Bryce Kiley
2010, December 17: Brockton Bay, NH, USA
Coil was a pain, but one that was largely out of my hair now. I'd spent all night cleaning up after him. Even with SAINT's help, there was almost too much to do. I had to make sure that the worst of his mercenaries were arrested, disarm his physical failsafes, take stock of any hard copies of his records, and make sure none of the tinkertech he'd purchased from Toybox went "missing."
Thankfully, he'd yet to reach out to the Travelers, so with the Undersiders in PRT custody, he didn't have any cape muscle that could cause future problems. Trainwreck didn't count; the guy was barely in Coil's orbit.
But that was all over now. With that whole mess handled, I allowed myself to relax and slept in until ten in the morning. I then spent a lazy afternoon with Sierra. The two of us ended up bingeing a full season of her favorite medical drama, one of those with unreasonably pretty nurses and barely coherent diagnoses a child could pick apart with a minute of thought.
It was cancer. It was always fucking cancer.
I felt a little indignant, like the screenwriters had personally insulted my previous life's profession, but it was the nice kind of indignance, one with a hefty dose of catharsis. Sometimes, it felt fantastic to get irrationally angry at nothing of substance.
After a late lunch of tomato bisque and grilled cheese sandwiches, I bid my sister goodbye and headed out to the sea. There was one thing I'd noticed from last night that I was dissatisfied with: my inorganic alchemy.
In a word, I sucked. I had plenty of examples to draw from. Alfonse repaired a mangled radio with some chalk and a clap of his hands. Edward could make cannons, polearms, and whatever else he needed on the fly. Major Armstrong could shape stone into drills and launch them with his punches.
I… could make dirt walls. Granted, those walls had proven very useful last night, but I'd noticed just how bad my control was compared to those experts.
A part of the reason for this was my utterly lackluster foundation in the material sciences. I had a respectable background in biology and medicine. I used my past life's memories to supplement the notes of organic alchemists, to bridge the gap in understanding to achieve something approaching true mastery. That wasn't an option with the material sciences.
It wasn't like I didn't understand basic physics, both the One Piece and Air Gear specializations relied fairly heavily on the discipline, but there was a slight disconnect. The knowledge, though present, didn't really feel like mine. I suspected it would take me far longer than a month to fully internalize the knowledge I'd gained.
The result was that I felt rather clumsy with inorganic alchemy. I'd made sure I could transmute one thing into another, if for no other reason than because it was a massive tinkering hack, but doing it with any sort of speed in battle was beyond me. Making walls and pillars out of whatever material I could touch was about as much as I could manage within a few seconds. I wouldn't want to rely on it in any serious confrontation.
So, I did the only thing I could: I practiced. I had SAINT lead me to an abandoned island around the Nova Scotia region and began to mold dirt.
"Sand castle building contest," I challenged SAINT. "I'm restricted to just alchemy. You're only allowed to use barriers to shape the sand, no Psychic."
"Gon? Porygon-gon?" he trilled.
"Afterwards, we'll take turns chucking rocks at each other's castles. Whoever lasts the longest is the winner. Deal?"
"Pory." An image of a mystery box appeared on my UI. Then, cliparts of many nuts were dropped into it.
"You want me to make you a genetically altered snack nut?"
"Pory."
"Deal. If you win, I'll tinker up the ultimate snack nut for you, SAINT. You can pick whichever combination you want," I promised. I had a feeling that if there was such a thing as the mathematically perfect honeyed almond, my little buddy would find it.
He chirped and trilled in excitement before heading off to the other side of the beach. Hexagonal barriers formed around him and began to pack the gravelly sand of Nova Scotia into bricks. Clearly, I'd made an eager rival for myself.
Chuckling, I slipped on Major Armstrong's gloves and punched the earth. The beach sand here was nothing like the smooth, fine grains found in luxury resorts. It was coarse and miserable, but that was what made it perfect for packing with alchemy.
I fused the bricks into sandstone and began to shape the walls, raising them with my tech rather than my hands. The game was on.
X
The game was off.
In preparation for SAINT's barrage, I'd constructed a full-blown star fort. Its walls were four feet high, tall enough for me to crouch behind as cover. The walls had been transmuted into something closer to granite than sandstone and I was sure it could take more than a few hits from SAINT.
