Close call

I had spent the entirety of the evening simply watching my sister and Vista talking and coordinating responses over the console, while I didn't manage to understand everything they were talking about, Sebastian was more than capable enough to fill me in and the glimpses into the lives of government sponsored capes, no matter if Ward or Protectorate, were quite fascinating. Watching my sister celebrating with Vista that the situation had been resolved was close to the best feeling I had had in awhile, the only thing darkening my mode were the constant flashes of fear every time my sister gestured with her hands. Still seeing her like this, happy and excited, animated in the way she had only ever been with me was bittersweet. I admit I was jealous, not just of Vista for being able to spend time with my sister without any baggage, but also of the fact that they could use their power so casually, or at least Vista. Lea still had trouble controlling her power.

I learned through the day that it had been Vista who had been the one to give my sister a chance, she had taken the risk and visited the crazy cape despite all the warnings and had done more for my sister than the rest of the PRT combined. I should have thought of that, my sister very much didn't trust adults, even less those that had power over her and while I had taken her trigger in account I hadn't really understood what she had gone through after. I knew she had been kept in the hospital basement, constantly drugged up and unable to do anything by herself, but I hadn't realized just how traumatizing this had been after what had happened at her trigger. I felt like a failure of a brother for not realizing that her distrust of adults must have spiraled into straight up terror by the time I had come for her. Through why she hadn't been drugged then seamed a little suspicious. Maybe I could ask Ms. Johansen for more information.

I was calm when the PRT people came to check up on me and ran me through a battery of tests designed to test response time and awareness, the same test they had already done on a number of others who had recovered from their unconscious state. Afterwards I was given a tasteless meal and told to get ready to return to the Apartment. The situation had been stabilized, and while Bakuda hadn't been caught yet, the checkpoints had been removed and operations returned to normal as much as possible. The Apartment had been secured, there would now be a 24 hour protection detail in a block around the building, the PRT simply couldn't host so many people. A lot of RPT soldiers had been moved into the Headquarters empty rooms and their apartments would serve as temporary accommodations for the families of police-men and -women. I was told that my apartment would be repurposed as well and that I would be staying with Mr. Rodrigues and his family at his apartment. That by itself told me just how much someone in the PRT wanted me gone from the building and just how important it was for them that I didn't meet my sister.

Jokes on them, I had already found out everything, I knew they were intentionally keeping us apart and while I didn't know what excuse they had given my sister they had done their very best to make me believe that she was unstable and her power not under her control. For now I would wait, she was safe, I could protect myself and until I could look at her without flinching there was no reason to meet her face to face, less I hurt her even further. Maybe Ms. Johansen would finally come through with those phones.

The way back to the apartment complex took only 30 minutes and in what felt like a blink of an eye I stood in front of Mr. Rodriguez apartment, while my escort had a short exchange with the adults inside the room. Ms. Rodriguez, or Kala as she told me to call her was a middle-aged women, probably a bit older than her husband, but still in very good shape. She wasn't exactly what you would call beautiful or motherly, more like a tomboy who had grown up into an energetic older woman. She was clearly the soul of the family and her energy seemed to drive her little family cosmos, which meant that she was the one to order everyone around while she did at least 3 different tasks simultaneously. I ended up volunteering to cook to get a quite minute while tornado Kala bossed everyone else around. Not to say she didn't have her reasons, under her management the apartment turned from a working mans domain into a cozy, but very cramped living space with enough sleeping accommodations to fit all of us. My bed was the extendable couch in the living room, which I would be sharing with Mr. Rodrigues, the woman had requisitioned the only bedroom as well as the bathroom. Me and Mr. Rodrigues shared commiserating looks as we were assigned specific hours to use the bathroom, which were much earlier and a lot shorter than at least I was used to. Having never lived in such tight quarters with so many people since I had returned from foster care years ago I had a hard time going to sleep that night, but in the end exhaustion won out and I slept through the night without any nightmares.

