Stumbling into Victory 4

Stumbling into Victory 4

Jonathan Yukawa
Brockton Bay, NH, USA

Spring break in New Hampshire was lovely. Temperatures hit forty-five, maybe even fifty degrees during the day, which was brisk and refreshing as far as my Bostonian sensibilities were concerned. It certainly made my morning workouts more enjoyable.

I woke up feeling energized. Going to sleep exhausted and completely drained of my ba helped. It was probably just a placebo, but I got to wake up to a full tank and that relative difference felt fantastic.

‘Hello, Atem, good morning,’ I greeted my soul-buddy as I brushed my teeth.

‘Hello, Jonathan. You’re in a good mood today,’ he observed. ‘I believe you wanted me to remind you to set your board.’

‘Ah, right, I was too sleepy to do that. Any suggestions?’

‘You only have two field spells so that may as well be where you begin. Are you partial towards the mountain or the sea?’

‘Seeing how Umi will cause less collateral damage, let’s keep that there,’ I said. ‘As for monsters, do you have any recommendations?’

‘Silver Fang. He is a good boy,’ Atem said with a laugh.

‘Of course he is. Actually, I have Mystical Moon as well. I assume I’m not going to create a literal moon, right?’

‘No more than you will summon an entire ocean.’

‘Good, then those two can be set together. The Furious Sea King synergizes well with Umi if I ever need to flip that card so he can stay as well. That’s two.’

‘I suggest the Man-Eater Bug. It excels at stealth and can lunge with deceptive speed,’ he advised.

I set my third monster in place, but felt a little hesitant. The name did not inspire confidence. ‘It’s not literally a maneater, is it?’

‘It is, but it won’t be difficult to control,’ he assured me. ‘Many lower-level insect monsters tend to have a rather simplistic thought process. While this does mean they are driven by their instincts, they are also relatively easy to dominate.’

‘So it won’t nom on whichever poor bastard it gets its claws on?’

‘Not unless you permit it, no. You should be mindful of your monsters, but too much caution is just paranoia.’

‘Oh, that’s good. As for numbers four and five… I wonder if I can wear Hard Armor. I wanted to use the Sea King’s trident but he wouldn’t let me.’

‘It is hollow so I suppose you could crawl inside it for protection. That said, you have more experience with armors of such design than I.’

‘How big is it?’

‘About six of your silly American feet at the shoulder.’

I rolled my eyes. Even the ancient Egyptian was giving me shit over imperial units. ‘Better than crocodile tails or whatever you used back in the day, old-timer.’

‘You are a historian. You know we used the royal cubit, which is the distance from my elbow to the end of my middle finger,’ he sniffed with faux pretentiousness. ‘See? Perfectly standardized and always accessible.’

‘Yeah, royal puberty must’ve been a fun time for all,’ I drawled jokingly.

I eyed myself in the mirror. I stood at a respectable five-eleven. That made standing inside it a ridiculous idea. Armors did tend to be more customizable than most realized, but there were limits.

If Hard Armor stood taller than me at just the shoulder, it was sized for a goliath of a man, about six-six or so. Even if the breastplate could be made to fit, the joints would not align with my knees and elbows. I doubted the monster would allow me to wear just its breastplate into battle.

In the end, I settled for Frenzied Panda and Kagemusha of the Blue Flame. The panda was cute and Kagemusha did say he’d give me kenjutsu lessons to supplement my slapdash kendo if I ever found the time.

That decided, I headed to the communal living room for breakfast. I was microwaving a packet of oatmeal, with apples and brown sugar, when one of my five flatmates came by.

“Yo, Jon,” Luke greeted. He and Sean got along especially well together after bonding over a shared love of baseball. “Sup, man?”

“Hey, Luke. Want some oatmeal?” I asked.

“Uh… Is this oatmeal-oatmeal or one of your historical recreations?” he eyed my bowl with great, unwarranted caution.

