Dan had forced himself to watch the security tapes of his little scuffle. With a sense of mortified curiosity, he had shuffled his way over to the tiny surveillance room, escorted by an amused Margaret. The room itself was every bit as thematic as the rest of the hotel, with monitors that looked like they were plucked straight out of an eighties Alien movie, and keyboards that made satisfying click-clack noises as their keys were depressed.
The tapes themselves were rather high quality, all things considered. The Pearson did not skimp on its security cameras. The video showed the entirety of Dan's brief encounter with the would-be bank robber, in all of its excruciating glory. It did not paint him in a flattering light. That said, he could see how, to a blind optimist, his actions might have seen selfless. The keyword here is blind.
Moments before teleporting, Dan had bit down on his knuckles in anger. The camera angle could only catch the back of his head, and so the action itself was obscured. Dan's hand could have been doing any number of things. Maybe his chin itched, and Dan was scratching it. Maybe his fingers were prospecting for gold. Maybe he'd stuck his hand in something gross and was sniffing at it. There were many options available for a reasonable interpreter.
Officer Pierre-Louis had gone with the 'prepping a surprise attack' interpretation. Dan had to wonder what sort of lunacy Pierre-Louis engaged in himself, to believe that Dan's master plan involved pinpoint accurate retching.
The teleportation itself was, and Dan still felt absurd even thinking this, perfectly normal. Visually, there was little difference between Dan's teleportation and someone who could short-hop. One moment he was by the door, the next he wasn't. He had even kept his eyes open, not that the camera angle could have caught that fact. Dan felt marginally better knowing that he had managed to not raise too many questions within the first month.
Next was Dan's 'attempted takedown' of the thief. Nothing about it was pretty, nor sensible, nor even remotely on purpose. He had nearly headbutted the poor, flailing, vomit-covered man right in the sternum. Dan hadn't even noticed at the time, too concerned with his own horrified vision-induced meltdown. Through blind luck, Dan's distraction had sent the robber's gun clattering to the floor, in an action that might have seemed intentional if not for the awkward belly-flop that followed it.
Had Margaret not stepped in at the end there, Dan was fairly certain he would've eaten a bullet or three. Instead, the end result of Dan's misfired teleport was a tangle of bodies and two effectively unconscious adult men. Not the worst result, all told, but it certainly could have gone better.
Dan concluded that he wasn't very good at being heroic.
A single errant thought had put both him and Margaret in exponentially more danger than they had started the encounter in. Had the robbered fired out of surprise, had he not dropped the gun, had Dan fallen slightly earlier or differently, had any number of tiny things gone differently, someone might have died. It was a painful lesson on why the word vigilante was viewed here in such a negative light. Accidental or not, Dan had meddled in something that he should have stayed out of. He felt a a surge of extraordinary gratitude towards kind Officer Gregoir Pierre-Louis for not arresting Dan's dumb ass on the spot.
Dan sighed as the tape ended. Margaret gave his shoulder her signature pat, seemingly reading his thoughts.
"We can burn the tape if it'll make you feel better," she remarked.
It might. Dan was perfectly capable of burying this mortifying event in the darkest depths of his mind and never remembering it again. He wanted to, badly. It was evidence of his very worst fears, that his silly dreams were exactly that. Dan wanted to believe that he could rise to an occasion that would never occur. So long as it never occurred, he would never have to prove himself. So long as he never had to prove himself, he could believe that he would rise to the occassion. It was a circle, a horrible, poisonous loop.
Deep down, Dan still wanted to believe that he was special.
"No," Dan decided aloud. It was better this way. He needed the reminder. The next time he fell into a rut, the next time he fooled himself into thinking I'd shine if only I had the chance, he could come back here and watch himself fail in the most embarassing way possible.
Normal Dan, that's what people had called him. What had changed since then? What had he changed?
He used to be Normal Dan, now he was just Normal Dan with powers.
Dan discovered that he hated that fact.
________________________
"You couldn't even last a month without getting into trouble?" Marcus asked incredulously. "Your talent for stumbling into idiotic situations is almost impressive."
"I didn't get into trouble!" Dan protested. He was back at Mercury's space station, standing in the good doctor's lab. The old man was peering through a microscope, paying Dan just enough attention to deliver the occasional insult.
"You've garnered the attention of an over-enthusiastic police officer. What would you call it?" Marcus asked sternly, not even glancing away from his work.
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"The guy is a nut. I'm sure he'll find some other insane thing to hold his interest sooner or later," Dan pointed out.
"On your head be it," the doctor replied with a shrug. The conversation lulled for a moment as he refocused his microscope. After a moment, he sniffed at the air.
"Why do I smell vomit?"
Dan grimaced, wiping absently at his shirt. "That's me. Sorry."
"Seriously, Daniel?" His voice was flat and unimpressed.
"I couldn't help it," Dan huffed. "I kept my eyes open when I teleported and things got weird."
Mercury frowned. "Define weird."
"Umm, like physics took a vacation, weird. Like I was riding in Spackle again, weird," Dan clarified with a shudder.
