Chapter Text
Bayleaf stuck to his stealth mode form till he was fairly sure he was out of range. He found himself in an area filled with boarded up factories, decaying warehouses and run down tenements…. The Docks, if he remembered the layout of Brockton Bay canon correctly. He slipped between two buildings and changed to his human form-- then reconsidered as gravel and broken glass cut into his bare feet. Swearing, he pulled the bits of glass loose and hastily shifted to his worgen form; the shifting seemed to heal the minor cuts, and the leathery pads on his wolfen feet were far tougher than his tender human skin.
It was time for a quick assessment. He was stranded in a strange unfamiliar territory with no money, no ID, no shelter, no… well it would be easier to list what he DID have, he decided. He looked down at himself. He had a shirt made of what seemed to be homespun linen, and dark brown breeches of the same with a rope belt. Not even shoes. Apparently Agent had traded in even the basic druid starting gear for more points to spend in the point-buy system.
So he had two pieces of clothes that might have won a medal at a renfaire for authenticity, and his own carcass. Oh, and a butt-load of talents and powers, but at this point that and two bucks would buy him a cup of coffee. So… what did he need first?
He needed clothing. That was a quick and easy fix, though. It was already close to sunset; he could wait. For now he contented himself with finding a back door into the abandoned factory he was hiding behind. The doorknob and lock snapped off easily. He slipped inside and looked around: it was dark, dusty, and there were no signs of anyone else, not even the junkies or homeless had gotten into this place yet--- probably too recently abandoned. Perfect. He had shelter now, at least temporarily.
Once the sun went down he turned back into the black sabertooth, went into stealth, and went on the hunt.
Calling the Docks a poor neighborhood was being generous. It was impoverished, run down, covered in graffiti and trash and there seemed to be a homeless junkie in every alleyway or at every other street corner. But struggling neighborhoods did have certain commonalities, no matter where you were, so it didn't take him long to find what he was looking for: A Goodwill store, complete with one of their ubiquitous clothes-drop bins out front. Once he was sure the coast was clear, he shifted into worgen form and snapped the security chains off the bin. He grabbed as many bags of donated clothing as he could carry (which was a considerable number, considering his strength) and ran for it. A quick leap from alleyway to rooftop and he soon returned to the abandoned factory, his loot in tow.
He felt very little guilt about robbing a Goodwill; people dumped their old clothing and possessions there under the delusion that they were donating to a charity. They weren't; even though Goodwill was listed as a nonprofit, the owners of had made themselves millionaires re-selling free stuff-- almost pure profit. They paid their workers a pittance, too, sometimes as little as a quarter an hour, while bragging about "employing the unfortunate and disabled." Meanwhile their CEOs took home six figure salaries at a minimum.
No, he didn't feel guilty at all stealing some of their free stock.
It was a mishmash, but he managed to find a few hoodies and tees that hung baggy on his human form. He even found a couple pairs of tennis shoes. He made extra sure to hit everything with his "purify" spell; it was meant for cleansing people of toxins, diseases and poisons but it doubled surprisingly well as a cleaning and sanitation spell. It wasn't as good as a trip to the laundromat but it would have to do for now.
He Purified and hung up his homespun on a peg in the wall. Waste not want not.
The moon was high now; time for step two in his brilliant plan.
There were beaches all along the Bay; some more popular than others. The ones nearest to his location on the North side of the harbor probably weren't very popular with the beachgoing set, due to the proximity of the Ship Graveyard, but it would do for a start.
It was a short run in Worgen form from the abandoned factory to the beach. He brought along nothing but a backpack he'd found in the Goodwill loot and, because he was feeling optimistic, the now-empty garbage bags. He wouldn't need anything else.
On Azeroth, there are certain abilities used by nearly everyone that, were anyone to examine them with an objective eye, would become obvious as being "arcane" in nature. Those trained in mining could use their thaumatic senses to locate nodes and pockets of ore, precious metals and gems, even from the air. Those trained in herbalism could detect plants by species, at considerable range. Hunters (and druids, when in one of their more feral forms) were known for their ability to detect any animal life form and differentiate by type and species.
Thanks to Agent's min-maxing, Bayleaf had been brain-crammed with the training and talent for all three. It was how he had managed to avoid running into any of the residents of Brockton Bay while out on his little junket; he could sense someone coming from blocks away.
Here and now though it made him possibly the king of all beach combers.
He knelt down to dig his claws in the sand, closed his eyes, and Searched.
When he opened them, hundreds of glowing ghostly stars speckled the beach as far as the eye could see. Some of them seemed to shine up through several feet of sand like lights underwater. Copper, silver, gold (and not a small amount of nickel and zinc...)
He grinned a wolfish grin and started digging.