“Oatmeal-oatmeal, with brown sugar and apples. And that was zimbuleh, an oatmeal porridge from Nigeria. I wouldn’t say it’s a historical recreation, just something that’s stood the test of time.”

“Yeah, that. I don’t know about any of that. All I know is that the flavor was way too intense.”

I chuckled sheepishly. “That’s my bad. Zimbuleh uses cardamom to give it that aromatic flavor. I didn’t realize there were two kinds, black and green, and used the wrong one.”

“Heh, for real? Did you try making it again?”

“I did. It tasted much better the second time around. Interested?”

“Maybe… But yeah, I’m gonna pass on breakfast for now. I gotta go to the lab.”

I blinked in surprise. Luke was a psychology and business management dual major. Neither discipline was known for intensive lab work. “Lab? Since when? Are you doing that thing with placebo sugar pills?”

“Since this semester, dude. I’m taking Behavioral Conditioning Methodologies for psych. The professor gave us all rats to look after.”

“Ooh, that does sound familiar. You named it, right?”

“Her. Her name is Lily and she’s adorable. I’m going to teach her to play fetch.”

“Alright, you do that. Later, man.”

“Later.” Then, before he could walk out the door, he turned around, “Actually, yo, Jon.”

“Yo,” I held up my bowl. “Change your mind?”

“Nah. Me and Sean are going to a party in a few days. You know, do something spring break-y. You interested?”

“Eh… You know I’m not big on parties. You two have fun, though.”

“You sure? That cute redhead you get along with is going to be there. Anne, right?”

“That’s her. We stopped dating a while ago, dude. We’re just friends.”

“Alright, man. Invitation’s open if you think twice,” he said. Luke was a good dude. Truthfully, he tried to bring us flatmates together more than anyone else.

“I’ll think about it. An evening of drinking won’t kill me,” I told him. If nothing else, a party in this weather sounded like a nice chance to try out that mulled wine recipe I found.

X

I jogged to the gym. I got my shit kicked in, by both Brian and Samuel this time. I jogged home. I took a nap. Thus, my first day of spring break vanished. Before I knew it, it was evening and the moment I’d been waiting for had arrived; today was to be my first outing.

I snuck out of my dorm and got dressed in the rundown transport hub. The last thing I needed was for one of my flatmates to see me riding off on a fuck-massive wolf. We were cool, but not that cool.

‘You seem excited,’ Atem said, audibly amused. 

‘I am. I guess I still have a bit of that naive optimism in me,’ I said with a rueful chuckle as I buttoned my doublet.

‘That is good. There is something precious about hope, intangible yet immeasurably powerful. It is what keeps us moving forward towards a brighter dawn when the night is darkest.’

‘You’re right, and also a bit of a drama queen.’

‘Drama queen? Me? Might I remind you that you are the one dressing up to patrol the streets as a masked crimefighter.’

‘Touche, pharaoh-man, touche.’

Atem didn’t put much stock into this superhero business. Oh, a smart fellow like him understood all the individual nuances that led to the creation of a superhero culture. He probably saw the webs of relationships and power dynamics that defined this city’s geopolitics better than I did. Even so, there was a part of him that saw cape life as just a bit of flamboyant pageantry.

I summoned Silver Fang. The big goofball promptly tackled me into the wall with a wide, wolfy grin and a cheerful bark. I grunted in mild annoyance as I tried to shove his head aside. With his size, his head alone had to weigh over thirty pounds. Eventually, I bribed him with enough headpats to let me ride him and we set off.

Patrolling was… boring. No one talked about it in comic books, but heroes didn’t magically stumble upon a crime on every block. Not even Brockton Bay was that bad because even if we had a lot of gangsters, most people were smart enough to go home for the evening, not wander around like hapless sheep waiting to be hunted down.

