Surge 3.12

2010, November 10: Brockton Bay, NH, USA

I received a politely worded warning from Mr. Maury, my homeroom teacher, telling me that I should find a tutoring student by the end of next week. Otherwise, he'd be forced to report my inactivity to the administration and I'd be volun-told to work in group study sessions with a much larger audience. I wasn't against the position necessarily, but more students at once would mean I wouldn't have time to do my own homework or plan out my tinkering during tutoring sessions. I gave him my thanks for the heads up and moved on to algebra II and AP bio.

Math was as mind-numbingly dull as always, though seeing Chris so happy did make me feel a bit more lighthearted. The boy's notebook was filled with doodles of robots, laser guns, jets, and who knew what else, so much so that it barely had room for the math problems he was supposed to be doing. Clearly the high hadn't quite worn off yet.

In AP bio, we had our first dissection of the year, one of three throughout both semesters. Mrs. Pearce had trays with scalpels and dissection scissors out on each lab table, one for every two students.

"Pair up, pair up," she said as we walked in. The rail-thin woman was as stern as ever. "We'll go over lab safety one more time before I cut you loose. Remember, if I find any of you playing with the cow eyeballs, you will go straight to the principal's office and receive a week's detention. Am I clear?"

"Yes, ma'am," we chorused back. She was one of those teachers who would hound the principal until she made good on that threat.

Stephanie and Chelsea immediately paired together, sending me an apologetic smile. I waved them off. They were my friends, but only in that tangential way that lacked true familiarity. I was about to join one of the few freshmen nerdy enough to be in this class with me but before I could, someone else grabbed me by the sleeve of my sweater and gently tugged me to his desk.

I blinked in surprise. He looked vaguely familiar though that wasn't saying much. "You're… Brian… right?"

The tall boy gave me a lopsided smile. "Hey, yeah. Bryce, right? Mind working with me?"

I shrugged. He was as good a lab partner as any. I sat at his table and pulled up the worksheet. I'd been a physician's assistant in my past life and regularly played Dr. Frankenstein with random foodstuffs for my own amusement. It didn't matter who I worked with.

We went around the classroom and grabbed our eyeballs. Brian… Jones… probably? James? Johnson? For the sake of being a good lab partner, I proposed we take turns making the incisions to answer each question on the worksheet. Luckily, neither of us were particularly squeamish.

"So, what's up?" I asked as I grabbed the eyeball like a small apple and began to peel the fat tissue around the sclera with the scalpel. It was tough and a little stringy, but where the blade caught, subtle application of force via Psychic let me cut through easily enough.

"Huh, you're really good at this."

"I like science," I replied with a non-answer.

"Well, umm… You eat with Chelsea at lunch, right?" he asked, voice subdued so the other tables couldn't hear us over the low drone of the class.

I let out an internal sigh. I remembered him now. "Yup. You went to the dance with her."

"Yeah… Hey, you know if she's single?"

"As far as I know, yeah."

"Sweet, is she interested in anyone?"

"Not a clue. She doesn't talk about guys with me, man."

I rolled my eyes when he was distracted with peeling the lens out from inside the iris. From what Chelsea said, they'd agreed to be friends but he clearly didn't feel the same way. He probably thought he was being smooth, using this lab as a chance to get some intel about the girl he likes. Chelsea probably figured him out the moment he dragged me off.

I didn't want to be stuck in this weird high school drama. It wasn't as though I knew anything important about her in the first place so I couldn't help him even if I wanted to.

Brian gave me what I assumed was supposed to be a friendly punch on the shoulder. "Come on, man, help a brother out a bit. What's her favorite food? If I asked her out, where should I take her?"

I decided to throw the guy a bone. If Chelsea wanted to go out to dinner on his dime, that was her business. "She said she likes Thai food one time, dunno if that's her favorite or anything but I guess it's a safe pick. Brian, it's not that I don't want to help you," I lied, "but we don't really hang out outside of school, you know? Chelsea and I are friends in the sense that she's a really friendly person, took pity on the lonely freshman, and we now eat lunch together."

He sighed. We'd completely forgotten about the eyeball now but I'd filled out my worksheet while he'd talked. "I know, it's just, the dance felt like a good opportunity and when she said yes, maybe I got my hopes up too high."

"And what happened after?"

"She said she wasn't looking for a guy and wanted to be friends."

"Look, I don't know much about dating, but I do know that chasing a girl when she says she's not interested isn't going to make her like you. This isn't a romcom where the guy wins her over after some funny hijinks."

"But what if she's playing hard to get?"