By the time he called it quits for the night, the beach looked like it had been attacked by an army of gophers. (Heck with it, let 'em wonder.) His Alexandria backpack was so full and heavy the seams were stretching. It was small change, mostly, but there were still quite a few watches, rings, bracelets, necklaces and earrings, ready to be rinsed free of sand and pawned. There were also a couple of raggedy wallets-- he had only sensed them because of a few coins in them or a key stuck in a side pocket-- and a couple of them were stuffed with bills and credit cards. After a terrible struggle with himself he regretfully dropped the wallets, contents untouched, into the first convenient mailbox. More than likely some crooked postal service worker would steal the cash themselves, but he wasn't going to start out life here with that on his conscience.
He returned to his temporary lair, made a campfire with his Vine Entangle, and crashed out on the bags of clothing he had stolen from a charity bin.
The next day started, cold and clear, with a quick trip to a pawn shop to unload his boodle. The man running the place had raised an eyebrow at the sheer quantity, but had said nothing. He'd probably noted the sand still flecked on some of the items and took beachcombing as an acceptable explanation. Adrian left with about two hundred dollars in his pocket-- highway robbery, but he was in no place to quibble at the moment. Between that and the coins he had just under four hundred in cash on him.
The next stop was the public library for a little research. Joy of joys, they had internet. His objective was to do a quick research of the Endbringer attacks, then failing that, the Slaughterhouse Nine, the Teeth, then maybe metahuman rampages in general, to find a likely destroyed city he could claim as his birthplace when he applied for status as a refugee.
It was morbid work. There were a depressing number of them; way more than had been listed in canon. Most of them though weren't major cities. Major cities could generally bounce back from even a Hulk-style rampage; It was usually the small towns that had gotten the hard end of a cape triggering and going off the rails. Apparently unlike in the comics, where the villains always started their little rampages in places like New York where there were more capes per square mile than there were Starbucks', the super powered villains in Earth Bet did occasionally have the brainstorm to start their campaigns of terror in some little podunk town with no heroes (see the Slaughterhouse Nine, who had obliterated several small towns in their travels already.)
Adrian eventually found a villain rampage that was practically custom made. Some doink chemo Tinker calling himself Memento had gone on a prolonged terror campaign out in the Midwest. He'd apparently go out on a junket till he found some podunk one-stoplight town that offended his inexplicable sensibilities, proclaim it a blight upon the face of the earth, then spray it down with his amnesia-inducing gas. Once the bewildered and panicking populace had run off, he'd hit it with fuel-air bombs and blast it off the face of the earth. He'd obliterated five dinky communities before the local heroes showed up and bagged him.
It had been less than a year, and Memento victims were still turning up dozens of states away with most of their previous lives a permanent scrambled blur. Society had pretty much shrugged in exhaustion, chalked them up as yet another categories of S-class or A-class refugee, and told the civil service sector to streamline putting them back in the system-- and the system had readily obliged. It seemed governments didn't like it very much when people dropped off the grid and would go out of their way to get a nice shiny paper trail stapled to them again.
So a Memento victim it was. It was the right nationality, the right accent, the right background (he would have had a hell of a time convincing people he was a Nova Scotian or Japanese after all) and people would know better than to ask silly or inconvenient questions about his past.
He rented a room, little more than a closet really, at a decrepit building owned by a grungy fellow who asked no questions and who happily backdated him as living there for several months for an extra hundred up front. Then he stopped at the post office and snagged a PO box. From there he made a beeline for the Brockton Bay Human Services offices. He walked in as Adrian, a man without a country. Three hours after that he walked out as Adrian Smith, an official native of Brockton Bay, sixteen year old emancipated minor, complete with a fresh shiny ID card and a registered sophomore at Winslow Academy. From there it was a beeline to the local bank where he used his shiny new ID card and a chunk of his cash to open a bank account. Then for a final touch, it was over to city hall to open a business license: A tiny little pushcart business called "World of Crafts."
He had a legal ID, a permanent address, a bank account, a legitimate revenue source, and a decoy paper trail that, thanks to the ridiculous circumstances of this world, looked totally legitimate despite existing for less than a day. That was as close to being a respectable citizen as anyone could get in Brockton Bay.
Then it was a quick shopping run. A cheap burner cell phone, some canned and packaged foods, a proper military backpack from an army-navy surplus (the Alexandria backpack had its charms, but really…) along with a few bits of camping gear, a box of tools, a sleeping bag and a few other oddments.