The next morning school still hadn't resumed and so I spend the day supervised by Luna and Stella, playing around, teaching them math and in general doing everything possible to stop myself from tinkering. I hadn't realized just how much of my time and thought was directed towards tinkering until now, but while I was currently not really bored, the twins kept me relatively busy, there was this constant tingling in my fingers, pressure building in my head and the urging of the light to keep progressing, to keep making new and better things. I imagined it wasn't unlike an addiction, you could ignore it for a while, but more than a day of not indulging would impact the rest of your life in a negative way. It was already very easy for me to lose focus, but today was worse than I had ever experienced. I would have to find a way to deal with this before I fell into a fugue, something Sebastian had told me about when I asked him if other tinkers had the same symptoms. Apparently most parahumans had an instinctive urge to use their powers, but mostly tinkers had states of almost mindless power usage when they didn't tinker for too long.

It did help a bit when I designed a few enchantments and arrays in my head and had Sebastian record them, but because part of my power allowed me to do this nearly instantly it wasn't a solution in the long term. A good thing that happened during all this was watching an old fantasy series, 'Lord of the Rings' and its prequel 'The Hobbit' with the twins, which gave me an idea. A few days back, in one of the caches I had gotten some kind of hide, very tough and resistant to energy attack hide, which l still didn't know were it came from, but fit really well with the theme of a dragon. And I had a castle, I still hadn't visited, but what kind of guardian beast would be more fitting for a castle than a dragon. I was definitely going to get myself a dragon, I didn't care how many resources I would need, my tomb was infinite and as long as a single scrap remained all resources would replenish with time. I would get a dragon pet no matter what. Sadly, planning the enchantments took only a few minutes and it took so long because I created entirely new enchantments that included a few insights gained from combining arrays with enchantments. Spiritual Energy was omnipresent on this planet and while the amount was rather meager, arrays were especially great at attracting energy from vast distances, which combined with my knowledge about magic and the light allowed me to create enchantment that would recover energy much faster than normal. I would have to upgrade Amanda at the next opportunity, which would come soon, because I could only do that after deactivating all enchantments and turning her back into a simply piece of snake hide, an enchanted piece, but one without and capabilities to retain memory.

The more I thought about it, the more problems seemed to crop up and it didn't exactly help with my need to tinker so I returned my attention to the twins, they had done a good job keeping me busy so far and I hoped this trend would continue for a least a little bit.

When Mr. Rodriguez didn't return for dinner I had hopes to gain at least a few hours of free time, while the others slept, but contrary to my expectations it was decided that the children would sleep together in the bedroom while Ms. Rodriguez moved to the couch. Stella tried and I joined her protest, but it was for nothing. I didn't have much of an issue with sharing a room with two girls, but it had been more than 24 hours since the last time I was able to tinker and I hadn't actively used any of my powers for more than 20 hours. The pressure in my head didn't decrease, even when I tried inventing new enchantments in my head, the constant itching in my fingers was getting to me and I started spacing out at random intervals. I needed a distraction and I didn't see a way in which I could organize one myself, so I did something I hadn't done for years. I opened up and trusted an adult not to stab me in the back, by sending a text to the Captain:

'Hey Cap, under constant surveillance, need freedom or will expose myself, clock is ticking, running out of options.'

It didn't take long to get a reply:

'Tomorrow morning is the earliest I can manage without exposure, can you hold?'

There was no way I could endure that long, at least I didn't think so. Sebastian had already warned me that my left hand had started drawing things without me noticing while I had mentally written the first text. Outing myself was only a matter of time now, so I sent back:

'NO'

There was no answer and I sequested myself to the bathroom to try and regain my self-control, but at this point even stalling for time was agonizing. Spending as much time as I did in the bathroom would have been suspicious by itself, but in a situation were 4 people had to share one bathroom to prepare for bed it was doubly so. 20 minutes was all I could give myself and only after a long and very stressful shower was I ready to face the music. By this point either my legs or my left hand where constantly moving, shaking and generally trying to expel the superfluous energy in my body. I endured the complaints for hogging the bathroom for so long and was left alone in the bedroom for a few additional minutes.

To my eternal gratitude the Captain came through just before the sisters were ready for bed, in form of a cop knocking at the door. I don't know exactly what Ms. Rodriguez was told, but she allowed me to follow the cop. I was lead downstairs to the lobby, before we entered a short tunnel to what Sebastian told me to be a side building that was listed as a warehouse, but contained a fully functional police station with cells and all.

