Fanfic #85 Starfinder by Bowlerhat Guy (Worm/Starfinder RPG)

This fanfic is an si oc, as a Starfinder tinker, in Worm a couple of years before canon. I really like this fanfic because even though the MC makes mistakes he doesn't spend forever angsting over it. I also like that the characters are interesting and aren't just generic versions of their canon selfs.

Synopsis: Tell me if you've heard this story before. Got Isekai'd. Got a tinker power. Got relatives in Brockton Bay. So, the usual. Only those relatives are decidedly not the Heberts...

Rated: M

words: 110k

https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/starfinder-worm-starfinder-rpg.87029/reader/

Here's the first chapter:

Stop me if you've heard this story before.

I died. Not horrifically or anything. As a point of fact, I died for reasons that are quite frankly so embarrassing that simply thinking about them makes me want to self terminate.

See, I owned and loved two cats. The furry little monsters were easily the highlight of my day, at least recently.

I was also, deathly allergic to cats.

So you can probably see where this is going already, but just so that we're all on the same page, I do have some countermeasures. I took allergy shots three times a year, had some very expensive allergy medicine, and maintained stock of inhalers that I used often and freely.

It's just, I hadn't accounted for a global pandemic shutting down all the allergists in the city, making it exponentially harder to keep up my stock of all those things.

Hence, I died in bed with my cat sitting on my chest, suffocating to death because of my asthma, staring stupidly at my empty inhaler, while starbursts indicating I was running out of oxygen began to overtake my vision.

See? Embarrassing.

So, theres part one.

Part two is waking up again. As a fucking teenager. In a car. A car I didn't recognize driven by people I didn't know.

I had approximately thirty seconds of time to take in my radically different body shape and locale before that car crashed.

The next time I woke up, it was in a hospital, where I was told that my parents were both dead and also did I have any relatives that would interested in covering the bill?

I didn't know the answer to that question, and was honestly in sort of a daze as a result of all that aforementioned dying, then nearly dying, so I had just sort of shrugged numbly at the orderly who had asked, and then again at the police officer that had turned up to ask the same question.

Eventually they did find one of 'my' still living relatives, who blessedly didn't have to pay my hospital bill. Which is good because that would make for an extremely uncomfortable introduction. 'Hey Auntie, I need a place to crash till I'm eighteen, that'll be eight grand' was not my idea of a friendly introduction.

All that is to say, I find myself on a greyhound to Brockton Bay within a week.

Also, I had powers. You'd think that should have come earlier in the explanation but it hadn't been entirely relevant, and probably wouldn't have made any sense until I mentioned Brockton Bay.

I also hadn't really noticed I had powers until I got on the bus and suddenly had hours of time to myself to think. Tinker powers were sort of non-obvious that way. At the very least, they were sort of easy to dismiss as random intrusive thoughts while you had other things to be worrying about.

So yeah, I was familiar with this pattern. Isekai'd into a kid with Tinker powers, shuffled off to live in Brockton Bay with relatives, I mean.

I was in a Tinker of Fiction story. Probably. Maybe. My current Tinker focus looked liked it was dedicated to the technomagic bullshit that made up a most of the gear from the Starfinder tabletop rpg. That is, the scifi version of Dungeons & Dragons. So that lent some credence to the assumption, being fiction and all.

I just didn't notice any indication that my specialization could change, which was kind of worrying. I needed that sweet, sweet, overpowered bullshit if I was gonna survive on the Deathworld that was Earth Bet.

Muttering to myself about how irritating it was going to be to do puberty again - I was thirteen going in fourteen right now - I got off the bus, grabbed my travel suitcase, and patiently waited for the social worker who would be bringing me to my new family to pick me up.

Next stop, casa de Hebert!

---

The next stop, it turned out, was not the Heberts apparently. The social worker got me in her car and started driving, taking us through a roundabout route through the city that I suspect was aimed at avoiding any gang hotspots.

It provided an okay slice of what the city looked like as I watched it fly by through the window. Mostly, the whole place just looked dirty. Even the nicer areas had a distinct lack of city maintenance going on. Sidewalks were cracked all over the place, roads had so many potholes I was surprised we didn't lose a tire in transit, and obvious gangsters hung out groggily on street corners being ignored by all the other pedestrians like this was all completely normal.

