And Bruce blacks out. He sees two great shining crystal behemoths as big as moons travelling in space circling each other...but in more than just this dimension slipping in and out of realities. shedding scales of light that fly towards a blue world, earth. The experience cannot be comprehended by the human mind and is understood only in metaphors. The great shining bodies flying towards earth in a great spiral shedding more and more scales of light, shrinking as those scales race ahead of them to the blue gem of a world.

When he wakes up there is a cape pulling him out of the rubble and the memory of the vision fades and all that is left is a feeling of having seen something profound. The cape drags him to where the rescue workers have set up tents. seems Behemoth has been driven off by Scion and everything is over now, but by the grim faces on the capes gathered by the tents and new ones coming in with rescued people it looks like it was another fight where they lost a lot of people.

Bruce lays where he's been put and takes stock of himself. Bruises everywhere, obviously. At least one cracked rib, very probably. Scrapes and cuts in various places. A sense of disconnected awe that doesn't match his situation, that's presumably shock. All in all, a pretty unpleasant condition to be in, but not one likely to get priority from any of the medical types. Best to just lie here and wait, trying not to sleep--he doesn't think he's concussed, but it's hard to be sure with no prior experience.

An overworked looking nurse comes over to him to check on him, gives him some painkillers if he wants them and a bottle of water and one of those thin terrible and not at all useful patients robes if he wants to change out of his clothes, and a blanket. there are a LOT of refugees so they hurry off quickly.

He does want painkillers. He does not want a stupid robe. He decides he's probably not concussed, so he hauls himself and his potentially-cracked rib the handful of blocks back to his hostel. Miraculously, enough of it is still standing that he can collapse into a bed and fall asleep; he'll dig through the rubble for his possessions in the morning.

When Bruce wakes up he feels a lot better, under his clothes all the cuts and bruises have disappeared and his rib no longer hurts. Even more strangely in the center of his vision there is floating white text.

| You have 3 notifications... |

Wow, maybe he did hit his head. Or, no, he must've triggered, that's what this is, he's a parahuman with a power that does healing and floating white messages. Which doesn't make any sense, even by cape standards, but maybe it will once he reads his notifications. He tries mentally intending to open them, poking the air where the "..." appears, and muttering "open".

As he taps the floating text more text appears. 

1/3

| Achievement unlocked! |
Trigger Event: you have become a Parahuman! the scientific name for those with extraordinary abilities, capes, supers. You get the idea.

 2/3

| Perk unlocked! |
I've got the power!: you now have the power of the Goal Reward Shard. Otherwise known as The Gamer Power.

3/3

| Status effect: Rested |
Resting for 8 hours has restored you to full health and removed negative status effects. Effects removed: Adrenaline Burnout, Drugged, Exhuastion-mild

Ooookay, so his life now works on video game rules. Heh. He's Gordon Freeman. 

He notices that he did not lose a status effect for "freaked out about having had a building collapse on him", and in fact what was a perfectly adequate bottom bunk two days ago is now feeling pretty cramped. He gets up, grabs a set of less wrecked clothes, and heads to the hostel bathroom.

The only other person in there says, "Good news, the hot water and the cold water both work! Bad news, only one at a time and you can't pick which." He doesn't comment on the floating text, or seem to notice it. 

Bruce's shower is accelerated both by the state of the water and by the fact that the shower stall is even more cramped than his bunk; soon he's in the deserted common area, staring at the messages again. If nobody else can see them, are they even real light? He turns the light off and tries to see by the light of the text.

To Bruce, the text is giving off enough light to see things by if they are close to his head. If he moves his head closer to something so the text in front of him moves closer to that object, they will appear more illuminated. It acts as a normal light source nothing strange about how the light reflects off things or anything. Apart from it being floating glowing text of course.

Okay, so it's less "he's hallucinating text" and more "text only he can see". He turns the light back on and considers what to try next. Maybe his power will helpfully explain itself if he says "main menu" or "info" or "help" at it? 

|GOAL REWARD SHARD OPERATING SYSTEM V1.0| Welcome to THE GAME |

Status
Perks
Skills
Inventory
Achievements
Options
Map
Notes

A window appears with the text in nice neat boxes perfect for tapping when Bruce says Menu.

But then it vanishes when he says Help and is replaced by just plain text instead of a fancy Menu UI with this list of commands.

HelpList...

Menu
Status
Perks
Skills
Inventory
Achievements
Options
Map
Notes

Oh, wow, so many things to investigate. He looks at the help screen and tries saying "Menu".

|GOAL REWARD SHARD OPERATING SYSTEM V1.0| Welcome to THE GAME |

Status
Perks
Skills
Inventory
Achievements
Options
Map
Notes

The menu reappears! All those options and all those buttons to press, sure looks inviting.

He's going to go through them in order to make sure he doesn't miss anything. But first he's going to find something to take notes on. He hunts around and ends up with a pen and a paper towel, then gets to it, starting with "status".

Health: In good health

Stamina: Well Rested

Stats:

Strength: 8
Dexterity: 9
Constitution: 8
Intelligence: 18
Wisdom: 14
Charisma: 11

Representative stats chosen based on predicted user preference (D&D 3rd ed.), to change representative Stats to those of another system use the interface panel in the options menu.

(Stats are purely representative of your current ability, they do not affect game mechanics.)

Status Effects: none

Character description:
Dr. Bruce Banner is a recent trigger having been caught up in the Behemoth attack on Vanderhoof and is still getting used to his Parahuman abilities. Recently got a Doctorate in Biology and was looking forward to doing his Post Doctorate work. Is a huge dork.

Apparently, the Interface can tell who is a dork. who'd have thunk.

Yeah, Bruce's dorkitude is practically visible from space. He has never denied this.

He writes down his stats; that seems important and he's not ready to trust that the interface will always be available yet. Now, what's in Perks? He hopes it's got a list of the perks he can get, as well as the one he has.

PERKS:

|I've got the power!: you now have the power of the Goal Reward Shard. Otherwise known as The Gamer Power.|

There's only the one perk...for now. no list of possible perks to be seen.

Such is life. What's in "Skills"? And is "Inventory" just a list of all the objects on his person, or something more interesting?

The Skills menu is empty, that's depressing.

Inventory menu opens up a little image of Bruce with little boxes describing his Equipped clothing. And a Window with a grid with empty boxes and some text over the box grids saying:

Weight Limit: 0.00/30.00 Kilograms

Of course, the superpowers display in metric. that isn't baffling at all.

He just passed his thesis defense; his impostor syndrome is on a brief hiatus. So his actual skills are different from his power's "Skills" category, whatever. 

The metric inventory is completely unsurprising; of course it would use sensible units. If he gets up and picks up the chair he's sitting in, does its weight show up in his inventory?

Nope!

This reminds him that he needs to go dig through the collapsed half of this hostel for his backpack. He puts the chair down, heads outside, and starts hauling bits of concrete out of the area that used to be the room he was staying in. It's slow going; while he works, he goes to the help menu and looks at "Inventory" from there to see if there are notes on what counts.

HelpList just contains a plain text list of words that so far have turned out to be voice commands, nothing is on it that he didn't see before when he used the Help command. While the actual Main Menu has all the same terms on it, it has buttons to actually poke at.

But while he is hauling concrete...

|For pushing your body, you have earned +1 strength!|

Bruce can't tell if he is stronger just by feeling it from only a single point of strength gain. 

The strength gain notice is pretty neat! And since muscles ordinarily don't get stronger until they repair themselves after a workout, it also has interesting implications that he's getting the notification now.

Since the help list doesn't have additional information, he'll go back to experimenting directly (his favorite thing!). Putting a rock in his pocket? Holding it up and saying "Add rock to inventory"? Holding it so it overlaps with the grid in his vision and letting it go?

Rock in his pocket does Nada. Voice command to add rock to inventory makes the rock disappear from his fingers and an icon of a rock appears in the inventory grid with text under it that says "small rock x1". When he holds another rock up to the grid and lets it go it drops as it should, but when it falls through the inventory window it disappears into it and now the text says "small rock x2".

Oooh, it's smart enough to recognize that those are both the same type of object! Or else it's going off his impressions of what counts. He's going to want to test that later, but it'll require a second person to hand him things without him knowing what they are. For now, can he take the rocks out of his inventory by grabbing at the images of them?

If he pokes the image it will appear in his hand, but unless he expects that it will probably fall right out of it because pointing is not an ideal gripping position. If he reaches through the window for the rock his hand will disappear through the window and feel the rock under his fingers to be grabbed and pulling his hand back he will have the rock.

Bruce does some trial and error before settling on reach-in-and-grab as the best way to retrieve things. Also, there's his backpack! It's covered in dust, and the apple that was in it is a write-off, but the rest of his stuff is basically intact. He puts the whole backpack in his inventory, except for his wallet in case something goes wrong with this.

The inventory stores every item in the backpack and the backpack itself separately. If he wants to bring things out he has to do them one at a time now. But it does stack similar items together. All his socks are in a single stack for example.

You know what, this is still a win--now his stuff won't take up space on a bus seat, and it can't get lost or stolen. He keeps his wallet in his pocket, since it might decide all his cards are different things, and anyway, he doesn't want to be obviously pulling it out of the air in front of him.

What happens if he tries to remove a single sock from his inventory, first by reaching in and grabbing just the topmost sock, and later with various voice commands?

Reaching in while expecting to only grab a single sock makes him feel only a single sock in there to pull out, expecting the whole stack means he can feel the whole stack in there but can still just grab one if he wants to.

Asking for a sock gets the last sock he put in, asking for a particular sock like the second to last sock he put in or a blue sock as compared to any other colour of sock he owns gets him the specific one he asked for, it appears right into his hand. when using voice commands he doesn't need to reach in to grab them. If he asks for multiple socks in a vague way nothing happens. If he specifies how many socks he wants he will get that many socks in his hand.

The voice commands all follow the "Remove X from inventory" format.

The grabbing seems to work by expectation, and the voice commands seem pretty good at distinguishing what to get based on criteria given.

Well, if he can get stuff to appear in his hand whole his hand's in his pocket then he'll put his wallet in there too. Worst case seems to be that he'll have to take out all the things in it one at a time and reassemble them. Once he's either done that or established that he won't have to, he checks out "Achievements".

Once he puts his wallet in everything gets sorted separately and he will have to take everything separately out if he wants those items. Except for the money bills and coins. what happens to those is that a "money" textbox appears under his character image with the exact amount he had in his wallet under it and a "withdraw" button is under that.


When he gets to the achievements page it's pretty empty.

Achievements:

|Trigger Event: you have become a Parahuman! the scientific name for those with extraordinary abilities, capes, supers. You get the idea.|

No hint as to what any other achievements might be. Just the one achievement he was already notified about. But he can admire the fact he is recognized as a cape by a mysterious text box whenever he wants on this menu.