Captain, or Sargent Jim Raynor met me in the halls and lead me into what looked like normal office space, but thanks to Sebastian's scans I knew to be a fully electromagnetically shielded conference room that could serve as a bunker in an emergency. What made me hesitate to enter the room was the man waiting inside, I don't think I had ever seen him before, but Sebastian took only milliseconds to pull up the relevant information. Gabriel Thomson, police chief of Brockton Bay, war veteran and according to multiple newspaper articles the only reason the Police in Brockton Bay was even operable most of the time. He was known as the type of guy who wouldn't shy back from taking extreme measures to protect his people and kept a impressively tight ship. Even the PRT was rumoured to have more spies than the Police in Brockton Bay.

"I have been informed about your situation, I don't enjoy this situation it makes working with the PRT more difficult and strained than it needs to be, but I can see why Sargent Raynor has done it this way and I won't interfere. I will ensure your privacy here, as long as we stand on the same side. ", was the only greeting I got from the Police chief and his following thread was even more ominous and on point: "Should you ever cross the line and become a true villain, murder innocents or become a thread to my men, then there won't be any written or unwritten rules that can safe you from my wrath. You wouldn't be the first cape to disappear in Brockton Bay."

Chief Thomson didn't rise his voice, his tone stayed casual all the way, but I knew that he meant every word. I am not ashamed to admit that I was afraid, there stood a man who had survived not just a war but also the daily gang fights, assassination attempts by normals and capes, all of it while he kept the only law enforcement agency without parahuman backup in the city up and running for decades. His eyes told stories of merciless death sentences handed out to those that crossed his bottom line and his stance showed that despite all his experiences, his pain, his losses in the field he stood still, unbent, unbroken and ready to end the next fight. I had never been so scared in my life before, I could only try my best to avoid his gaze as he left the room with a small nod to the Captain. It was the Captain that brought me out of freeze mode and reminded me of why I had come here.

Even my urge to tinker and all physical signs of withdrawal had disappeared, apparently even my power knew and recognised the thread I had just received. The Captain lead me to a chair and brought me something to drink before sitting down next to me and tried to calm me down.

"Benjamin, don't take Chief Thomson to serious, he won't interfere. From what you have shown so far you are far from the type of person he would be interested in to eliminate. He is harder on you than most people, because you have the power, the potential to do truly awful things, but he is just as hard on any of his men when they get assigned heavy weaponry for the first time. It is the same rules for everyone, as long as you don't cross him and don't hurt innocents, and I don't mean small stuff like robbery, you have nothing to fear."

He crouched down in front of me to look into my downturned eyes and continued: "The actions you have taken so far speak well for you and he knows that. Right now he is your ally, if you don't squander this goodwill he can help you in ways only very few people in America can. Even if something goes wrong, there is still I your Captain, and what kind of Captain, what kind of Man, would I be if I couldn't hold the sky for you until you are ready. You have done great things for this city, don't think I don't know what happened during the evacuation, covering that up has been a bitch and a half, which means you have a bank of points you can spend before anyone would even question your actions. Keep that in mind, be yourself and you will be fine."

Captain Jim Raynor rose from his crouching position, gave me a pad on the head and left with the words: "Food and Drink is in the cupboard, I can give you 3 hours, be ready to return by then."

I only watched him go and tried to digest what I had heard, I wasn't a Villain, never truly had been one, stealing had never been my motive in the first place, but fooling around had been fun, not as much fun as going after true villains. Not much could beat the anticipation, the pure adrenalin of running into the unknown with nothing but what I myself created. I just didn't feel like a hero, I might have done things that looked heroic from the outside, but I had never thought that way. For the three times I had intervened, the first two times had been purely to protect kids, children like I myself had been. Children who had begged had screamed for help like I had, I knew myself well enough to know that I would have never gone after Bakuda if that farm hadn't involved ungeraged kids, the risk would have been to big and even if I knew different intellectually I still perceived most adults as a thred. The only reason I got along so well with Mr. Rodrigues was his children and the fact that I could read his aura with the light. He is a truly compassionate man who wants only the best for me, his guilt for spying on me was easily apparent every time we interacted. The Captain was different, maybe because I had seen his weakness before ever meeting him, maybe it was the way he treated my like a person who could make their own decisions or maybe it was simply the fact that he hadn't taken advantage of me at first opportunity. Yes, while I didn't mind Mr. Rodrigues and his wife, much, I truly had stated to trust Jim Raynor, which is why I didn't hesitate to order Amanda to disgorge the Wardrobe.

It was time to tinker.