Louisville, Kentucky, December 29th, 04:27.
I used to think of myself, James and Chibi, maybe May too as something of a disjointed, messed up family, but after visiting the Vasil household, I've come to the conclusion that our relationship is basically just normal.
Seriously, it was an effort and a half to keep them from physically trying to kill each other! Jean-Paul kept manipulating his sibling's bodies and Aroa would just blast everyone and then hide behind my legs.
And I did catch what I think was Cherie twisting her sibling's emotions seemingly without much care. It was very funny.
Speaking of Cherie, she seems interesting. Partly just because of her power. It's less potent than her father's but the Thinker aspect makes up for it. Frankly, if I ever find someone who can swap two parahuman's powers, I would be pretty tempted to offer her a trade.
The sheer possibilities that exist when you can not only know the location and feelings of everyone in the entire fucking city but also manipulate all of those emotions nearby.
The games I could play with that power. With a bit of effort, I could probably cause a cascading effect of psychological breaks throughout an entire city! That's like, Simurgh level shit! Not that I could ever match your majesty of course.
Point is, she has potential.
And with Heartbreaker likely to do something rash, she has an opportunity on her hands, the question is whether or not she'll grasp it. Either way, Heartbreaker is fun enough by himself, so I don't mind whatever the result it.
However he's unfortunately far too prideful to accept an invitation to my Clowns. And even if I offered one, that would run completely counter to my own point of him doing whatever he wants by himself. His daughter on the other hand, she'd make a pretty good Clown.
Thoughts for later I suppose.
For now, I have three main things to do, one being to collect a commission from Vendor, and the other, slightly more important part is to visit a certain Toybox.
Well, I say slightly, but visiting those Tinkers was actually sort of a major part of my plans for the next few months, I just kind of forgot.
Isn't it ironic that John's point about me being easily distracted was proven wrong by me getting easily distracted? I was planning to visit Toybox before Heartbreaker after all.
Ah well, it's not too big a deal since he wasn't too far away.
Y'know what, let's actually list things this time, if I at least think the order I need to do things then I'll probably not forget.
First I need to go pick up my dog, then visit Toybox, then Vendor, then I think I'm set for leaving the country properly this time.
Seems simple enough.
Luckily, I know where Cerberus is right now. He got hired to hunt down some weird moving forest thing, because the dude who's power made it swayed some rich dude's daughter into joining him in what is basically a cult, but small scale I guess.
And naturally I have no problem with my dog tearing cultists apart. But he should probably be done with that by now, which places him somewhere in Kentucky.
Which means I've got to portal to Louisville, then wait for either John or Jinx to get back to me about where my dog is, since he's not carrying around a phone or anything, another problem that might get solved at Toybox.
However luck seems to be on my side once more as John soon gets back to me about Cerberus being spotted running around in some forests to the South-East and I decide that this is a good chance to stretch my wings.
So, without bothering with subtlety even slightly, I mind myself climbing up to the top of the tallest building in the city, preparing myself for take-off.
I still haven't really practiced my flying much, but how hard can it be to 'go that way fast?'
"Worst case, I can just kill anyone who sees me eat dirt."
With that in mind, I get myself in a runner's stance and under the light of the night's sky, I bring forth both of my beautiful, majestic wings, each of them pulsing with power ready to be unleashed.
And with a single bound, unleash it I did.
the world behind me atomises as I am blasted forward, immediately breaking the sound barrier and turning into a line of blue-red energy as I soar through the sky.
"WOOOHOOOOO!!!" I scream out as the wind attempts to crush me, but thanks to some quirk of my biology, I don't even have to wear goggles of any kind to enjoy the sight of the world passing below me.
This feeling? Flying? This, is what freedom feels like.
I should get Lucy a jetpack or something while I'm at Toybox. But that's not really the same.
Hmm, there's got to be someone out there that can give parahumans the ability to fly. I'm sure she'd love it.
The only downside of my speed, is that it means I only get to enjoy the flight for about ten minutes before arriving nearby where my dog should be.