Unfortunately, we'd never get to find out. An honest-to-Truth grapeshot cannonball, straight out of the Age of Sail, hammered into my not-really-a-sandcastle-anymore castle. It struck with enough force to pulverize the outer wall and collapse the central keep.
Dust showered me like snow. I stared dumbfounded at the remnants of an entire afternoon's worth of work (dicking around). SAINT stared at me, then at the cause with bewildered exasperation. Something like this wasn't anywhere near enough to break my force field.
Off in the distance, about seven hundred yards from shore, was a wooden galleon, scaled down such that one man might reasonably sail it. It was also blasting a pirate sea shanty at an obnoxiously loud volume.
The ship glided across the water, seemingly unaffected by the choppy waves. On the prow was a cape dressed in a classic pirate's outfit. He even had a tricorn hat and an admittedly well-groomed mustache. At his hip was an ornate cutlass.
The man-sized galleon slid to shore, with zero regard for potentially grounding it. Judging by the way the ship sailed and the black powder cannon that demolished my fort, I labeled him as a fellow tinker.
He took a swig from a flask that was undoubtedly alcoholic and hopped off his ship. With a confident swagger, he sauntered up to the wreckage of my castle, pulled out his cutlass, and aimed it at my chest.
"Yarr, who be buildin' a fort in Captain Morgan's waters?" he growled. Now that he mentioned it, he looked exactly like the rum mascot, red coat and all. I suspected I knew what was in his flask.
"SAINT, I'm not hallucinating, am I?" I asked quietly, external mic off. "There's a rum mascot pointing his cutlass at me?"
"Gon," he affirmed. On my UI, the brand's logo popped up so I could compare the two for myself.
"Well, fuck me, a Shard bonded to an alcoholic pirate LARPer," I swore. Then, out loud, I introduced myself. "My name is Creed. You're a bit far from the Caribbean."
"Vikings were the first pirates and they landed on Nova Scotia before those posers found Cuba," he snapped, his ridiculous accent gone for the moment. I was only a mediocre student of history, but I was quite certain almost everything he said was wrong.
Still, I remained patient. "Whatever. You could have seriously hurt someone. What would you have done if I wasn't durable enough to handle a cannonball?"
"Yarr, toss ye in the sea fer chum!"
"And how are you a captain? You don't even have a crew."
"I don't need a crew, laddie. A good captain needs but his ship an' his rum!"
"No, I'm quite sure that's not what the word 'captain' means."
"It matters not," he snarled. He swung his cutlass violently to the side, making a satisfying whistling of air. For all that his ship and cannon was bullshit, his cutlass was utterly mundane. Zooming in, I could see the laser-cut watermark of the manufacturer on the blade, made in Florida apparently. "Drop all yer valuables an' pray I don't make ye walk the plank… yarr."
I stared at him incredulously. "You forgot to punctuate your sentence with 'yarr,' didn't you?"
"I did not… yarr."
"You did."
"Did not."
"Did too."
"Did not."
"Did too."
"I don't care! Give me yer booty or I'll have yer guts for garters!" he shouted, cutlass swinging frantically.
He must have had some kind of control module, because his ship came alive. Its cannon, just one big one because a man-sized galleon didn't have room for a row of them, twisted my way. Up close, I could see that the cannon had been designed to look primitive, but actually had a sophisticated power system and was bolted to the deck.
I gave up. By this point, I'd developed a migraine completely unrelated to his earlier cannonfire. I just wanted to practice my alchemy, build a sandcastle, and have some best duck bonding time. Clearly, that was too much to ask for because Earth-Bet was an absolute shithole even this far out into bumfuck nowhere.
"Fuck this. I'm arguing with an imbecile," I groaned. Then, I had a wicked, horrible idea. It was sadistic, but I wanted this idiot to suffer as much as the headache he'd given me. I said slyly, "SAINT, I guess I can't make you your glorious, mathematically perfect snack nuts. We'll never know who might have won because he broke my sandcastle."
"Gon?" SAINT trilled in alarm. He stared at me, at my ruined sandcastle, then at "Captain" Morgan. "Pory… Pory-gon…?"
