Chapter Text
"Ok," Enrique the PR and Branding head said, voice muffled by the hands covering his face as they had been for the last five minutes. "Ok, fine. If this is really as far as we can go to compromise on this, fine. Welcome to the Wards…" He sighed, hands sliding off his and onto his lap, "Dark Smoke Puncher."
"We Gucci fam," I extended a fist, ejecting a plume of mana smoke at the apex of the punch. "Ayyy!"
Enrique rolled his eyes and bumped it. I supposed I could understand the sentiment, five days solid of trying to hash out a Cape identity that was Family Friendly, Marketable and Absolutely Fucking Awesome was even wearing on me a little.
"Now get out. We'll call you when we need you for tailoring your costumes."
Booyah.
I stalked from the room with a flourish of smoke and almost ran headlong into all six point six feet of Armsmaster's power armour.
"Guess who has two thumbs and a new Cape name?" I pointed at myself with said thumbs. "Dark Smoke Puncher!"
"I see you did settle on that name, despite my directions," Armsmaster tried to smile.
"Chyeah," I preened. "Just imagine the headlines! 'Dark Smoke Puncher to be next Triumvirate member?!', 'Dark Smoke Puncher saves America!'"
"So you say," he replied evenly. "But you know, even I had delusions of grandeur in my youth. I quite strongly believed I'd outstrip Hero himself before I realised powers have their limits."
I made a farty noise with my mouth, "yeah nah, give me six, six months and I bet I could beat you up."
"That's not going to happen."
I made chicken noises and after a few seconds, Armsmaster's helmet sprouted several new panels which slid down to cover his mouth, sealing him away from my taunting.
Kawaii as fuck.
"Now come on," he continued, now in a robot voice. "Before your fitness and power testing, the Director wants to greet you."
Half an hour of driving and security checks later I stood in front of The PRT ENE Director Emily Piggot.
She inhaled deeply. "Dark Smoke Puncher. Welcome to the Wards, I hope you don't have any complaints so far?"
"Ummm, not really. I mean the whole PR thing is lame af, but I get you guys have, like, reasons or whatever. And I guess it's also been boring that I've seen like no other heroes yet, and ah…" I shrugged.
"Yes, at least you finally understood why we couldn't have you name yourself The Guy, Kirito or Master Baiter-"
I snorted.
A muscle twitched in Emily's neck. "We have our rules, and you have to follow them even if you don't agree. As for having not seen any of the Protectorate, we had to verify what you told Armsmaster about Tattletale aka. Sarah Livsey. It all checks out, and that's the problem."
"Because of the security risk."
She nodded slowly, "yes, exactly-"
"And you're finally meeting with me because you've decided I'd be able to keep a secret or I'm not an enemy spy or whatever. So you brought me here to give me a stern talking to, bust out the NDA's and possibly threaten me because even despite that I could be an irreparable security leak I'll still have to be in the same room as people eventually and they'd really hate it if I knew their secrets."
Emily frowned.
"I'm very smart," I said smugly.
"You will find you won't get very far with that kind of attitude, Thinker type parahumans tend to have this very problem."
"I haven't even used that though, besides I'm not even a pure thinker. It's like I told Armsmaster, I'm-"
"The Crawler of the Dauntless genre, yes," Emily cut me off. God, how rude. "Which is another thing I'd like to talk about. What exactly do you mean by that?"
I bounced in my seat, I'd been working on a whole bit for this! I stood up and slid the chair aside. When the director opened her mouth to speak I shushed her, rubbed my hands together and winked.
Starting in my Terminator crouch I leapt to my feet, twirling arms swirling smoke. "Gashan!" I struck a JoJo pose of my own creation.
"Unlimited Powah!"
Emily steepled her fingers and watched me silently until the last of the smoke dissipated, "unpack that for me, please."
I sighed and moved my chair back to where it was and plopped into it. Some people just didn't appreciate the classics.