He also managed to find Fugly Bob's. In the original web novelization, Fugly Bob's was a Brockton Bay fixture famous for three things: its name, its head shef and owner who sported a horrendous burn scar across half his face and for whom the restaurant was name, and its menu of burgers that could probably kill a vegan at twenty paces. It's most legendary burger was the Fugly Bob Challenger, a monstrosity of a sandwich made from a full pound of hamburger, a mountain of cheese, onions, pickles, lettuce, and condiments and enough fries on the side for six people. If you could finish the entire thing in an hour you got it for free, and your photo mounted on the wall next to the other rare heroic souls who had done the same.
He had originally planned to order something less ambitious, but the smell of sizzling seared meat and grease seduced him. He used the last of his pocket cash and ordered a Challenger. Alas, in his human form he could not finish it, and had to pay for it. He doggy-bagged it for later. Alas, he didn't get the coveted photograph, but doggone if he didn't feel like a proper Brocktonian now with a proper belly full of Fugly burger...
That would have been it for his day, except for a moment's inspiration. He had lugged along some of his clothes, including the homespun he'd arrived in, and put them through a quick wash and dry at a coin laundromat. It was as he was folding and stashing the clothes that he realized something very important about his first outfit: it hadn't been made in Brockton Bay. It had been made in Azeroth-- or at least with Azeroth methods. Which had some VERY interesting implications.
The bell on the door jingled as he meekly entered the shop. It was a beautiful dress shop, but surprisingly small and crowded considering the reputation of the owner and manager. Every spare inch of space was crowded with manikins swathed in silk and satin, cotton and crinoline. Fortunately the showroom floor opened a little bit past the entryway.
He was still standing in the middle of the room gawping like a tourist at the sartorial splendor when the shoppe owner came in from the back rooms. "I'm sorry, sir," she said. "But our boutique is by appointment only--"
She was a tiny thing, five feet if that, and dainty. She was wearing what appeared to be an antique dress with more ruffles and frills and furbelows than Adrian had ever seen, and her hair-- or possibly her wig-- was a veritable mass of golden Shirley Temple curls. Most disturbingly she wore a doll-like porcelain mask that completely concealed her face and made dark hollow holes of her eyes.
Adrian held up a hand. "I know, I apologize for intruding," he said. "But I'm not here to shop-- or to snap photos like a tourist. It's just that… um, how do I put this? I discovered something that might be of interest to you."
"Oh really?" Parian (for that was who she was) said warily. Out of the corner of his eye Adrian saw the dresses around him rustle. Ribbons hiding unobtrusively among the manikins floated on nonexistent breezes, coiled like cobras ready to strike. The cloth-kinetic cape had little to fear from the likes of him.
"Yes. Please, I mean you no harm." The rustling stilled. He carefully set his backpack on the ground and gestured to it. "If I may?" After a moment she nodded. He unfastened a large side pocket and pulled out the homespun tunic and breeches. He held the folded cloth out to her. "What do you make of these?"
Parian took the clothes carefully in her hands and ran her gloved fingertips over them. "Let's see. Linen obviously. Oh, and hand made linen, you can tell by the irregularities. You don't see that often." she unfolded the tunic and shook it out. "All hand stitched, with hand made thread--! The cut, the design, everything down to the buttons is authentic. Well," she said, giving Adrian a look, "this could hang in a museum display on medieval clothes-making. Where did you find this?" she sounded intrigued.
"Would you believe along with a load of donated clothing?" he said with a crooked grin. It was technically true, if not precisely so. "But that's not the really interesting thing. Take a look at those breeches and tunic, then take a look at me. Think they'd fit me?"
Parian looked at the clothing in her hands, then gave Adrian the once-over. She took in his six-foot height and broad shoulders. "Not likely," she said, amused.
"Well that's the thing..." He looked around. "Let me show you. Do you have a couple of manikins to spare? One adult male, one child." At her gesture two cloth-covered manikins tottered out from the workroom in the back and set themselves up in the middle of the floor. "Now, try the tunic on the adult."
The manikin raised its arms and the tunic slid down over its head. It settled on its shoulders, hanging in a loose yet comfortable fit. "Okay," Adrian said, "Now try it on the child." Obediently, Parian sent the tunic over to dress the smaller manikin. It slid down over the child doll's raised arms… and settled in place, once again a perfect fit.
"What?" Parian stammered. 'How…?"
Adrian knew. The clothes were of Azeroth make. And in Azeroth, tailoring incorporated so much of the arcane that enchanters would salvage old clothing for the exotic dusts, motes, and energies they used in their own craft. Among other things it made the clothes more durable to the point that they were often used as a substitute for armor. But the most common feature added was to make the clothing naturally self-resizing. This was how an Orc could shop for clothing (or for that matter, real armor, which incorporated the same techniques) at the same place as a gnome.
Parian shot a look at Adrian. "Oh no," he half-laughed, holding up his hands in protest. "I didn't make them. They were just donated." Which was the truth, more or less. "when I noticed their, er, odd behavior, I naturally thought of you."