"Yup. I mean, we can't settle our bet and it's about time to go home for dinner. Too bad, I was going to propose a challenge to Amy, too. Imagine, two mathematically perfect snack nuts made by me and Amy."
"Pory…"
I could see the currents of electricity forming around SAINT in a menacing corona. What with his recent evolution, he had so much to work on. I didn't know who this Captain Morgan fellow was, but he was probably a villain, or a deeply irresponsible rogue. Either way, he'd just volunteered to be SAINT's practice dummy.
I dusted myself off and skated into the air. Whoever he was, I could settle the score with the nearest PRT branch when SAINT finished expressing his displeasure. Meanwhile, I intended to sit back and watch the pretty colors.
X
2010, December 18: Brockton Bay, NH, USA
Turned out, Captain Morgan was wanted for several counts of murder. I wasn't the first person he'd fired on, and most people didn't have multiple layers of force fields or a stone fort to tank the bulk of the blast for them.
After SAINT finished teaching the idiot important life lessons, I took his charred husk to the nearest PRT branch, which turned out to be a small office in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Ever since the PRT expanded to Canada, they'd endeavored to set up an office in every region and province, but that didn't mean every office was well-staffed or defended. Captain Morgan had been treating the nearby waters like his personal fiefdom, living out his pirate fantasies while being just not threatening enough to be worth a greater hero's time.
Nova Scotia really was that much of a backwater. What with the remnants of Newfoundland being its direct neighbor, no one especially enjoyed living there.
In the end, what had started as a training exercise had turned into my first, non-endbringer related international deployment. I would forever have to live with the fact that this fuckwit was my first international arrest. When people looked up my records, they were going to think I went to Nova Scotia, the frozen asscrack of nowhere, just to hunt down this Jack Sparrow wannabe.
SAINT and I mutually agreed that Amy didn't need to know about this.
I knocked my head into a shower tile. Even after a good night's sleep, I was still annoyed with him. Alas, I could only console myself with the look of abject grief on his face when I Bubblegum Crisis'd his precious galleon into so much waterlogged scrap.
Still, I had bigger distractions: Today was the eighteenth. More specifically, today was Saturday, the fourth Saturday since my previous specialization. I awoke to dozens of ideas for new inventions, each zanier than the last.
Collectively, they were a bizarre mix of what could best be called spy gadgets and over the top, evil genius inventions. I now knew how to build altogether too many flavors of raygun, a weaponized fart dispenser, and… robots shaped like cookies…
Despicable Me. My next specialization was Despicable Me. It was like my power was mocking me for that joke of an encounter yesterday with this joke of a franchise.
I got out of the shower and toweled off. I would have loved something with a bit more oomph, but maybe I was being greedy. It wasn't as though Despicable Me had nothing for me to consider. That setting was one in which villains fought against the Anti-Villain League with wacky gadgets. In a word, they were super-spies.
If nothing else, I could build an arsenal of self-defense items for the people in my life who needed protection. And, I was a hero now. I couldn't just go around blowing people up with my Walker Pistol and Muggy Ball bullets, nor did I want to. As a children's cartoon, Despicable Me certainly had no shortage of nonlethal incapacitation methods.
Yes, maybe the specialization wasn't as much of a dud as I'd first assumed. I'd been something of a joke villain anyway, why not bring a bit of levity to heroism as well?
As always, the first thing I did was make sure that I remembered everything I'd learned in my previous specialization. Once I'd done that, I made a list of every gadget that might be worth having. I only needed to make one of each. After that, I could leave the management of the production line to SAINT.
First on my list were the cookie-bots. In the first movie, Gru, the main character, used these to infiltrate his archnemesis' base. He "adopted" three orphan girls and had them sell robots disguised as Girl Scout cookies to Vector, said nemesis.
The robots were genuinely impressive pieces of tech. When idle, they looked exactly like cookies, so much so that Vector took a bite out of one without noticing. When active, they unfolded spider-like limbs that could be used to crawl up vertical surfaces and a powerful scanning suite that allowed them to find Vector's hidden vault almost instantly.
They were also capable of acting with some autonomy. A full squad of six managed to sneak through Vector's home and deactivate both his perimeter and vault security systems. They even came with powerful laser cutters that could sear their way through several inches of steel and solder their entry shut afterwards.