"Again, not a rom-"

"Mr. Jones, Mr. Kiley, care to share with the rest of the class?" Mrs. Pearce interrupted us, to my silent thanks. Brian wasn't a bad guy, as far as I knew, but this conversation had been getting stale.

"Sorry, Mrs. Pearce," I apologized politely. I picked up the scalpel and finished laying out the back of the eye, removed the optic nerve, and put a pin on where the fovea should be before sliding my worksheet to Brian. "There. Retina. Optic nerve. Fovea. Fovea has cones, rest of the retina has rods."

"Shit, thanks. You're really fast."

"I like science," I said again with a nonchalant shrug.

We finished up with lab. As I was packing up to go to lunch, Stephanie poked me on the arm. "So, what'd he say?" she asked with a knowing smile.

"Don't ask things you already know. He's still interested, told him it wasn't my business."

"Oof, cold. No respect for the bro code?"

"What bro code? More importantly, what could I tell him about her anyway? No offense, Steph, but leave me out of Chelsea's love life."

"Fair point. You look like you have enough troubles of your own," she said leadingly.

"What are you talking abo-"

I was cut off by Stephanie pointing to the door of the class. There, one of the most recognizable faces in the city waited. Amy Dallon stared at me with an arched brow. The "come hither" was implied.

"Thank god I wore a sweater today," I muttered. It was November, cold enough that I could cover up without looking out of place. After our chat last night, I'd reaffirmed my decision to avoid letting Amy touch me. I didn't know how she'd react if she ever found out about me being a gravity child, but I sure as hell didn't think she was ready for that particular bomb.

"You say something?"

"I said it's cold. Glad I wore a sweater."

"Anything you want to tell us about you and our prickly healer?" Chelsea said, eyebrows wiggling suggestively as she caught up to us. The girl was like a bloodhound for potential gossip.

"We're planning a June wedding," I replied dryly. I walked up to Amy and before she could take me by the hand, I instead grabbed her shoulder and pushed her out into the hall. "What's up, Ames?"

"Do I want to know what that was about?"

"Chelsea's love life."

"Oh, yuck. Let's go somewhere quiet."

"Ames, there isn't really anywhere in school we can talk. Just call me like you always do."

She didn't look like she'd let this go so I walked a step ahead of her and out into the quad. It wasn't empty by any means, there were the usual cliques, skaters practicing tricks against the fountain, jocks tossing a frisbee around, and some other students catching the sun, but at least we'd see anyone coming to eavesdrop.

She let out an explosive sigh and allowed herself to flop onto the manicured lawn. She stared up at the sky for a long minute before looking at me. "Did you mean it?"

"Hmm?"

"What you said yesterday. Did you mean it?"

I sat down by her head, close enough to be familiar and far enough to avoid accidentally touching her. "Absolutely. It doesn't matter who your dad is. That doesn't define you, Amy. I don't think less of you."

"Even if I'm not just a healer?"

"Even then. They say powers run in families. If anything, I like that you've built something positive out of your father's legacy."

"You don't get it, Bryce. I'm the biokinetic. I can make Bonesaw look like an amateur."

I rolled my eyes. "Who's the thinker, me or you? And yes, yes you can be much worse than Bonesaw. But you've also chosen to be much better. If I asked you to make a superfood grain that could grow in all climates, was immune to mundane diseases and parasites, and had high nutritional value, could you?"

"I'm not going to," she huffed.

"No, you're not, because you've decided somewhere along the line that every use of your power besides healing is wrong, even if it means making a dent in world hunger. Or making a super-penicillin. Or a cure for cancer in pill form."

"Introducing new species or drugs like that could have unpredictable effects and-"

"And you're not equipped to be the judge of that," I finished for her. "I get it. But let's not pretend there aren't ways to mitigate the risks. You could work with thinkers who can simulate stuff like that. There are entire universities dedicated to ecological and economic impact. You could get the PRT and the Guild to help distribute them to where they're most needed."

"I don't know…"

I rolled to face her. I decided to back off for now; there was no point in pushing someone who was already so set in her ways. "And that's okay," I told her sincerely. "I'm not saying you should march up to the PRT and shoulder even more responsibility than you already do. That sounds like a nightmare, honestly. My point is, your power isn't evil and you're not going to become a villain just because your dad happened to be one."

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"You really believe that."

"Yup. Besides, if you ever do join the dark side, you can be my sidekick and we'll conquer the city in the name of universal healthcare or something."

She let out a derisive snort. "Who'd want to be your sidekick?"