He ends up leaving everything from his wallet in his inventory, once he verifies that he can remove things even by speaking very quietly.

The Achievements menu is singularly uninteresting; maybe "Map" will be better. Even a perfectly ordinary zoomed-out world map displayed on the interface would be pretty neat.

It is a photorealistic map of the few blocks surrounding Bruce, with a blue dot showing his position. It even shows all the buildings that were crushed as crushed so it's more accurate than an in-car GPS unit is. there is a + and - button that when pressed zoom in or out. He can zoom in until it is literally just showing the roof above him in a metre by metre square, or zoom out until it is a world map.

If he taps somewhere on the map a red line will go from Bruce's position to wherever that point is showing the quickest path. It is like the best GPS you could have! what a useful interface.

This map is his new favorite thing. He loves his map so much. Does it have other people on it, or just buildings? If he goes outside so he can zoom all the way in on the ground he's standing on, is it accurate and detailed on the level of random pieces of rubble?

If he zooms into where he is outside he can see himself! updates live apparently, he can wave to himself on the map view if he wants. If anyone else is around he could spot them on the map but they aren't highlighted the way Bruce is by a blue dot, and people can be hard to pick out just visually from a birds-eye view sometimes if he isn't zoomed pretty far in. But, the map IS always centered on Bruce with no apparent way to pan around, so if he zooms out too far he can't spot anyone because they would be too tiny.

It's not a fully general remote viewing power, but it can probably be muchkined into something with a lot of the same utility. Awesome.

He plays around with the pathfinding tool for a while. Is it smart enough to know that the best route from here to Boston is via an airport? What about the best route from here to Singapore, does it assume he can swim the Pacific? For that matter, does it have him start swimming at an actual port?

(Maybe he shouldn't be making assumptions about what he can and can't swim to. This power is so multifaceted he would be only moderately surprised if it contained some way to get to Singapore without a plane.)

Nope, the pathing to Boston is entirely by land, the map is not assuming he is paying for airline tickets. The route from here to Singapore takes him to a port first where presumably he either swims or takes a boat. The pathing will follow optimal currents by sea though so it isn't a straight line over the ocean, will avoid islands and storms too if Bruce can spot a storm big enough on the global view to confirm that is what the interface is doing.

There are currently no nautical themed skills unlocked so the assumption of not being able to swim the Pacific is a safe one, for now...

He's going to be on an airplane in a few days, assuming the busses to Vancouver haven't been too disrupted by Behemoth, and he can't wait to see what it thinks the optimal path to places is when he starts ten thousand feet in the air.

More mundanely, he should go to the bus station and find out how robust his plan to get to Vancouver is. And bring all his stuff in case the answer is "we're packing everybody into busses and there's a space on the next one."

In between cleaning out the last of his things from his hostel into his inventory, he checks out the "Options" menu.

Options:

-Graphics
-Audio
-Interface

No Save, Load or Exit Game buttons for obvious reasons, otherwise looks like a normal videogame options menu.

"Save" and "Load" would have been awesome, but "Exit Game" would have been terrifying. "Interface" sounds promising, what's in there?

Interface:

The Interface menu has a ton of options. He can choose window size, window colour, text font, if notifications should display in combat or not, where the popups appear instead of right in the center of his vision, how transparent the windows can be. He can change the vocal commands to open Menus, he can set the commands to be activated via hand signal instead. He can set them to be activated via eye movements if he wants.

Pretty much any way he can think to customize how things display or are activated he can do it, ease of use and customization so he can get it exactly the way he wants seems to be the theme of the interface menu.

What fun! Bruce spends the whole walk to the bus station optimizing the interface. The first thing he does is set up as much stuff to be controlled by a mix of staring and blinking, so he won't have to mutter at nothing in front of people. He doesn't exactly have a secret identity, in that he doesn't have a cape identity, but nothing good is likely to come of random people seeing something weird about him (beyond the pre-existing "he's a total nerd").

Once all the commands are as subtle as he can make them without being likely to go off accidentally, and everything is in a nice blue and white color scheme and a very readable font, and notifications during combat are firmly disabled, he arrives at the bus station. It turns out that there's still enough of a semblance of order going on that they want Bruce to take the bus he has a ticket for, so he has one more night in the left half of the hostel before he can get to Vancouver. While following the delightful map's route back there, he looks in "Audio" and "Graphics".

Graphics:

FOV: |=======[]=======| 
Depth of Field: OFF/ON
Motion Blur: OFF/ON
Saturation: |=======[]=======| 
Contrast: |=======[]=======| 
Brightness: |=======[]=======| 

---

Audio:

Master Volume: |=======[]=======| 
Music: |[]==============| 
External Voices: |=======[]=======| 
Team Chat: |=======[]=======| 
Notification text to speech: OFF/ON
Subtitles: OFF/ON

A bunch of sliders and on/off toggles. Some for options even new games from Earth Aleph in the cutting edge of 2001 don't have.

Woah. Some of these have . . . Implications. He tries out the full range of each of the graphics sliders one at a time, first noting the starting position of each.

Messing with Field Of View, Depth Of Field, and Motion Blur instantly makes bruce incredibly nauseous, humans were not meant to see everything with a horrid after image effect or the whole world out of focus. Moving the FOV slider down seems to actually shrink his peripheral perception even though his brain is telling him things always look like this, and he gets an immediate splitting headache when he moves the slider up past halfway but for the few seconds he can handle the pain it's like he can see from the sides of his head as well as from the front.


The contrast slider just makes the contrast really high, it's a bit gross looking but not enough to make him as sick as the other options.
Increasing the saturation makes it look like what movies think being on drugs is like, it's very psychedelic and colourful, lowering the saturation makes everything grayscale.
Raising the brightness slider seems to just make everything brighter uniformly, so he isn't actually seeing more detail on anything and anything too well lit is blinding at its highest settings, might help when it is actually dark though. Lowering the brightness just makes everything darker like wearing sunglasses, might be useful if he goes to Arizona or something.

He stopped walking as soon as he confirmed his suspicion that the graphics settings did in fact affect his entire vision and not just the game display. In spite of this, Motion Blur causes him to trip on his own foot and sprawl on the sidewalk. He finishes investigating the graphics options from a sitting position with his back to the wall of a mostly-intact building, and declares everything except the brightness slider to be Nope. Then he just sits with his eyes half-closed for a minute, waiting for the headache and nausea to fade. 

Is he ready to try out the audio options? Not really, no. He's ready to haul himself to his feet and walk the rest of the way "home" and sit down in an actual chair in the quiet common room. Then he will carefully, slowly, turn up the master volume, trying to experience super hearing without giving himself another splitting headache.

Everything is just louder, it's not too bad. But hearing his own breathing and heartbeat that loudly is a little freaky, not nausea-inducing freaky just not something one would be used to. He could probably get a similar effect listening to a spy microphone pinned to him on loud volume on earphones but it wouldn't have the actual directionality of having an ear on each side of his head.

Super hearing is handled fine by Bruce as long as no very loud noises happen. Wouldn't want to use this in combat in case of gunshots or flashbangs.

Well, if he ever needs to eavesdrop on someone in another room, he can put up with hearing his own heartbeat. After confirming that turning the master volume down makes him deafer, and resolving to use it to sleep on the airplane, he puts that back and tries out "music". Just a little bit, in case it's awful music. If it's at all bearable, he leaves it on (quietly) in the hopes that it would turn scary if anything dangerous was about to happen and give him some warning. 

Does "External Voices" apply to his own voice, or the voices of people clearing away rubble outside, or both? Similarly, what do the subtitles subtitle? Notification text to speech is probably what it says on the tin.

The music sounds like the top 40 hits radio station, If he listens long enough there will be an "advert" in a Microsoft sam voice that different albums or radio stations may be specified via voice command.

External voices setting only applies to the people outside not his own voice and doesn't amplify any other sounds. However, it counts breathing noises and lip smacking as "voices" so if mouth sounds from everyone around him even when they aren't talking bothers him maybe leave it off in crowded rooms, but otherwise does what it says on the box.

The subtitles subtitle any recognizably speech sounding sounds that Bruce is trying to listen to, even if they are too faint to actually make out properly as long as it is recognizably speech and Bruce is trying to hear it he will get accurate subtitles of the speech.

One person Bruce subtitles for the test is complaining over the phone that behemoth threw his Disney trip to California out of whack because his luggage got wrecked. 

He turns the music off for now, but acknowledges that it'll be useful if he's ever bored. 

These audio features probably weren't intended for making him an excellent eavesdropper, but that sure is what they add up to.

For some reason, the person complaining about his luggage is what makes him realize that all of this is real and not some bizzare hypothetical situation he can just move through on autopilot. Also, that shape the rescue workers are pulling out of the rubble over there is probably a corpse, isn't it.

Half the people he randomly passed on the street in the past three days are probably dead. Fuck. Thank goodness he's alive, that too, but mostly fuck.

Eventually he pulls himself together enough to put the audio settings back to normal, but with master volume turned slightly down and external voices turned slightly up, and check out the Notes menu.

The notes page has a glowing keyboard and a blank page with the blinking | cursor showing it is ready for text input. Also little microphone symbol to the side, And a Save file button and a Load file Button.

Seems like a basic word processor and if the microphone button does what it would seem to, a voice recorder as well. So that you can take Notes, It does what it's for.

Bruce tries typing, and speaking, and saving, and loading, and promptly concludes that he loves the Notes. He's never going to spill something sticky on a lab notebook again. He's never going to forget a grocery list or have nothing to write down an important address on. He can look at his speech notes during conference talks and nobody will ever know. He would marry this power if that wasn't arguably incest. 

Incidentally, why is his power so useful? Most capes get stuff that's good for combat and maybe something else if they're lucky. His power will probably have combat relevance in time, but it also has all these amazing features that help with being a mild-mannered academic. It makes him suspect there's a catch somewhere that he hasn't found yet.

But it's not like he can stop having this power, so he might as well enjoy it. And that means doing what you always do in video games: looking for quests to increase your stats. He goes outside and offers to help the city workers with their cleanup.

Nearby there is a gruff official looking man in a hardhat and facemask holding another person in similar garb steady as they throw up after seeing a corpse. These are probably disaster workers, the second person wanders off to go sit down and recover while the gruff man gets back to hauling rubble off of a corpse and taking pictures so it can be identified later.

It’s grim work but they could probably use some help. Or Bruce could head back to where they set up tents for refugees to help out there if that is too much for him.

He has ever taken an anatomy class, but hasn't ever actually seen a corpse before. It was all photos and videos, and the interface didn't have an option for turning off his sense of smell. Not to mention the half-subconscious drumbeat of that could've been me whenever he thinks about people getting crushed to death. He makes his apologies and goes to the refugee tents.