Almost two hours went by with nothing. I saw an altercation outside a nightclub as Silver and I hopped along the rooftops, but the bouncer had the drunk fool well in hand. It was enough to make me wonder if this was worth my time at all. After all, I’d get to pull a new pack each week anyway.

Then I remembered that I needed a strong reputation as a hero. If some rando pulled out Exodia to nuke Leviathan off the map, the response wouldn’t be gratitude; it’d be fear, fear that cosmic power belonged to a complete unknown. Besides, Atem said I needed to overcome challenges if I wanted my ba to grow. Having Exodia as part of my potential decklist meant nothing if my soul tore at the seams just trying to call his name.

Sighing, I decided to stop at a 7-Eleven gas station. These things were always open and I figured Silver could use a sausage from their roller-heater-thingies. No, it wasn’t healthy, but it tasted nice and magic spirit-wolves weren’t exactly picky about their food.

As for me, I doubted I could stomach one without getting the shits so I settled for a late-night coffee. For whatever reason, mom and all her Asian buddies used to drink coffee in the evenings whenever they met up to chat, not in the mornings. I used to think coffee was a nighttime drink when I was growing up.

The coffee here wasn’t too great; that place I went to with Anne was better. Most of the fun was in freaking out the cashier with my big ol’ wolf-buddy. That face of confusion and disbelief he made when I actually bothered to pay for our food was hilarious.

It was as Silver squeezed out the door that we saw them. A group of three kids had come by the parking lot while we were messing around inside. Two were boosting a car with a jack while a third kept watch. The older kids looked like they were in high school while the lookout couldn’t have been older than fourteen.

I snorted but activated Mystical Moon. A crime was a crime and a hero had to leave an impression. Suddenly, we had our own spotlight. A moon manifested far above Silver, bathing us in its golden gleam.

Silver seemed to soak in the moonlight. His fur, already a pristine white, took on an almost radiant luster. He also grew bigger, as if the light was a form of nourishment. Now, he was about as large as those Clydesdale horses I saw at ren faires, with about as much muscle and many more pointy bits.

He let out a blood-curdling howl, the kind that carried for miles through frosted forests and set the entire forest on high alert. It froze the three boys in their tracks as I steered the goodest boy slowly towards them. I didn’t blame them.

“Howdy, boys,” I said with a shit-eating grin. If I had a cowboy hat, I would have doffed it. “You can run if you’d prefer. Silver here could use the exercise.”

‘You’re enjoying this way too much,’ Atem said dryly. ‘And you say I’m the dramatic one.’

‘I mean, you’ve never wanted to ride a giant wolf with your own, personal moon at your back?’I asked him. ‘Where is your sense of adventure? This is a man’s romance, Atem.’

‘’They are little better than children. The little one actually is a child. I suppose intimidation is a valid tactic if it keeps us from having to harm them.’

‘Exactly. As a wise man once said, the difference between villainy and supervillainy is presentation.’

‘That was a fun movie. But you’re trying to be a hero, as I recall.’

‘Same difference.’

It was a boring arrest, which was good. Silver didn’t have to nibble on anyone and I got to preserve my spells. They couldn’t be primed again until next sunrise and cost a fair bit of ba to set so I’d prefer to be conservative with them if I could help it. Hopefully, a continuous spell would have more uptime than the ones I had now.

I had them sitting on the curb waiting for the cops in short order. The primal terror wore off quickly, but Silver kept them from bolting simply by walking lazy circles around them.

“Come on, man, we didn’t even take the car,” one of them complained.

“You would have. You’re not seriously bitching about getting stopped from committing a crime, are you?” I pointed out reasonably.

“Yeah, well… my bro’s in the Empire. Just you wait. He’s going to cap yo’ ass when he gets me out.”

“Nice try. If you had any gang ties that mattered, you wouldn’t be out here in the cold stealing car tires. Either you’re lying, or you do know someone in the gang but he’s just a no-name chump.”

“Please don’t tell my parents,” the tween begged. “Dad’ll fucking kill me.”