Deciding that I might as well test how my durability fairs against my own flight speed, I don't slow down and instead simply change the angle of my flight by almost ninety degrees, pointing straight to the earth.
I want to know just in case someone throws a building or something at me, so I know whether I should avoid it or if I can just fly through. Just because I'm doing something stupid, that doesn't mean there isn't a reason for it.
Anyway, where was I?
Oh, right.
Booooom!
The earth shakes and ruptures, trees are uprooted and reduced to splinters as the force of my landing hits the forest like a meteor.
Meanwhile, I simply lay there in my coffin of rock for a moment, letting the dust settle before climbing back to the surface, dirt and rock not being nearly sturdy enough to lock me in place.
With a simple gesture, I bring a hand to the back of my neck and crack it, observing the scene around me with little more than mild amusement.
"That went better than I thought it would. Didn't even break many bones.~" I probably would have been completely unharmed with my armour out and any damage I did take was gone before I could even really point it out.
So what have we learned?
If someone throws a building at me, I can just fly right at it.
Granted, there's probably something to be said about the difference in materials between a building and dirt, but whatever, caution is so boring anyway.
Now, time to find my dog.
First, I wait a couple of minutes for the after effects of my turbulent landing to calm down, and once it does, I close my eyes and focus on my senses.
My sense of scent and hearing specifically. Both of them are insanely potent, to the point that I feel like having normal human senses again would likely feal like going blind and deaf.
In no time at all, all that exists in my mind is those two senses. The scent of the forest, earthy, filled with gross scents of plants and animals, none of them suited to my palate.
The sounds of trees creaking and falling, thanks to my landing, as well as the rustling of leaves and the cracking of branches following the movement of the various animals. Each of their footfalls I can hear, their laden breathes clear to me as day.
But none of it is what I am looking for, so I tune it out. The leaves, the wind the careless footfalls, and I focus. Until...
Gotcha.
My dog may not be so careless as to make unnecessary noise with his steps, being surprisingly stealthy for his size, but locating him is not too difficult when you simply consider one thing.
An animal's instincts are sharp, and any that sense him know to keep their distance. So all I have to listen for is a ripple of noise, a ripple of fleeing animals with Cerberus at it's centre.
However I still don't care to attempt any stealth of my own, so I simply turn to face his direction and bring my wings back out.
Looking at the dense thicket of trees before me, I believe that it's time to test that earlier theory out.
With a thundering boom, I launch myself forward, moving in a straight line for my dog, crushing every tree that tries to stand in my way, and with the speed I'm traveling, it only takes me about a dozen or so seconds before I can smell him, and even less time before he is right in front of me.
Naturally, I don't slow down or make any attempt to move out of the way, simply choosing to barrel into him instead, sending the both of us tumbling for hundreds of feet.
"Who's a good doggy!~" I exclaim once we stop rolling, manoeuvring myself to be above him so I can give him some good scritches.
He returns the favour by spitting acid in my face.
How rude, now we're both naked.
"What was that for?~" I ask with a pout as he gets to his feet, throwing me off of him.
"Nice tattoos," he grumbles in response, not answering the question but successfully distracting me anyway as I twist and pose to show them all off.
"You like them?~ I made them myself!~" I exclaim with pride, happy with how the designs turned out.
"They suit you. Now whaddaya want?" He asks, reminding me that I'm here for a reason.
"Oh right! I'm gonna go get my head cut open by a stranger so they can mess around with my brain," I say with a straight face, making Cerberus look at me like I'm an idiot, which prompts me to continue, "but obviously I want some insurance, so I figured I'd bring you along and that way if they do anything untoward that you can kill them all, or maybe die, who knows with Tinkers right?~"
Typically the chance of death would deter people from accepting an invitation but, like clockwork, Cerberus simply gets excited instead.
"When?" He simply asks, his weird tentacle things wagging in what I assume is excitement.
"Now," I answer before realising that he can't fly like I can.
...If he just runs with me on top of him acting like a jetpack, I'm sure we'll get back to Louisville quick enough.
