Hero Super

'This is false advertising,’ Calvin thought as he floated in a vast abyss of absolutely nothing, 'I was told there would be a flow to go with. Where is the flow?’

Despite his thoughts, he wasn’t really complaining. They were just thoughts, completely neutral, completely unemotional.

Normally, he would be weirded out. But he couldn’t feel weird. He couldn’t feel at all.

'This is… unusual,’ he thought.

Just a few minutes earlier— or has it been an hour since? The exact timeframe that has passed— if time was even passing at all— was completely blurred behind a wall of numbness in his head. All he remembered was a brief blinding light, a sharp ringing in his ears, total sensitivity in his skin, and the faint taste of his own saliva on his tongue before everything retreated into the void and was replaced by the unfeeling darkness that surrounded him.

Every sense was gone. The air smelled of nothing. Not the usual 'nothing’, where there’s nothing smelly, but actual nothing. His slightly dehydrated mouth didn’t feel dry at all, it didn’t feel anything. It was just a mouth. Everything was as it is.

The sweat down his back, unfelt. The erratic beating of his heart, unheard.

All that was left was him, his thoughts, and the all-encompassing peace that came with having no worries.

'Curious,’ he thought. 'My migraine is gone too. Even non-typical senses are gone.’

His sense of time, space, temperature, and possibly pain was gone. There was also his sense of worry, guilt, anxiety, and everything else negative.

After enjoying the effect for an hour, or maybe it was only for a moment, his thoughts drifted towards the peculiarity of the situation.

'This has to be some type of tinker tech. It has to be, I’m not feeling like a drill is boring into my brain or that all sorts of bugs are doing the cha-cha in my stomach,’ he started theorizing, taking advantage of the effect, 'but then… that would mean there’s a fundamental difference between a superpower and the effects of tinker tech? If my power-to-migraine converting physique is making a distinction, there has to be. Or maybe it’s my perspective that there is, hence the power is reacting to that perspective?’

Facing a dead end, by means of not being able to experiment in his current state, he re-oriented his thoughts towards another mystery he encountered earlier.

'Those two Scrappers, that red-haired one with the explosion and the green-haired one with the moss… someone attacked them. Who was it?’

The question popped up, floating in the vast void, asked towards no one, not even himself as he had no definitive clue to the answer.

But in his current state, pieces of facts and some thoughtful conclusions lead to an obvious and horrifying theory— horrifying if he wasn’t in his current state of ease.

'Someone’s following me.’

The facts were simple: The two bootleg power rangers got attacked and were distracted by the attacker. That gave him a chance to break Red’s skull and rush Green. However, Green already had a dent in her head before he even came down.

He knows he didn’t do that, or at least he didn’t remember doing that.

So it was a coin toss between early onset dementia or a 'stalker’. Personally, he’d rather bet on the latter. But you never know.

'That also means they were already in the area before moss lady closed off the alleyway— or they had a power that let them come in without alerting anyone— either way, I’d rather assume they’ve been following me even before the barricades went up,’ he pieced things together slowly, 'that gun-wielding scrapper in the sewer randomly disappeared… and a few more chasers were gone during the rooftop chase. If it’s the same person, then they’re helping me. But why?’

A second dead end was hit by his trains of thought, two more than what he wanted to hit. There were other mysteries to pick through, other thoughts to complete, but his efforts were instead focused towards more effective, not to mention needed, efforts.

'I should take a nap,’ he thought.

Whilst the lack of any stimuli nor the lack of any sense to react to stimuli didn’t panic him in any way, he still had a sense of fatigue accumulated from the night out.

The only thing, or at least the most desirable and achievable, action he wishes to do is to take advantage of the peace and quiet before the inevitable headache and body ache assaults him, no doubt due to the consequences of his choices.

'Who are you—’ he couldn’t help but be hung up on the thought before sinking into relaxation. '—mystery helper.’

“Lightspeed!” Relia called out as she burst through the door of Lightspeed’s room in the staff dormitories. Behind her lingered a long trail of mist that had yet to dissipate from her speed, “shit, where is he?”

She ran to his bedroom, finding nothing but a neat bed and a wardrobe inside. The bathroom stood the same, empty and normal. Kitchen, pantry, and even underneath the couch— the man couldn’t be found anywhere inside.

“He’s not here, honey.” A familiar voice jolted her.

Her stance lowered and she immediately made distance before turning around.

“Ah,” she muttered, relaxing her pose as soon as she saw the person leaning against the doorframe.

“You look haggard,” the person smirked, gesturing to the couch.

She ignored her offer and instead asked a question, “Where is he, ma’am?”

“Ma’am? Bah, stop that. You make me feel like crude oil. Just call me Maxine,” she waved her hand nonchalantly before disappearing and reappearing a split-second later on the couch, “what’s your name again? Your super name, not civilian.”

