Emmett went out on the rooftops of Belport earlier than usual that Thursday night. As per usual, he slipped into an alley, donned his mask, turned his hoodie inside out and wore it overtop of his backpack. Then he buckled his utility belt and climbed up to the roof.
He was excited about the belt, but he couldn’t really use anything… not without getting into a fight.
Clara had explicitly warned him not to do that, and it had taken a solid five minutes of reassuring her...
2023-03-19 13:13:59 +0000 UTC
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A city is nothing without its foundation.
Beneath the bustle and gleam of Belport’s skyline lies a framework of concrete, steel, piping, and wires, subways, electricity, and plumbing.
So much unseen. So much taken for granted.
And beneath even the skeleton and nerves of Belport, beneath the urban sprawl, lies the ruins of all that came before: Demolished brick from the industrial era, wattle and daub from the colonial era, tanned skins and bones from primitive nomads long ...
2023-03-18 19:53:23 +0000 UTC
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“What about a utility belt?” Emmett asked.
He’d already wrapped up training for the evening and had basically dragged Clara to section 002. Now she stood across from him in one of the many storage rooms. The overhead lights reflected harshly on the scattered metal tables.
His mind had been racing too much to explain to Clara on the way over. Emmett wasn’t even sure he could explain what he was thinking—it had taken him the several minute walk to section 002 to realize wh...
2023-03-18 16:26:44 +0000 UTC
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Emmet ran home across the rooftops of Belport Wednesday evening and spent the rest of the night hunched over his kitchen table, working on his radio locator project. It was the beginning of March now—already halfway through the semester.
He already noticed a difference in his low-light vision when he needed to pee in the middle of the night. His room looked so bright Emmett thought he’d left a light on. It was a long, groggy minute before Emmett realized that he had, in fact, not le...
2023-03-17 19:46:26 +0000 UTC
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Dr. Venture strode quickly through the halls to wing 002 where Clara was waiting. He’d asked her to check on the analysis of Porcelain’s samples. Apparently, the results were compiled.
Venture entered one of the half dozen testing rooms of the mechanical wing. Apertures lined the walls, each one specifically tailored to test different properties of materials—chemical markers, tensile strength, energy absorption, psychic refraction… Among other measurements useful in analyzing t...
2023-03-17 12:26:29 +0000 UTC
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“Let me get this straight… You’ve been a super for a little over a week, and you want to take another mutagen already?”
Dr. Venture’s eyes were narrowed and focused on Emmett. There might have been a hint of a smile on the doctor’s face, but somehow that unsettled Emmett more.
Until that moment, Emmett had been dying to get to the lab so he could confer with Dr. Venture and Clara about the mutagens. The weekend had dragged, classes had dragged. Even the jog over to the...
2023-03-16 19:52:19 +0000 UTC
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Emmett spent Saturday trying to focus on schoolwork. It wasn’t easy.
He topped off the mutagen vials with fresh ice and pushed them back under his bed. Even after Lock woke up and rushed out of the apartment, Emmett tried to keep from fixating on the vials—
There wasn’t any point. Emmett wasn’t about to take any of the mutagens blindly. He’d wait until he could take the vials by the lab on Monday and ask Dr. Venture to analyze them.
And he really did have schoolwor...
2023-03-16 14:45:12 +0000 UTC
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Clara had found her father in the hub of section 006—the biomedical wing—staring intently at a cluster of monitors. He didn’t so much as turn when she entered.
“I have a lead,” she said.
“A lead on what?”
“Porcelain.”
Her father still hadn’t responded by the time Clara walked over to him. She looked over his shoulder at the readouts.
The screens were absolutely covered with information—charts, diagrams, graphs, and wave patterns, all scrunch...
2023-03-15 16:43:00 +0000 UTC
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Lock woke up Saturday afternoon to the sun peeking through a crack in the curtains. He wiped the sleep out of his eyes and sat on the edge of the bed. He winced at the headache and massaged his temples.
So… he could still catch a hangover—it just took him three bottles of rum now instead of one.
Thankfully, only Manton, Carter, and Jessie had seen him chugging straight out of the bottle and they already knew Lock was enhanced. They didn’t give him any grief.
He didn’...
2023-03-15 13:50:02 +0000 UTC
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Emmett jogged the rest of the way to his apartment, hoping that he looked completely normal—like a guy out for a jog at 11 o’clock at night.
Even though jogging was easier than it had ever been, Emmett’s heart was racing the entire way home. By the time he got to the Woods apartments on the West End, Emmett was a bundle of nerves.
He just wanted to make it to his room without talking to anyone—without any luck Lock would be out tonight, too.
It seemed like everyo...
