Step by step

After satisfying my hunger I spent another hour planning my next steps. I was constantly gaining new powers and I didn't know why. No parahuman I had ever heard of would gain new powers at intervals. Eidolon could have any power, but he couldn't keep to many at once, at least that is what I remembered from PHO, maybe I was the same and just hadn't reached my limit. I would have to carefully pay attention if any of my powers where growing weaker if I didn't use them. The sabotage power was perfect for it, I didn't really need it and as it wasn't magic in any way I wouldn't lose much if it vanished. It unnerved me a little that there could be powers I hadn't noticed yet, my last few had been very noticeable but that was because there was either knowledge or physical components included. I couldn't change anything about this, so I decided to spend a few minutes every moment checking my powers for changes.

I used one of my note sketch blocks to make a list of my powers and tried sketching a few ideas for a villain costume. If there were cameras in the room I had already been exposed and even if I couldn't hide anything in the tomb, without it being sorted into a door or destroyed, there was enough space in my closet to hide a sketchbook. Trough calling it a closet wasn't all that accurate anymore. Maybe portal, cosmic dumping ground or gateway was a more apt description. But no, those didn't sound right, maybe Wardrobe would be a better description, just like the wardrobe leading to Narnia. Yes, I had my own magic wardrobe, a portal to another world, completely different from the mundane.

That night I went to sleep a little early, I had stuff to do tomorrow and if I got ride of my obligations in the morning, I would be able to spend the rest of the day trying to build the necessary tools to advance my crafting.

After a satisfying amount of sleep, interrupted by the occasional nightmare of my sisters tortured body, my own memories of the time without all my limbs and a lot of grisly things I didn't know where they came from, I was ready to start the day of tinkering.

But first I had to eat breakfast and make sure Ms. Norbert wouldn't disturb me for the day. A shower later, I was immersed into the feel of my new hoody and on my way to the cafeteria. As it was before 8, there were a lot of people running around, somewhere even literally running to while putting on police uniforms and PRT gear. Something must have happened, I wasn't surprised, Brockton Bay was known as one of the most dangerous cities in the united states, but it irked me that I didn't know what was going on, because I wasn't allowed even the most basic access to information.

An advantage of everyone being busy was that the cafeteria was almost empty with a lot of good food remaining. This time I managed to get as many slices of the german bread as I wanted. I thought about keeping some of it for later, but there wasn't a good reason to. I could get more every morning and I wanted to avoid people looking into the things I brought in and out of my room in any case. A very satisfying breakfast later I was accosted by a PRT trooper in full uniform.

"Benjamin Nightcastle, Name is Carlos Rodriguez, call me Rodriquez, Youth Guard representative Ms. Norberg has called in to say that she won't be able to see you today. I am to inform you that I will be the one to check in on you. "

Mr. Bane was built like a war machine with more muscles than fat and the size of my wardrobe. I felt like he could break me in two with one hand and his stance showed a constant readiness for action. But maybe this was an opportunity for answers so I hurried to answer:

"Good to meet you Rodriguez, Is everything alright, I noticed the rush this morning?"

Mr. Rodrigues wasn't tricked that easily.

"Just a minor incident, Benjamin, can I call you Benjamin? There is merely an power outage and some of the traffic needs to be rerouted. As you have finished eating, I have a set of exercise questions for you, we need to ascertain how far you are along in your education."

He handed me a stack of paper and added:

"Go one now, I will collect these in a few hours. These are for your own placement, we wouldn't want you to be bored in school, if you don't do them we will simply place you into a lower grade for your age group."

I was insulted by the way he insinuated that I wouldn't be able to keep up, I had been very advanced in my studies before all of this happened. I wasn't one of those kids who wasted their chances at education on acting out and rebellions, that was my sister. I had always taken my education serious and I was even ahead of my sister in some classes.

When I looked into the bundle of placement questions I realized just how little they knew, or where they merely testing me, I could do those in my sleep. One hour later I was done and bored. I couldn't tinker because Mr. Rodrigues could visit at any time and I was angry for being forced to do a useless test. I would have to take a higher level examination to ascertain my educational standards, which meant I had wasted an hour.

Suddenly I blanked for a moment and forgot my train of thought. What exactly had I been thinking of, something about tests and school. That had certainly been weird, maybe I had gained a new power, but even double checking with the list in my notebook I couldn't find anything new.

I spent the time waiting for Mr. Rodriguez organizing my cooking supplies and writing a list of what I would need. I wasn't really in a hurry so I took my time checking the expiration date on everything and noticed there were quite a few cans which must have been left here for years, further evidence that this room wasn't usually used for hosting minors was the stash of high percentile alcohol hidden below a the lowest shelf. Whoever had lived her before, he hadn't had the time to clear out the room. Or maybe these had been left behind by a former owner, they were pretty old and while I didn't know much about alcohol, I knew that old stuff was more expensive. Some of those bottles where older than me.