I started to suspect we might not be going to the Heberts house when instead of parking infront of the charming little house with the broken front step I expected, we pulled up to an apartment building.

"Are... we in the right place?" I asked tentatively, eyeing the place with a critical eye. It wasn't completely terrible.

I just knew for a fact that Danny and Taylor Hebert didn't live in an apartment building.

"Yes. Give me a second John." My social worker stated apologetically, setting the car to idle in front of the building and getting out to make a phone call.

I frowned, trying to puzzle out the situation.

Maybe I was in one of those alt worlds where canon was dead and my foreknowledge would be useless?

I allowed myself to hold to that petty delusion for the entire time it took my new family to get down the elevator to help me bring my stuff inside and greet me.

The black woman who came down the stairs with her older teen son kind of clued me in to what was going on.

See, I'm black. At least, half black. That was true in both of my lifetimes. Hence, I hadn't really thought much about it when I was isekai'd here - it was completely normal to me.

In retrospect, it would make a lot of sense for my extended family to therefore also be black. For a second I even managed to get my hopes up, thinking I was going to be with the Laborn family. Honestly, that would be great. I could keep Grue from being a stupid villain, protect Aisha from her Mom's boyfriends and-

"John, this is your Aunt, Dianne Hess, and your cousin Terry." The social worker said, introducing the pair to me.

I fairly felt my eyes cross at that, but managed to get out a strangled greeting that I guess Dianne misunderstood as sadness, on account of the dead parents and all that, because she hustled forward to pull me into a hug.

"Come here. You're so tall now!" She comforted me like she actually knew me which... she might. I could see Terry eyeing me speculatively out of the corner of my eye and had to suppress a grimace.

I knew literally nothing about this family, because they hadn't been mentioned much in canon beyond 'they exist'.

I was still trying to parse that while my suitcase of stuff was given to Terry, and the social worker left.

I only half paid attention while Auntie explained what the button sequence was to call our apartment, which was on the second floor somewhere apparently.

I remained mostly numb and uncommunicative for the entire trip, until I was finally led into our apartment - 202 - and shuffled into the living room where an older man was watching television.

"Gerard, this is my nephew John." Auntie introduced me. It wasn't lost on me the way that Terry appeared to be intentionally ignoring the guy, or how he seemed entirely non-plussed at my existence.

"Wheres he gonna sleep?" Gerard asked eventually, gesturing with the neck of a bear bottle around the small apartment. There were only four rooms leading off from the single hallway, not including the kitchen which was actually just an extension of the living room. Presumably one of those rooms was a bathroom, which meant there were only three bedrooms - one for each of the Hess kids and one for Auntie and her... boyfriend? Husband?

I didn't know and that irked me way more than it probably should have.

"He can stay in my room. Soph'll fucking explode if she has to share." Terry put forth quickly.

"Language!" Auntie immediately chided him, to which Terry - in true teenager fashion - turned away just enough to roll his eyes.

Now, in a normal household, that'd be it. I'd been here for five minutes tops and almost everyone present still had their shoes on in the entryway.

Then Gerard handily demonstrates the atmosphere that probably led to Sophia's trigger event, by jumping up and angrily stomping toward him.

"You respect your Mother!" He roared, lifting a hand to box my cousin about the head. It was, quite frankly, cartoonish how fast he went from zero to one hundred here, and it freaked me the hell out.

This is probably an adequate time to explain something about myself. When faced with a scenario that makes me panic, I always double down. It isn't intentional. I just find that following through on a bad decision is usually more effective than taking to long to decide and making no decision at all.

Now since I came from a functional family, in a functional society, in a functional city where the moral standards of your average person haven't been warped by years of sharing space with literal Nazi's, I found domestic abuse to be super fucked up, even if was probably not that outlandish in Brockton Bay.

So I did what any shocked, disgusted kid would do.

I kicked my Auntie's boyfriend in the balls so hard he lifted an inch off the ground.

There was a stunned silence wherein everyone present turned to look at me incredulously, except for Gerard who just looked like he might burst a blood vessel trying to kill me with his mind.

"...My bad." I offered weakly, at just about the same time Gerard's apoplectic rage managed to overcome the pain he was probably feeling.