“Missmoke,” she answered, briefly baffled by her power.

“Where’s your mute friend?”

“I’m faster so Puffer stayed behind,” she informed her before getting back to topic, “where is he?”

“Fast, huh?” She grinned, making a shiver run up Relia’s spine, “Anyway, he’s out and about. Probably staking out a place or investigating something. The boy’s busier than usual these days.”

“He didn’t say where he went?”

“I’m his ex-mentor, not his mother.”

“Still…” she muttered, annoyed at the man. “Can you call him?”

“I can, but like I already told you—”

“—he’s busy…” she frowned.

“Don’t frown, honey. You’ll ruin your pretty face,” Maxine said with a wink, “what’s this about? Maybe I can tell him once he gets back.”

“Memo came to, just a few minutes ago,” she checked her holowatch, “around twelve minutes ago.”

“Memo… that’s the girl with pictures in her dress, right?”

“Yes ma—xine,” she stuttered, “she’s the one you carried back to HQ.”

“Hmm…” she looked her up and down before narrowing her eyes into slits that made Relia’s heart shiver, “honey, just spit it out.”

“…excuse me?”

“You ran here as fast as you could… just to tell Martin that your friend’s out of the coma? No, no, you’d send him a message, or go in the morning.”

She stayed quiet, feeling unnerved by the woman’s sharpness.

“What else happened?” Maxine pushed. “I’m betting she said something.”

There was a moment of hesitation before she decided that trusting the woman was the next best thing she could do right now, “she woke up for a few seconds, but in those few seconds, she told us something that’s… I don’t get it.”

Maxine leaned forward, intrigued, “You don’t get what?”

“She could barely talk, but she managed to let out one word— retired.”

“Retired?” She chuckled. “Are you sure she wasn’t saying that she’s tired or something similar?”

“No,” she answered resolutely. “Retired. She said it clear as day.”

“Does she want to retire?” Maxine scratched her chin.

“She wouldn’t just quit.”

“Some would have for less… but I’m guessing you have an idea what she meant by it.”

“I— I don’t know. She said it desperately, and it was the only thing she said clearly, so I just— I think it’s related to the villains. Maybe they’re retired ones.”

“Or heroes,” Maxine said with a wry smile.

“Heroes don’t retire.” She shook her head.

“I know, honey,” she gave a sad smile, “still, that does narrow your search quite a lot. Is there anything else?”

“Not really?” She shook her head.

“Then go. Or get some rest. I’ll tell him once he comes back.”

“Thank you,” she nodded, throwing down a smoke bomb and turning to mist flying out of the room and the campus.

“Retired, huh,” Maxine muttered as she watched her smoke slowly dissipate. “I knew his beetles looked familiar.”

A disgustingly bop beat greeted Calvin’s ears as awareness returned to him. He immediately opened his eyes, seeing a drastically different scene than the pigsty he was expecting— a dance floor.

'So it wasn’t tinker tech… but drugs?’ He immediately thought, as he tried to re-orient his head. 'No, no, that doesn’t make sense… but what the fuck is this?’

A floor of light panels, rhythmically flashing with varying colours, making his head spin from the changing brightness. There was no other way to describe it quite as succinctly as a 'dance floor’.

His gaze drew towards the other mad, but surprisingly thematic, details in the room: the broken mirror strapped to the ceiling, the ten-foot-high walls slapped with blob-like patterns that made his vision feel odd, and the lava-lamp-esque pieces of furniture that were glossier than his own sweaty forehead.

'This has to be drugs, I refuse to be in disco,’ he thought, grimacing.

With a grunt, and a bit of [Jumper], he pushed his face off of the floor and sat upright to stop the nausea and the migraine pooling in his head. Disappointingly, a change in perspective did not facilitate a change in environment— he was still in the 70’s.

Nor did it change the fact that his head hurts again.

'So it’s real. What is this place?’

It was actually a small room, minus the freakishly tall ceiling. It was still bigger than his dorm room before the first upgrade. It was more like a karaoke room for a small group, both in looks and size… and with a dance floor for some unknown reason.

'As far as prison cells go, this is actually worse than just plain cement,’ he thought, scratching his head, only to find his wrists weighed down. “Huh?”

His eyes drew downwards, towards his hands.

“This again?” He muttered in disbelief.

A pair of familiar, box-shaped, futuristic yet medieval-looking shackles were wrapped over his coat’s sleeves and around his wrists.

Like the one he wore before, on his first kidnapping, there were subtle lines of purple and creases of grey that divided the tech like a puzzle. It hummed with dangerous power, or rather Calvin imagined it was humming. In reality, it was only lightly pulsating with light, subtly enough that he almost missed it.

