"It's only abusing the service if I'm lying, right? If so, I'll take you up on that, I'd really like to keep my identites separate as thoroughly as possible. I'm 5'10"." He hasn't even told his family; what they don't know they can't accidentally spill to someone who'd hurt them. He might tell his cousin at Christmas, but in the meantime he doesn't trust the phones.

“See you then sir! Hope it all works out and we get to see you working with us. The Boston team just had a few transfers to New York and Brockton Bay so a new team member may be just the thing we need. Have a good night.”

"Good night!" Alright, he's actually doing this. Time to go home and prepare.

Heavy clothing won't be a problem--when his muscles bulked up he had to buy some new shirts, and at the time he went out to Medford and acquired an oversized Tufts sweatshirt. He is not now and has never been affiliated with Tufts in any way, nor has he ever worn the sweatshirt. With the hood up and pulled tight, he looks like a faceless, if cold, nobody.

Speaking of clothing, what do superfans.net and other sites have to say about costumes? He's been assuming that heroes coordinate theirs and as such that it would be a waste of time to come up with a full design yet, but he should look at some images and read about practical considerations so he has a general idea of what to go for. Something he can fight in, obviously; ideally something that looks like it could be full of pockets so he can subtly pull things from his inventory. And he wants it to look like a brute's costume, to draw villains' attention away from his subtler but more powerful abilities.

Costumes vary a lot, seriously an incredible amount of variation between practicality and different styles. Superfans doesnt have any actual guides but has a lot of discussion on the topic.

There is a whole rant about bodysuits being an awful idea if being solo and not having an organization to replace them constantly because they tear in combat and need a ton of cleaning and repair. Other posts are about ways to make a theme and stick to it because a good theme can get you far even with minor powers. Even a couple of entrepenuers advertising that they make cape costumes with “no affiliations asked” presumably to sell to villians and rogues as well as heros.

Some general guidelines are it shouldnt be too sexy. Hiding part of your bodies form while drawing attention to other parts of your body is a good idea for hiding civilian identity, this has lead to a resurgence in shoulderpads and breast pads. Utility belts are great ways to have pockets in skintight costumes that dont have space for them. ALWAYS WEAR A CUP IF YOU HAVE A PENIS, there are whole threads dedicated to akward boners in costume. Lethal weapons that are on theme are tentatively allowed if it is more about being part of your costume and persona than about beheading people with a sword.

SiesmicLizard comments a lot in threads about power armor Bruce sees during his searches.

Awesome though power armor would be (and he bets he'd get good at using it unusually quickly) he doubts he'll get any until he learns to make it himself and convinces the Protectorate to pay for parts. He will definitely wear a cup, yikes. Utility belt sounds perfectly suited, no pun intended. He has honestly no clue about themes, everything that indicates "I am strong and heroic" is extremely taken and it'll depend who he ends up working with anyway.

Armed with this knowledge, a bag with his gym clothes, and a body that is arguably a weapon in its own right at this point, Bruce goes to North Station at the appointed time and heads for the Protectorate building. He's wearing an academic's idea of job interview clothes under his Sweatshirt of Misdirection.

Someone is actually there to meet him at North station (and people similarly dressed are there to meet the decoys, they do not mess around with secret identities) and takes Bruce to a secret entrance in the train station. How cool!. Travelling through an underground tunnel to the headquarters in the government district.

Once they resurface into the PRT building that holds the Boston Protectorate base some PRT troopers search bruce very thouroughly for weapons. Then they take him to an office where a caucasian woman in a business suit in her early 30s and a man of asian descent who could be late 20s to mid 30s wearing a tshirt and shorts over a clearly cape uniform bodysuit are waiting.

The cape looks him up and down. “Well you certainly have the figure for it, Welcome to the Boston protectorate.” He holds out his hand with a smile.

The sweatshirt goes in the gym bag once they're in a secure area. They don't find the Swiss army knife in his inventory, so he doesn't get to find out if it counts as a weapon. 

Oh great, meeting new people. Many of whom are preselected for being traumatized and interested in dangerous, violent work. But it's okay, because he's one of them! Har har. He smiles anyway, and firmly returns the handshake. "Thanks. Pleased to meet you."

“My name is Knockdown, I know it’s not very cool I chose it when I was a teen and it just never got changed.” A smile along with a fun anecdote to promote feelings of comradery. “I hear you want to join the Protectorate? And do you have anything we would rather call you?”

The lady in the business suit beside him remains silent. She is observing their interaction but not joining in on the conversation.

"Knockdown is cooler than anything I've come up with; all the good Brute names are taken. You can just call me "hey you" for now, I guess," he jokes. "But yes, I'd like to join."

Knockdown gives a questioning look. "You are a Brute? Do you know how much you can deadlift?"

"I have a weird grab-bag power, but the Brute part is what I'm looking to build a persona around. Last time I checked I could deadlift 400 pounds. Also I heal from every injury I've gotten with a good night's sleep, but I don't know how far that goes."