He paused, searching for a way to verbalize the experience. "The world went crooked, my senses went haywire, and my stomach did a backflip out of my mouth."
The doctor stopped his tinkering for the briefest of moments. "You move through the Gap Between Worlds when you teleport?"
Dan could hear the capital letters in that sentence. "I guess? Is that important?"
Marcus slowly resumed his work, his voice steady as stone. "Possibly. Best not to mention it to anybody else. Just in case."
"In case of what?" Dan pressed.
A shrug was all he got in return. Sometimes he hated this old man. Dan made a note to bring it up later. The surly doctor could keep his mouth shut tighter than a clam with lockjaw when he wanted to. Pushing him now would only make him angry.
"Moving on then, I guess," Dan folded sourly. He ignored the doctor's triumphant smirk. "I was thinking about doing some self-improvement. Any... ideas?"
"Self-improvement?" The esteemed Dr. Marcus Mercury looked away from his project long enough to snort incredulously. "I've never needed to do such a thing. I've been perfect for ninety-seven years straight, so there's never been anything to improve."
Dan rolled his eyes at the dismissive response. "That doesn't help me."
"Well that can be the first thing you improve," the doctor replied, returning his eyes to his microscope lens. "Figuring out how to better help yourself."
"I was hoping for advice," Dan pointed out, somewhat hopelessly.
"You want advice on how to be a better person? Make a list of everything you hate about yourself then work your way down it. Easy," Marcus advised.
He made a shooing motion with his hand. "Worries heard, advice given, now leave me alone for a few days. I think I've identified how cosmic radiation merges with prions to form a neural—"
Dan fled the room.
The advice was reasonable, if rude. There were a lot of things that Dan didn't particularly like about himself. In fact, he was starting to suspect that his accidental teleport had been triggered by some sort of latent self-loathing, combined with a need to prove himself. He had absolutely no evidence supporting this belief, but it sounded good in his head.
Dan's list quickly proved itself to be a daunting task. Recalling every embarassing moment in your life was both difficult and excruciating. Even worse, Dan had rarely spent any time examining his own past actions. It had always seemed like a waste of effort. Without the desire for self-improvement, what would have been the point? So, having zero experience at self-reflection, and no real idea of where to start, he had simply started from the beginning.
Dan's parents had been good people. He had been born late in their life, after years of struggle, and as such he had been their treasure. They had raised him kindly, had kept food on the table, had helped him with school to the best of their abilities. Dan had hardly struggled, truly struggled, for a single day in his life. Rather than seeing this as the gift that it was, Dan had grown used to seeing it as the norm.
As a result, Dan was lazy. Monumentally lazy. He had once visited the San Diego Zoo with his college friends. They had watched the pandas laze about in the sun and heard a lecture on how little energy a panda is able to extract from its food. As a result of their diet, pandas have a limit on their physical activity. While his friends had ran around the zoo, Dan had watched the pandas. For four hours he had watched them. In that time, between three different pandas, there had been perhaps a single instance of physical movement beyond idle scratching. Dan felt that the panda was his spirit animal.
Dan is lazy. This was the first item on his list of undesirable character traits. He wasn't sure how to change it, but he could figure that out later.
Speaking of figuring things out later: Dan liked to procrastinate. He had coasted through his school years with a consistent C average, doing his work the day before as often as humanly possible. His life had been secure enough that this had rarely come back to bite him, but things were different now. He currently depended on the generosity of a very eccentric man, he had no savings, and was theoretically an illegal immigrant. He couldn't afford to procrastinate.
Though some might call it a subset of laziness, Dan felt it deserved its own slot. It was mental laziness, rather than physical, and so a different beast entirely. Thus, Dan likes to procrastinate was the second item on his list.
Dan had graduated college at twenty-one, and had immediately found a job at his father's old company. For roughly 9 hours a day, Dan had alternated between napping, browsing the internet, and inputting data into spreadsheets. He had done this for five years, before being promoted to a managerial position that only required the first two actions. Dan had every intention of doing this job for the rest of his life. He had no desire to climb the corporate ladder. He had no thoughts of a better life for himself. While he wasn't quite at peace with his boring, if stable, life, Dan had never thought about changing it. He had no ambition to speak of. None at all.
And thus Dan found the third item for his list: Dan lacks ambition.
He frowned down at his paper, then glanced at a nearby clock. It had taken him nine hours to get this far. No wonder he felt so damn tired.
Self-reflection was difficult at the best of times. Had he sat down and focused, it might have taken Dan a third of the time to get this far. Unfortunately, it seemed as if the internet was a universal concept, and Marcus had several spare computers. A generous portion of his afternoon had been wasted watching cat videos beamed in from across the galaxy in-between his bouts of serene introspection. This was not the recipe for a productive day.
Dan thought for a moment, then scribbled down a fourth item: Dan is easily distracted.
He looked over his list with a satisfied smile. He had honestly accomplished more than he'd expected to. He carefully folded the paper up, and pocketed it. Dan was worn out. He'd had an exhausting day and desperately needed to sleep. He fell into bed, satisfied with himself for the first time in a long while.
Baby steps, Daniel. One at a time, until you've learned how to walk. Running would come later.