It had been a few weeks since the horrific events of the fight in Coil’s underground base. Chris had been having a lot of trouble sleeping. While Leviathan had been far more lethal and destructive, there was this element to fighting the mutated part of Noelle’s body that was horrific in ways Chris struggled to explain. There was just something about this giant fleshy blob of creature parts that kept unfolding out from itself, regenerating as fast as you could damage it, and growing larger every time you faltered.
It kept him up at night.
But not everything had been bad. In fact, a whole number of things had been changing in Chris’s life lately. He’d been spending more time at the station when he wasn’t working or doing self-study homeschooling. They had power back on, and Glory Girl had made more supply runs over to Boston, so their entertainment options had been replaced and fixed up. It was nice to go over there, not as Kid Win, but as Chris Spencer. Play some video games, putter around on some of their odds and ends projects where his ability might be relevant.
And hanging out with not just people his age, but girls his age.
Chris had never had much luck with the opposite sex. It was easy for him to be this big personality in costume, as Kid Win, but when he was out of costume, he felt awkward in a lot of social situations. There were a lot of things in life that he sort of didn’t really care about, but there were things he did care about, and he tended to get very animated about them.
Not everyone shared the same interests or energy, and there had been several times where he’d be talking about something super interesting to him, and he could see the person he was talking to had stopped paying attention or had tuned out entirely.
It was one of several things that Chris struggled with in his life. He had attention deficit disorder, which made concentrating on something for an extended period of time difficult. ADD on its own was bad enough, but when it was paired with the drive to create things that Tinkers had, it became more of a menace. His brain would be going fast, darting around and thinking about all sorts of different things, and that would trigger an idea to form in his head about something new he could create with his ability.
He’d start working on it, but then his mind would wander more when he was working, and he’d either forget his previous train of thought entirely or he’d get a different idea, and then start chasing that. It was a genuine struggle for him to finish many of his creations; he’d make ten half-built ideas for every one he managed to finish.
And it wasn’t that they were bad ideas, either, but he’d lose his train of thought, then forget about key elements or components. It was a pain to go through and try to try and recreate the ‘tinker spark’ for the idea, because that creative urge and that idea that had been captured in his mind fizzled out, and most times he couldn’t get it back.
So he wound up scrapping his half-finished pieces for parts to new projects. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. He’d been attending therapy sessions for a couple of years now to try and work around his ADD. One solution was for him to make things in smaller pieces. Powercell here, emitter there, a servo assembly. Pieces that he could use for any number of different things. And from there, it was easier to try and assemble a completed project if he had the building blocks all knocked out. It was how he’d made his suit.
Well, that, and a lot of helpful guidance from Armsmaster.
Chris sighed as he trudged across town. The streets were mostly dry on the north side, which was great. Another month or so, and the water level would be low enough in the tunnels for crews to start ripping out and replacing the electrical infrastructure of the city. That was one thing that Chris had been helping with quite a bit. It was easy for him to look at the existing city plans and networks, identify patterns, and suggest improvements to the civil engineers. It was sort of a fun little mini-game to mentally visualize the flow and loads on the grid. Where transformers and substations would have to be located.
The engineers had been quite happy with his feedback; he’d initially had to sit there and exhaustively explain to them how and why he was suggesting changes, either to improve the function of the electrical and data network that was being planned out, or why their ideas weren’t always the best. One or two had gotten offended, but after some back-and-forth discussion with him and some of the other PRT staff, they’d calmed down. He wasn’t trying to insult their hard work or their educations, but he had a way of just… feeling that something wasn’t right, and digging into it would give him all the context clues he needed to propose a far better solution.
He spotted the station down the street; it was very easy to see in the daylight, with all the colorful containers, and the ever-growing spread of murals and paintings on the walls of buildings, containers, sidewalks, and more. It was a Tuesday afternoon at the end of July, so it was fairly humid, but the breeze coming off the ocean kept the temperatures from being too terrible. It was hot, but not unbearably so. The smell was another thing entirely. With the streets visible and it being easy to tell which roads were dangerous and which ones were safe to drive on, crews had started using tanker trucks and pressure washer-style wands to clean the streets, sidewalks, and alleys.