2023-03-14 20:51:14 +0000 UTC
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Emmett took a minute to stash his phone and wallet on the roof of a nearby coffee shop, hiding it in a crevice of the air conditioning unit. Then he backtracked to the warehouse roof, keeping an eye out for any guards as he leaped across the rooftops.
While Emmett and Athena waited, crouched in the dark on the edge of the warehouse roof, Athena explained how she’d been tracking the new mutagen variants.
“There’s a group of us keeping tabs on shipments. We’ll get word a day...
2023-03-14 12:04:16 +0000 UTC
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Emmett took his time walking down the hallway to the training hub. His right arm still ached from the first time he tried punching Clara’s fiery robot. Now the rest of his body ached too: It felt like he’d spent the last hours of the evening running for his life and getting burned alive…
Which Emmett supposed he had.
He walked into the training room, muscles tender and skin feeling raw beneath his suit.
Clara was unhooking the last of pieces of her VR gear ...
2023-03-13 20:34:33 +0000 UTC
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Emmett spent the rest of Friday evening in the Gray Room, struggling to find a difference between running and fighting.
Emmett still didn’t like running.
He blamed it on reading too many comics and watching too much anime. There was nothing heroic about running from a fight.
Clara and Venture’s robots were definitely stronger than him, but they weren’t that strong. Emmett wasn’t even sure if their current settings would qualify as Class 2 supers.
T...
2023-03-13 14:29:10 +0000 UTC
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It had only been a week since Emmett had gotten his new body and powers, and it was only getting harder to pay attention in his classes.
He spent most of engineering and machine design classes doodling in the margins of his notebooks: Mostly mod ideas for his arm.
Venture had said that eventually Emmett could swap things out on the fly, but the more he brainstormed, the more he realized he wanted all of these things: Smoke pellets, caltrops, the lock-picking kit (even if he didn...
2023-03-12 23:38:20 +0000 UTC
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Emmett rode the bus back to Eastside and spent the rest of Thursday evening trying his hardest to work on classwork and not get distracted by superhero stuff.
It mostly worked.
He caught up on the readings and discussions he had to finish—weekly busywork. Then he worked on his final project for engineering, setting up the desktop version of his radio locator.
By the time midnight rolled around, Emmett had pushed aside the piles of electronics on the kitchen table and had f...
2023-03-12 18:08:48 +0000 UTC
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Emmett napped on the bus to class and then dozed off again on the bus to the lab. He’d done homework until almost three in the morning before he finally gave up and went to sleep.
His older brother Darryl used to say that as he got older, it got harder to pull late nights. Emmett hadn’t believed him until now.
At the bus stop near the lab, Emmett wondered if it would be any easier to pull an all-nighter if he was doing something related to being a super rather than doing schoo...
2023-03-12 13:54:07 +0000 UTC
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[Truck-kun waking up in a strange forest]
Truck-kun’s engine rumbled to life, the revometer visibly trembling. The last thing it remembered was that rogue box truck barreling toward it… Joe’s wide-eyed face through the coffee shop window… The sound of screeching metal and busting glass… Joe falling to his knees in anguish…
That was one crazy nightmare!
Truck-kun rolled forward, its tires gripping dirt. It sprayed fluid on its windshield and wiped, trying to get r...
2023-03-12 00:44:54 +0000 UTC
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Emmett took the bus home Wednesday night.
Part of him wanted to run home across the rooftops of Belport, but his entire body was sore from training in Gray Room. Emmett sat down on an empty seat in the middle of the bus and tried to stretch his legs out without moving them too much—
Whatever muscles were in the back of his thighs were tight and felt like they would cramp up any second.
Between that and Emmett’s apprehension about running into an enemy super again… it r...
2023-03-11 21:19:33 +0000 UTC
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Lachlan jogged the West End streets of Belport, concentrating on the steady rhythm of his shoes on the pavement.
He went right past Gnosis’s sprawling concrete headquarters, not stopping until he reached a set of unmarked buildings on the far end. To the uninformed, the warehouses probably looked like storage.
Lock jogged between warehouses until he came to a secret doorway on the outer wall. Hidden sensors scanned his tracking chip, and the door slid open for him.
Three g...
2023-03-11 18:03:04 +0000 UTC
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Dr. Venture rubbed his eyes and adjusted his glasses.
He’d been watching Clara and Emmett train—
Clara and Emmett.
Venture still wasn’t sure if he was okay with that. Then again, there was still a chance he was getting worried over nothing. A few years ago, Clara had confided in him that she was gay, and Venture had never heard anything to confirm Emmett’s interests—
Aside from that text message from Lock.