"My progress will go like," I traced a steep upward angle with my finger that slowly curved off into a nearly flat line. "That, with everything I do. Assuming there isn't a level cap somewhere I should just be able to autistically level grind forever, and that's only with the stuff I have now. In a little bit, I'll start getting new powers, which I'll probably have some control over what they are and every time they'll follow that same progression. Can you believe Armsmaster totally didn't believe me when I said I'd be the new Triumvirate member? 'Cause I'm gonna be the very best, like no one ever was. To catch…"
Shit, did my new points in INT not work on improvising song lyrics?
Emily hmmed.
"Anyway," I shrugged. "Power goes up forever."
"We'll soon see, won't we."
Soon? I mean… "Yeah probably."
"In any case," Emily said. "Welcome to the Wards ENE. You were right about why I called you here today. Unless you sign an agreement stating you won't divulge any of the information you read off of people we would have to continue to restrict your access to both The Rig and the PRT building to ensure the privacy of our employees is kept."
"Yeah, no problem, fam," I got up and walked up to the desk as she slid a pen and a sheet of paper laden with text to me. "Just let me read this first."
I speed read the thing. Pretty standard all around, depending on the offence I could be fined or imprisoned and apparently I could sign this even as a minor because of some Cape law. Good shit.
I signed, in big loopy lettering, 'Dark Smoke Puncher'.
"What do you mean your power ate a book?" Armsmaster barked.
"I mean it ate my Japanese textbook!"
"And this is how you learned the language?"
"Obviously," I shook my head in disbelief. "How else would I?"
"Was it automatic?"
"No, that'd be shit design. There was a yes-no popup."
Armsmaster visibly floundered like I hadn't spent ten minutes explaining my power came with a Heads Up Display. "Right then, I'm going to find some books so we can observe this in action. Get back on the treadmill, see if you can gain another 'point' in 'vitality'."
"But running's hard," I whined as he powerwalked out of the room. "Armsmaster!"
"Come on, Dark Smoke, you could do with it anyway," Jed the Power Testing Technician who I wasn't allowed to tell anyone sold weed said. "You've got to be the most unfit kid I've ever seen."
He was right, "But I'm quantifiably twice as smart as them," I grumbled.
"And now you can be twice as fit," he prodded me back over to the Darth Vader Conversion Chamber he called a treadmill. "In you pop."
"Kirai desu," I grumbled, reattaching the electrode patches and setting off into a shambling jog. Oh god, it already hurt to breathe, and people did this for fun? Savages!
I had to give up a few times to avoid puking my lungs out, but eventually, Armsmaster came back with a wagon full of books and Observe… heavy duty tinkertech monitoring equipment.
"Did you get another 'point of VIT'? Never mind, get over here and tell me which books work, don't absorb them! I want to have it all recorded as closely as possible," he began hauling his gear out and hooking it up to the shit they used to monitor my Smoke magic.
I ripped the electrode monitors off, despite Jed's directions, and staggered over to the wagon. I wiped a deluge of sweat from my brow with a thumb and flicked it all over the ground. The books he brought were probably about as varied as he could find on such short notice. Magazines, various genres of novel, a copy of How to Make Friends and Influence People which Observe told me Dragon had bought for his birthday last year; god I totally shipped that.
"This works," I said, holding up How to Sing by Lilli Lehmann. "Doesn't even have a stat requirement."
"As I expected," Armsmaster muttered as he glanced over at me. "Needs to be a concrete, trainable skill. But then why would How to Make Friends not work… I had hoped, blast. Never mind," he raised his voice, "Now get over here and sing directly into the microphone before using the book."
"Any song?"
"Whichever you like, just make sure it's the same one before and after. Jed, please take the regular wavelength monitor."
I took a few deep breaths, yeah I could be an Idoru. I could totally be an Idoru, and for this, I knew just the song.
Armsmaster gave me the signal.
"Somebody once told me-"
For some reason they let me sing the whole fucking thing.
"Like a goose with a head cold," Armsmaster whispered, which like I knew I wasn't very good but ouch. Armsmaster was so mean! "Now hold the book in front of these sensors and ready in three, two, one… Now."
The book exploded into blue shards that quickly disintegrated into golden motes before vanishing completely.
Armsmaster made an annoyed sound, "we'll have to do this again at a later date once I build something to measure whatever energy is being put out. Now sing the song again."