Dead marine life smelled bad, but so did all the silt, seaweed, and trash that littered the streets. He didn’t know how long it would take before the place was back to looking like a habitable city, but he expected it would be months away.
What was strange, though, was the news coverage the city was getting. They had restored cellular service last week, and the news was crazy. Brockton Bay had been this city you’d hear mentioned in the national news, like it was a bad thing, like where crime was high. ‘Don’t move there, it’s as bad as Chicago or New York!’ Now though? People all over were buzzing about Brockton Bay. The city that had killed an Endbringer and the Slaughterhouse Nine. People were going berserk with excitement and support for his hometown. # BrocktonStrong was forever trending on social media, usually in the top position, and there was a new trend: # BrocktonBound.
People from all over were packing up their lives into moving trucks, buying tents or campers, and straight-up migrating with construction supplies, clothing, food trucks, you name it. The news kept making it clear that the city was a disaster relief area, and that life here sucked ass, but still, people were booking it. Not just locally, either, but forming up in these long convoys and crossing the continent. With the highways inspected, cleared, and certified as safe to travel, and the streets in the city being clearly marked out with either green circles or red X’s, people knew what was safe and what wasn’t. Not all the city had been marked out, but Assault and Battery had taken up the flag of speed-painting every intersection in the city where engineers had checked the road surface and tunnels. They were competing with one another to see who could end with the higher total.
Of course, one of the most popular destinations in the city for people coming in from out of town was the station. Which, according to Victoria, had led to some strange situations where people were essentially rubbernecking while there was a bunch of homeless people just trying to work and live their lives. They hadn’t had any major incidents yet, but security had been more vigilant with unknown visitors showing up. There were concerns about further issues with The Fallen, which Chris was sincerely hoping weren’t going to happen, or if they did, that it wouldn’t be anytime soon.
Chris walked up to the big gate and waved at the guy in the booth on top of the wall. The gate came to life and let him in, and closed right behind him. Most of the people who lived here were currently working elsewhere or were busy working directly at the station itself.
Entering the station, Chris went up to the clinic first, looking for Amy. She wasn’t there, so he checked the other places she’d usually be: her bedroom, the gym, or her workshop downstairs. After exhausting all the other options, he went down into the underground tunnels and knocked on the door of her workshop. The sound of motion could be heard through the door, and then it opened. Chris was still getting used to the fact that Amy was nearly eye level with him now, and astonishingly hot.
He stood there like a doofus for entirely too long, with his hand still raised to knock on the door a second time. Amy gave Chris an anemic smile and stepped backwards, gesturing at a rolling stool. “Hey Chris, please come in.” He took the offered seat, and she closed the door behind him, walking back over to where she’d been sitting in front of her big workbench. There were bits and pieces of her exosuit pulled apart and set on top of the table near where they would have originally gone on the suit.
“So, uh, hey, yeah. Are you making repairs or doing some upgrades? I sort of recognize things when you have your suit all torn apart like that.”
Amy had her hair pulled back and banded, and it was a pretty good look, in his estimation. Much different than her typical center part. Amy rocked her hand from side to side, saying, “A bit of both, to be honest with you. Experimenting more than anything, seeing what changes I can make, and where. What brings you over, though?”
Chris leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs, and brought his hands together, toying with his left thumb. “Well, first, I wanted to thank you for the healing in Coil’s lair. I know you don’t really do that stuff anymore, so thanks for that.”
“Oh, Chris. You don’t need to thank me at all. I still heal people, it’s just… It’s not the sole thing that I do anymore. My focus and desire to do things are moving me in other directions. I still heal people, if someone gets hurt on a patrol, or in a fight, or something, of course. And I still like helping out in the clinic here and there, too.”
Chris didn’t look up, instead staring at his hands as she spoke. He was really nervous about bringing this up and was afraid he’d screw things up or offend her.
“When you… healed my head injury, did you uh… see or feel other things in there, things that might have been different?”
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Amy’s stool squeaked underneath her as she shifted in place. She was silent, and Chris expected to be told to leave at any given moment.
“Chris, why don’t you just talk to me about what it is you really want to talk about?”