"You'd make a terrible supervillain so of course you'd be the sidekick. A real supervillain needs flair, vision, gravitas. That ain't you, Ames."

"Of course, that's what I'm lacking. Style."

"First step to a solution is admitting you have a problem," I nodded sagely. She rolled her eyes and sat up. Her hand lashed out in a whipcord slap over my unguarded stomach, making me cough. "Oof, why?"

"You're such a dick, Bryce."

"You'd be more convincing if you weren't smiling," I replied with a groan.

"Whatever. Come on, let's go eat before lunch ends."

"Sure, did you tell your sister where we'd be?"

"I said I had to talk to you about something. If she asks, I healed a little girl in the hospital who fell behind on her schoolwork. I wanted you to tutor her, got it?"

She had that dangerous gleam in her eyes that promised unfathomable pain if I didn't go along with her story so I decided on the better part of valor and nodded. "Yes, ma'am. Tutoring some kid."

"Good. And Bryce?"

"Yo."

"Thanks…" she said hesitantly, a single word laden with meaning.

Naturally, I couldn't keep things too serious so I did what I do best. "Whatever keeps you from growing a cactus in my rectum, Panpan."

I laughed as my words registered and her face went red. We raced through the halls towards the cafeteria, me cackling like a loon and Amy threatening increasingly anatomically impossible punishments on my person.

X

Since I didn't have a student to tutor, I shot a few quick emails to potential clients before shifting into my costume and heading off to the lab beneath Harvey's. Harvey's Bar and Grill had been doing well enough from what I'd been hearing. Its location near the college made it reasonably popular by default and the traditional Irish pub aesthetic was a timeless classic for a reason.

But that was in the evenings. Just after school, the bar was all but deserted, with only a handful of people inside working the dead shift between lunch and dinner. There were a few college kids waiting around and watching the rerun of some basketball game or other. A few more hung around a dartboard, probably killing time until happy hour so they could grab some grub on the cheap.

I pulled up the face of the out of state owner on my UI and took on his appearance with the suit's texturing function before waltzing in through the back. The line cook looked at me funny, he'd never met the owner before so I was a stranger, but shrugged and went back to frying up a basket of fish sticks for the basketball crowd. I'd come in using a key so as far as he was concerned, I belonged here. He wasn't paid enough to care beyond that.

I nodded to the manager who did know what the owner looked like. Galen had come recommended by said owner, Faultline's business partner who'd also helped her set up the Palanquin, and was read in on enough of the details to not be surprised. He had a cushy job here; $130k and benefits to run a mildly busy bar and not ask questions about what was in the basement.

He was an old-ish fellow in his late middle-ages with a salt and pepper beard. According to him, he'd had his excitement and now wanted something nice and stable, like managing a bar. How he thought Brockton could be "stable" was beyond me, but he'd moved from upstate New York for the job and the fact that he was an out-of-towner made him more trustworthy by default than any Brockton native.

I gave him a quick wave before making my way to the basement. In the end, whether he was or was not trustworthy didn't matter much. If he sold information to one of the gangs, the most they'd learn was that Creed had a lab here. If they raided the place, I'd lose very little while gaining some valuable intel about my opponents. The most they'd find here was some wapometal, which I stopped by once a week to upload to the DSS.

After digitizing everything, I hung around long enough to exchange a few quick words with Galen. I also got myself a late lunch in the form of a chicken pot pie; Amy and I had not arrived at the cafeteria fast enough to eat anything substantial.

While I was still downtown, I decided to have a bit of fun and try something I'd seen Ikki, the protagonist of Air Gear and the Storm King, do fairly often. The Wing Road was the most elaborated upon road, not least because both the main antagonists and the protagonist used it as their foundation. It didn't make the rider an airbender from Avatar, but it came pretty close. Like the other roads, it took generally accepted physical principles and extrapolated them to the point of hilarity.

For starters, the Wing Road allowed the rider to "break the barrier front," and run at an extremely low pressure, minimizing air resistance and maximizing jump time. This was also somehow used to minimize blunt impacts by distributing force throughout the rider's entire body rather than a single point, though for obvious reasons I didn't feel the need to test it. Any impact that could hurt me through the Expansion Suit, I wouldn't be able to shrug off like this anyway.

Masters like Ikki, Sora, and Nike were said to "catch moondrops," using differential pressure to create a surface of air to skate on. They could effectively replicate the Germa hover boots through raw skill alone.

Thankfully, seeing how I had the boots anyway, I didn't need to master the Wing Road to that degree. I'd be happy enough just learning to "grow wings," a phenomenon by which a rider could enhance an existing tailwind.