Forty minutes later and I'm not entirely sure if using me as a jetpack got us here any faster. Because while yes, it did make us faster, it also caused us to keep crashing, so it kind of cancels out.
And now I need a bath because I am covered in dirt and my hair is a mess.
One interesting thing did happen once we arrived at the city's outskirts, relatively well hidden with the sun still not having risen, and that is that we got to see a lot of flashing lights in the form of emergency service vehicles.
Just from a quick look as we made our way to the local arcade, it seems that one of the skyscrapers blew up or something and fell on some other buildings, causing a little bit of chaos, some property damage and a couple corpses.
The heroes even seemed to be in full swing helping the emergency services with relief efforts, and I guess it is nice to see that the ol' tax dollar is being put to good use.
I sure do hope they catch whoever was responsible for that.
Ahem.
Anywho, time to go.
Thanks to Stacy, I happen to know exactly where Toybox is currently staying, so all that's left is to give them a visit while walking my dog, then I can actually put my holiday abroad into swing.
=================
A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!
I completely forgot that I planned for Lusia to visit Toybox before leaving the country, but whatever, it all works out I guess.
Also, the chap may be worse than usual, but I'm tired cuz I'm visiting my dad and he's making me get up early to do work. Took everything out of his shed (a lot of shit) and put it back in but neater, also finished building my grandad's patio, something we started years ago but apparently he will only continue building it when I'm visiting for some fucking reason.
On the upside, I got a nice new backpack which will be important for certain future canon events of my life
also for some reason when I use italics now it puts a double space before it, idk why
(5+)Advanced chapters with the links below!
pat/reon.com/user?u=41732867 (get rid of the first slash or check the description)
Also, join the discord with this invite code! Pj3Dttwses
Some Desert, Nebraska, December 29th, 09:09.
I have discovered yet another issue that I simply forgot to think about.
See, I've been running around in this desert with my dog for at least an hour by now, but there is one vital thing I forgot to consider when searching for a giant invisible cube filled with Tinkers.
Namely, that it is invisible.
So while I am sure that it's in the general area, it's not like they're just gonna open up and invite me in, that would defeat the whole purpose of hiding away like rats.
Ah fuck it.
With a disgruntled shrug, I force a ball of blood out of my chest, about the size of a volleyball. I almost call out to Cerberus to duck before remembering that there's no point and simply throw the sphere into the air above me instead.
I let it arc for a bit, but once it is about fifty metres in the air, I send a thought to my disconnected blood, and with a light bang, the ball explodes into tiny but sharp shards, sending thousands of needles piercing the surrounding land.
Naturally, being the idiot I am, I was staring right at the ball when it exploded, so one of my eyes also got needled.
Ow.
Yanking the needle out, I observe my surroundings with one eye, the other now being on a conveniently sized kebab stick.
Everywhere around me is a field of small, dark red spikes. All except for one spot a small distance away. Well, small for me. Over there, my needles instead seem to have bounced off of an invisible wall, spreading out some hardly perceivable ripples seemingly in the air.
Popping my eye in my mouth like a lollipop, I turn both of my eyes to the invisible wall and smile over my snack.
"Found ya,~" I say, my voice a playful singsong.
However, as soon as I start in the direction of the forcefield, a sudden gust of wind blows past me, likely the result of a large object suddenly attempting to fly away if the dust patterns are anything to go by.
"Oh no you don't.~"
========
Many people have wonders as to the nature of the ever elusive Toybox before, yet very few have any idea what it is like, even fewer still those who are not also Tinkers.
The Toybox is a megastructure. A perfect cube over a thousand metres wide and long, filled with such a diverse plethora of technology that even Dragon would blush upon seeing it all.
However, despite the vast swathes of technology, each piece decades to centuries more advanced than what the human race is currently capable of, the Tinkers who dwell inside are not feeling the level of security that they should.
They are surrounded by uncountable weapons, from guns to lasers to tech that manipulates space and time, even a massive forcefield that surrounds the structure, granting not only invisibility but also protection strong enough to withstand a nuclear bomb or two.