I don't remember much of what happened after that because the back of the head was the first place ol' Gerard hit me.

Small favours.

---

"Nnggggg..." I groaned as I woke up. My everything hurt. One of my eyes wouldn't open properly, and it breathing made it feel like I had glass shards in my lungs.

I really fucking hope that dick didn't break my god damn ribs.

"You aight?" Terry asked me quickly, jerking upward from where he was sitting next to the bed I was in ontop of what looked like an air mattress. The room was dark despite the blinds on the window being open, so I guess it was night time, but I could still see the black eye on his face where he had obviously been hit after G man was done bludgeoning me half to death.

I shot him an incredulous look.

"You know what I mean man." Terry said in exasperation, leaning over me and poking at me ribs like he knew what he was doing - which he didn't.

I could tinker up something to heal myself, ut Starfinder crafting was kind of expensive. The three forms of healing I could easily make were a Serum - which would require a bunch of chemicals I doubt we had on hand - a Crystal, Starfinders equivalent of scrolls from D&D - again prohibitive because I doubted we had a jewelers kit and rare gems laying around - or a Spell Chip - which would require I build an entire computer for the purposes of having it cast spells for me.

Of the three options, that last one was my best bet, requiring only that I build the Spell Computer and program the spell, but even that wasn't something I foresaw myself being able to easily get ahold of the materials to create.

In otherwords, I was screwed. I also had school tommorow, which meant I was going to have to explain all of this.

"I'll live. Even if I wish I knew Panacea right about now." I complained.

"Who?" Terry asked me quizzically, leaving me staring at him stupidly.

"Pa- the New Wave healer?" I tried again.

"The New Wave chick? She's new right? Alexandria package or some shit?" Terry mused, stepping away from me.

That didn't sound right.

"...Terry, humour me for a second, but uh... what year is it?" I asked, already feeling a headache coming along.

"Shit, you got it bad. I'ma get some ice. Don't move or wake Gerard up or he'll beat your ass again." Terry told me, stepping away to move to his door, which he had apparently attempted to soundproof with a towel by rolling it up and stuffing it in the crack at the bottom of the door.

"Seriously what year is it?" I asked urgently. I had been expecting the usual shenanigans - to drop in somewhere slightly before canon. Maybe a few months at best. I couldnt remember when Amy had triggered, but I was pretty sure it was just a year or two before canon. If she hadn't triggered yet then...

"Two thousand nine. Now shut the hell up." Terry hissed at me, voice becoming quiet as he quickly opened the door to our now shared bedroom and slipped outside.

I stared stupidly after him, pondering that for a moment. I didn't know all that much abkut the period before Worm started. It was mostly blank to me.

As if to highlight this growing sense of confusion, a girl slipped from the doorway on the far side of the hallway and into the room with me. She was about my age, maybe a bit younger, with an annoyed look on her face as she stood over me.

"...Yo?" I whispered in greeting.

"You're our cousin?" She asked me brusquely to which I attempted to nod back, stopping when it hurt to much to shift my neck that quickly.

"...He's gonna be fucking worse now." She grunted at me.

"...sorry?" I tried again. I was trying to remember if Sophia even had powers yet.

She snorted at my halfhearted apology.

"Don't be. Fuck him." She hissed venomously.

Staring up at her, I realized something.

Sophia Hess has probably more to do with the formation of Taylor Hebert as a character than anyone else besides maybe Emma - who I could get access to through her if I was lucky. She was also, an extremely messed up person if today was any indication.

She wasn't quite as close to the action as Taylor herself, but she was pretty close, at least to start with.

Plus she was family. You don't bitch out on family.

So I opened my mouth and said something extremely stupid.

"I've got powers." I blurted out, which caused her eye to twitch violently, and her mouth to open with what was no doubt a sharp retort before Terry came sliding back into the room with the bag of ice for my eye.

He eyed us both from the doorway, then shrugged.

Sophia, grouchy bitch she was, obviously decided that this wasn't something we were going to talk about right now, because she grunted again and left without saying a word to her older brother.

"She'll get used to you eventually." Terry apologized for her automatically, despite the fact that she hadn't actually done anything.

I thought that was quite telling, but didn't say anything about it. I just grunted my own wordless response, accepted the ice bag, and lay back down.

I had a feeling life was about to get very exhausting.