There doesn’t seem to be a volunteer table or tent or anything, if he asks around the workers tend to to think he is another refugee looking for help at first but eventually he is pointed towards the trucks holding the food and supplies that have arrived. 

If he goes over to help he will be given a high visibility vest all the other workers are wearing and told to help shift the big bags of staple foods like rice or cornmeal off the trucks.

This is boring but involves zero corpses; he's happy to do it. He turns on his new private radio station and amuses himself finding the most optimal route through the ever-shifting people and tables, and doing a Fermi estimate of how many grains of rice are in each sack.

For a couple of hours moving big heavy food sacks he gains:

|For pushing your body, you have earned +2 strength!|

Now maybe he does think he can feel himself be a bit stronger than when he woke up this morning, he has gone from 8 to 11 in a day and that’s a significant increase.

If it's in fact going off DnD like it said it was, he is now stronger than average, which every memory of grade school gym class he has says is as fake as Twinkies wrapped in political speeches. Speaking of memory, he should try memorizing something and see if it boosts his INT. If his power lets him become actually smarter . . . Well, he doesn't know what a smarter version of him would do, but he knows it's better than he can imagine.

Eventually, he and the other workers get all the trucks emptied and the food secured in places it can be easily handed out.

The guy in charge thanks him and offers him an extra ration if he wants it, he doesn’t know if Bruce needs it but behemoth did just attack and lots of people lost everything so no harm offering.

He appreciates the offer, but he's actually a tourist here and lost next to nothing; he'll be fine with the one ration. (He is unusually hungry after the afternoon's work, but he figures he'll be in Vancouver tomorrow and can buy food there where there's less shortage.)

He goes back to the hostel, finds out that the manager is alive and confirms that he's checking out tomorrow, and sits in the kitchen to eat his ration and start memorizing the first chapter of his current Star Trek expanded universe novel.

Nothing happens after just one chapter, but Bruce has an 18 in intelligence, it might take more work the higher the stat is.

He must be on the right track though because he gets:

|For careful consideration, you have earned +1 Wisdom!|

Hard to be sure what Wisdom does in this world with neither clerics nor explicit spot checks, but higher numbers are better. He memorizes for another hour or two, then goes to bed and sleeps the sleep of the well-exercised, resolving to buy a book of sudoku or logic puzzles when he gets to the land of intact buildings and functional storefronts. 

Two whole hours of memorization is enough to get him what he was working towards, and another suprise.

|For Exercising your mind, You have earned +1 intelligence!|

19 intelligence now, that really does seem high.

|For performing a special action you have unlocked a skill!|
Reading: You read good now. increases the speed at which you read and Increases your comprehension. 

First skill gained! And Bruce does notice an improvement in how fast he can read a page and memorize it now, he isn’t sure how exactly he is doing better at it...it just seems to be easier. And Bruce was no slouch at reading speed before either.

Ooh, awesome! He really hopes the skill includes reading academic papers; it will really help with literature searches.

In the morning, he gets his breakfast ration and heads to the bus station again, checking the map to see if the optimal route has changed. He's not sure if it accounts for walking traffic, but it does account for road accessibility and yesterday the straight-line route was blocked off.

Nope no change, even if there were foot traffic it apparently isnt enough to make that the non optimal route. Bruce gets to the bus without issue and gets a free seat near the front.

Being about to go somewhere gets Bruce thinking about the future. He was looking forward to continuing in academia, he still is, but getting superpowers and using them to do a slightly better version of what you were going to do anyway seems like such a waste. Especially with a power like his, with so much room to grow. If he trains, and improves, and fights some villains, he could get strong enough to make a real difference. Maybe even strong enough to help more people survive Behemoth and Leviathan. 

As the bus is getting ready to leave someone who wasn’t in the line waiting to get on steps up to the door. He is wearing multiple sets of designer clothes 3 sizes too big for him with a mishmash of brands, some of the clothes have those anti-stealing tags on them. The bus driver asks him if he has a ticket.

”I got your ticket right here buddy.” And he pulls out a 9mm handgun and waves it at the driver and passengers. “Okay you tourists, hand over your valuables and get off the bus, this is my ticket outta this dump.”

Shit. Well, he was just thinking about becoming a superhero. And he does apparently heal when he sleeps. Bruce gets his (empty) wallet from his inventory and pulls it out of his pocket, walks toward the gunman with his hands in front of him, then when the gunman is distracted reaching for the wallet, he shoves the gun sideways and aims a kick at the gunman's kneecap.

Shoving the gun aside works, his gun clatters out of his hand and onto the floor, the kick is...less effective, it sort of glances off. "You fucking prick!." And the Gunman punches Bruce in the side of the face really hard, it splits the skin it hits so hard and the inside of his cheek is cut up on his teeth.

But Bruce got the gun out of the gunman's hand and his stand against him was enough of an example that other passengers decided to get involved. Piling onto the gunman and pinning him. With the strength of an average human and the risk of death, Bruce is more of a hero than a lot of capes.

This fight appears to have been implemented as a stack, or possibly a heap; Bruce ends up near the bottom, minus his wallet and barely holding on to his glasses. Eventually the pile sorts itself out enough to summarily eject the no-longer-a-gunman out the door.

Someone has also called the rescue worker capes, one flies down, salutes the bus driver and takes the gunman away. Fucking with evacuations and taking advantage of the endbringer attacks gets you ridiculously harsh penalties, sucks to be the gunman.

The driver gets the first aid kit out of a compartment after the cape flies off and helps bandage up Bruces face, though if he wasn't someone who healed with a nights rest he would need stitches. "That was stupid what you did, brave but stupid. Could have got yourself killed over just some stuff. Can always buy more stuff." The bus driver tells him.

He can't really share any of his true reasoning, so he goes for, "If I'd had more time to think I'd have acted differently. I'm just glad it worked out alright. Thanks for the first aid."

Oh dear, there's the adrenaline crash. He knows exactly what the molecular structure of adrenaline looks like, and also that he just went through a lot of it. Well, he did just have his second brush with grievous bodily harm in three days. Time to sit in his bus seat and get where he's going without doing anything else, yes?

Does he nap? It is a very long bus ride, the beggining of it is slow with the bus having to veer around rubble and broken road, the bus driver already knows where to go though he had to navigate these obstacles on the way in.

He does nap, for the first while. Then he wakes up, and types subtly on his lovely virtual keyboard, and plans. 

He does tourist things for three days in Vancouver, halfassedly. During and in between, he experiments. He practices getting things out of and into his inventory faster. He works out in the hotel gym, tracking the max he can lift and how much of what exercise gets him a boost. He does sudoku and teaches himself to spin the pencil on his fingers. He goes to a bar and chickens out completely and goes to a different bar and flirts clumsily with someone he'll never see again, to see if it boosts his Charisma. He debates the ethics of getting a high Charisma and commits to keeping it lower than his Wisdom. He tries to figure out what the heck grinds Wisdom. Is it reading philosophy books? Playing chess at this adorable cafe with chessboard tables? 

Eventually he's back in Boston, where he immediately signs up for a self-defense class. Based on his internet research, the best type of self-defense to learn is Krav Maga. Just reading the description is scary, but that's kind of the point.

His cheek heals up from the sleep healing buff.

Working out for part of the three days gets him +3 Strength, and that is enough for Bruce to notice physical changes to his body. Even if Bruce only ever lifted weights with his arms it's his whole body that is getting fitter faster which does not make that much sense. It's as if he isn't even building muscle his body is just being directly modified to fit his stats. That last point of Strength took a lot of exercising to achieve, the gain seems to slow down the higher the score. He also gets +2 Constitution from all the exercise.

Sudoku during the three days gets him a single measly +1 Intelligence and no more. Pencil spinning gets him +1 Dexterity, it probably isn't that useful a training method because his Dexterity is below average.

Flirting goes pretty well! he doesn't get a large stat gain only a +1 Charisma but the flirting itself is very successful, he is actually kind of fit in an attractive way now with his 14 Strength. The person he is flirting with seems pretty interested in this fit, cute and funny scientist and gives him their number.

He actually gains a +1 in Wisdom while attempting to figure out what grinds wisdom, but nothing from the things he actually tries.

Once he takes a single class of Krav Maga he will gain his first combat skill!

|For performing a special action you have unlocked a skill!|
Hand to Hand Combat: You know how to fight without weapons! Everybody was kung fu fighting.

And it seems like the basic knowledge of how to hold himself in a fight and how to land and take a punch just suddenly appears in his mind as if he has always known it. He isn't Neo in the matrix having just learned all of Kung fu, but he now knows enough to be a competent beginner with knowledge he was sure he did not have before.

The next three weeks are even more packed with experiments. Who's gonna be 1337? Bruce Banner is gonna be 1337! 

Getting stronger evenly regardless of how asymmetrically he works out is biologically fascinating and extremely convenient. Also he kind of likes how he looks in the mirror, wow. 

20 Intelligence heck yes! He will find other ways to boost it. Maybe keeping up with the scientific journals will help, he was doing that anyway and now he can read faster.

He hopes martial arts will help more with his Dexterity, since pen spinning didn't; it's weird that the same stat is used in DnD to pick a lock and dodge an arrow and applying that to real life could shake out all sorts of ways. If the Krav Maga twice a week doesn't do it he'll try a day of paintball.

He did not expect flirting to go nearly as well as it did, and he can't bring himself to explain to the woman that he's leaving town in 48 hours. He puts her number in his notes anyway, because if his beloved notes interface has a storage limit or the capacity to get jealous he hasn't noticed.

Getting a +1 in Wisdom for trying to figure out what grinds Wisdom and failing is hilarious and frustrating in equal measure. 

The sensation of knowledge appearing in his head finally makes Bruce understand why some people do drugs. He wants more skills.

He also wants to know how good he should be aiming to get before he tries to sign up for the protectorate. What does the Internet have to say on the subject of cape power levels and the line between good and weaksauce? (In the process, he finds a new website called Wikipedia. There isn't much on it yet, but it has promise.)

He also makes time to go to a firing range and take a seminar. If he's going to pursue the cape life, he should have at least a basic idea of How To Guns.

There is what appears a fan forum for Cape news called SuperFans.net . It has....not the cleanest website design Bruce has ever seen but its Forums seems to have a lot of gold among the usual garbage you find on Forums and the most useful info seems to have been pinned by the mods.

It seems there are a lot of weaksauce capes that get along fine in smaller towns, doing their game of cops and robbers and keeping the collateral damage down. You can be weaksauce and still have a career. It is when capes start getting protectorate ratings over 3 that they get scary, though there are plenty of weak capes that are scary as human beings and not because of their powers but they seem to get shut down quickly.