However, despite all of that, none of them feel safe as they gather in the control room, sweating nervously as they stare at the various monitors depicting the outside desert.
Or, more importantly, the infamous pair wandering said desert seemingly aimlessly.
Their defences are secure, yes, but their greatest defence has always been that no one could find them, and even if they could fight against the duo outside, what would be the point?
As an enclave of Tinkers, they are naturally well informed, and anyone who knows anything is well aware that both of the Monsters outside of their door are nigh unstoppable by themselves.
Pair them together and all they can do is stay quiet and hope they give up and leave.
"Do you think they'll leave?" One of the eight Tinkers present, Clockwork, says, his voice wavering and filled with nerves.
"I don't know," the current most senior member, Pyrotechnical, responds, studying the monitors with the same intensity as everyone else.
"Do you think they're here for us?" Clockwork asks again, seemingly dealing with his nerves by asking questions.
"I don't know," Pyrotechnical responds again, a growing irritation starting to overshadow his nervousness.
The duo outside seem to pause, the scarier of the two, Tear, seeming to give up, giving the group of Tinkers some hope.
"What would they even want with us?" Clockwork asks again, pushing Pyrotechnical over the edge with his pointless questions.
"I DON'T FUCKING KNOW!" He yells, turning to his fellow Tinker, "I'M WATCHING THE SAME SHIT AS YOU! I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING YOU DON'T SO STOP ASKING ME!"
"Uh, Pyro?" The nervous voice of the second most Junior member, Keeper speaks up, drawing Pryotechnical's irate attention to herself.
"WHAT!" He yells as he turns to her, to worked up by Clockwork's incessant questioning to control his voice, only for his face to falter as he witnesses the expressions of everyone else in the room.
With robotic movements, he turns his head back to the monitors, following Keeper's shaky finger to see what she is pointing at.
It seems that Tear, still a decent distance away, has conjured some sort of ball in front of her and thrown it into the sky.
Before anyone can even begin to question the orb's purpose, it explodes in the sky, sending fragments scattering throughout the area, and a separate monitor helpfully informs them all of an impact on their shields.
"Shit." None of them know who said it, but they all agree with the sentiment as the madwoman's blazing red eyes snap in their direction.
"UP! UP! GO UP!" Pyrotechnical yells out, but Big Rig was already smashing commands into the console before he even spoke, having the same thought.
However, it seems that their efforts were pointless as the megastructure they call sanctuary proves entirely incapable of escaping the Clown.
They barely make it a dozen feet off the ground before the woman had launched herself at them, impacting the barrier feet first, following which a torrent of blood explodes out of her body, forming numerous tendrils that each turn back to dig into the earth.
At the same time, either by chance or design, the woman's madly grinning face happens to land right in front of one of the cameras, allowing for everyone in the room to get a clear view of her fingernails growing, seemingly covered in a layer of bloody distortion.
With her new weapons, Tear does not hesitate to slam her hand into the forcefield, piercing through it as if it was warm butter and grabbing a hold of the true structure within, after which even more blood pours out of the woman, forming even more tendrils that each dig into the vast surface of the cube.
The collective of Tinkers can only ignore the flashing lights warning of the shield integrity lowering and watch with gape jaws as the insane Clown proceeds to do the impossible.
With a might heave and an explosion of blue energy the woman reels back, dragging the entire Toybox back down to the earth like it isn't the size of a small city.
"This isn't possible." A voice complains before the room is shaken by a mighty crash!
There are enough stabilisers built into the building that the room doesn't shake them too much, but the shock at the display of strength they just witnessed in combination is enough to knock a few of the weaker willed members to the ground, which is to say all of them.
"D-do you-" Clockwork starts, only to be cut of by Pyrotechnical.
"I swear to fucking god Clock, if you don't shut the fuck up..." He lets the threat linger, not because he didn't have a threat in mind, but because of what is happening on the screens before them.
The woman who just pulled them out of the sky is standing on the ground once more, her face inches away from one of the cameras as she knocks on the walls.
