Getting home had been an ordeal.
First, I had to come to terms with leaving my car behind. There was a giant gash in the side along with a dozen dents. Besides, the police were going to be looking for it. So the first thing I did after I finished my conversation with Sam was to report my car had been stolen. I needed to keep up appearances after all.
The next problem was actually getting home.
Groves Den was the closest thing Bayside had to a slum, so walking home wasn’t an option unless I wanted to get mugged. So I had to get a ride. It was actually pretty difficult to get a driver that wanted to come and pick me up. Sam’s place was a decent distance away from the center of the city and mine wasn’t much better so I had to promise a tip of forty dollars to get someone to show up.
When I finally managed to get home, it was well past seven.
I hadn’t even stepped onto my front porch when the front door swung open. Lucy stood in the frame, her face sporting a scowl. She had probably been ranting with Mom about how irresponsible I am or how difficult it was to get a hold of me.
“Where have you been? We’ve been worried sick!”
I needed to get my story straight. It wasn’t like I was going to necessarily lie. I just wouldn’t tell them about all the really bad stuff.
“My car got stolen,” I said, ignoring the stupefied look her face morphed into.
“Someone stole your car?” She looked past me and saw a distinct lack of a car in the driveway. “You’ve really not had the best time lately.”
“No, I haven’t,” she let me inside and we walked to the living room. The smell of freshly delivered pizza made my stomach rumble. I hadn’t eaten since lunchtime and after what happened today, I was about ready to devour a horse. “Good thing you ordered pizza. I wasn’t able to get groceries.”
“Well, we weren’t going to wait forever. Where were you when it happened?”
“The Downtown Mall. I was just doing some window shopping when I came out and found my car was missing.”
“Well, it was technically Eleanor’s car and she has insurance for it. I’m sure you’ll get a new one soon.”
In hindsight, it was honestly a win.
I’d finally be able to do some of the more extravagant upgrades to the car I had been holding off on. If I pushed too far and the thing would start looking too different and everyone would figure out something was up. Though, with it being ‘stolen’, I didn’t have to worry about drawing suspicion anymore. I just had to fix it up and figure out how to spoof number plates, then I could go nuts.
I strolled into the living room to see Mom chatting away at the laptop on her knees. Alex’s voice was coming through the speakers, which was a little earlier than usual. But Mom had probably called her early to vent her stress.
“Hey, sorry I’m late.”
“Max,” Mom sighed in relief. “Thank goodness. Where have you been!?”
“Yeah, sorry it’s… been a day,” I shuffled over to one of our sofas and dropped into it.
I explained how I was at the Downtown mall browsing some stores. Then, I came out to find my car was gone. I asked around only to discover the car had been stolen, which forced me to catch a series of buses home.
I looked around to see who had bought it. Lucy looked like she believed me but Mom looked a tad suspicious.
“Damn, that’s rough bro,” Alex’s voice came through the speakers. “Got a black eye and now the car’s gone? Did you break a mirror recently? Walk under a ladder? See a black cat maybe?”
“Given my luck, I must have,” I sighed. “Looks like I’ll be walking to school from now on, or busing. Maybe I should walk, it would be good exercise.”
If I was going to team up with Sam, I was going to need to keep up with her. That meant more exercise. I wasn’t the most athletic of my peers but I wasn’t overweight or suffering from malnutrition. I was lean but without all that much muscle, that needed to change.
“Cardio? When was the last time you actually exercised?” Lucy asked, amused. She had interrupted my train of thought. “I remember destroying you on athletics day.”
“We were kids,” I deflected idly. I was bigger than her now and had longer legs. She was five-three whereas I was bordering six feet and only going to get taller. Jackson and Chris liked to joke that I was five-ten and coping. “I’d kick your ass. You’re tiny.”
Lucy pursed her lips in thought before a sly smile broke out across her lips. “Naaaah.”
“I’d love to see this competition,” Mom chimed in. “I think it would be fun and it would get you out of your room. You’ve been spending a lot of time there recently.”
I ignored the look Mom gave me.
“My money’s on Lulu. Sorry bro,” Alex chortled.
I waved them off, dismissing their words as my mind drifted elsewhere.
With my costume almost done, I could switch my focus to my offensive options, namely the suppressed gun still resting in my inner jacket pocket. With enough time, I could modify it into some real intimidating mechatech. I just needed to be scarce with the charges I used on it to make sure I got the most efficient upgrades. Though, I wouldn’t be able to get to the really good stuff unless I improved the model.
The more charges invested into the base model, the more modular options would open up to me and I would be able to—
“Max, are you gonna eat or just stare at the floor?”
“Huh?” I looked up at Lucy before staring down at the box on the table. My stomach grumbled again. Before I knew it, I was reaching for the pizza. “My bad. I was just thinking about the car. Just wondering who stole it.”