Parian pulled off one of her elbow-length gloves and ran her fingers over the cloth. "it… I can't describe it," she said. "There's something… strange beyond explaining in this cloth. Yet… Don't ask me how I know but I'm sure that with the right materials, I could duplicate this!"
Adrian smiled to himself. He'd figured as much. He suspected that Parian was as much a cloth tinker as she was a telekinetic. "Some tinker somewhere?"
"None that I know of," Parian murmured, still stroking the cloth in a perturbing fashion. "And I know literally every tinker with a cloth-related specialty on the planet."
"So," Parian said. "How much, then?"
"Well, seeing as I only FOUND the things, maybe a small finder's fee; I wouldn't feel right--" before he'd finished the sentence she'd scribbled out a number on a scrap of paper and stuck it under his nose. His eyes went round in spite of himself. "And it was nice doing business with you," he squeaked.
When he walked out the door, she had his tunic and breeches. He had her private cell phone number in case he made any more "discoveries"-- and as one might expect of a rogue who had to regularly do business with capes of every stripe, six figures in small unmarked nonsequential bills stuffed in his army backpack.
The weekend (it was apparently Wednesday when he made splashdown) arrived. Plans were progressing fast; he had a new identity… or would that be a false identity or a secret identity?… courtesy of the state and federal government, a sizeable bankroll (he had been in near hysterics before he'd finally gotten back to his rented room and hid it all under his mattress), and he was enrolled in the appropriate school… now for phase two.
Bank account or no, it was going to be a tricky process depositing most of that cash. A homeless teenager who suddenly dropped six figures in cash into his bank account was the sort of thing that had people pressing alarm buttons. He'd probably have to disguise it as cash profits from his business.
Speaking of which, he needed to start getting together a stockpile of merchandise to sell. He was an Engineer, with the full category of gnome and goblin inventions, plus the entire catalogue from the Warlords of Draenor garrison engineer and the gnomish gearworks AND the goblin workshop. He had blueprints in his head and knowhow in his hands to make everything from toys to tanks. But, he needed a workshop to build this stuff… and to build all the cape gear, weapons and more that he'd need in the field.
He also needed a place to stash all the stuff he didn't want people to know about just yet (like tens of thousands of dollars in small nonsequential bills, ahem), a place where he could rest, mend his own wounds, and keep his head down for a while when things (as per the original timeline) started getting more desperate and dark…
He needed a lair.
Thus began a long weekend at the library web-browsing for a certain category of abandoned construction and/or public works. He was sure there were plenty of old smuggler's tunnels around the harbor; port cities tended to have those in multitude. But considering the forecast in the next two years or so called for cloudy with a chance of Endbringer, he didn't particularly want anything too close to the waterline. Captain's Hill, as he recalled, was going to remain well above the floodline and out of the combat zone when Leviathan came by to say howdy-doo. Unfortunately it didn't have quite as much construction and none of the sort that he was looking for.
No, he needed to shift his search further North. Brockton Bay had been a shipping nexus even back in the days of the horse and cart. That meant a lot of on-site machine work. What he needed would probably be someplace between the Docks and the Trainyard… someplace where, back in the city's heyday, a lot of cargo got shifted and a lot of steelwork needed done. He hunched over the library computer and clicked on the interactive map he'd found of Brockton Bay. There. He tapped a finger on the screen. There was a little patch of real estate, a little row of buildings right on the line where the Docks ended and the Trainyards began. It was deep in gang territory-- he grimaced to himself at the thought; in Brockton Bay the only place that wasn't in gang territory was under a force field bubble out in the Bay.
He cross-referenced the buildings in question with the city records… bingo. Five of the buildings were listed as completely abandoned. Three were of the type he was looking for. One was available to anyone who was willing to pay the back taxes on it…. But noone had even benched an offer because of it's utterly untenable location.
Fifty minutes later, the ghostly silhouette of a jungle cat could be seen slipping through the alleyways of the Trainyard. The building in question was just off the actual railyard by about half a block; he could hear the deafening clank and roar of the diesel trains as he scouted out the location. He squeezed through a narrow gap between yet another warehouse and an all-but-shuttered factory of some sort that took a sixty degree bend about fifty feet in, went twenty feet more, then opened into a little cobblestone courtyard. It was walled in on three sides with ancient brick and stone, and had exactly one door. There was part of an old fashioned slate shingle roof visible above it, with two or three stone chimneys poking up into the sky behind the factory's more modern smokestack. Bayleaf switched back to his worgen form and forced the door, the ancient lock cracking like peanut brittle under his grip. He took a deep breath and stepped inside.