“Should’ve thought of that before joining these two chucklefucks.”

“He’ll literally kill me. Like, for real.”

“If he’s abusive, I’m really not the one you should be talking to. Take the chance to tell the cops and get some real help.”

“Fuck no! I don’t wanna go into the system, dude!”

“Then I guess he’s not that bad,” I pointed out. The system sucked, everyone knew that, but it sure beat dying.

I wasn’t unsympathetic, but ultimately, I wasn’t qualified to handle that kind of thing. Either the kid was lying to get out of this, or he wasn’t, in which case the police and child protective services was the right answer.

The cops arrived in roughly seven minutes or so, which wasn’t too bad for Brockton Bay. Once, I heard that a sorority girl almost died of alcohol poisoning at a house party because 911 took too long even though the college was pretty close to the hospital. Laserdream had to ferry her vomit-choked body to Amy before brain death set in.

The squad car wasn’t the only one to arrive, though. Floating down from on high was Glory Girl, Brockton Bay’s favorite brick and the sole reason Amy hadn’t lost her shit yet.

That… That was yet another problem I wasn’t qualified to address. I had plenty of miscellaneous talents. Providing therapy to a depressed, obsessive, socially isolated, incestuous lesbian teenager was not one of them. Knowing Earth-Bet, it’d become my problem whether I wanted it to or not.

Victoria must have been on one of her patrols, the kind that sometimes ended with her calling her sister after hours. I remembered her being a mostly noble, upright sort, if reckless and bad at controlling her own strength sometimes. PHO seemed to agree.

Her aura blanketed us all like a fine mist. It was a strange feeling. Consciously, I knew it was artificial, but I could feel my body reacting anyway. She already nailed the superhero aesthetic, pretty, well-fitted costume, with a cool entrance and an appealing power, but I could feel that observation being cranked up to eleven. She wasn’t just a local celebrity but a figure to be admired and fawned over, a figure of awe.

I shook it off with a bit of effort. Being conscious of my own soul gave me some awareness of my emotional state. Hopefully, I’d get to the point where I could utilize my own ba to repel master effects before they became an issue. As it was, I wasn’t a fan of vicariously feeling Fragile One’s love for her emotional support human.

“Huh… I didn’t think the howling came from a literal wolf,” she muttered as she settled on the ground. She placed herself between me and the police protectively. “Hero or villain?”

“He’s a villain!” one of the little shits cried out. “He’s kidnapping us! We called the cops!”

“Yes, that’s why I’m sitting here, waiting for them,” I drawled, more amused than anything that this was the card he wanted to pull. I gestured to the boosted car. “I was grabbing a hot dog for Silver here when these guys showed up to steal car tires.”

“You said you’d feed us to your dog!”

“Liar. I said Silver could use the exercise. Besides, the car’s right there. That’s pretty damning, kid. Besides, Silver’s a wolf.”

“Right, we’ll take it from here,” one of the two officers said as the other began cuffing the three delinquents. He began scribbling incident details on his notepad. “Uh… What do you want to be called?”

I didn’t have a name. I had a few I wouldn’t mind being called, but couldn’t decide on one. None of them felt quite right. I’d hoped that my first patrol would give me new insights.

Even now, I was no closer to deciding. “Summoner” sounded too cliche. There was “Gambit,” the X-Man, but I neither threw explosive cards nor did I want to be a copycat. “Ringmaster” and “Beastmaster” sounded cool, but would raise some serious questions the moment I called one of the more risque female monsters to my side.

‘You know, you can go with something humorous. I liked that Mouse Protector character you showed me online,’ Atem pointed out.

‘I’m not that punny. I don’t think I have it in me to be that witty mid-fight,’ I told him. ‘Then again, you do have a point.’

I doffed an imaginary hat and patted my mount. With my fakest Texas accent, I drawled, “Well, sheriff, the name’s Cowboy. Void Cowboy.”