He had no idea what it was for, who designed it, how it worked, and why it worked. But he knew what it was working.

Not for his outfit, but his power.

“I swear there’s a general shop for would-be kidnappers. It’s the same exact model,” he muttered, observing the shackles. “Now, the question is, how do I take you off?”

He first tried willing it off by using his pocket’s [Automatic Wardrobe]. As expected, it didn’t work.

'Breaking this should be simple… I know it can’t dampen the [Impervious Pebble]s—’, he summoned a pebble in mid-air and sure enough, it was as impervious and as short-lived as before, '—but I don’t want to make too much noise trying to escape,’ he thought, wanting to actually stealth through the entire escape this time around.

'Not escape. Rescue, Calvin. This is a rescue mission. Rescue.’

After correcting himself, he returned his focus towards the shackles and started muttering 'think’ repeatedly to himself trying to will an idea to appear.

'Damn, I don’t want to break it. It could be useful later. It’s tinker tech too, so I bet it’s expensive as hell—’ he paused in realization.

Focusing on the pair of shackles, he recalled the feeling of using his system’s Super Help to bring up its details— which basically was just him trying to ask the thin air if there was a Super Help window to help him.

Thankfully, there was.

Super Help

Super Gear: Nullchains

A pair of cuffs designed by its creator to nullify superpowers. Mass production and a faulty design based on a stolen prototype led to multiple faults in the device. Will dampen a single superpower.

Efficacy is inversely proportional to the Super’s [Super Spirit].

'I asked for help, not an autobiography,’ he let out a chuckle at the oddly verbose window, '[Nullchains]. That’s just bullshit. Why’s my shirt [Plain White Shirt] and the kidnapper’s shit is fucking 'Apocalypse Shackles of The Neverending Abyss’ or some shit. Whatever, super help is super… helping. And it’s super gear, so it might be tinker tech… which means—’

He used the system again and pulled up a function he never used due to the existence of [Automatic Wardrobe].

Super Equip

Super Gear: Nullchains detected. Unequip?

Yes No

He stared at the 'Yes’ button and immediately felt a weight on his wrists disappear. White light covered the shackles and flowed to his palms, re-forming into the tinker tech a split second later.

Super Equip

Super Gear: Nullchains detected. Equip?

Yes No

“[Automatic Wardrobe], eat your heart out,” he chuckled. “Now, question is, do I keep it off? It’s easy to take off anytime anyway…”

A moment’s deliberation was all he needed to decide to equip the [Nullchains] again. At the very least, it won’t immediately alert passing guards or Scrappers that he was planning to escape.

'Speaking of… how do I even escape? Can they even see me in here?’

There were no doors anywhere, nor windows or hatches. All around him were four walls, a mirror ceiling, and an epilepsy-inducing floor. There’s also a short bench and a funky-looking table, but neither likely presented an opportunity to escape.

'I could try ramming against the wall… burst out the other side a la red sugar-water-jug-man, but then that’s immediately a non-sneak mission. It’s dangerous,’ he concluded immediately.

It wasn’t only dangerous to him, but to the other kidnapees.

'I wonder. Is it like the dorms? Is there a secret portal-slash-door somewhere I can use to get out?’ Calvin thought while standing up and tapping his shackles against the walls. “Too thick… I guess there goes my commercial—”

Calvin paused.

Inexplicably, he heard a tap from the same wall.

It was faint, but it was unmistakable. There’s another side. Not only that, there was someone on the other side. Whether or not he could go through or break through, he had no idea. But that mean he wasn’t buried in a coffin underground, destined to die in disco.

He tapped twice this time, receiving the same thing in return.

'I’m guessing the others are in their own disco room. So this is a jail cell of sorts. But what’s the structure, exactly? I guess I should knock on everything.’

All four walls received a reply in return, either the same knock or a furious banging. The floor was a no-go, there was nothing underneath it. But then again, maybe the other person couldn’t reach their ceiling to reply.

'Lastly, the ceiling,’ he looked up and scratched his chin.

Before he could even try and knock on the roof, his ears picked up the sound of muffled footsteps from an unusual place— above.

As more moments passed, the footsteps grew more pronounced, accompanied by hushed and unintelligible arguments. Seconds later, a shimmering sound rang out followed by screaming that was suddenly cut off.

Then it repeated, the screaming was replaced with loud sobbing. And again, with angry shouts. And again, with begging.

“This is a horror movie and a half,” he muttered to himself. “Now, time to think… what is this place?”

From what he gathered, from his ears and his imagination, their cells were rooms buried in the floor. That would mean the exit was the ceiling, which finally made sense as to why it was so far away. There was nothing to climb, nor anything to stack to climb.