On protectorate ratings, Bruce learns that law enforcement classifies capes into categories and gives them numbers from 1-10 with 10 being the strongest. They are as follows:


Mover: Has a power enhancing mobility.
Shaker: Has a power with an area of effect.
Brute: Has enhanced strength or durability.
Breaker: Can shift into another state.
Master: Can control others or create minions.
Tinker: Can create or alter devices with futuristic technology.
Blaster: Is a ranged, offensive threat.
Thinker: Focuses on information gathering.
Striker: Has a power that is melee-ranged or touch-based.
Changer: Can alter their form or appearance.
Trump: Can manipulate powers in some capacity.
Stranger: Focuses on stealth or infiltration.

Bruce also gets the impression that capes that use guns, whether hero or villain, get taken out quickly. The fights escalate too quickly and other capes get involved to stop someone from using lethal means.


Going to a firing range and taking a course gets him:

|For performing a special action you have unlocked a skill!|
Firearms: You know how to use a gun! When you absolutely, positively, got to kill every motherfucker in the room; accept no substitutes.

More knowledge downloaded into his mind, his aim improves right in the middle of practice and makes the instructor look at him funny about how badly he was shooting before when now he is alright at close range. It's not just how to shoot a gun he gets some basic maintenance knowledge as well.

And he gains:

|For doing something with speed, you have earned +1 Dexterity!|

The Krav Maga classes increase his Strength +4 and Dexterity +2, The Paintball Increases his Dexterity +1 and Constitution +1 and gets him a LOT of bruises, lucky he heals after a nights rest.

Reading his Science Journals on biology actually gets him a surprising skill.

|For performing a special action you have unlocked a skill!|
Biology II: You know how living things work. Let's do it like they do on the discovery channel.

The system recognized his expertise when he used it reading those journals, and there is evidence that skills have multiple levels to them, he doesn't actually get any new info downloaded into his mind though.

He doesn't end up buying a gun, as it sounds like he'll still be safer without. Also, wow, that is a bloodthirsty pull quote for that firearms skill, yikes. Well, he knew powers were like that. It was still worth taking the class, though, both for the Dex boost and for the safety lectures.

His postdoc job starts, which leaves him with less time for training, but not none. The convenient way strength grinding works means he can do all his workouts on a stationary bike with a book or the latest edition of Nature; lecturing might be good for Charisma; and of course he still makes time for martial arts. A couple acquaintances ask why the sudden interest; he says he almost got mugged in Canada and realized he should know how to protect himself. He reads up on the Boston cape scene and major players therein.

He keeps trying different things to grind Wisdom. Meditation, walks in the park, long conversations with his new colleagues that wander over various subjects including the meaning of life and the nature of time and similar.

The stationary bike excercise and Krav Maga for a week end up getting him more Dexterity points than the planned Strength increase, and some Constitution too.

He earns in a week of excercise: +4 Dexterity, +1 Strength, +1 Consitution. He feels a lot quicker on his feet now and like he has more stamina.

Looking up the Cape scene in Boston actually earns him +1 Wisdom! Turns out a branch of the Fallen are in town, an Endbringer worshipping cult that incestously breeds its capes together to try and create more capes with similar powers. He also learns that the local proectorate team is getting a new leader soon as the old one tranfers out.

His meditation doesn’t earn him Wisdom but it does earn him a skill.

|For preforming a special action you have unlocked a skill!|

Meditation: You can clear your mind. Patience you must have my young padawan.

And now it is much easier to clear his mind of stray thoughts when he meditates...It isn’t that useful.

When Bruce next checks Superfans.net he has a private message from “SiesmicLizard” who is well known as an admin on the Forums.

You know what, if there's going to be an Endbringer cult it's probably for the best that it be full of people dumb enough to think inbreeding is a good idea. Still: yuck. So many kinds of yuck. At least he's gaining stats! He should pick up some skills next.

Why has a forum admin messaged him? Surely he hasn't broken the forum rules, he's been mostly lurking with the occasional question. Only one way to find out. MldMnnrdAcadmc opens SiesmicLizard's PM.

You are logged into superfans.net.

> You are viewing: Private messages.

SiesmicLizard sends: Careful what you search for, people might think you are a new cape looking for info :D You should use a VPN just in case or at least sign out before you browse. Someone might come to the wrong conclusion and not everyone is as nice as i am. Dragon VPN is pretty good. Be safe out there.

Um, yikes. Yeah let's go with yikes. He spends entirely too long crafting a response, but when he sends it it's over a VPN, and a good one. Not the Dragon VPN, though, he doesn't trust this person much more than anybody else.

Thanks for your concern and your advice. I really am just an excessively curious normal person, but really that's all the more reason to be careful! :)

SiesmicLizard sends: If i did meet a new cape, I would tell them to join a team. It is a lot safer. Even villians don’t last long solo. But I would reccomend to any new capes to join a hero team if they can manage it, hypothetically of course :D

Did you read that the Boston protectorate team is getting a new leader? Might be a good time for any new capes to join up. Pity i dont know any. If you ever meet any you should let them know. :3

Well that lie failed epically. Still, as "I know your secret" messages go, it was pretty non-ominous. And the advice to join the Protectorate seems pretty sound, maybe even well-intentioned. But he's still pretty sure they'd laugh him out of the building. He's good at lots of stuff, he's strong and fast but not inhumanly so, he's got a map and an inventory and notes, but none of that adds up to being useful as a hero. He needs to learn more.

He takes a first aid and CPR class, and goes to a parkour club's beginner night. He also hits the MIT libraries for books on computer security, programming, conflict resolution, car repair, and escapology.

First aid class gets him this skill:

|For preforming a special action you have unlocked a skill!|

First aid: You know how to give emergency care. You aren’t dying on me today!

The knowledge he learned from the class solidifies in his mind a bit more, it is easier to recall once he gets the skill. He also gets knowledge on a lot of improvised ways to create the neccesary tools for first aid.

Parkour night gets him:

|For preforming a special action you have unlocked a skill!|

Free running: Traverse difficult terrain with ease. Run run run jump.

It’s not just knowledge that he gains, it is muscle memory as well and with Bruces now very atheltic build he becomes suddenly decent at parkour! Though there are still people a lot better than him, the skill doesn’t make someone an expert.

Once he gets to the library and picks up a guide on computer security he gets a new notification.

| Would you like to learn the [computer science] skill from the book: The Complete Guide to Internet Security? Y/N |

Yes. Obviously he wants that. He is like unto Pac-Man, consuming every skill in his path.

The book dissapears in a blinding flash of light! Leaving Bruce holding only air.

|For preforming a special action you have unlocked a skill!|

Computer science: You know how to operate computer interfaces. I gave it a cold… I gave it a virus. A computer virus.

Bruce gets very very basic information in his head about how to operate multiple operating systems, he doesn’t actually learn anything new on how to use windows he already knew what he was doing there. But he learns how to use Linux and Mac and a dozen other more obscure operating systems. Bruce even learns how to use the old IBM punchcard computers.

But the book is now gone, and it did not belong to him. It’s a shame Bruce started his devious life of crime so soon after getting powers.

Mmmm, knowledge--hey, wait a minute! He did not mean he wanted to literally consume the book! Darn power could've been a bit more specific.

He returns the other library books intact a couple days later, plus a new copy of the vanished one, explaining sheepishly that the original was dropped in the bath and that he will definitely be more careful and not such a butterfingers going forward. Then he grabs the same collection of subjects again, this time from a used bookstore so he can eat them with impunity.

Om nom nom nom. Tasty knowledge.

The books on programming just gives him the prompt on learning the computer science skill from them with an added warning.

| Would you like to learn the [computer science] skill from the book: A beginner’s Guide to java? SKILL ALREADY LEARNED |
But actually reading those books the old fashioned way does change how his computer science skill appears on his character sheet. It now says 12.0 % to next milestone next to it. Maybe this is how to progress to the next level of the skill since the Biology II skill Bruce has shows it is possible to progress a skill.

Consuming the book on conflict resolution nets him:

|For preforming a special action you have unlocked a skill!|

Negotiation: You can negotiate to get what you want. You were right about one thing Master, the negotiations were short.

This time the knowledge loaded into Bruces mind is a lot less explicit and more...feelings on how to interact with people and discern their motives so as to use their wants as a lever to get your wants.

The book on car repair nets him:

|For preforming a special action you have unlocked a skill!|

Repair: You can fix simple objects with appropriate materials. There always seems to be a way to fix things.

The information is far more wide ranging than repairing a automobile. Hundreds of small solutions to simple machines being broken flood his mind momentarily overwhelming him before they go to settle in his long term memory. He feels like McGyver right now able to fix anything with duct-tape and a paperclip.

But not actually all that much information specifically on car repair. Bruce might have gotten more on that specific subject by reading the book itself, but the book was $3 used and the general repair skill was probably more useful as a whole so no big loss.

The escapology books dont prompt any skill learning but they are very interesting and he gets +1 Wisdom while reading about clever solutions to certain bindings.

If Bruce was worried about being secretly evil, he'd be worried about that negotiation skill, but he's pretty sure he'll be using it for good.

He was more interested in general mechanical knowledge than car repair in particular anyway, given how he doesn't have a car, and the sensation is glorious. 

Learning escapology the normal way is fun, if less effective, and the Wisdom point is nice. It sort of seems like the way to grind Wisdom is to stop trying to.

With these skills in hand, Bruce feels more competent, but he isn't sure what to learn next. Not because there aren't thousands of subjects worth studying out there, but because he's not sure which ones are the most useful for a superhero. Well, he got good at academics by going to school a lot; maybe he'll best way to get good at heroics is to join the Protectorate. Do they have a webpage for new capes who want to sign up?

A quick Yahoo search shows what you would expect from a government webpage for the local boston protectorate, clunky and poorly designed. All it really has on joining up is to actually call them or just show up at the front desk at the local office. The rest is just propaganda about how great they are.

On superfans.net however there is a guide by someone who is actually looking out for new capes. A certain SiesmicLizard.

They recommend calling ahead from a payphone away from your home so it can’t be traced and showing up in a face concealing Domino mask to protect your civilian identity. You never know who would want to poach a cape from the Protectorate with less than friendly means. Also included in the guide are common legal traps less friendly Protectorate branches might want to put in a contract, though this mostly applies to underage capes in the Wards program. Adult capes can just leave without too much issue most of the time.

They sure do seem friendly, for a creepy internet stalker. He can't actually find a reason not to take that advice.

Also, he really needs to join the Protectorate sooner rather than later. Every time he sees a news story about a villain harming someone, his mind starts spinning scenarios of what he could have done to help if he had been there, what gear it would have been useful to have in his inventory, what tactics he could have used. Hitting the gym helps a little; on Krav Maga days, sparring helps a little more. But he needs to be doing something, and doing it as part of a team, with gear and legal sanction, is infinitely better than doing it alone. Also, with his map and some more repair skills, he bets he can be useful as support for other capes.

Before he does anything, though, he needs to have a solid grasp of what he wants from the Protectorate and what he wants to offer them. He can patrol, he can do dispatch, he can fix gear. He wants money, enough to quit his other job, and various useful equipment, and training, and he wants to be able to expense books.