Really, these things were better than the vast majority of tinkertech on Earth-Bet. And, considering that the "cookie" in "cookie-bot" was just aesthetic window dressing, there was no reason I couldn't make them look like anything at all.
"SAINT, the first thing I thought to do when I realized I could make espionage drones indistinguishable from cookies was that I could slowly replace everything Amy owns with increasingly elaborate robots to fuck with her," I admitted with a chuckle. "Am I a bad person?"
"Porygon," he trilled, a note of bemused condemnation in his voice. "Gon. Pory. Porygon."
"Yeah, you're right. It'd be funnier if I did that to Kid Win. He'll freak out whenever he figures it out, but he can keep the robots and it should give him plenty of ideas for his modularity speciality."
"Gon…"
"You know, these would be an excellent excuse to help explain why I know so much about everyone. Sure, the heroes would all be paranoid as hell around me, but it's not like they weren't already, what with The GOAT being a mysterious thinker and one of the PRT consultants going mysteriously missing a few days ago."
"Porygon? Gon?"
"Detectors, you're right. I shouldn't release these out into the wild until I'm sure I can detect my own robots. These aren't tinkertech in the normal, Shard-backed blackboxed sense. There's a chance someone can reverse engineer these to use them against me. Either that, or they'll try to make their own police state and I can't have that."
"Gon."
"Yeah, thanks, bud. What would I do without you?"
"Pory."
"Hey, now. I wouldn't replace you with a volleyball with a face painted on it like a friendless loser… probably."
He snorted skeptically, the traitor. I wasn't sure how a balloon duck managed that, but he did.
My first creation decided, I got to work designing prototypes. I had to take into account Big Rig's fabricators; the more work I could offload to them, the better.
Then, around eleven-thirty in the morning, I received an unexpected call from Eric Pelham of all people.
"Hello? Hey, Bryce, how's winter break?" he asked, a little nervously.
"Yo. I'm doing pretty well. What's up?"
"Not much. Do you want to hang out? A few of the guys are at my house. Come over and play some video games."
I hadn't thought Eric Pelham and I were especially close, but maybe he thought differently. He'd always been a friendly sort so maybe a handful of interactions was all it took for him to call me a friend. Then again, we'd also known each other since elementary school so it wasn't like we were strangers.
"Sure, but why?" I asked.
"I'm bored to tears, man. Grace is off practicing for a winter orchestra thing so I can't bug her or she'll get mad."
"Karate. Orchestra. You are dating the most stereotypical Asian girl I know."
"She's great, huh?" he said happily. "Athletic, talented, smart…"
"You've got it bad."
"I do. Anyway, come entertain me. It's me, Keith, and Sam right now. We could use a fourth for games."
I rolled my eyes but cracked a smile. I slid over my plans to SAINT. He could start the parts fabrication using the metal collected by my drones. "You know what? Sure, I have time to kill."
"Awesome! What do you like on your pizza?"
"Pineapple."
"Heathen."
"The tears of orphans."
"That's better. Seriously though."
"Pineapple."
"Dude, and you wonder why you have no friends."
"Fine, fine. Roasted red peppers?"
"Ooh, I'll get one with Italian sausage, roasted peppers, and jalapenos. Keith and Sam have a meat lover's. Sounds good?"
"That works. Where do you live again?"
He gave me the address. "It's like two blocks away from Amy's place."
"Just looked it up. I see it. Alright, I'll be by in half an hour."
"Sweet, see you, man."
X
I approached the Pelham house with a six pack of root beer. Mom found out and said I shouldn't visit empty-handed. It wasn't much, but I doubted coming over with my latest batch of baconions would go over well so these would have to do.
The Pelham residence was pretty, in that manicured way that made me think someone got paid too little to trim an eighth of an inch of grass twice a week. I didn't know what the couple did for their day jobs, but the garage door was halfway open and there were no cars so I could only assume they were out.
It was a kind of easygoing confidence that was foreign to most of the city. Brockton Bay wasn't exactly a "love thy neighbor" kind of place and I could only imagine that the kind of freedom to leave their garage open came with being outed capes.