I was halfway through my first slice when Mom turned on the TV.
My afternoon excursion with Sam was the current story. We listened silently as the news anchor described what had happened. Apparently, the Cains we had left in the dust were all arrested. Bonesmith tried to fight the police but was captured when Ionizer arrived on the scene.
“Huh, so that’s what happened,” I said, playing innocent. “Guess we won’t be getting it back.”
Mom gave a tired sigh. “And I really liked that car too…”
A mugshot of Bonesmith appeared on the screen and I got a good look at what he looked like beneath his disguise. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting but I was left disappointed. He just looked like any other guy I would have passed on the street.
“That guy,” I started. I had never gotten the chance to ask Sam who he was. “He’s part of The Cains, right?”
“Yeah, he’s been with the Brotherhood for the last year and a half. Rumor has it he used to be a pirate and operated in the Caribbean before Foresight dismantled their operations,” Lucy explained. “He’s wanted for kidnapping, theft, and multiple counts of third-degree murder. ECU’s gonna come down hard on him.”
Mom scoffed.
I looked over to see an uncharacteristically dark look plastered across her features. “It’s never enough. I doubt they’ll hold him for long. Their prisons aren't enough. I give it two days before he’s out of custody.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“I like to think the situation is improving,” Lucy said optimistically. “Villain incarceration has increased by 82% since 2002, especially when Deadlock and Ajax allied with the ECU. The situation isn’t nearly as bad as it used to be in the 60s and 70s.”
“Yet escaping custody is more common than it was before,” Alex pointed out. “Evohuman prisons all across the world are starting to overflow. The Antarctic Evohuman Correctional Facility has already reached maximum capacity and it only opened five years ago. If you ask me, I think they might be deliberately letting some people slip.”
Lucy looked like she wanted to argue but struggled to find the words.
“Can we at least give them the benefit of the doubt?” Lucy asked, looking around for support. “I don’t think they’re deliberately letting anyone go. It could be a case of more people escaping because more people are being captured in the first place. Powers are much more common now than they were fifty, sixty years ago.”
Mom scowled but said nothing. I couldn’t remember the last time she had looked so annoyed when the subject of Evohumans came up.
“Bonesmith…” Mom muttered under her breath. “Alex, do you know what powers he has?”
“Oh! Oh! Something to do with bones, I bet,” Alex laughed. “Gimme a sec and I can look ‘em up.”
“Already on it,” Lucy said, pulling out her phone. The news anchor hadn’t said anything about me or Sam, so it seemed that we were in the clear for now. “Got it! He has moderate regeneration. He’s able to lose limbs, vital organs, and a lethal amount of blood without any risk to his life. Regeneration speed is determined by the severity of the injury.”
“Ew. Are you reading Supers and Meta’s Online again?” Alex audibly cringed. “That place is full of tinfoil hats and conspiracy psychos.”
“Lucy, hun. You’ll detach from reality if you get all your information from there,” Mom said.
Lucy rolled her eyes. “I get that it’s a public forum but it's still the most reliable website for info on supers. A lot of stuff happened today. Domination managed to put a stop to a dispute between the Cains’ Gold Rush and Pandora’s Red Flare. Abby also managed to capture Junkmonger and Techies again… and Bonesmith was apprehended by Bayside’s new Rookie Commander, Ionizer.”
“Not bad. Sounds like a good day for them,” Alex said.
“Regardless, unless it’s an official account, anything posted there is gossip, at best,” Mom replied, giving Lucy a knowing look. “You know better than to believe everything you see online.”
“I’m careful!” Lucy defended hotly. “Plus, there are moderators getting rid of the crazies and an ECU official posting in this thread, so it’s pretty legit— oh! Abby just commented. Apparently, his Morpher classification comes from the ability to reshape his limbs into anything he wants.”
That explains the giant gash in the car.
“I wonder why he didn’t use that power to fight off the police?” I wondered aloud. He certainly tried to split my car in half.
Lucy shrugged. “Probably because killing police is also a good way to get yourself a termination directive.”
I snorted. “You think someone with his power would be afraid of execution?”
The thought amused me. Someone with the power to regenerate from even the most life-threatening injuries wouldn’t exactly fear being killed. In fact, they probably saw it as more of a challenge. What could kill him? Sam had hit him so hard that his impact in a solid concrete wall hadn’t killed him.
Force alone wouldn’t be able to do the trick, which meant Red and Pink wouldn’t be able to do much except disable or slow him down. Could he survive being disintegrated? I was hard-pressed to think of anyone that could. Even the most powerful regenerators in the world had some kind of limit but then again, public info could easily be wrong.
“True immortality doesn’t exist. At least, not that I know of but as strong as he is, Gaea could still deal with him,” Lucy said.
Gaea was an exception. If you were a flesh and blood organism, she could kill you with a passing thought.