He glanced up at her, those golden eyes of hers drawing and holding his attention captive. He had to focus. He was getting distracted, yet again.
Staring into her eyes, he blurted, “You fixed my dyscalculia. It’s like this massive part of the world, and this thing that’s often so important for many Tinkers that work with tech like I do is now suddenly open and available to me. I don’t spend hours fighting to do basic math without a calculator in my hand anymore.”
Her head moved in a partial nod. “Yes, I did. You had a pretty decent concussion, and I fixed it while I was working on the other things.”
Chris had interlaced his fingers and was twisting his hands at some point, the tension he felt inside being expressed on his joints.
“Can you cure my ADD? Is that possible?”
Amy’s lips parted like she was going to say something, then she closed her jaw. Her eyes studied his face closely. “Is that something that you’re sure you’d want?”
He frowned. “Why are you asking like that?”
Amy drew her feet up on the hoop that served as the bar on her stool. Relaxing somewhat, she sighed. “Well, it’s just that ADD is something that would affect your personality and your mannerisms, Chris. Fixing the dyscalculia wouldn’t really have any effect on who you are, or how other people perceive you in casual interactions, you know? But that’s not the case with the ADD. Having ADD is something that impacts every aspect of your life, but it’s also something that’s a bit of a recognizable trait in you that others see.”
Chris paused to think about that. He hated his ADD; it made so many aspects of his daily life difficult, let alone his career as a superhero. He couldn’t deny what Amy was saying, but the thing was, he mostly saw the negative effects his ADD had in countless social interactions.
“No, I’m sure. The ADD makes it so, so hard for me to be a Tinker, but it’s not just that. It’s forgetting things constantly, it’s people being put off by me interrupting them constantly or going on tangents mid-conversation, or having to fight a mental battle to get through homework every day.”
“So… You’re sure? Because if I cure it, I’m not going to go and ‘give it back’ if you have regrets later. I’m not trying to like, dissuade you from doing it, just trying to make sure you’ve thought about it and it’s not an impulse decision thing,” Amy said carefully.
“Yeah. I’ve been thinking about it all week, once I realized that the other thing was gone. It’s not some spur-of-the-moment thing at all. I used to be on medication to treat it, and I loved it. I felt like I was so much more in control of my life, but then I started getting bad side effects from the meds, and they wound up taking me off them. If I could, I’d want to live every day like that. You know, without the side effects.”
Amy held her hand out to Chris, and he took it. He felt fizzy tingles on the back of his neck, and like things were a bit fuzzy for a moment, like he was just waking up, and then everything was back to the way it was before. Amy slid her hand away and smiled at him.
“All done!” She announced.
Chris looked around. He didn’t really… feel any different. Although when he started to pay attention, he realized that things had changed, but it wasn’t as dramatic as he might have expected. Something catching his eye did just that– it wasn’t demanding his attention or diverting his attention into investigating or thinking about it. He scratched his cheek and went “Huh.”
“I thought that it might be a bigger deal immediately, but I suppose I won’t really know how dramatic a change it is until after I try and do some of the things that normally give me problems. But, thank you, Amy.” He stood up and offered her a hug, and she slid off her stool and accepted.
When they sat back down, Chris asked her, “How have you been holding up? And how are things going between your mom and the Director?”
Amy gave Chris a sad smile. “I’m making things work. Taylor and I have been spending a lot more time together, which has helped a lot, and Vicky’s been super supportive as well. It’s hard, but there’s enough work to be done that it’s easy enough to just throw yourself into it and not think about other things.”
“Hah!” Chris laughed, his face breaking into a wide grin. “You can say that twice! I’ve been helping out with the civic planners on the plans to restore the power and data grids, and that’s just a side project, between working on repairing my gear, constant patrols, and then pulling shifts keeping an eye on things with the relief workers.”
Amy bobbed her head in agreement. “Yeah. Plenty of work. It’s when things are slow that it’s the hardest for me. But uh– about New Wave, we’ve got sort of a working agreement right now with the PRT, we’re sharing members back and forth to help with coverage, and in exchange, they’re providing us with data, intel, and operational support. So things are better between us than they ever have been in the past, but Mom is still making sure that we’re keeping things separate and equitable between both parties. She’s really paranoid about Vicky or me leaving to join the PRT.”