He mail-orders a mask that will fit over his glasses, and takes the red line to the green line to the ass end of nowhere, and makes the phone call.

Bruce gets +1 wisdom during the planning session, apparently, his actions have been judged wise by the system again.

"Hello, this is the Boston protectorate headquarters how can I help you?" Says a youngish sounding female voice over the payphone once he gets to one and calls the protectorate public line from it.

"I'm a new cape looking to join your team," he says in a friendly voice. "Though I realize that's hard to verify over the phone." There's nobody else on this street, but he's keeping the receiver between his face and the street anyway.

“As long as you know the fine for coming in and falsely claiming that to us is 1500 dollars for money wasted on power testing, we have had people claim that just to meet the team you know, then that’s no problem! When can you come in? And you don’t have to answer now if you don’t want to but what roughly is your kind of power?.”

He names some good times this week, starting two days out. "And my power is kind of a weird grab-bag, it'd take a while to explain it."

“You can come straight into our main office if you want, or if you are worried about your civilian identity you can make your way to north station in heavy clothing and if you give us a height we can have approximate body doubles around just in case. Abusing this service carries heavy fines however.” She tells him still in a friendly professional voice.

"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.”

"The aerogel sounds great. I haven't tried the container thing, do you have a bottle of water and somewhere you won't mind it potentially ending up on the floor? And it's been at least fifteen seconds, so . . ." He pulls his watch and puts it back on. "Nope, time doesn't pass in there. Which suggests that if I can put animals in at all they at least won't suffocate."

Knockdown has bottled water he hands Bruce. “Here ya go, we make much bigger messes than some spilled water in here don’t worry.”

"Thanks. Alright, let's see what happens!" He puts the full bottle in his inventory, takes an empty bottle out, grins, and then sprays water all over the floor a couple meters from where they're standing. "Hey, I'm a hose!" He can't make any "drank from the firehose, now I *am* the firehose" MIT jokes out loud, but he can certainly make them in his head.

“Hmm...30 litres of water isnt that much when you think about it though, and you need space for other gear I would assume...try it with air in the bottle this time if you dont mind?” Dr Barker paces around Bruce looking at the distance the water travelled from his hand.

The same trick works with air, and produces an audible puff of wind. "That came out a lot faster. Hard to tell just from looking, but I think it might come out at a constant mass flow. Even a kilogram of air would be quite a lot, this could be potentially dangerous in a confined space."

“Oh goodnes yes don’t build up a whole kilo of air and release it, that is quite a lot of volume, maybe we should be behind the blast shields after all.” Says Dr Barker.

”Dont worry I could have a forcefield up before the bang reached us, but yeah lets not test it by blowing your arms off hey new guy.” A smile from Knockdown to defuse the tension.

"Yes, let's not. Even if they might grow back overnight. I'm thinking my eventual gear setup will have some air and some water and some aerogel, but also things like first aid stuff, a beanbag gun, duct tape, that sort of thing. And it'll depend on who else I'm with and what threats we're most expecting."

“Even without the air and water it’ll be like having the most well equipped PRT trooper ever on our team. A full arsenal wherever you go, I like it.” Knockdown looks very approving of these powers. “Carrying around enough supplies can be cumbersome in costume but its like you have a bag of holding to carry the party with.”

"Bag of Holding is basically it, yeah. I'm glad you think it's useful! It's not as flashy as some powers, but it suits me pretty well. Hmm, what else should we test, or is it time to move on to the next thing in the grab bag?" He looks at Dr. Barker as he says this last, and reminds himself not to turn his head if anybody calls that very similar name.

Dr. Barker looks a little dissapointed as he says this. “Maybe we should leave pressure and volume experiments to later once we have some safety standards written up, we havent had exactly this problem before at this power testing facility.” Sad face at having to wait for safety to be able to science more. “What else is in your amazing bag of many things?.”

Seems both Knockdown and Dr Barker play D&D with references like those.

"Anything involving my regen should happen last. We could test my strength and speed, or I've got that map I mentioned but it works best outdoors."

“Strength and speed we can do.” And Dr. Barker leads Bruce over to a bunch of different excercise machines some even specially designed for brute testing and for testing movers.

And thus he is tested on all the machines. Bruce is at olympian athlete levels of strength and speed due to his Strength and Dexterity scores and very good stamina due to his above average Constitution.

”It’s almost a pity you are a Parahuman, you are at peak physical condition for a nonpowered human. You could have gone to the Olympics if being a Parahuman didn’t disqualify you.” Knockdown says.

“We have Tinker and Thinker tests too if you want to try them?” Offers Dr. Barker after they are done testing his physical condition.

He probably wouldn't quit academia for the Olympics, but that's neither here nor there. "Cool!"

"Sure, I'll take them. I don't think they'll show anything particularly superhuman, but I'm curious what they are and it can't hurt to be sure." Also they might be educational enough to give him a skill.

Thinker tests are a mix of intelligence tests, problem solving so a lot of puzzles, and mathematics and physics problems, its kind of fun. A lot of sense testing like seeing how quiet a noise he can hear or if he can see infrared or ultraviolet, these are pretty boring. Precog tests which again are pretty boring since Bruce has no ability at that unless you count his map. And a bunch of bizzare questions along the lines of if he can taste the colour of tommorow probably to pick up some of the stranger thinker powers.

Bruce scores very very intelligent but nothing that mundane humans couldn’t achieve very rarely. Dr. Barker seems put out someone beat his score, he was up until now the smartest member of the local PRT according to those tests.

Knockdown finds Dr. Barker being thrown off his perch hilarious.

The Tinker test is literally a bench of random parts and being told he has two hours to build something.

He does surprisingly well on the hearing test by turning up the master volume, but the others are pretty straightforward and the precog test is a joke. He feels like a total douche for scoring higher than Dr. Barker because of his power and letting everybody believe he was always like that, but not bad enough to say anything about it.

In the tinker test, he decides to practice his repair skill; he finds a broken motor and manages to get it turning again.

“Thinker 1 for the hearing and intelligence and Tinker 0 for getting a motor to work out of all this junk? What do you think?” Dr. Barker says to Knockdown.

”Sounds about right to me, maybe Brute 1 for the healing and strength if it works like he says it works since we havent tested it yet. Does the inventory power count as a Striker ability? He can pull things out in melee range...Maybe blaster 0 if we give him some nonlethal ranged weapons like a beanbag launcher or rubber bullets. If the Inventory counts as a Striker ability I’d vote for Striker 3 as his main classification.” Knockdown muses.

”I agree, preliminary rating of Striker 3, Brute 1, Thinker 1, Tinker 0 and Blaster 0 depending on equipment.” Dr. Barker says into a voice recorder he pulled out.

”The ratings really don’t convey how useful you are likely to be new guy, I would be happy to have you on the team if you’d like to join.” Knockdown claps Bruce on the shoulder in a friendly way. “You can use our showers and one of our spare plain uniforms if you want before negotiations start, or you could go home and we could continue another time if you are tired out.”

Eh, getting here was enough rigamarole that he doesn't feel like doing it again tomorrow. "And I'll be happy to join! Spare uniform and a shower sounds great; I'll meet you back here in a bit to talk contract?"

And off he goes to see what superhero gym showers are like. He's back promptly, en-uniformed.

They all head back to the office they were in originally, the same suited woman is there still tapping away on her blackberry. Has she not left this whole time? She looks up at Knockdown.

”Striker 3, Brute 1 and Thinker 1 but highly variable in utility, will need a lot of gear to use full potential.” He says to her.

She nods and rifles through a briefcase for a specifc stack of papers in her briefcase full of papers and places them on the table. “This is a contract template, any clauses can be negotiated if it is not satisfactory.” She says to Bruce. The first words she’s said all day for all Bruce knows.

Time to intensively scrutinize every word of this contract as well as someone with 20 Intelligence, the Reading skill, and a lawyer cousin can! He takes notes in his Notes with his hands typing under the desk.

He would end up a junior member for a year with a $78,780 USD a year salary and have a $112,810 USD a year salary once he becomes a full member. Junior members have restricted acess to confidential files and cannot lead patrols.

The gear budget they give him in the contract template still seems very low even though knockdown reccomended he get a higher one. A lot of his expenses seem to be expected to be paid out of his own salary. There is a trap about invention rights for tinkers in there that SiesmicLizards post warned him about. There is a kind of shady looking NDA that is worded very restrictively, bruce could probably find a better wording that still protected PRT secrets while not stopping him from talking about institutional abuse for example. The contract wants to put almost full creative control over his cape name and persona in the hands of the PRT PR department and he should probably push back against that a little.

He will have acess to the Protectorate Gym with all its specialized equipment for capes. He can sleep in a bunk on base if he wants to. He will have acess to three cafeteria meals a day for free (Knockdown reccomends eating elswhere when he sees Bruce on the page that contains that clause). He will have acess to specialized classes for capes and acess to PRT trooper courses. He can be given a legitimate excuse for his civilian identity to work at the PRT headquarters if he wishes to have one. He can have acess to Tinker services if any Tinkers are in the local teams and they agree to do work for him when usually tinker gear is heavily regulated for civilian purchase.

Team members do need to reveal their civilian identity to the team leader but no-one else if they so wish it.

Otherwise the huge document seems pretty okay to Bruce.

Bruce is pretty well-paid for a postdoc, but that's like being pretty tall for a halfling. He has zero objection to those salary numbers. He does want a bigger gear budget, and argues persuasively that it will make him much more valuable. He also wants a whistle-blowing exception to the NDA ("of course it's very unlikely to come up, but I'd hate to end up in a bind where I'd have to either break an agreement or be an accessory to wrongdoing") and to be clear that the Tinkertech IP clause doesn't apply to him since he isn't a Tinker.

He doesn't mind the bit about the cape name and persona; they can control how he appears to the masses and the media and he'll keep being himself with anyone he actually knows. As long as he doesn't have to be in character at home or hanging around HQ, it's fine.

He does want an excuse for working at the PRT building, and already has a good idea for one; presumably he can work that out with his team lead, from whom he would like a written promise not to go telling people who he is. ("Again, I'm sure nobody here would, but it's good form to have it written down," he says, gesturing at the pile of papers on the table.)

Bruce is assured Knockdown won’t go telling people his identity, there are internal regulations that prohibit that kind of thing. So they don’t mind adding that to his contract that the team lead won’t reveal his indenity to anyone he doesn’t give explicit permission for.

Knockdown and the lawyer argue in whispers (that Bruce can totally hear if he increases his volume settings) about gear costs. Eventually there is a discretionary budget set aside for Bruce that requires him to fill out a form for things he wants to buy on the Protectorate dime and hand that form to Knockdown who will decide what to approve.

The lawyer argues against changing the NDA until glares from Knockdown make her relent and change it to have a whistleblowing exception.