“You’re assuming the old hag will be bothered enough by this guy to get off her ass,” Alex said, her voice crackling from the crappy audio on Mom’s laptop. “She’s too busy wrangling the people in The Queens Court and fighting in the political space to care about small fry like this schmuck.”
Lucy faltered a little. “Yeah… but hypothetically—”
“Surviving Gaea is borderline impossible. How you go about preventing your cells from getting divided into oblivion is beyond me,” I cut her off. “She’s an S-class Biokinetic for a reason.”
“I’ve had enough of this,” Mom muted the TV and climbed back into her wheelchair. “I’m going to email the insurance company and see what we can do about the car. I don’t like the thought of either of you walking in the streets.”
My eyes lingered on Mom’s crippled form as she left the room.
“Huh,” Lucy’s eyes were fixed on the muted TV. “Another earthquake down south. This time it's in Ashton. A 4.4 apparently.”
“It’s probably The Mountain making sure the country’s foundations are holding. Wouldn’t want to collapse into the ocean,” I said, getting up from my chair. “Anyway, I’m pretty tired from today. I’m gonna go chill in my room, maybe finish some homework.”
“I’ll clean up,” Lucy offered, giving me an easy smile. “Take it easy, okay?”
“Will do.”
I retreated upstairs and shut the door before sitting down at my desk. I took a moment to collect myself before I removed the gun from my jacket and placed it down in front of me.
Its polished black steel glimmered under my bedroom light as I inspected the design. It had served its purpose in getting us out of that pursuit safely. Now the only question was where to take it from here.
I reached out and laid my hand on top of it, allowing the information to reveal itself in my mind.
[Charges: 0/25]
[Type]
* Powered USP-S
[Durability 97/100 - Repair Unavailable. Cost: 1]
[Battery Remaining: 20%]
There was more I wanted to do with it tonight but unfortunately, I had spent every charge trying to make it useful in today’s skirmish. If I had more time to work with, I might’ve been able to more efficiently spend those points on more important things. For now, I’d be stuck with this until morning. Not much of a problem, all things considered. I’d just have to quell my impatience in other ways.
I opened up one of my desk’s drawers and dropped the empty gun into it. Then I walked over to my closet to retrieve my costume. It was discreetly hanging from a coat hanger at the very back in case Lucy decided to get nosy. There had been many times in the past when she had been too invasive for her own good. I didn’t want her finding anything and mom couldn’t get upstairs to my room anyway, what with her wheelchair and all.
I marveled at the state of my armor. I was never big on the whole cape trend seeing as I found it largely impractical. It was big in the United States and other Western countries and had been since the sixties when people started developing superpowers.
Eventually, when Mechakinetics started coming onto the scene, costumes and other wacky outfits slowly got replaced with power armor and other tech-based defenses. Pretty much all the ECU heroes and rookies were outfitted with that kind of gear, albeit with some creative flare for PR's sake. Villains, independents, and vigilantes who didn’t have access to Mechakinetics were the only ones who still ran around in costumes. They had to get creative in order to conceal their identities.
My [Armored Suit MK III] hadn’t quite yet crossed the threshold to be considered power armor. There were a number of expensive steps to get to that point yet and I’d need another week or so to figure out the right path. Regardless, I was happy with the current results. It might not be power armor, but it was certainly advanced enough to be considered a mechatech suit of armor.
Mundane firearms weren’t going to penetrate it but I was under no illusions the armor would fully resist the force of the impact. Just as long as the bullets or projectiles didn’t get through and shred my skin and body, I’d consider it a win.
The material was almost like a serpent’s scales, except layered with smooth, black metal. I had upgraded the top layer of the suit to Compound 9, a carbon-steel variant created by Vulcan, while I kept Neoprene-Steel as the second and lowest layer. In a city like this, you couldn’t be too careful.
My [Armored Headpiece MK III] was of similar quality, though I still wasn’t quite happy with it. After prolonged upgrading, I had changed its form to be more compact and comfortable. It wasn’t as bulky as the typical motorcycle helmet but still offered just as much protection. It covered the whole head with the visor taking up three-quarters of the front so my visibility wasn’t impacted. That part required quite a bit of fiddling until I got it how I liked it.
I needed to be absolutely certain it would protect my head against even some of the more deadly weapons the gangs possessed and I wouldn’t get that certainty until I had upgraded to MK IV at the very least.
So far, splitting my attention had served me well in the past week. In the morning, I’d continue to work on the helmet and start making some improvements to the gun. A non-lethal option for my weapon would be nice and from what I could see, a laser weapon would give me the ability to choose between lethal and non-lethal.
As long as I am able to implement a setting to change the lethality on the fly instead of relying on my power to switch, it would be a good investment.
My phone buzzed with a notification but I was too tired to check it. Heading to bed, I decided I’d answer in the morning.