“Are you going to?” Chris asked.
Amy shook her head. “No, things are good with New Wave, we’re both pretty happy with where we are, it’s just this idea she’s got stuck in her head that people are going to try and poach us, and the PRT is the fall guy. It could be anyone else; if there were other teams in the area, I’m sure she’d be blaming them, too.” Amy shrugged. “We don’t really mind, it’s just a quirk, I guess, and she’s being protective of us, which is nice.”
Chris chatted with Amy for another half hour or so, and they discussed a range of things, but one idea he had was incorporating a HUD and sensor package into Amy’s suit, so she’d have additional capabilities. He jotted down some quick notes with a pad she provided and stuffed them into his pocket. It seemed like it would be a good project for him to test out his new situation. Giving Amy another hug before he left, he made his way upstairs.
There was someone else that he was here to visit today, and then it was just chill time. Chris knocked on the door, more than a touch nervous. The door opened to a lithe, attractive blonde standing behind it, holding it partially open with a haughty look on her face.
“Yes, can I help you?” She asked.
“I was uh…” Chris tried to glance into the room behind her, but she shifted to block his view. “...um, supposed to meet someone here this afternoon?”
A slight grin broke the facade on her face, and she looked over her shoulder. “Noelle, your suitor is here.” She turned back to Chris and told him, “You can wait outside, peasant,” and shut the door in his face.
He heard giggling coming from the other side of the door. Turning around, he rubbed the back of his head. This was really awkward. He was just here to play some Vee Two and hang out.
A moment later, the door opened, and Noelle stepped out, her cheeks pink. “Sorry, Chris! You know how roommates can be.” She said the latter part over her shoulder, and closed the door behind her, a solid thump hitting the other side of the door not a moment later.
She snickered, and Chris grinned. Noelle, Marissa, Jess, and Oliver of the Travellers had been staying at the station. Krouse and Luke had been as well, but following some drama that Chris didn’t know the details to, Krouse had left, and Luke had as well, although not together. There had been talks about bringing some of them on board the local PRT, and all of them still had various paperwork being done higher up, the last he’d heard.
Noelle looked remarkably better than she had just two weeks ago. She’d looked like she belonged in a cancer ward when Chris had first met her, but she’d been staying here at the insistence of Amy, who was acting as her personal doctor. Noelle had gained weight and filled out quite a bit, something that Chris was unable to ignore, although he did try his best not to stare. She was dressed in a shorter skirt and a short-sleeved shirt that suited the warmer weather, and had on a pair of sneakers.
“You um, you look really nice today, Noelle,” Chris said after briefly admiring her figure.
Noelle smiled brightly and ran her fingers over her hair. “Oh, thank you! It’s funny, Mars and I started hanging out a little with Crystal and Victoria, you know, because of me spending time with Amy? And it turns out we have a bunch in common! So we’ve been doing this little clothing bartering stand thing a few days a week, and we’ve found a bunch of cute things to wear.”
Chris blinked. “Whoa, really? What are you guys trading?”
The two walked over to the entertainment area as they chatted.
“So Crystal makes the Brockton Strong merch herself, right? People literally can’t get enough of her stuff, so mostly just that, and then they bring us stuff we’re looking for, either for us, or for the other people here, because keeping clothing intact is a challenge for the dockworkers working the yards, or sites all over the city,” Noelle explained.
“Marissa really likes doing it, too. I’m sort of shocked, she’s like… I don’t know, something about being here has really perked her up. She was always sort of gloomy before, but being here and helping out really seems to have made her a lot happier, I think.”
Chris took a seat on the couch next to Noelle and handed her a game controller, turning on the console and television in the process.
“Yeah? I’m glad to hear that. What else has she been doing around here when she’s not doing the swap meet thing?”
Noelle was looking at the game controller and frowning.
“Something wrong?” He asked.
“Oh, it’s just the symbols on the controller buttons aren’t what I’m used to, is all,” Noelle replied.
Chris blinked again. “Oh! Wait, are you used to the Aleph control scheme?”
Noelle nodded.