They remove the Tinkertech IP clause without any issue, SeismicLiazrds article said they would remove it if pushed even if you are a Tinker anyway.

The contract ends up pretty suitable to Bruce for a first pass of edits with Knockdown having pushed for edits in Bruce’s favor multiple times. A more cynical person might think either he is really that stand up of a guy or this is an elaborate good cop bad cop routine with the lawyer.

Bruce even earns a system bonus during the negotiations!

|For being persuasive you have earned +1 Charisma!|

Bruce does not have enough data to rule out either "stand-up guy" or "elaborate good-cop bad-cop routine"; he'll assume the former for purposes of social friendliness and the latter for purposes of not telling him anything he doesn't need to know.

The system bonus is nice. At least it is if Charisma works like Strength, and is just making him more socially adept rather than being some kind of freaky mind control shit.

Once a mutually agreeable version of the contract is printed up, he signs it. Oh hey, he's technically a superhero now. That's cool. "Achievement Unlocked", lol.

Little does he know there are multiple achievements waiting for him on the path of a protectorate hero...

Knockdown gets up and goes over to Bruce to shake his hand. “Welcome to the team! I’d be glad to have you supporting our operations here. We can call up the body doubles to be decoys for when you go home or if you don’t mind staying overnight we can test that regen power.”

"Thank you! I'm glad to be here." He hesitates a bit, then says, "And we should probably test my regen today. Better to find things out in controlled conditions than in an actual fight. Also we should talk about my civilian identity and his upcoming change of job at some point."

“What better time than now for the identity reveal.” He points at the lawyer. “Would you mind leaving us?”

She nods and leaves silently closing the door behind her.

Knockdown pulls off what Bruce had no idea was a brown wig until now revealing his buzzcut, and takes out his coloured contacts revealing his eyes are blue instead of the boring dark brown he had before. “I’m Jason Strong, nice to meet you. If you are revealing your identity to me I thought it only fair I reciprocate.”

Well that's a pleasant surprise. He pulls off his mask. "Bruce Banner. Nice to meet you too."

“So for payment and secret identity issues...we can do cash but its easier if we hire your civilian identity and pay you that way, that would mean a few more people know who you are but they have maximum security clearance and are under intense scrutiny in case of being compromised.”

"That makes a lot of sense to me. I'm a biologist, I can get a job here 'studying parahuman physiology' or something."

Knockdown puts his wig back on and his contacts back in. “Should we head back down to power testing to test your regen? You better be sure of that power because Barker is going to want all sorts of different injuries to test.”

Gulp. "I went from broken ribs to perfectly fine once, and I've never woken up with so much as a papercut. I trust it." He sounds like he's trying to convince himself, but also like he's mostly succeeded. 

So off they go back down to power testing, where Bruce is given a local anaesthetic to his non-dominant arm.  Barker does a series of cuts each deeper than the last, he freezes a patch of skin, burns another with a cooking blowtorch, gives him an electrical burn, does a tiny bit of acid on another patch of skin. So far the tests are all just skin tests that Bruce cannot feel through the anaesthetic.

And then Dr. Barker wants to break one of Bruce's fingers... "He said he healed a broken rib! seeing the bone stick itself together would be incredible data!."

Knockdown is very against this. "The skin tests aren't enough? you've shredded half his arm with all that!"

Bruce alternates between staring at the wounds and looking away, and eventually settles on staring.

"Unless you're going to have me sleep in an x-ray machine, I don't see what you're going to learn. I suppose you could break it badly enough that it would have to either move itself back into place or heal wrong and film that . . . " Oh crap he just suggested that about his own finger didn't he. 

Dr. Barker looks sheepish. "Well, it was actually going to be a Tinkertech MRI machine...but if you are against it..."

"This is a really good painkiller . . . If it heals wrong you have to put it back, yeah?" He attempts to joke. "Go ahead. For Science."

Knockdown shrugs and slams a forcefield on both sides of Bruce’s pinky finger. There is a super gross cracking noise. “Don’t let anyone know I can be that accurate with my forcefields okay, as far as anyone knows I can only do large fields.”

Even Dr. Barker winces at the sound of the bone breaking. “W-well uhh...if you will come this way to the cot we have set up inside the scanner...”

Bruce flinches, not fast enough to mess up Knockdown's aim, then switches from staring to the opposite of that. "Eeegh. Yup, coming."

He follows Dr. Barker to the scanner, slightly green and with his good left hand clenched in his pocket to stop himself from grabbing the broken one.

“We could bandage it if you’d like? It won’t impair the scanner or anything.” Dr. Barker was looking vaguely guilty now, it all sounded like a better test before it actually was done. “If not...see you in the morning.”

"I'm just gonna not look at it and not think about it, thanks. See you in the morning!"

He gets on the cot and starts in on the job of going to sleep as fast as possible. His Meditation skill might actually come in handy here for the first time since he got it.

The local anaesthetic is really really good, Bruce can’t feel any pain at all and falls asleep without too much issue.

After exactly 7 hours and 50 minutes since Bruce falls asleep his tissues start regenerating, his finger bones shift into place and fuse together, the dead skin cells dissolve and new cells replace them. Within 10 minutes from then and exactly 8 hours after he falls asleep all his injuries are gone and his arm is left pristine.

Once bruce wakes up there is a gaurd outside his door waiting for him with fresh PRT labelled clothes in his size and directions and an escort to one of the showers.

Bruce sleeps through the end of the healing and a few minutes past that, then wakes up and smiles at his non-numb and correctly shaped finger. 

Once he's showered and dressed, he calls in sick at his lab and goes looking for the cafeteria, unless someone bearing more bureaucracy finds him first.

The gaurd escorts him to where he needs to go, making sure he isnt wandering into any restricted areas.

After Bruce grabs a simple cafeteria meal of scrambled eggs and toast and takes it back to the room (can’t eat unmasked in front of everyone after all), Jason Strong (Knockdown) in his civilian identity comes in after knocking and giving Bruce time to mask up. “Hi I’m Jason, I’m a combat instructor here.” His smirk at meeting Bruce for the first time officially is not very subtle at all. “Dr. Barker asked me to tell you that the MRI results are insane and will probably be enough fuel for multiple papers. And the PRT director asked to meet you after you are done eating.”

"Pleased to meet you, Jason. I'm excited to read those papers. I'm about done eating, so if you'd remind me where the Director's office is?"

“I can bring you. Give poor Pvt Jenkins a break escorting you.” Jason says.

The guard rolls his eyes at Jason.

"Thanks. I'm sure I'll be able to find my way around on my own soon." His Map interface helps a bit, showing him a floor plan of the floor he's on, but it doesn't say which room is the Director's office.

The map also doesn't show what's in the office, but he bets he'll find the Director wanting to talk either secret identity logistics or his persona or both.

Jason leads Bruce to an office on one of the upper floors but in the center of the building. Jason opens the door for Bruce and nods to the man waiting inside. “Director.”

The plaque on his desk says: “Armstrong”. The man is in his late 30s maybe, tall and thin with a high forehead very prominent jawline. He gives off the vibe of a fellow academic.

”Welcome, come in and sit down. You too Jason.” He smiles and gestures to very plush chairs he has in front of his desk. For being the local director of a paramilitary organization his office sure seemed a lot more like a professor’s, with it having no windows and the door being reinforced steel being the only divergences from that vibe. “I am PRT Boston director Armstrong, nice to meet you.”

Bruce grabs a seat. "Pleased to meet you too."

“You don’t have to tell me who you are to join the team but I would like to be one of the people who knows who you are under the mask, and hopefully eventually you will trust the PRT enough to unmask to the whole hero support team. But at least me knowing would make the logistics of paying you a whole lot easier, and I hear from Jason that you want a job for your civilian ID as cover.” Armstrong sits down behind the desk while he talks.

"Can I have a minute to think?"

Bruce considers the question. He really isn't cut out for this cloak-and-dagger bullshit, for one thing. For another thing, if the PRT Director is secretly evil, they all have much bigger problems. He's probably more at risk from someone wondering why he quit his postdoc job than from anybody in this building.

"Yeah, alright." He peels his mask off. "I'm Bruce Banner."

So director Armstrong and Bruce discuss the logistics of secret identities and pay and job offers for his civilian identity to work at the PRT. It takes hours and hours.

Jason is floating paperclips with forcefields during bits of the disccusion he can have no input into.

Eventually they tell Bruce that it will take a fortnight to finalize everything and that he should go home and not make any suspicious gear purchases if he can help it until his discretionary hero gear budget is made available and he can buy things through the PRT. In two weeks he can be officialy hired under his civilian identity into the research team and will have to meet with their PR department for hero persona and costuming decisions.

Everything seems to be going well. Though Bruce has barely scratched the surface of the Gamer system.

Paperwork! Not the most exciting thing ever, but it's reassuring having everything clear and nailed down. Much better than if he'd had to go the masked vigilante route, that's for sure.

He spends his two weeks of limbo accumulating miscellaneous skills--lock-picking, cooking, chess, law, escapology, sleight of hand, even holding his breath as long as possible. At one point attempting cooking and sleight of hand simultaneously gives him a nasty skillet burn.

Practicing those does get him some skills.

|For performing a special action you have unlocked a skill!|
Lockpick: You know how to disable most basic locks. No key? No problem.

Turns out the best way to open a lot of modern cheap locks is smashing them or uninstalling them from the door partly, lockpicking skill using actual lockpicks at its start without specialized gear really only helps for very old locks with easily messed with tumblers. So most of the old houses around would be easy picking but not say an office building with a modern lock.

|For performing a special action you have unlocked a skill!|
Cooking: You can cook! Stick with me and you will never go hungry again!

Now this one gives Bruce a flood of basic info, lots of preperation techniques, lots of food theory and knowledge of how flavours will mesh together, literal cookbooks worth of of basic recipes and even how to prepare raw ingredients into cooking ingredients like raw wheat into flour. The muscle memory though doesn’t come with the skill this time, if Bruce wants to flip pancakes well he needs to practice.

|For performing a special action you have unlocked a skill!|
Escapology: You know how to break out of restraints. You think these chains will hold me?

Bruce now knows how to (with tools that are easily hidden) break out of handcuffs, both police and BDSM kinds. Knows so so so many ways to undo knots. Has the muscle memory and knowledge on how to do the painful trick of dislocating joints to escape a heck of a lot of arm bindings. And maybe the most fun information, the best ways to make people think you are bound when in fact you are not for preformance escapology.

|For performing a special action you have unlocked a skill!| 
Slieght of hand: Misdirect and confuse. It’s an Illusion Michael, a trick is something a whore does for money.