Venture sighed and pushed it ...
2023-03-11 12:08:04 +0000 UTC
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After two hours of combat training, the chest cavity of Dr. Venture’s robot opened, and it pulled out the long gray whip.
Emmett’s eyes widened. He’d been so preoccupied with training that he’d forgotten about his mods.
The robot walked over to Emmett and held out the whip.
“How do I, uh…”
“Hold out your right arm.” Thin, wiry fingers slid out of the robot’s fist as it reached for him.
Emmett kept his arm as still as he could, despite the...
2023-03-10 18:58:05 +0000 UTC
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Emmett spent most of Wednesday’s classes alternating between trying to concentrate and staring at the clock on the wall, watching it tick away—
Waiting for his time at the lab—
Waiting until he could train in the Gray Room.
Waiting.
Waiting.
By the time his Machine Design Class let out that afternoon, Emmett was tempted to sprint to the lab.
Instead, he rode the bus.
Emmett wasn’t supposed to draw attention to himself. At first, he assu...
2023-03-10 18:50:16 +0000 UTC
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“You can relax,” she said again. “They’re not coming after us.”
Emmett had run another four blocks across the rooftops, and only stopped when they were definitively along the boardwalk and out of the slums.
Clara had flown beside him with her cloaking system engaged. During that time she’d shimmered like a mirage, but otherwise been completely invisible. When they finally stopped to rest, her suit shimmered and became its normal understated gray.
Futuristi...
2023-03-10 18:47:26 +0000 UTC
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Emmett was about to walk out of the lab when Dr. Venture stopped him in the hallway outside of section 003.
Venture stood ominously in front of Emmett, blocking his path. “Before you go, we need to talk.”
Emmett swallowed dryly, wondering if it was related to whatever was eating at Clara.
“You’ll be allowed to train here with the understanding that you don’t neglect your studies. Your work in the lab and your classes take priority. Heroics is a young person’s ...
2023-03-10 18:45:38 +0000 UTC
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Emmett spent the next two hours chasing after the blue robot.
At first, Emmett had doubts about how much he would enjoy training in the Gray Room, but after the first few minutes Emmett had lost himself in the simulation and in the game—
Which was equal parts amazing and frustrating.
As awesome as it was hurtling across rooftops with superhuman speed, Emmett felt like a kid who’d just had the world’s most enormous and awkward growth spurt. Several times he slipped when...
2023-03-10 18:44:11 +0000 UTC
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Emmett followed Dr. Venture out of section 002 and to the door of section 005, carrying the pile of modifications in his arms. The whip dragged behind him on the ground.
Venture paused at the door, allowing the camera and system to scan him.
Emmett regarded the screen, camera, and speaker next to the door, realizing that these seemed to be the most modern of the entry systems.
“Thank you for verification. Please step through, Dr. Venture,” TINA said, its voice c...
2023-03-10 18:43:53 +0000 UTC
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Emmett followed Dr. Venture through a sealed door and into the next room of the lab, section 002.
“I’ve laid out several basic modifications for your arm. These are all pieces that would be useful for a new mask.”
Four metal tables pushed together in the center of the room and several things were sprawled out on them. The first that drew Emmett’s eye was the long whip that curled around the edge of the tables. Then there were several small boxes.
And in the center of...
2023-03-10 18:43:38 +0000 UTC
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“You didn’t let me finish telling you about your new body.”
It was Tuesday, and the day had dragged on while Emmett waited for the afternoon to get there.
He was finally standing back in the lab, back in section 006—the same white hospital-like section he’d woken up in a few days prior.
Dr. Venture fiddled with a wall monitor. When he was finished, it showed a 2D genderless drawing of a person with arrows pointing to various body parts. Clara was in a different lab...
2023-03-10 18:42:53 +0000 UTC
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[Montage accompanies opening Narration]
What is a truck?
Is it more than the sum of its parts? More than its frame, its cab and wheels? More than its ability to haul boxes and freight?
Is it more than just a truck when it's transporting life saving medicine, or hauling a family and their belongings to their new home? When the heat of its engine warms a blue-collar worker up on the way to work on a cold, cold morning? Or when it dispenses justice to the forgotten cor...
2023-03-10 18:42:41 +0000 UTC
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That evening, Emmett finished his commute home in minutes, running across the rooftops and then jogging through the Woods apartments to his block.
He felt like his head was swimming—this time in a good way. He was elated, curious, and apprehensive, and again the feeling of standing on the shore of something amazing hit him like a wall of water.
Emmett tried not to smile like a maniac as he got close. The last thing he needed was to look suspicious or crazy so close to his place....
2023-03-10 18:42:27 +0000 UTC
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