Moreover, he heard the footsteps. Not just faint tappings like from the walls, but loud footsteps and whispers. Which means the material was thinner. Which he hoped meant that it was a hatch or a door of some kind.

'Layout figured, eavesdropping time.’

A few moments later, pieces of pink furniture were stacked up against each other to reach the ceiling. Calvin was sitting on a cushioned footrest, pressing his ear against the glass-like mirror to hear things better.

“—even? The quota was seven-ty, you dumbass,” an accosting voice came into earshot soon enough.

“No, no, no— seven. They said seven,” a boney thunk rang out after the second person complained.

'I know that voice,’ Calvin’s brows curled.

“It’s Seventy. You were in the middle of KZ— untouched and brimming with supers and newly awakened immigrants— you think the quota would’ve been just seven? Get your head out of your ass, moron, and point at which ones are yours so we can take a look,” he let out an annoyed tsk before muttering under his breath.

'Shit.’

Scrambling, Calvin quickly started shoving the pieces of furniture back into his pocket before finally sitting down on the bench trying to act with extreme nonchalance.

'Wait— I should act scared, right?’ he thought, pausing before shaking his head after a thought, 'Fuck it. Too much effort. I’m wearing a mask anyway.’

He laid back and stared upwards, trying to pick up sounds from outside of the cell.

Footsteps, then a mix of either begging, whimpering, or shouting, before the cycle repeated and grew closer to his rooftop. Just like before.

'So they were checking on the kidnapees earlier.’

Somehow, it reminded him of exams, or at least the ones he saw in movies and TV series where the teachers roamed around the room— except the cries of desperation were more internal in those shows.

Before he got lost in his thoughts again, a glimmer appeared on his ceiling a few seconds after the footsteps arrived on top of it.

'Wow,’ he smiled wryly.

Soon after, the mirrors made way and folded to the sides, revealing two Scrappers dressed— well— scrappily while looking down on him. One of them was familiar, he sat right next to him before he got kidnapped.

Even with his struggling brain cell, it was easy to recognize the man’s role in the current predicament.

'I’ll remember your face,’ he noted.

The other was, unusually, more refined despite wearing similarly Frankenstein-esque armor-slash-clothes.

“This yours?” The man asked, gesturing to Calvin.

“…yes,” the kidnapper affirmed, his voice sounding almost defeated.

“Looks like you’re not completely useless, this guy looks like he has something useful,” he patted the kidnapper’s back. “I’ll bump him up the list, should score you some more points.”

“Thank you,” he nodded, his 'grateful’ smile turning sour the moment his superior looked away.

Calvin almost chuckled at the two.

“Quiet too,” the 'superior’ nodded gratefully, “one less voice annoying my ears.”

“Is that all?” The kidnapper asked.

“Yeah, run back to whatever rat-hole you have for a hub. We’re going to hunker down soon, there’s no telling when they’ll retaliate so we gotta do it early.”

And with that, the mirrors folded back out, closing the 'lid’ of the disco jar he stuck inside of.

'Why does everybody else’s superpowers look cool?’ he thought. He didn’t really understand what it was, but it piqued him. Especially how easily it makes exits, which he really needs right now, 'Or is it tinker tech? It’s hard to tell.’

He gave it a brief thought before concluding that it didn’t matter either way. What mattered was that he had an exit now— or at least knew where there was one to be made.

“Now we just wait a bit,” he muttered, leaning back and trying to get some rest before starting his escape.

After a short while, when he no longer heard footsteps above, he started building his stack of furniture once more. His ears pressed against the mirror at the top, trying to hear any bit of conversation or any hint of footsteps in the immediate area.

'All clear… I guess?’ He frowned, unsure. 'Man… I wish the system had a minimap, or something similar. I wonder if there’s a power or tinker tech that’ll be… something… like that…’ “Brain blast.”

He paused, immediately opening his holowatch.

'There’s a network,’ he thought as a smile appeared on his face.

Excited, he opened up a particularly invasive app that Quinn had given him a few days ago. A blank, radar-like, 'map’ appeared on the holowatch, immediately getting populated by dots that represented holowatches that were connected to the network.

'I should bake her a cake after this,’ he thought in glee. 'Now for the next trick… I really hope this works.’

He went to his messages and got Batty’s holowatch I.D.— which was basically her phone number. It also doubled as a bank I.D., a taxpayer’s number, a credit card code, and apparently the same code used to track the holowatch. It was a wildly unsecure way to store everything, but it also was very convenient. Especially now.

’Stalking, rescuing— same difference depending on the circumstances I guess.’ He justified it in his mind while copy-pasting and letting the app scour the network.

A few seconds later, a 'dot’ on the map appeared larger and turned a different colour, making him grin excitedly under the mask.

'Mini-map set and objective pinned… now it finally feels like a stealth mission.’