The place was one of those odd little forgotten corners. Back in the day it had been a repair and work shop, built right next to the railyard for convenience. Over the years it had been used to provide the railroads with everything from shoeing draft horses to ironwork to brasswork to glasswork to… well, just about any work that required strong hands, solid tools and a hot furnace. But times had changed, the tracks had been re-laid, and the workshop had fallen into disuse as better facilities were built on the OTHER side of the tracks. Other buildings had cropped up around the workshop, building over it, overlapping it, till it was hidden from site and all but forgotten to the world.
Bayleaf looked around. It was perfect.
The dust was inches thick. It was undisturbed even by the footprints of mice and probably had geologic strata to it. Cobwebs were everywhere, long abandoned by the spiders that wove them for the lack of flies. But the walls were solid stone-- not brick, but stone, the bones of a world; huge raw-cut blocks that made his druidic senses hum with satisfaction. There were two furnaces, long cold. Stout worktables made of heavy oak beams and still scarred black. Even the tools were there, abandoned where they lay-- hammers, tongs, anvils, tools for iron and brass and glass and leather. There were even a couple of anvils. It was actually a two story building as well, with sleeping quarters up in the rafters.
There was a washroom in the back corner with an antiquated showerhead and a toilet...
To his surprise there was no wood rot, no mildew, surprisingly little rust as well. For a place near a seaside harbor that was a bit unusual. He could only guess that the place had been corked up so tight when it was closed that nothing of moisture or humidity could get in.
The only question that remained was how to get his equipment, materials, and the like in and out of the place. The answer came when he found the double doors in back. He ripped off the boards blocking it and opened it to find his back door directly faced a solid brick wall. Disgruntled, he began ripping out bricks with his bare clawed hands.
...To find himself in yet another abandoned warehouse. "Town oughta start trading in abandoned warehouses, they'd make a fortune," he muttered to himself. He climbed through and found it spacious if empty. There were a few flickering lights-- perhaps not so abandoned?-- and a bathroom with running water, so whoever owned it was still paying upkeep for some reason. As he recalled, building owners tended to keep even empty buildings hooked up to utilities in order to keep the heat on, so as to prevent freezing and moisture damage…
Either way, bonus for him. Since they were so rude as to build over his back door like that, he would avail himself of the facilities and splice into the electric and water lines in here. Assuming he even needed them, considering his plans. But the real bonus was that the place had a front door and a delivery ramp and thus an address to have things delivered to. Whenever something he ordered arrived here, he would be on hand to open the door and roll it on in… and right through to the back, out the hole in the back wall, and into his workshop.
He found a loose sheet of plyboard large enough to cover the "secret entrance" (aka Huge Frickin Hole in the Wall) and set about cleaning the antedeluvian dust out of his lair.
Saturday was spent on shopping.
Not just any shopping, though. Porch sales. Yard sales. Garage sales. Flea Markets. Even Brockton Bay had such things, especially in a mild indian summer. He was treasure hunting, and he was stretching his Searching power to the absolute limit. The treasures he wanted were scattered far and wide… but it was amazing the amount of territory you could cover when you could turn into a bird.
Added bonus? No receipts, which meant no paper trail.
He bought a few things for his comfort-- some bits of furniture including a bed, a little winter clothing, a propane heater-- but the main items on his shopping list were:
1. clockwork, engine, motor and electronic components.
2. certain gems, crystals, and rare earths and metals.
3. scrap metal in bulk.
4. tools.
5. Fuel.
6. anything his Searching power "pinged" on.
His approach was as methodical as his beach-combing. He first scoped out the local papers for any listed yard sales. Then he overflew those areas in his raven form, scanning. If he pinged on anything he dropped down into a secluded spot, turned human, and quickly bought whatever he'd pinged on, then followed up by going over everything else with a fine toothed comb. If the people running the yard sale were amenable to it, he'd pay them a little extra to box up and set aside what he'd found, with the promise he'd be back for it later.
He made some surprising finds; enough that he started wondering what treasures he'd completely overlooked in his past life when he went yard sale trolling. He found countless pieces of real silverware, including a serving platter and cover. He found more than a few bits of gold too. Gems were a rare find but he found plenty of crystals and semiprecious stones that would have been worth ten times their weight back on Azeroth. The hippie lady at the flea market with the new-age crystal stand must have thought her ship had come in when he came along and basically bought her out. He even bought the push cart.
He snapped up clocks of every size, wind up toys, old electric countertop appliances, pocket watches, and any number of items that noone watching could have guessed the reason… but he'd spot them amongst countless other debris, his eyes would get a funny gleam and he'd snatch them up. At one point on impulse he'd bought a stack of flowerpots, some potting soil, and an assortment of seedlings...