“You’re fucking kidding me,” I heard Victoria groan. Her face paled. The internet troll–really just a social cripple of a boy–was infamous among our generation. “I can’t believe this is happening. You’re not Void Cowboy. I refuse to believe that degenerate could get powers.”

“Reality must intrude sometime, pardner,” I said, shooting her with imaginary finger-guns.

“A-Are you really?”

I snorted, “Nah. I don’t really know what I want to be called yet. It sounded funny in my head.”

“It wasn’t!”

“It was. I’ll remember that look on your face forever.”

“Villain. You’re a villain,” she huffed, but she couldn’t hide a slight upturn of her lips. “What’s your power? I can help you come up with a name. You might have some explaining to do if you made your fluffy friend there.”

I sighed. There was one more thing I overlooked. Director Emily Piggot was one of two survivors of the Ellisburg Incident, in which a mad biotinker by the name of Nilbog turned the townspeople into goblin horrors. All of the residents died and the PRT squad sent to deal with it was killed almost to the man.

Because of Nilbog and a handful of other biotinkers, Earth-Bet had a lot of prejudice against capes that manipulated biology. It’d get tiresome if someone decided that I was making the monstrous creatures I led into battle.

I quickly summoned Firegrass onto my lap. The beachball-sized root vegetable croaked and burped out a puff of smoke. “Nope. I summon monsters, and the moon above us. Silver here’s just the one I chose to ride around on tonight.”

“Oh, that’s good. Really, biotinkers get a bad rap, almost as bad as human masters,” she said as the police pushed the three into their squad car. “How about Monster Mash? You know, like the song.”

“That’s… Maybe…” That was actually a pretty good one.

“Well, decide quickly. The only thing worse than Void Cowboy is letting PHO name you.”

“At that point, I’ll just settle for Void Cowboy,” I joked. It really wasn’t a terrible name so long as I ignored the association.

She made a face. “God, please no. Can I pet your wolf?”

“Sure, why not.”

We stood around while the police took my statement. Victoria threw around a few more name ideas, some better than others. It wasn’t exactly exciting, but Silver soaked up the attention with his best, goofy grin.

The cops finished up and drove off after confirming that I was a new indie. Those kids probably wouldn’t get more than a slap on the wrist, what with how overworked cops were around here. Hopefully, a night in a holding cell would be enough to straighten them out but it was out of my hands.

Victoria gave Silver one last pat and rose into the air. “Well, I’d offer to finish your patrol with you, but I need to get home or mom’s going to chew me out again.”

I waved her off. “You do that, Glory Girl. Maybe next time, I’ll have a proper name for you.”

In the end, I considered tonight decent enough for a first outing. I got to show off Silver Fang, got him a hot dog, and introduced myself to the local powers. It wasn’t as explosive as I knew Taylor’s would be in the near future, but it was a start.

Author’s Note

Poll up to decide a name for Jonathan. Silly is silly. Serious is serious. I’m ready to go in either direction with this fic.

The royal cubit did not literally change with every pharaoh. I’m joking. Don’t come for me, internet Egyptologists.

You know, writing the 7-Eleven scene made me realize I’ve never written a story where Vicky is a major character. She appears more often than Taylor, but that’s mostly as an accessory to Amy. I figured I may as well here.

Apparently, it’s never stated that an MI wielder is immune to mind manipulation. It’s implied somewhat, given Marik and the like never controls another wielder. I’m going to split the difference and say being aware of your own ba gives you a natural resistance that can be trained.

Animal Fact: The red-crested korhaan is a bird native to Angola, Zambia, and South Africa. They’re nicknamed the “suicide bird” or “kamikaze bird” because males will perform vertical dives as part of their mating ritual and to signal to other males that this area is theirs.

The ones that get closest to the ground get bird-pussy. The ones that get too close… Well, Darwin had a point. For real though, it’s very rare for a korhaan to die.