"Helloooo?~ I am looking to purchase goods and engage in commerce.~ Can you please let me in?~ Pretty please?~" As much as her words are phrased like a question, it's clear to them all that there is only one real response.
"W-what do we do?" The newest member, Augment, asks, having only joined up two weeks ago.
"Isn't that obvious?" Glace responds, her voice almost as cold as her specialty, "we do what she says and hope that she doesn't do anything worse than rob us."
======
What's taking so looooooong.~
I just want to purchase wares and maybe make a deal or two, why did they have to try running away?
Shouldn't they be inviting new business in, instead of trying to leave?
Unless maybe they just didn't see us here? In that case, it's a good thing I got hold of them before they accidentally left.
...Ah, who am I kidding. Just because I don't want to accept it, that doesn't mean I should ignore it. They were just running away from me.
How annoying. There are downsides to being so renown I guess, people just see you and give up.
It sucks.
I wonder if Eidolon gets it? He's the strongest after all, maybe all he really wants is a good fight, to stretch his muscles for once. Then again, he is a boring hero, despite being powerful enough he could easily take over a country and rule as king, which is what any sane person would do with his power.
"Her Cerberus, do you think they're gonna let us in or should we just prove that we're not vampires and go in without an invitation?~" I ask, but Cerberus looks at me like I didn't just ask a perfectly reasonable question.
However, before I can answer my own question, the wall in front of me folds away into itself, forming a rather large doorway that reveals seven figures, which is odd, since I smell eight.
But that curiosity is answered as the wall continues to fold away until I am given a clear sight of what is undoubtably a giant ass robot suit, like, the size of a building big.
Eh, it's honestly not as impressive as I thought it'd be, probably just because of all the shit I've already seen. Still cool though, but I'm more interested in looking at Stacy, who seems particularly nervous even among her quivering fellows.
It's almost like she's hiding something from them or something, such as being the cause of my visit, but that would just be silly.~
I'm also not at all surprised that they're all pussies, because nerds, obviously. I bullied enough of them in high school to know that they don't grow any balls until they start making 80k a year.
Well, that's what my mom said, I never actually met any techies that made that much, so I can't be sure.
I got distracted, where was I?
"I assure you, there is no need for violence, Miss Tear," some woman says, her cold tone almost hiding the fear wafting from her, "we are fully willing to cooperate, just tell us what you are looking for and we will se what we can do."
Haaah, sometimes I wish things will go back to how they were, before I was super cool and powerful. Back when no one knew me or respected me, because this is just boring.
I don't want you to just bend over and give me whatever I want! That's boring.
Trying to push past that, I give them all a cheerful smile as I respond.
"Mah mah, you say that like I'm robbing you!~ I'm just here for business, same as anyone else you deal with.~ That being said, mind if we go inside se we can talk shop?~"
Predictably and annoyingly, my words completely fail to disrupt the tense atmosphere, and despite following after them with a completely relaxed gait, both of my hands in my pockets and doing my best to seem harmless, they only seem to grow more afraid.
I don't get it, I just can't win.
If I try and scare them they shake like leaves in the wind, but if I try and appear harmless then they get even more scared?
Like, I get the logic of the whole, 'it's scary because it doesn't seem scary but can still kill us' but what the hell am I supposed to do for them to not be afraid of me?
Well, I could probably work it out, but not on a first meeting.
How annoying.
Oh well, I'll just get what I want and leave then. Fighters are more fun than Tinkers. They at least have some balls.
=================
A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!
Unga bunga Lusia is learning the downsides of being terrifying. And yeah, her acting like a completely normal person makes her waaaaay scarier. Think Homelander right? He's scary cuz he just seems like a dude until you look into his eyes and there's just something wrong about him.
Also, Toybox in canon lives in a seperate dimension, but the guy who made that was 12 in canon which would make him 9-10 right now, so I figure he'll trigger in like a year, and have taken creative liberty to what the toybox is gonna be like before then.
More on that next chap prolly.
(5+)Advanced chapters with the links below!
pat/reon.com/user?u=41732867 (get rid of the first slash or check the description)
Also, join the discord with this invite code! Pj3Dttwses
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