Knockdown whistles appreciatively. "400 pounds is very close to the non-parahuman world record. But that regenerating ability is pretty sweet. Does it only work if you sleep? and any other powers in that grab bag you mind telling us about?"

"You know, I haven't actually gotten injured and then pulled an all-nighter since I triggered. I don't spontaneously heal at midnight if I stay up late, though, so I bet it's the sleeping." He should scratch himself up a bit and then film himself sleeping. He should do so many different experiments, really, a few months is not nearly long enough to have figured this whole thing out.

"And if you're the person doing my powers testing, I'm willing to talk your ear off. For example, I have a map in my head I can use to view my surroundings from above and find the shortest route from A to B."

Knockdown looks interested at that, This guy really does seem to have gotten a grab bag. "Really? Wow if nothing else we could use you running the Ops station for the team with that ability. I'm not 'The Guy' who does powers testing but I will be assisting, forcefields come in handy in power testing. Would you mind doing powers testing with us before talking about your contract? It is fine to leave it to later if negotiations don't work out and you don't then want us having info on your powers. But it can help us decide where we want you and what you could be expected to do."

"Yeah, I do think I'd be good in that sort of position, though I'd also like to patrol some. And I'm fine with doing powers testing before the contract stuff. Is there a lab or a gym or something we should be heading to?" He won't be revealing everything in that powers testing, and might not do so even after negotiations, but his negotiation skill says he should 1) try to impress them and 2) make an impression as helpful and cooperative. Also, they really will be better able to come up with places to deploy him if they know more of what he can do.

Knockdown nods and stands up and opens the door, waving over one of the omnipresent PRT guards. "Jenkins! can you escort us to power testing?."

The woman in the business suit stays seated, but she looks at her blackberry phone now it seems Knockdown and Bruce are leaving the room.

And off Bruce and Knockdown go down some stairs further underground into a very large concrete room with some reinforced windows looking into it, behind which are people in lab coats. One young man in a lab coat who can't be more than 25 is waiting for them in the room. "Hey! Knockdown is this the potential recruit?."

"Yep, no cape name as of yet but he's talked about some interesting powers." Knockdown gestures to Bruce.

"Nice to meet you Mr No Name I'm Dr. Barker." The scientist holds out his hand to Bruce.

Handshake. "Pleased to meet you, Dr. Barker. I have multiple unrelated powers, because I like being weird and making people's jobs hard. Shall I just rattle off a list?"

Dr. Barker seems very excited by that proclamation. "Sure!" He pulls out a notepad. Ah, poor unfortunate peons without the Notes system having to use paper. "Go ahead."

"I'm on the high end of physical strength for a human and the low end for a strength-based cape, and I heal from moderately severe injuries overnight. I have a map in my head that lets me watch my surroundings from above and plots directions from my location to anywhere else. And I can put up to about 30 kilograms of stuff into a private pocket dimension sort of thing and pull it back out. I also have some martial arts knowledge, but that's from taking classes."

The notes aren't that relevant to heroing, for all that he loves them, and he doesn't want to mention the accelerated learning until he's more confident that he'll never end up on the opposite side from any of these (admittedly very nice-seeming) people. 

And the pocket dimension very much intrigues Dr Barker. Even Knockdown raises an eyebrow.
"You can put anything in there?." Dr Barker holds out a pen to Bruce. "Can you show me?."

"Sure." He puts the pen in his inventory with a few blinks and eye-flicks, then spreads out his empty hands. "Nothing up my sleeves." And just to make sure they know it isn't sleight of hand, he does it to his gym bag too before retrieving the pen and handing it back.

(He should get a book on sleight of hand now that his Dex is awesome. He makes a Note to that effect.)

Dr Barkers eyes go wide seeing something vanish then reppear. “How much volume can you hold or is it just a weight limit? If we put you in low G could you hold more mass? Can you put anything at all in there? Can you put air or liquids in there? Does time pass for things in the pocket dimension? Could living things be put in there? How do you know what to grab if its full of stuff?” He starts rambling off all the things he wants to know. Science is very exciting!

Holy shit, a kindred spirit. This is gonna be great.

"No volume limit, just the weight. Plants are fine but I've never tried putting a live animal and I can't put liquids or gases directly but if they're in a container I can. Time I'm not sure--" he checks the time and puts his wristwatch "let's find out. Stuff doesn't interact in there, I could fill it with peanut butter and take my bag back out and it wouldn't have peanut butter on it. Please put me in low gravity."

Oh goodness another science minded individual, the capes here are happy to accede to his tests but they never take the initiative to test themselves. Is this Dr Barker’s new best friend?

”Low gravity might take some work and a trip to Dragons labs. Can you remove the container from your pocket space but not the gasses inside? Could be a cheap way to have aerokinetic powers, same with water in containers could give you a high pressure hose perhaps? Also we do have aerogel that barely weighs more than air and can be made in immense volumes, hey presto a barrier to stop villains pulled from pocket space.”