Card tricks! These are sure to impress and wow any possible suitors, nobody will think these are lame at all. More than card tricks though Bruce gets muscle memory for hiding things up his sleeve or in his palm and that is very useful. He gets ways to distract people from what he is doing with his hands with body language and dramatic gestures with the free hand. The skill also synergises very well with escapology and its ways to trick people into thinking you are bound. Bruce could also make a passable pickpocket with these skills actually.

And that burn gains him a new kind of Pop-up.

|For withstanding the dangers of the world you have unlocked a Resistance!|
Fire resistance: Heat will damage your flesh less. 1%

 
 The actual mechanics of how this skill works is unclear, and has physics breaking implications for some possible mechanisms.

|For withstanding the dangers of the world you have unlocked a Resistance!|
Pain resistance: Pain will inhibit you less. 1%

The skill did not say it will remove pain, so pain will still function as a warning system, but probably will help Bruce deal with or ignore pain.

Practicing holding his breath and reading law review articles did not gain him any skills but holding his breath seems a lot easier than it was before and he can hold it much longer than should be normal for a regular person (maybe some escapology skill there for escaping water traps), and learning legal concepts seems a lot easier than it would have been pre trigger and Bruce was incredibly intelligent beforehand.

Eventually it is time for Bruce to come in officially as a new parahuman powers researcher for the PRT. This would be an exciting new dream job even if it wasn’t a cover for superheroing.

Huzzah, skills! Wow, that cooking one is thorough. The sleight of hand might be lame on its own, but given that he can also actually pull things out of thin air, being able to pretend to do so could come in quite handy.

He's kind of surprised that he can get resistances to pain and fire but not to carbon dioxide buildup, but maybe he'd need to actually pass out or something. Not worth trying, considering.

This new job is so very exciting. Maybe he'll even get to do some actual research in between all the heroing; the other Dr. B. didn't seem like the territorial sort. And combat is supposed to be where cape powers show their full potential.

So Bruce comes into the PRT as his civilian identity, no decoys needed. They hand him the paperwork for his fake job. It is the government, after all, it needs its bureaucracy. He will be an analysis guy to help figure out if a capes altered body is a biological thing and thus a changer state or if it breaks physics so much it becomes a breaker state.

Jason meets him after the paperwork to show him around, he really does seem like a nice guy.

They give him an actual tiny office for his fake job and some files to fill it with to make it look convincing that he is working if anyone checks that they will add to periodically to show work is being done. They take civilian identities seriously here.

Eventually, he is lead to an empty room and given a mask while Jason stands guard. Then leads him up to the PR department in the top floors where they will talk personas and costumes.

So up masked Bruce heads for his first day as a real superhero. A fat guy in unflattering loose clothes with a weirdly gelled almost mohawk for hair and a squint behind his glasses is waiting for him. “Hello I am Glenn Chambers, I will be helping you with your hero persona today.” He shakes Bruce's hand. Despite the unattractive look Glenn is sporting there is something in that voice and behind those eyes that makes him seem charismatic.

Maybe he spends so much time optimizing other people's appearances he can't be bothered with his own. "Hello Glenn, I'm still in search of a name. Just call me late for lunch, I suppose. Do you know my powers already or should I explain?"

“I have read your powers testing file but if you have a preffered certain way to describe your extremely varied powerset It might be good to hear that anyway.” Glenn smiles at Bruce’s joke alias. 

"I'm thinking of focusing on the pocket dimension aspect; it's the most obvious one and if I theme around it it might make people miss or underestimate the other stuff. The name could be something about preparedness or versatility or having a lot of equipment or something."

Jason pipes up. “I thought of Arsenal, because he always carries one with him.” He looks very proud of thinking that one up.

Glenn strokes his chin thoughtfully. “I do kind of like that direction for the name, could build a good theme around it. Put pockets everywhere to make it look like you are pulling things out of them. Toolbox? Jack of all trades? No too long. Packmaster? Makes you sound like an old timey caravan leader. Swiss army knife would have trademark issues...”

"Arsenal is good. Swiss army knife is too long anyway . . . Is multitool trademarked?"

Glenn checks the computer on the desk real quick. "No its a generic name for that kind of tool. Multitool doesn't inspire that much awe...can we modify it? Ultratool? Hypertool? None of those sound right... Arsenal is pretty good though, makes me think of a miss militia type powerset able to generate any weapon needed."

"Ooh, how about Omnitool? Literally means everything. And it's going to be obvious that I don't just have weapons."

“First impressions from names are still a powerful thing... the misdirection with Arsenal would be useful. It also sounds much more noble and heroic. Omnitool sounds like a tinker name.” Glenn paces around his desk as he thinks out loud.

"Sounding like a tinker name is arguably also misdirection. More to the point, first impressions apply to more than just villains. They affect allies and the public too. I'd rather be 'the all-around useful guy' than 'the guy with all the guns'."

“It’s up to you, I just think Arsenal is more marketable. A bold red and white uniform with some weapon pattern outlines on the limbs. Imagine the merchandise. But if you are sure for Omnitool...” Glenn gets some drafting paper and coloured pencils and outlines a blue mechanics jumpsuit with even more pockets than the standard jumpsuit. A pocketed bulletproof vest drawn off to the side as secondary gear. “Something like this? Will be much less popular than something bold like Arsenal you know.”

Jason pipes up. “Im very fond or Arsenal but you do realise hero work is more than just PR image Glenn. If all around useful guy image suits...” Gestures at Bruce because he can’t reveal his name. “More than fully loaded weapons guy image then I say go for it.”

"I am going to have to live up to whatever image I go with. And that costume looks neat." Pockets and bulletproof vests are both awesome.

So Bruce and Glenn work out the full costume and persona of Omnitool the all purpose utility cape over the next few hours, themes and custom designs for gear and such, proposed catchphrases (during which Jason snorts loudly at the concept of hero catchphrases) and even merchandising options.

You would be shocked at what products want to slap any hero at all onto them. Omnitool themed bathroom wet wipes might not be something Bruce will want to associate his brand with if he wants to be taken seriously.

Bruce is likewise skeptical of catchphrases; it would have to be a really good one for him to be willing to say it repeatedly with a straight face. And if the rest of the team isn't doing them he'd rather not be the odd one out even if they do come up with something decent. As for merchandising, he would definitely prefer to stay far away from ridiculous nonsense. He'd be surprised if anything it would be a good idea to stick his image on wants him when he hasn't done anything particularly cool yet. Unless he's wrong about that, it's probably best to hold off on merch until and unless he gets a reputation that lends itself to actually good merch.

"Well we are done here, costume should be done in a few days. Welcome to the protectorate Omnitool." Glenn holds out his hand to shake. Jason does a little round of applause now Bruce has a hero name.

Handshake, little smile. Having a name makes this whole thing feel significantly more real and less like some bizzare fantasy everyone else is indulging for mysterious reasons. "So once my costume is done, anything else before I start patrolling?"

Jason steps in. "You probably won't be patrolling for a while, you are brand new and we need to figure out a schedule of joint patrols with people you'd fit well with so they can keep an eye on you. Also, there are so many classes to take first, some of them taught by me." Jason makes a sympathetic grimace. "I know waiting sucks but it is procedure to have newbies on the comms first while they learn the ropes so they can get used to how patrols work."

"That makes complete sense. Classes are good; better to learn as much as I can in controlled conditions first."

“Well I better show you your room...office...thing? I mean I use mine for naps between patrols.” Jason leads Bruce out of PR and towards the team’s part of the building.

"Sounds like a good use of it," Bruce says as he follows along.

So they head into the team’s downtime area with little closed off cubicle rooms for each of them.

There is a female figure with short velvety black fur all over her body and long legs coming out of one of the rooms. When she notices someone approaching she turns to face both of the newcomers. On closer inspection her ears are also wide and pointed and sort animal shaped, her face is subtly muzzled and her green eyes are bigger than a normal humans. She also is wearing nothing but a tanktop and gym shorts and doesn’t seem to mind Jason eyeing her up appreciatively as he approaches.

”Hey Jason who’s the new guy?.” She motions with her head towards the masked form of Bruce.

Bruce joins in the appreciative eyeing. "I'm, uh, Omnitool. Just picked it. And, hi. I mean, what's your name?"

Her brow narrows slightly at Bruce’s eyeing but it relaxes when it’s not at her nonhuman attributes and when he opens his mouth and his harmlessness is made clear. “I’m Echo. No secret identity for...obvious reasons.” She wiggles her unique ears. “And good on you for not staring at all the monstery bits.” Even if she did totally notice Bruce looking at other places.

Bruce thinks her "monstery bits" are quite nice, but he is not going to say that and is instead going to be glad he's wearing a mask. She is a coworker, Bruce, Jesus. "So, what's your power? I can store stuff in a pocket dimension and pull it out again."

“Neat, I can echolocate, yes my name is very original, and act as my own sonic weapon. Can even shatter glass if I concentrate and have a few seconds.” She nods at Bruce and gives a more knowing friendly look to Jason. “It was nice meeting you but I was just about to head down to the gym. See you later Omnitool.” And she heads off.

Jason being her coworker doesn’t seem to stop him ogling her as she walks away.

"She seems cool. Does everyone patrolling with her need earplugs, or is she really directional?"

“Mostly directional, but our comm systems also let us shut out outside sounds if we need them to. Good for if a villian decided to use flashbangs.” Jason has a bit of a goofy grin after seeing Echo, guess someone is infatuated. He opens the door to one of the last cubicle rooms.

”This one is yours, you can put a bed in here just requisition one using the forms in the holder inside the door. We have a laundry service too if you need it. And the vending machine down the hall is free to use if you don’t abuse it. The funds for restocking the vending machine are limited.” Jason shows Bruce where the forms are and motions to the rest of the room. It has a desk, a computer and a dresser for clothes.

Jason doesn't look half bad himself; Bruce wishes him luck. "Speaking of comms, what's being on the comms like?"

He does take the bed form. He probably isn't going to move in here significantly, when his apartment has a private kitchen and this place doesn't, but it will be good to have a place to crash after working too late turns into working too early. Much better than sleeping on the armchair in the corner of his old lab.

"Mostly it's you relaying important information to each squad, playing navigator, sending info to relevant authorities if they are on the scene, sometimes running any tinkertech that can be controlled via cellphone tower, that sort of thing. Also so so so much paperwork." An apologetic smile on his face.

"When we don't have newbies doing it because of newbie-ness we take turns or have a PRT officer do it. Though obviously then you have to be careful on comms if there's anything you don't want some officer to hear while if it's one of us on comms... you won't get written up for swearing on the job or cussing out the higher-ups for example because everyone on the team gets how it is in the field. But if you need help with the paperwork load I won't mind helping you out a little." Jason clearly puts a lot of effort into being a good leader.

"I appreciate it. Any of that paperwork I should be doing now, or am I good to go check out the gym? Oh, and I hear there are various training classes; how do I sign up for those?"

