I just stood there for a second, staring at the glowing tattoos on my arm and poking the still-warm bullet like maybe it would do another trick. Nothing. Then divine clarity hit me like a truck.
"I'm gonna be late."
I scrambled to my feet, kicked the bullet under a nearby trash bin for safekeeping, and broke into a dead sprint toward work. The whole glowing-like-a-rave-stick thing? Minor detail. At least until I noticed the stares. Wide eyes, double takes, whispers.
I shrugged it off and kept running.
Not like I've got anybody for them to threaten me with. Gramps was the last, and he'd passed almost two years ago, just after I started high school.
I tried my best not to slam into anyone, but the further I ran, the thicker the crowd got. It was either slow down or start bowling people over.
Instead, I went with the mysterious third option. Instinct kicked in, and I yanked on the same thread of power I'd used to stop the bullet.
The world slipped sideways. Colors drained into monochrome, sounds warped into distant echoes, and my body… wasn't solid anymore. I knew, because some poor bastard walked straight through me like I was a hologram.
I just shrugged. Intangible now? Cool. I leaned into it, phased through the worst of the crowd, and popped out the other side without breaking stride.
I heard a few shouts as I phased through people, but I was in too much of a hurry to care. (Other than making sure I hadn't accidentally hurt anyone — priorities, after all.) Once I cleared the crowd, I let the power slip from my fingers and slammed back into real space.
The wave of sensation staggered me, but I didn't slow down. If anything, I sped up — dipping back into that phase state in short bursts whenever someone got in my way.
That's when I saw him. A kid, too close to the road — shoved there, or just clueless, I couldn't tell. Time stretched again, not as hard as before but enough to make my stomach lurch. A car barreled toward him.
I yanked on the thread, desperate, praying for another miracle. And just like before, the power answered.
I felt it this time — the weight of a phantom hand in mine. I willed it forward, and a golden-tinged blue arm burst from the asphalt, scooping the kid up and out of harm's way like it was the most natural thing in the world.
It was that act — yanking a kid out of the way of a speeding car with a magic arm made of neon fire — that made something very obvious click in my head.
"...Why the hell am I going to work?"
I froze mid-stride, making sure the kid was okay before letting the question really settle in.
I was a parahuman. If I needed money, I could just join the heroes and get paid to do what I was already planning to do: help people.
That thought hit me harder than the bullet-that-never-was. With a grin, I spun on my heel, turned my back on the office, and started walking home instead.
Line break
"Okay, easy, easy…" I muttered, tongue poking out as I concentrated on powers I'd had for all of maybe an hour. The spectral arm shimmered in front of me, holding a book aloft while I tried to lock it to my real arm so I could move it around.
No luck.
My focus slipped, and I yelped as the book tumbled out of my grasp. It hit the floor with a crash loud enough to rattle the ceiling below. The neighbors immediately responded with the classic bang bang bang of a broom handle and a muffled "Shut the hell up!"
"Yeah, yeah, love you too," I muttered.
Deciding I'd had enough playing with my powers, I instead moved on to… playing with my powers. Different kind this time. I dragged out an old, half-forgotten notebook from before I dropped out and started scribbling blueprints. Junk-class stuff, nothing fancy. A shield rig I might actually be able to cobble together out of spare parts and stubborn optimism.
After about thirty, maybe forty minutes, I had a design sketched out. Sure, it looked like a claptrap (…what even is a claptrap?) had drunken hate-sex with a garbage disposal, and then the mutant lovechild got dunked in industrial-grade nitric acid—but hey, it worked. Probably.
If the math wasn't lying to me, the thing could deflect, like… two medium-caliber bullets. Maybe. Assuming they weren't AP rounds. Or hollow points. Or shot at anything more powerful than a water balloon launcher.
God, the whole thing was an affront to common sense. Any actual engineer who so much as glanced at it might've just spontaneously combusted on the spot. But hey—at least it wasn't something as boring as spider silk, or one of those equally asinine "sticky string" powers.
So with a deep hope I wouldn't get tetanus just from assembling the damn thing, I got to work.
Now, most Tinkers you hear about? They probably have a clean lab, neat tools, little robotic arms with lasers doing precise welds. Me? I had a pile of junk, three screwdrivers (none the right size), duct tape that smelled like mildew, and a dangerous amount of enthusiasm.
I didn't even understand what my hands were doing half the time—bolting one bit of scrap onto another, wiring random circuitry like I was following an invisible instruction manual only I could read. Sparks flew, something hissed smoke, and one of the screws went in sideways, but somehow… the pieces clicked.
I took a step back and admired my first piece of bona fide tinkertech.
[SCRAPSHIELD Mk. 0.5]
Capacity: Maybe two bullets. Three if they're .22s and I'm really lucky.
Recharge Delay: Please don't shoot me while it's rebooting.
Manufacturer: Me, bitch.
Flavor Text:"Built with love, duct tape, and mild tetanus."
It was glorious. Glorious in the way a feral raccoon wearing a crown is glorious — ugly, dangerous, and definitely unsanitary. It even had that faint buzzy feel when I touched the edges, like static electricity mixed with the looming threat of bad life decisions.
"Not bad for my first day as a cape"