I thought about surprising Mr. Rodriguez with a bottle, but I knew it would only lead to a search through these rooms and I wasn't that stupid. High quality booze was worth a lot and it could come in hand later, so I put back the case and secured it into the holder below the shelf. Then I continued to busy myself with meaningless tasks.

When Mr. Rodriguez finally knocked at my door, I had just finished my midday meal of leftover pasta with cold tomato sauce. I really needed to get some cheese. After opening the door, exchanging stiff greeting and signaling him to follow me in we were seated on the table. Me finishing my food while he was checking the sheets of questions. He didn't have an answer sheet with him so I assumed he had already looked them over before giving them to me. He paused after looking through the pile and told me:

"Benjamin, I must say I am impressed. These are all question suitable for you age, even a little advanced, but as far as I can see you didn't have any trouble with them. We will have to repeat this test with more difficult material but I am certain you will be going to high school directly. I might have to hire you for private lessons for my daughters, they are having trouble with the basics. Anyway, Ms. Norbert has instructed me to pass on a message from your sister."

He passed me a small note in my sister messy handwriting. I would recognize that shorthand anywhere, my sister had started to write her notes like her SMS a few months ago and I hated it. the note read:

'Hi bro, I'm good, luz t learn, pws uder cntrl, wana vis' (Hello Brother, I am doing good, lots of things to learn, powers under control, do you want to visit)

How typical for my sister. Asking me to visit without thought into how many loops I would have to jump to do that. I doubt the PRT would agree to a visit before ensuring we couldn't simply run away and the fact remained I wasn't ready to be in so close proximity to her again. At least it was good to see that she was doing alright and still herself. The lack of any information about her situations, and no a woman saying she is 'good' is never sufficient information, was worrying, but maybe I could get more information trough Ms. Norbert and if that didn't work I could try to contact Ms. Johansen. I wanted to avoid her as much as possible, she was way to sharp, but I would contact her if I didn't get more information soon.

I tried asking Mr. Rodriguez for more information about my sister, but he didn't seem to know much, or his poker face was simply better than mine. I might have to wait until the Youth Guard phones arrived.

Mr. Rodriguez didn't stay for long and soon I was again left to my own devised. So I started to design enchantments on my sketchbook to use when I got some better tools and privacy. When Mr. Rodriquez check on me two more times during the day I knew I had made the right call to stay away from tinkering but I was getting impatient. I had all the material in the world, but I didn't have the tools and time to do anything with them. My first sketchbook was already halfway to being filled with ideas of powerful enchantments and useful little tricks to try out. Paper was an awful material for enchantments, so without very deliberate aura control, there was no way for an enchantment to activate. Which was why I was using it, I didn't want any accidents.

After dinner I was finally secured in the knowledge that nobody would disturb me again this evening so I began my first major project. Because my best tool was reinforced chopstick with a small hard light projection in the form of a knife, the materials I could use were restricted to those easily damaged. Because animal remains had stronger aura I choose the hide of a big snake from the tomb. I didn't know the name of the snake, I only new it was a snake at all because I asked for the hide of a snake without poisonous properties. Choosing a snake with big patches of skin was done in the hopes to get a safe to handle material. The hide didn't core the chopstick, so I dared to touch it with my hand. The snakeskin wasn't very thick, barely half a centimeter and with my hard light chopstick I was barely able to cut out a 1 meter times 1 meter piece of hide. Because the hide was already treated to last, at least I assumed it to be so I could safely use it to create my first major project. An animated construct.

Because, every villain needed minions, and the most loyal minions of all, where those you created yourself. Enchanting an animal product to reproduce and animate part of an animal was comparatively easy, as long as the form of the construct was very similar to the original animal, the aura had already assimilated with that form and flowed the most freely if you kept it similar. Therefore my first minion was a snake made from snakeskin. Animating a piece of hide took serious knowledge, effort and skill. Knowledge was easy, I knew runes to turn a piece of paper into a fire demon, having a minion and at the same time proving my abilities was worth the effort, but my skills in carving weren't all that great, so I first used the carving chopstick to carve an erase mistakes and mend tears in skin array into an eraser. That way I could mend the skin if I misplaced a stroke or slipped while carving. Then with the help of my carving chopstick and my eraser of mending, I went to start the biggest project so far. Hours went by, hours in which I had to repair the hide so often I was afraid my eraser would run out, because while using aura enchantments didn't directly damage the object if you did it right, every use reduced the amount of aura inside non-living objects. I had a sense for the strength of an aura, but I couldn't really measure changes. As it was by midnight, I had barely finished half of the enchantment and had to erase sections more and more often. My body was giving up on me and further forcing myself to work wasn't a good idea, so I hid the hide as well as the tools in the Wardrobe and prepared for sleep.