I revved my new regalia and jumped into the air until I stood just above the rooftops. Then, dipping down, I skated atop a power line and kept going. I felt the wheels catch on the line and skate forward. There wasn't any chance of getting shocked so long as I only touched one wire, not that my suit couldn't handle it anyway.

Then, gingerly, I shut off the pyrobloin valve. There was nothing keeping me in the air except this one line.

It was an exhilarating experience. I knew of course that I couldn't lose my balance anymore, but knowing in my head and doing something like this, something so hilariously dangerous and impractical, was entirely different. Sure, I'd raced faster while trying to pick up After Burner. I'd climbed higher into the sky while fighting the Empire and Merchants. But this was different. Then, I'd been relying on my hover boots or Agility. That wasn't the case here. It was just me, a set of wheels, and the wire stretching out like a path before me.

I felt the wind flatten my suit against my chest. I wanted to pull up my helmet and feel the breeze on my face. I understood now, that inexplicable, instinctive love of the sky that Ikki felt when he first took to the air. To fly under your own power, to rely on your own skill and travel as you please; this was freedom.

"Whoo!" I let out an excited yell as I skated through a residential district.

I drew a lot of attention, especially when I passed by an elementary school, but I couldn't find it in me to care at the moment. It would be one more way for me to advertise my ATs for the catalog.

I purposely caught the treads of my back wheel on the edge of a wooden telephone pole and allowed the sudden jolt to rocket me into a seemingly suicidal flip. Twisting with catlike grace, I alighted atop another pole across the street before skating along its connected wire. Someone wolf-whistled and I laughed before twirling atop a street lamp and collapsing into a deep bow.

I'd strayed far from the Boat Graveyard now. I was still headed in the same general direction, but I zig-zagged every few blocks. I wasn't going very fast, nowhere near the top speed of a regalia, even untuned, but seeing the city below me and the sea stretching past the horizon lightened my heart in ways I couldn't quite put to words.

It was nice. Until now, every time I went riding, it was for some specific purpose. It felt good to put it all aside for a few minutes and simply luxuriate in the freedom of this birdlike mobility. This, this was what I was about, the joy of creating and the wonder of delighting in my own creation. More than being a hero or villain, more than playing the great game of cops and robbers, more than being Creed even, this was what I wanted to do as the Tinker of Fiction.

A wide grin threatened to split my face and I found myself laughing as I flipped through the air. I raced on a rooftop before launching myself into a 720 degree rotation that ended with me landing on a power line to continue skating forward. And that was one of the simplest tricks I could pull off now. Soon enough, the residual trepidation was washed away and I was performing tricks straight out of one of Tony Hawk's video games, if on roller blades instead of a skateboard.

I was mid-flip when I saw someone rising towards me, or falling given how I was oriented at the time. Dauntless, the only flight-capable member of the Protectorate, had arrived.

He raised his arclance in salute. "You look like you're having fun."

"I was, thanks for ruining it, Chronos," I drawled as I landed softly on a street lamp.

"Aww, don't be like that, Creed. I came by to say thanks. Heard what you did for Kid Win."

"What'd I do?"

"You're really gonna play dumb?"

"I was playing until you showed up. And now I'm not but I still don't know what you're saying, Chronos."

"Fine, be difficult. Why do you call me that? Not that I mind being compared to the god of time and all…"

"Well he did eat his own kids so there's that."

"What?"

"Yeah, that's his most famous legend. Chronos was the son of Ouranos and Gaia. He murdered his own father via dismemberment and castration because his mother told him to. There was a prophecy that said Chronos would go the way of his father and he really didn't want to die by his own kids so when Rhea, his wife, birthed them, he swallowed them all. And then Zeus came along and killed him so… prophecy fulfilled. Neat, huh."

"That's… I don't think I learned that in school."

"Yeah… Greek mythology gets pretty dark. I mean, there's more context behind it, but that's the gist."

I could see him frown under his helmet. "What are you getting at? What do I have to do with Chronos?"

"Nothing. You grow with time, get it?"

"Then why'd you tell me all this?"

I gave him an exaggerated shrug. "Who knows? Maybe I just like mythology. Or maybe someone asked me to tell you. Or…" I leaned in as if to whisper. Dauntless found himself doing the same. "Or maybe, I just like fucking with you."

"Wha-Hey!"

