Amy Dallon scowling at me. Her shoulder-length hair was a frizzy mess and her big, brown eyes were narrowed in an approximation of an intimidating glower. The bags under her eyes had darkened over the week, making her look like an adorably grumpy raccoon.

But raccoons could be fucking rabid.

"Yes, Ames? Good day to you too," I said with a quirked brow.

"Homecoming," she growled.

"What about it?"

"Don't expect anything just because Vicky's dragging me there."

"I'll be sure to toss the condoms," I replied dryly. At her darkening glare, I backtracked and raised my hands in surrender. "Okay, just a joke. I know we're not going out. I didn't want to go to homecoming either, remember?"

"Then why'd you say yes?"

"Because of Vicky."

"If you think giving me a pity date is going to make Vicky suddenly fall for you-Eep!"

I cut her off by flicking her nose. Sure, she might one day become the Red Queen and I might get turned into a one-man human centipede for this, but audacity was my shield, damn it. If I didn't treat her like a monster, maybe she wouldn't become one.

The ostrich method, everyone. Guaranteed to work every time it works.

"Not what I meant, Ames." I sighed. I wrapped an arm around her and steered her out from under the stairs. "Walk with me."

She resisted for a moment but eventually complied when I started dragging her with me. "What? You're going to tell me you're not interested in my sister?" she sniped.

"Not a chance. I mean, don't get me wrong, Vicky is hot as hell, but even if I didn't respect Dean and she magically gave me a shot, we'd never work out. I'm too much of a sarcastic jackass and she's too… teen spirit."

"Then what's all this? Why are you going to the dance?"

"Because of Vicky," I repeated. "And, I suppose, because of you. Do you remember last week when school first started and I said you were my favorite hero?"

She threw my arm from her shoulder. "So that's what this is? Hero worship?"

"Not quite that either, though it's closer. Can I finish without interruptions now?" She huffed but remained silent. I pulled her out of the south hall towards a less crowded part of the manicured quad. I figured that at this point in her self-destructive spiral, honesty may well be the best policy. "Amy, Vicky doesn't give a damn about whether you go to homecoming or not. Well, okay, she'd like for you to be there, but that wasn't the point in her trying to play matchmaker between us. Hell, she doesn't actually care whether we fall in love or we never speak again. She just wants you to take a breather and step away from your hospital visits for a single weekend."

"I can't." I didn't think she meant for that to come out as a whisper.

"You can," I said gently. "Vicky said that without her to drag you home, you'd sleep in the ER if you could. I know that you save lives. I respect the hell out of you, but can't you see that you're worrying her?" Maybe it was a dick move to guilt trip her, but Amy being Amy, Vicky was literally the only leverage I could use to get through to her. "You need rest. You look like a coke addict raccoon going through withdrawal symptoms right now."

"Shut up."

"Sure, but that's why I agreed to go to homecoming with you. You could use a night off from work. Vicky could use a night off from worrying. And honestly? A bit selfishly? I could use a night chatting with my favorite hero who also happens to be my snarkiest friend."

She scowled and slugged me on the arm, but I could spy a hint of a smile. "Fine, I get it. I'll go to homecoming. Don't expect anything."

"Likewise," I said easily. "How pissed would Vicky be if we both showed up in t-shirts and jeans?"

"Pft, she'll twist you into a pretzel."

"And not you?"

"I'm her sister. She loves me. Which means she'll just take it out on you."

"Fine, suit and tie it is."

"At least Vicky's not dragging you dress shopping," she grumbled.

"Can't be that bad."

"I love her, but sometimes she's too… teen spirit," she returned my words.

"Good luck, and really, try to get more rest."

"You're one to talk. You've been dozing off all week."

"Both of us then." I held out a fist for her to bump. She rolled her eyes but obliged. "Now let's go back to our table before Chelsea starts rumors about us."

X

I returned from school to find SAINT listening to music. He'd gotten into his head that music was a mode of communication, one I greatly enjoyed, and had taken it upon himself to familiarize himself with a number of classic bands. When I arrived, he was browsing the Hybrid Theory album from Linkin Park, an Earth-Aleph import here.

His exploration into the world of music was fascinating to watch in its own way. He didn't sing obviously, nor could he play instruments, but he did enjoy the melodies. Rather than just sitting in the computer and vibing with the tunes, he dissected each song, separating them by instrument and trying to figure out why some sequence of chords inspired some specific emotions in its listeners.

Back in my past life, everyone said the K-pop industry perfected the art of popular appeal and I couldn't help but wonder how SAINT would stack up if I gave him a bit more time. Could he produce an Earth-Bet equivalent of Girl's Generation or Big Bang?

He cooed at me from inside the speakers and I waved him off before immediately getting to work on my helmet.

Essentia's helmet was a full face visor with a glowing "E" on its surface. My motorcycle helmet was likewise colored black, but the burnt orange visor wasn't large enough to cover the face completely. Instead, the helmet boasted additional face protection that wrapped around my jaw. It was more than a stylistic choice because the smaller visor meant I'd have to settle for a more compact user interface.

I spent two hours just designing the layout I thought would be most ergonomic before I took a break to complete the workout regimen Dennis prepared for me. By the time I finished, I had the design plans of a system that could be toggled using a series of blinks and facial movements.

I would be able to rotate between an overview of the suit's status, my own biometrics, incoming calls and messages, and a 3D map, all augmented by my favorite virtual pokémon and the PokéNav. This additional integration between the Expansion Suit and my PokéNav would likely add a day or so to the helmet's construction, but anything that made me more effective in the field was worth the effort.

Author's Note

Why? Why the fuck not? I decided that I wanted to play to a lot of tropes even as I subverted just as many so here's my take on the "Save Panacea" trope mixed with the "definitely not dating" trope. I doubt this is ever going to turn into a romcom or anything, but it seemed like a fun idea.

School life, but with the shadow of the Red Queen. Doesn't that sound like fun? /s

*Oh god help me I have no idea what I've done.*

Also, who saw Essentia coming?

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.