“No big deal! The buttons are the same, and we can swap the menu over to use the other symbols, if that’s what you’re used to! It’s just like the people who prefer to use the different VO packs, so Lung speaks Japanese instead of English.”
Noelle looked over at him, then smiled widely. “You’ll have to go easy on me, I barely got to play Vee Two before we started hitting the roads, so I’m mostly used to playing normal Versus!” She brushed some hair from in front of her face. “And Mars has been working for Mrs. Rivera, helping coordinate stuff. She’s just an assistant, but she’s really enjoying it, and Mrs. Rivera needs the extra help, so it’s been a good thing for both of them so far.”
Chris nodded and brought up the menu, swapping the options around so it would show the other symbols for Noelle’s benefits. It was weird that she was used to playing with the other controller symbols. She might have been a hardcore fan of the previous game; he’d heard that it was popular to get your fighting game controllers customized with the native button scheme.
They started off with some warm-up matches, and Noelle was playing around with all the new heroes and villains that Vee Two offered. The roster had been expanded pretty heavily, although the first game had a lot of DLC packs to add in fighters, so if you had all the DLC from the first game, the difference wasn’t so large.
She’d asked him some questions about how to do certain combos and moves, and he’d been happy to show her some tricks he knew.
Then they got to playing some more ‘serious’ matches.
And she utterly destroyed him.
After the third round, where he’d gone zero and five, he looked over her, slightly dazed and confused.
Noelle looked like the cat that’d caught the canary, but also just a touch sheepish, too.
“I might have forgotten to mention that I’m sort of a big gamer…” she admitted.
Chris burst out laughing. “I’d say so, damn! I’m like, decent, at Vee Two, but holy shit, you’re amazing!”
She smiled upon hearing that he wasn’t cross about the fact that he’d gotten schooled, and a bit of tension Chris hadn’t picked up on before left her shoulders.
“So… You think you can show me some of your moves sometime? And have you had a chance to play against Melody? She’s scary good at the game, too. Even has a fancy custom controller, although I have to help her replace the boards in it after the Shatterbird shit.”
Noelle bobbed her head. “Of course, I’d be happy to! And you’re not bad at all, you’ve got good reaction times, but I think if you tightened your strategic game up a little, you’d improve quite a bit!” Noelle paused to look around. Not finding who she was looking for, she turned back to Chris. “And yeah, I’ve talked to Melody some. She’s still not really feeling up to playing with everything that happened, but she did promise me that we’d play some soon. Amy’s been helping me to push her, too.”
Chris stood up and turned back to Noelle. “I’m going to grab a drink. Do you want anything?”
“A glass of tea, please!”
He trotted over to the kitchen and poured two from the big tank they had in the fridge. When he came back to the entertainment area, Noelle was gone. He glanced around, then set her cup on a coaster on the end table and sat back where he had been. She came back a minute or two later with a movie.
“Have you seen this? It’s one Amy recommended to me, I figured it might be nice to watch.”
Chris looked at the film. Vivisector Returns: The Reckoning. He shook his head. “Nope! And sure, I like movies!”
Noelle popped it into the entertainment center, and Chris hit the remote to switch the feed over. The movie started playing.
It was an older horror movie with loads of grisly practical effects. Chris wasn’t a fan of horror films; they always got to him.
Chris jumped several times, and about halfway through the film, Noelle pressed her side against his, leaning against him. He put his arm around her shoulder without even thinking about it, because right after he’d done so, he wound up jumping again. The two cuddled through the spooks and thrills, and when it turned out to have a comedic ending after all the suspense and horror, they laughed until he cried.
Wiping his eyes with one hand, he felt Noelle shift against his side, and then her breath was on the side of his face, and he was being kissed on the cheek.
His brain fizzled and short-circuited, and he froze up. Chiding himself, he turned to face Noelle, who was looking up at him with a blush on her cheeks. He followed his instincts and leaned down to kiss her back, but on the lips this time.
He thought he heard whispering and cracked his eye open to glance out of the side, toward the hallway. He was fairly sure he spotted Victoria, Amy, and Marissa whispering among themselves as they turned and headed into the kitchen.
That could wait until later.
He had a girl he was super into right in front of him, and he needed to make out with her.