He'd realized even before he'd started that he'd have a touch of trouble dragging his haul back to his lair. Not for the first time since splashdown he groused to himself bitterly about Agent not equipping him with the standard Azeroth "bottomless" handy haversack (or more likely trading it in for more points.) He'd gotten around that problem by scouting around till he found a guy in one of the lower-rent neighborhoods lounging around who had a pickup truck, and offering to pay him a couple hundred to haul him and his crap around for the day. His name was "Efe," so far as Bayleaf could figure; a balding, potbellied old guy with a ballcap, a wife-beater shirt and a fringe of shoulder length stringy hair and a disturbing resemblance to Cheech Marin. But he was mellow, and cool with doing a little driving for a few bucks. They drove around and picked up all Adrian's purchases. By the time they got to the false front warehouse, it was loaded to overflowing. "Efe" helped him unload, wished him luck, told him they should go out for a few beers sometime and drove off…. Never even having asked Bayleaf his name. No fuss, no muss and once again, no paper trail.
One might have thought it strange that, in a world and a city where tinkers scavenged like cockroaches, that Bayleaf pulled in such a load. Of course, the usual behavior of tinkers was to either scrounge dumpsters and junkyards, or try to pull off a not-so-daring heist and rip off a factory or a warehouse full of high-end technology. The few who even thought of money tried to order from horrendously overpriced underground companies like the Toybox, or even (in cases of extreme stupidity) tried to have stuff delivered to them in bulk from companies, thereby putting an enormous bullseye on themselves with a big fat blinking neon arrow above it that said "Please kidnap this Tinker now."
Almost none of them thought to buy things directly from ordinary people with plain old cash. And those who spoke of tracking Tinkers by their "unusual purchasing habits" never considered the millions of people at flea markets, Salvation Army stores, and yard sales whose purchasing and selling habits would probably make the most demented Tinker look banal.
Sunday he would have taken rest-- but must needs, as the saying went. He threw his furniture in place, started up his propane heater to keep warm, sat down next to his stacks of salvage, and got to work.
There were over five hundred "toys" listed in World of Warcraft. He could craft a shocking number of them, just with what he had. In one hour his first trinket was clicking, buzzing and whirring around the Foundry floor. By the end of three he had a small platoon chattering along… including one very special one, for a special purpose.
Monday morning, he was ready.
Principal Blackwell sat back in her chair with a self-satisfied air. "Well, Mister… Smith..."
"Sorry," Adrian said with a shrug and a half-smile. "I guess government offices aren't exactly creative with names."
"...Yes," Blackwell said with pursed lips. "Well, according to the standardized test they gave you, you place in the sophomore or junior year. We will be observing your actual performance in class over the year to determine your actual placement…"
Yyyeah, that would be the purpose of the tests they regularly hand out to ALL students, Adrian thought to himself with a mental raised eyebrow. In other news grass is green, water is wet, film at eleven. Her point?
"But I trust that your future performance will… compensate for your checkered educational past."
At this he did raise an actual eyebrow. Checkered past? According to the file she was handed, I'm an amnesia victim. I don't even have a past to checker!
"I will warn you right now, we have low tolerance for troublemakers here…"
I just may barf. I walked past three skinheads swapping sandwich baggies just on my way to the office. Who is she kidding? He considered his appearance. Jeans, sneakers, t-shirt, and a leather jacket. Was she picking up her cues on "troublemaker on sight" from old James Dean films?
"I will say I had some misgivings about your enrollment here, Mr. Smith. Your past is due cause for concern."
The penny dropped. Ah, I get it. Should've thought of that first. With things like the Simurgh, or Bonesaw, or Nilbog running around, there's probably a certain amount of prejudice against survivors of metahuman attacks. She's probably afraid that nutcase Memento might have turned me into some sort of teenage tyke-bomb. He huffed and curled his lip. Or that I might have a bad day and trigger all over her nice clean school. Irony ahoy.
She saw the tiny lip curl and predictably, misinterpreted. She stiffened a bit, and her already less than warm tone turned frosty. "You had best watch your attitude, young man. I run a tight ship here--"
hrnrrnk.
"--and I will be keeping a close eye on you for any irregularities. So don't give me any crap."
He looked at the scowling woman in her bowl-cut and only barely suppressed the urge to say You got it, Moe. "Understood, ma'am," he said. "May I go find my locker now? I think lunch is starting soon."
She glared at him for a moment. "Dismissed," she said. He beat a hasty retreat.
He found his locker in short order, and started unloading his backpack into it. He looked over the inside. "Cripes," he muttered. "This thing is enormous. I didn't think anyone made lockers this size for real." He shook his head. He needed to focus on his next objective: finding Taylor. Her description was pretty straightforward, so that shouldn't be a problem, he decided. There was a good chance he'd spot her at lunch-- but then again, maybe not. Didn't she take up eating her lunch in various hidey-holes to try and escape the gruesome threesome? Or was that something she started after the locker incident…?