Yes, there was the Fleur incident, but an assassination was admittedly different from casual burglary. I wondered if Lung also left his car keys out just to see which moron dared touch them.
Or maybe, Eric was supposed to close the garage all the way and would get in trouble when his parents got home.
I snorted in amusement. I'd clearly spent too much time as Creed if I was standing in the Pelhams' front yard, overanalyzing a slightly open garage door. One of these days, I'd pull a Lisa and start building personality profiles based on people's muffin choices. When that day came, SAINT had orders to Thunderbolt my noggin and zap the stupid out.
The door opened to reveal a smiling, blue-haired boy. Eric waved me in, game controller in hand and grease stains already leaving prints on the plastic.
"Hey, you're here!" he cheered. "Good, these assholes can stop ganging up on me. Keith! Sam! Bryce is here!"
I chuckled awkwardly. "Would it be bad if I said I have no idea who they are?"
"Dude, seriously? They're in our year."
"Dead serious."
"We all have PE together."
"Umm…"
"Never mind. I swear, your social circle is the size of a Cheerio," he grumbled. "Come on in, and for the love of God, make some friends, Bryce."
"I'm not that bad," I defended. It sounded weak even to me. I just realized that this may have been the popular kid reaching out to the loner.
Keith and Sam were waiting for us in the den. They had the TV on and a game console plugged in, playing the latest edition of Hero Smash. Seeing it reminded me why I wasn't as into video games as I used to be in my past life.
It was, as best as I could tell, the PRT's Super Smash analog. Most of the characters were just reskins of Nintendo's best characters, so much so that they all had the same combos and Smash moves. Fox McCloud? Miss Militia with a handgun. She made a fuck-massive bazooka instead of the Landmaster. Roy? Chevalier. Link? Mouse Protector. Mewtwo? Myrddin.
Really, the only characters with original movesets seemed to be the Triumvirate, Narwhal, and Chubster for some weird reason. How he got onto the roster was anyone's guess. The Triumvirate were, naturally, overpowered as fuck and "Final Destination, no Trio, no items" was the standard "Fight me, bitch," of Earth-Bet.
This was the problem with video game culture, or culture as a whole, on Earth-Bet. Practically everything revolved around superheroes. Sure, a few indie titles existed, but if it was intended to make money, it had to be hero-themed. It was uncanny, and honestly a bit much.
I wondered how much it annoyed Aleph-Nintendo to know that Earth-Bet had its version of their flagship games, just with comically bad reskins. What were they going to do? File an interdimensional copyright suit?
We played a few rounds and I tried not to let them catch on that I had no idea which one was Sam and which one was Keith.
"This is bullshit," Eric grumbled after my Miss Militia juggled his Legend. Fox did that. Apparently, so could MM. "You don't even like video games. How are you winning?"
"Skill diff. Git gud, hero-boy," I replied smugly. I didn't play much in this life. Uncanny valley or not, Super Smash was ubiquitous and Fox was my go-to. Well, that, and I had the Twinkle Eye and supernaturally good hand-eye coordination and reaction time. Eric had about as much chance of beating me in a fighting game as beating Vicky in arm-wrestling.
"Heh, he was looking forward to having someone he could beat," one of the two said. Keith… maybe…
One of these days, I'd care enough to remember, but that day wasn't today.
Author's Note
Can you tell I was drunk when I wrote this chapter?
Yes, I rolled for this. Yes, Despicable Me. No, I haven't seen Despicable Me 3 or Minions. No, I won't torture myself with the rest of the franchise; may Lord Wiki deliver me from that hell.
Yes, everything is up for grabs from any movie, with one exception: In the Minions movie, one of the exhibits at Villaincon (yeah, that's a thing there) was a time machine. I'm nixing that as an option. Time travel makes every story worse.
On the plus side, it fits well thematically. Sure, there are plenty of more powerful settings, but having a month for Bryce to collect himself, deal with his relational challenges, and master what he has isn't the worst thing in the world.
Thank you to everyone who paid for my groceries. I have a Patreon and Kofi with dozens of chapters written across my various stories. If you'd like to read ahead, receive more frequent updates, vote in monthly polls or even commission a chapter directly, check them out.