"Toodles~"

And with that, I was gone. Dauntless was one of the few capes I wasn't eager about fighting, not just because he was powerful, but also because he was the "hometown hero" and I was trying very hard to manage my image. Win or lose, it'd be a net negative for me. That said, for all his power, he wasn't much of a sensor so he could do little but stand around looking constipated as I vanished from his sight.

X

I arrived on the Gullrest with a few hours to spare. I doubted I'd get much done today but I didn't regret the time I'd spent zipping around the city. If I was honest with myself, I needed that more than I cared to admit. I tossed SAINT a bag of almonds I'd bought at a 7-Eleven on my way here and picked up the drone.

Big Rig's drone obeyed instructions incredibly well, a given considering what it was made for. The crab-like creature was built for construction so its chassis could take a few hits. It had some rudimentary sensors to determine which material or tool was what. Strider would be by tonight at 1AM to deliver $60,000 worth of materials, but there was no reason I couldn't supplement my metal reserves using this drone.

I slapped one of my old expanded bags on its back and sent it off further into the ship. So long as the outer hull was intact, and there were enough support beams left to withstand the water pressure, there wasn't any reason for me to leave the ship untouched. Better, by hollowing out the ship, I was making room for me to build my own ship directly inside, kind of like one of those parasitic hornet larvae that grew inside a paralyzed caterpillar by eating it alive from the inside out.

I set what used to be the mess hall as its storage and set it to harvesting. Then I turned to my partner. SAINT had polished off the whole bag in the time it'd taken me to give the drone its marching orders.

"You're lucky you can't gain weight, buddy."

"Ree," he trilled defensively.

"Yeah, yeah, you'd still be cute even if you could get fat. Rub it in. You ready to get to work?"

"Pory!" he cheered before slipping into the pokenav. I saw a cute, chibi duck icon light up on my UI showing me he was fully connected.

"Good. Let's get to tuning the regalia. I doubt we'll finish today but I want to make some progress on it."

"Porygon-gon."

The Pledge Regalia hummed to life, splitting into seven cross-like amplifiers that spread out across the room. Its sensors came online one by one and I could feel my control over the surrounding vibrations increase. I turned my attention inward, receiving a full scan of my biometrics. It was all here, from my heart rate to the rate at which each individual muscle passively twitched and spasmed. My body, laid out before me in more detail than I thought I'd ever know.

SAINT trilled happily and took control of the Pledge Regalia. He began to filter out all unnecessary information, feeding me only what I needed to tune my regalia. As always, creation was far trickier than destruction. Dismantling something via sonic vibrations was easy compared to tuning the regalia. I resigned myself to a grueling, tedious process.

The two of us worked in companionable silence. Key Mother and the unnamed Water Regalia had to be completely in sync so I began with that. Tuning the two together was a challenge, not just because they were incredibly complex pieces of machinery, but because I'd made the frames of my skates out of seastone. Suffice to say, a material as unyielding as diamond made scanning what lay beneath a challenge.

It wasn't impossible by any means, especially thanks to SAINT keeping meticulous calculations of every single system contained within the regalia as well as its internal dimensions, but the whole thing was still an exercise in patience.

After tuning the regalias to each other, I had to tune them to my body. Apparently, there was a way to cancel or heavily diminish the stresses my body felt by adjusting the regalias' operational wavelengths compared to my own body's. It was complicated physics about reciprocal wavelengths canceling each other out, treating everything from sonic booms to friction as just another expression of those same wavelengths, then applying the concept to the way energy was transferred up my legs through my skeletal structure. Wave-motion physics and ergonomics, but kicked up to hilarious, sci-fi levels.

So basically standard Air Gear nonsense.

I huffed out a laugh, more out of frustration than anything else. The task was mind-numbingly repetitive and not even the fact that I had SAINT's company slowed it down much. In the end, I expected this to take several more days. Until then, I'd just have to satisfy myself with thinking of an appropriately hammy name.

Author's Note

Could the AP bio seen have been cut entirely? Yes. I ended up including it because I enjoy writing slice of life, especially from the perspective of someone who's much older emotionally. High school was like that for me; not that I was "more mature" or whatever but that I feel like I paid a lot of attention to things that didn't matter in the end, and not enough to the things that really did.

I also feel like it's a decent contrast to the talk with Amy. She's coming out of her shell and the seeds for being more than just Panacea have been planted.

Is it tactless to call someone by their pseudo-endbringer title? Probably. Is it a fun easter egg most of the fandom doesn't know about because a grand total of like twelve people actually read Ward? Yes. Is Bryce going to keep doing it? Also yes, because he's a tactless shitheel who likes feeling smug.

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.