"Hey Taylor!"
Adrian's head whipped around. He looked just in time to see a petite redheaded girl in an ungodly amount of makeup stick her foot out and trip another girl in a hoodie and backpack. The hoodie girl stumbled and nearly fell. The other girl went so far as to slap her in the back, to try and get her to stumble further. The girl in the hoodie managed to keep her balance though. "Better watch your step, Taylor," the redhead taunted. "You're just so terribly clumsy."
Taylor didn't even look back. She just righted herself and kept walking, her head down and shoulders hunched. Adrian felt like someone had taken a bite out of his heart. His conviction only firmed; even if he didn't fix anything else, he was going to make this right. She kept walking down the hall right towards him…
And stopped at the locker next to his and began working the combination.
Holy carp. Luck of all the Irish. "Uhhh, hi," he said. "How ya doin?" She jumped, then looked up at him, brushing stray curls of her dark hair out of her face. With her glasses she looked like a frightened owl…
Taylor flinched and looked up at the boy next to her warily. She blinked a little when she realized she didn't recognize him. She was fairly sure she would have remembered being in the locker next door to a tall, dark, broad shouldered-- she pushed that thought away, blushing. He was handsome though, with chiseled looks and dark gray eyes. He gave her a crooked smile.
Had he said something?
"Oh! Uh. Hi….?"
"You must be Taylor," he said. "I'm Adrian."
Taylor's paranoia sprang to the fore. "How do you know my name?" she said warily.
Adrian jerked his thumb down the hall, indicating the departed Emma. "I overheard Princess Maybelline back there shouting it," he said wryly.
"Princess Maybelline?" she said with a half smile of her own.
"Yeah." He looked down the hall thoughtfully. "Dang, how many layers of makeup does she have to slather on to get that perfect Resting Bitch Face, d'you suppose?" Talyor did let out a hiccup of a laugh at that one.
"I don't recognize you," she said, immediately feeling stupid. Of course not, he was obviously a new student--
"Yeah, well. Funny thing is, if we had known each other, we probably wouldn't now," he said. He tapped his head. "Memento refugee."
Taylor's mouth made a silent "o." "I'm sorry," she said.
"Hey, not your fault. At least all I got was a clean slate; I could've ended up like those guys who can't remember anything past the last half-hour, or whatever." He looked a bit uncomfortable with the topic, and made an obvious move to change it. "So…basically means I'm totally new here. As new as you can get actually. Any more like Resting Bitch Face I should look out for around here?"
Taylor rolled her eyes. "You mean besides the neonazis, the asian gang members, and the junkies?" she said sarcastically.
"Well I know about those guys. At least they're courteous enough to wear identifying colors," Adrian said, amused. "But what about the rest?"
Taylor's smile disappeared. "That's Emma," she said. "You'll get to know her soon enough. "Her, Madison and Sophia are the Queen Bees in this school and everybody knows it." She pulled a trapper-keeper out of her locker and flipped through it. Then flipped through it again. "Dammit!" She threw her head back and stamped her feet in frustration.
"What?" Adrian asked.
"Those-- they stole my homework. Again!!" She threw the trapper-keeper down in the bottom of her locker and let her head fall against the doorframe with a thunk. "I can't stand it. I even changed my lock..."
Adrian knew exactly why changing her lock made no difference, but he could hardly tell Taylor that at this point. He had to take a different approach. "What kind of lock did you get? Can I see it?"
Taylor looked up at him. "Just a regular combination lock," she said. She pulled it off the door latch and gave it to him. He rolled it over in his hands and made a knowing sound.
"Eh, well, there you go," he said. "Just a regular school lock. They could get this thing open lickety split."
"How?" Taylor scowled.
Wordlessly, Adrian took out his wallet and pulled a metal strip-- it looked like it had been cut out of a soda can-- out of one of the pockets. He closed the lock. Then he wrapped the strip of metal around the shackle and worked it down inside the body of the lock. There was a click, and the lock popped open. "Easy peasy," he said. "They've got how-to videos online."
Taylor groaned. "Well that's ten bucks wasted," she grumbled.
A noise came out of Adrian's backpack. "Vweep. Whirrwhirrwhiirr. Ebbebebbbebp. PTING."
Taylor backed up a step. "The heck was that?"
"Oh. Darn, must've turned him on by accident..." Adrian reached down in his oversized pack and pulled something out. It was a little toy robot about a foot tall, made out of copper and brass. It had a rotating red beacon light for a head, two headlight "eyes," a short squat body, short little limbs with large bell-shaped hands and platform feet. "Oh, this is just one of the toys I make," Adrian said, holding it up. "I call it the alarm-o-bot."