“No paperwork right now, you good for the gym. But I have the forms for the classes ready in my cubicle!” Jason rushes into his room and grabs a bunch of forms from his desk. “Got them ready just in case anyone on the team want’s refresher courses or extra skills. Nobody ever asks for them.” A wry smile from Jason as he hands some forms to Bruce.

”These are the required set of classes, but there are so many supplementary ones for extra training and skills. Oh though here is also the firearms training ones because you’ll probably be carrying some nonlethal firearms.” More forms. “And some PRT trooper gear classes for containment grenades and flashbangs and stuff like that. Uhhh maybe...” Leafs theough more forms. “And these ones for protocols on using tinkertech gear...and I think thats it.”

Well, that is a lot of classes. Good thing Bruce is being payed to take them.

Bruce fully expects to get compensated three times: one in money, once from his power, and once from finding the classes enjoyable in themselves. He's going to be making out like a bandit, really. He says his goodbyes to Jason and fills out all of the class request forms. Yes, even that one.

“I like your spirit, Omnitool! Welcome again to the team. I am sure you will be a very useful member with all these skills you will pick up. I actually have to go run a close combat class soon, but see you later? Just ask a PRT trooper to escort you anywhere you need to go.” Jason waves a little wave and heads off down the hallway.

Well, Bruce is done for official duties for the first day. He can go check out the training areas for parahumans and the other training facilities for the troopers, like the underground swimming pool and firing range and gyms. He could also go see Dr Barker for more power tests just for the fun of science if he feels like it. There are plenty of resources to check out in a building hosting superheroes and a paramilitary organization.

"See you around!" Now to check out the parahuman gym and see if he can squeeze out another point of Strength, or for that matter Dexterity or Constitution, on equipment designed for his power level and way way beyond.

So a trooper (Not Pvt. Jenkins) leads Bruce to the parahuman gym. It has the normal sorts of equipment you might find in a high-end gym. Then a lot of pulleys attached by what looks like threaded steel cables to high-tech looking machines about the size of two vending machines side by side, presumably the exercise machines for Brutes.

There is also what is clearly a treadmill but very long and with warning signs all over it saying: "For Mover Parahumans only, use by regular staff may result in injury and fines that may exceed $700."

The gym also has various combat dummies, some of which have articulated joints and arms so maybe they fight back?. It is a really big gym. There could conceivably be any sort of exercise you might think of to be useful in grinding stats.

Cardio is a good way to grind Constitution, which is his worst stat right now, but that particular treadmill looks intimidating enough that he'd rather see someone else use it first, and maybe not even then, given his lack of a mover power. He'll parkour all over the gymnastics equipment for a while, then experiment with the sparring dummies. Might as well pick up more points in free-running and hand-to-hand while he wears himself out.

Jumping and doing parkour over the exercise machines is not exactly how they were meant to be used but... it still works Bruce out. The combat dummies spin so their articulated joints slap their arms at him and he has to block!.

Free running goes up a whole percentage point in the short time he practices it. Hand to hand goes up only half of a percent. It took him weeks and weeks of lessons to get up to 30% progression for his next skill level and it is only a few hours of work and without a teacher no less.

The system has not been stingy with statpoints so the next level in a skill must be a huge milestone to take so long. Especially since his doctorate is only equivalent to Biology II.

But he does earn: 

|For stressing your body you have earned +1 Constitution!|

He does feel a little sore after all that jumping around and getting slapped in the forearms by dummies.

Some teenage girl with blonde hair, blue eyes, a pink streak in her short pixie cut hair and a pierced lip walks in just while Bruce is finishing up with the combat dummies. She notices his mask. "New cape huh?"

He blocks the current dummy just hard enough to cancel its momentum and bring it to a stop. "Yup! I'm Omnitool, pleased to meet you!"

She looks him up and down sceptically. "I'm Allison, Melting point. I'm in the wards, graduating to the full protectorate team in a month. So what is your deal then? You know, what powers."

Well, this girl certainly is the classic rude teenager.

Eh, the skeptical look is fair, it's not like he was doing anything cool. "My main thing is a pocket dimension," he retrieves and restows his gym bag to demonstrate, "but I'm also a cut-rate Brute, hence the gym. Do you spar? And what's your power, heat stuff?"

"I can melt anything down to a fluid state then resolidify it." She suddenly looks interested in Bruce when he does the inventory trick. "How much can you carry? Because asphalt and concrete aren't that useful. They take longer to melt and we get billed for city damages if I use roads and sidewalks as material."

She does seem more friendly when she realises something. "You okay with sparring with a teenage girl? Nobody ever goes all out with me besides Echo. It gets old."

Oooh, Powe synergies! "I can carry thirty kilograms. A lot of that is going to end up being gear and weapons, but if and when we go out together I can probably allocate some to whatever you work well with. And I'm definitely okay with sparring--you've probably been at this longer, so I suspect it's more likely to be you needing to take it easy on me." He gestures at a mat. "Shall we test that empirically?"

She snorts. "You sound like Dr Barker. And yeah if you can carry sand and tungsten filings that would help. I can melt ANYTHING so molten tungsten is a great way to make most things be on fire, and glass is versatile."

She takes a combat stance on the mat. "Normal rules? If it was a real fight I'd be going for the nuts to incapacitate." Hoping to make him uncomfortable and give herself an edge.

"I definitely bear a nonzero resemblance to Doctor Barker, if I do say so myself. Sand and tungsten I can do, we should mess around in Dr. Barker's concrete room sometime. For now, normal rules, yeah. And go ahead, I'm wearing a cup." Teenagers commenting on his genitals: weird. But teenagers are like that. He moves to a clear area of mat and takes a ready stance.

She launches a few quick jab feints testing Bruce's defence. She is pretty light on her feet and seems to be borrowing a lot from boxing. "So you obviously don't know who I am. Don't watch the news much?"

"Not really. Sorry?" Lately he hasn't been doing much of anything that isn't a) important personal maintenance and job stuff b) worth one or another flavor of points from his power, or c) experimenting with said power. He's kind of a boring person.

"Well better you hear it from me than some idiot on a talk show after I join the protectorate and become newsworthy again. My parents were Empire 88, I was raised in it. Triggered when I was 8. I was called Kristallnacht as a cape back then. I GOT OUT. Ran away to the wards as soon as I could ditch my 'bodyguard' or more accurately my prison guard. I hate the empire got it? so whenever some reporter asks you if you think I still harbor sympathy for their beliefs or if I am some kind of mole for them, remember that I burned three nazis alive in my escape." She scowls and throws a hard punch towards bruce's center mass. She is very emotional about this subject!

Bruce is rather taken aback by this, and reacts by getting punched in the solar plexus. "I'm really sorry to hear that. Um, congratulations on escaping?" He says when he gets his wind back. He doesn't know whether to offer congratulations or condolences on the killing three Nazis, so he just launches a series of jabs at her ribs.

She dances out of the way of two of them but the third hits her below the breast. Her breath huffs out of her. "Sorry. I just deal with a lot of media bullshit and it pisses me off. Now you know anyway." The hit seeming to have shocked her out of her anger a little. She sweeps her leg at Bruce's to try and knock him over.

"It's a very reasonable thing to be pissed off about!" he replies, jumping back from the leg sweep and trying to grab her ankle.

He successfully grabs her ankle and she glares at him having caught her. "You don't seem new at this." Then she twists her whole body so her ankle comes free and kicks Bruce in the chest. Not as hard as she could have but enough to wind him and push him back. Seems she was holding back a bit if she could twist her body like that so easily.

Bruce obeys Newtonian mechanics, which is probably for the best but does put him off-balance. "I started taking martial arts after I triggered. Wanted to get past 'embarrassingly new' before I joined."

"Makes sense." She steps in and tries to slap his defending arm out of the way before throwing a punch at his solar plexus.

Bruce gets punched in the solar plexus. He staggers back a step or two, then recovers and comes in with a roundhouse kick.

She blocks it with her arms but she is considerably lighter than bruce and stumbles back anyway. Newton's laws are so inconvenient. "That's going to leave a bad bruise probably. I think I'm good for now. I could probably eventually beat you but I'd end up too injured to patrol later. Fucking bullshit how much difference weight makes." She rubs at her forearms.

"Yeah, it's pretty bullshit. And part of my being a cut-rate Brute is I heal fast, so I've been trying to build a habit of caring slightly less about injuries to match. I won't be feeling any of this in the morning even though I'm definitely feeling it now." He massages his sore solar plexus and makes a face.

"Unfair! You can train three times as hard and improve just as fast! Healing is such a bullshit power." She huffs and crosses her arms. You can definitely tell she's still a teenager in this moment of immaturity, even though she tries to carry herself like an adult and be seen as one.

"My powerset in general is ridiculous and makes no sense. Do you want to show off yours for a bit? I bet it looks awesome to watch."

"Got anything I can melt that won't turn into deadly fumes? plastic is a no go."

"Hmmm, I have a bunch of stuff but I want to keep most of it . . . What happens if you try to melt something that would normally catch fire first? Like a piece of bread or something."

"Bread goop that then catches fire from being hot enough to melt. Well the part I touched, the heat doesn't travel well enough to melt the rest of the bread. The stuff I'm not actively melting via touch will flash incinerate.

Complex chemistry tends not to survive ultra heating well. If it doesn't burn it separates out into component molecules. Meat does awful things when liquified, worst barbecue ever."

"Bleh, I can only mostly imagine. I bet you make excellent fondue, though. And you could probably do some really interesting things with polymers."

"I tend to heat things past their actual melting point so depends on the cheese and if it gets all burny at high temperatures. Ice to water tends to up with scalding water for example. And water to ice tends to be much colder than freezing point. Anyway thanks for the spar but I gotta go now. Hope you settle in new guy I'll be joining the main team in a few months." And she heads off back to the wards section of the PRT. 

"See you around!" 

He doesn't have any classes today, so after a bit more workout and a shower he heads back to his room and starts looking through the list of gear he can get. Not everything has a weight listed, but he can estimate pretty well. It looks like he'll run out of budget before he runs out of mass limit, but he can get them to run out almost simultaneously if he builds his own taser. So, he checks out the lab spaces.

The lab spaces are gods damned fantastic. Team Tinker's usually have their own private labs with their own built tools but the builder's lab that anyone can use has anything a regular maker would need. Shelves filled with labelled plastic tubs full of parts. Top of the line Lathes and Laser Cutters and Industrial welders and all sorts of gear. Very powerful computers for modelling and physics simulations.

There is a sheet he has to fill out about what parts you took with very reasonable prices for them, And he needs to sign up for computer rendering time since simulations can take hours and hours but it doesn't cost anything. He can use the machines and workspaces at any time as long as one they aren't in use currently and they also cost nothing to use.

Someone must have lobbied the local PRT hard for a good tech space.

This is super neat. He happily spends the next couple hours in the mental state where time means nothing, prototyping a handmade taser.