"You're a TINKER?" Taylor blurted out. Adrian laughed.
"Oh no no no," he said. "This is all just off-the-shelf electronics, and a little handicraftyness." He shrugged and laughed. "it's sort of a gag gift. You place it where you want-- like on your desk, or in your car, or whatever, press the button to set it, and if anybody sets off its motion detectors it sounds an alarm. Look--" he poked something on it.
The red light lit up and began rotating. "WARNING, FART DETECTED! FART DETECTED! CLEAR THE AREA! DO NOT LIGHT A MATCH!--"
"All clear, all clear!" Adrian shouted at it frantically. The alarm shut down. "um, wrong setting," he said weakly, palming his face. He looked around; several students had stopped in alarm at the ruckus and were now staring at the two of them silently. Adrian leaned out and stuck his face into the face of the nearest one.
"Yeah. It was MEEEEEEEEE!" He sneered. He held out a hand to the kid. "Come on, pull my finger!"
The kid, wisely, beat a hasty retreat; the other kids rapidly dispersed before they could become the next target of the weird new guy's attention. He turned back to Taylor like nothing had happened. "Anyway, like I was saying..."
Taylor was trying not to laugh and failing. "That's awesome! And you make these little guys?"
Adrian nodded, scratching the back of his head in embarrassment. "Yeah. I make little windup or battery powered toys, sell 'em from a push cart..." he gave her a card. It said "World of Crafts" on it and listed a website and cellphone number. "Its how I pay the bills."
"Neat." she smiled and tucked the card away.
Adrian hefted the Alarm-o-bot and looked at Taylor's locker thoughtfully. He could see a flute case in the upper compartment… they hadn't stolen her flute yet… "Say, wanna have a little fun with whoever's rifling your locker?" He held up the toy and waved it meaningfully.
It took a moment for the penny to drop. "Oh, that would be brilliant--" she hesitated. "Oh but we can't. They'd break your little robot just to get even--"
His grin grew strangely feral. "Meh, I ain't worried about that," he said. "I make these things by the dozen, remember? Out of old cell phones and crap. Be worth it to scare the crap out of Resting Bitch Face, wouldn't it?" He held the Alarm-o-bot up to her face. "Go ahead; say 'All clear.'" he pressed a button on the toy's back.
"All clear."
"There, that's the shutoff code." He stuck the little robot in the upper compartment, clamping its magnetic feet so it stood in front of the flute case. "Back to your duty, soldier," he said, giving the toy a mock salute. Taylor laughed as he closed the door.
She never saw the toy return the salute…
"Wow, what other stuff do you make?"
"All sorts of things," he said, stuffing his bag into the locker. "Most aren't nearly as complicated as Obie, there." He nodded at the locker.
"Obie?"
"Short for Alarm-o-Bot. AOB." He picked out the books for his next few classes, and slammed the locker shut. "Anyway, most of my stuff is just windup stuff or battery powered trinkets. Stuff like this." He held his hand up. Perched on his finger was a butterfly made out of wire and glass. As she watched it slowly opened and closed its shiny black wings. Even its antennae moved.
"Oh wow." She reached out a finger and petted it on the head. "How--?"
"The wings are broken bits of solar cell," he said. "and there's a really simple electric motor-- more like a little solenoid-- that turns a little wire camshaft that moves the wings and antennae. The movement changes speed depending on how much light is shining on the wings. It's not much more complicated than one of those bobbing bird toys, but it looks really lifelike, doesn't it?"
"Yeah. Pretty, too," she said.
He smiled. "Here." He reached up and fastened it to one of the stray locks of hair sneaking out from under her hood. It clung there, fanning its wings slowly. She immediately started to protest.
"Oh no, I couldn't--"
"Hey, free advertising," he said with a smile and a shrug. "Besides you looked like you could use a smile."
The school bell blatted. "Come on, we'd better get to the cafeteria before they give away all the good slop," he joked. "Come with me?"
He watched her chew on her lip, undecided. She had to be half-broken at this point; convinced that noone would willingly associate with her; terrified her three tormentors would use it as a justification to turn their ire on her-- or him-- but by this point so desperate for someone, anyone to just be with… "It-- it might be a bad idea for you to be seen with me," she managed to say.
"Great! I'm all about doing what's bad for me. C'mon." She hesitated again. Then, for a miracle, she gave him a smile.
"Okay… okay, sure." After all, what did she have to lose, right?
"Mmmm, slop ahoy..."
Behind them in the locker, the Alarm-o-Bot sentry blinked its eyes and settled in for a long shift on duty.