it is preety
You come to with a gasp. Your eyes open, and you're staring at the ceiling of an old, rundown building. Still alive. Still intact.
A phone is ringing right next to your head. A landline. Who the fuck still has a landline?
You sit up, your head pounding, and stare for a moment at an old, fullsized cardboard cutout of Lara Croft. Your cutout. You didn't even pay for it, you remember. You'd taken it from work. It had… burned, with your first lab.
You did it. You fucking did it. You're alive. You're back… who the fuck knows. Years earlier. Before your first lab. Before you triggered.
You glance down at the phone, and pick it up.
"Hey, Stu," Uber's voice comes down the line. For a moment you're filled with rage. The asshole who betrayed you. But he's not Uber. He never will be. "Garrett called me, said he won't be able to make it in today. I was wondering if you could come in. Cover for him."
Oh. Right. Work. You'd have to get back into the grind, now that you're not a cape. Joy.
"Can't you go in?" You really need a day to just… settle. To remember what's going on in your life. Figure out where things go wrong.
"I'm already going in later tonight, and like hell I'm working a double."
"Fine, fine," You say.
Right. Not a friend yet. Fuck. He probably never was. He only hung around you because you'd given him his powers.
"K. See ya," He hangs up.
You're left sitting in your apartment. You glance up at the computer on your desk, and it's only then, seeing the machine off and quiet, that you remember when this is. It still smelled like smoke.
2009. July. You'd worked your ass off on your projects, jumping erratically from one to the other. Mods, computer games, a novel. You couldn't ever finish anything, and over the summer you found yourself deciding to really hunker down and focus. You'd get a videogame made, finally. All the way in the bugfixing stages, only for your apartment's power to surge. The entire system, fried. All your work, gone.
It hurt, back then, but now there's just a bit of bitter amusement. You'd put more hours, more days into many more things that ended up breaking down on you. It showed that your Agent- whatever it was- definitely knew what irony is.
You sigh, reflexively push away the tinker ideas that came from the computer, pull yourself to your feet, and-
You pause. You look at the computer again, and let down the walls.
Ideas come in. Fast and flowing, hard and impactful. The noise in your skull that had faded over the years, slowly giving up on you as you'd given up on it. It's back.
… Did… Did that mean your power's been reset?
Your phone rings again. Slowly, you pick it up.
"Hello, Stuart," Your manager begins, and starts to lecture you. Like he'd expected you to teleport as soon as you got Zack's call. It was a joy to tell him to fuck off when you'd first quit, but somehow that fuel- that heat- isn't in you anymore.
"I'll be in as soon as I can. The schedule change threw me off a bit," You say, settling him down.
"Thank you," He responds, pleasantly surprised. "See that you do."
You find yourself standing in a pleasantly cooled storefront. Babbage Games is covered in brightly colored cutouts and posters, but it's entirely empty, save for you. Nobody's been in all day, and you're not really surprised. You're too far away from the Boardwalk for people to actually get to, and games aren't that big on Earth Bet. Not in comparison to Aleph, anyway.
It's given you a lot of time to stand and think. Figure out what you're doing.
You've got another shot. Another try. It's only years later that you found out what kind of enormous, world-shaking stuff you could have built, if you'd only known. Stuff that made Dragon and Hero and Armsmaster look like pansies. Even that power tinker could only rip powers out of people, before putting them into others. You'd given Uber his powers with some tinfoil, a broken cartridge of Street Fighter, and a half-dozen lemons.
You had to be careful. But you couldn't be careful, because your power's a psycho.
Right. Rules behind your power. You can build anything. Beat any tinker in their own area of expertise. But only once. If you build something a second time, even component by component, it gets weaker. A lot weaker, scaling downward. You can force up the power, but that gives it a misfire chance. The closer to something you've made before, the higher the chance.
Second rule. You can maintain your devices, If it's not broken badly enough, you can fix it, adjust it, reprogram or refocus it. But even your early work can misfire, if it's damaged. The more damaged something gets, the worse the misfire chance is. Even adjust it. But once something's damaged to a certain degree, it has a misfire chance permanently. You can never get it back to prime.
Subrule. Tools are important. If you build something with your bare hands and a bunch of makeshift tools, it'll be trash. It might do its job, but it's easier to damage, or burn itself out.
Third rule. The more data you can scan from a cape with a related power, that chance decreases. But not all the way. Not to mention, you'd been able to use Balminder's brain scanning helmet. Rework it into something useful. Stealing another tinker's work might be an option. You had never stolen a lot of tech, but you could see it being about as good as scanning capes, using their data. Maybe even better.
Fourth rule. The newest one, one you just figured out yesterday. Or, well, years in the future, subjectively. Your power is both sentient, and a psycho. If you hide away, if you do nothing, it'll start sabotaging you. Start fucking you over. So once you build your first device, you've got to start using it. Go crazy. Use it recklessly. Like running a stream, but you have to be on constantly. That revelation explained a lot of things, like how Bakuda went from tiny little bombs to reality-warping black holes.
Now. Your first device has to be important. Has to be big. Big enough to fix some of these rules, to counteract them. But the bigger you go, the more tech trees you'll cross out. The more tools you'll need, and you can't follow the normal tinker route of building tools to build tools. The more supplies you'll need.
You bore a hole into the closed door to Babbage Games with your eyes, and begin to plan. Your magnum opus. It'll be the first thing you'll build, and the rest will come to you in time.
[] Personal enhancement. It'll burn out all of your wet tinkering, some of your chemistry, but if you could make a potion that gives you secondary powers, permanent brute stuff, you might not even need to rely on tinkering.
[] Replicator. It'll take up all of your sensor tech, and maybe nanotech, but you'll be able to scan and replicate other people's tinkertech. Have permanent copies of your own. As long as you have this, you'll never lose your tech or miss out on anything.
[] Reality Shifter. It'll burn out your dimensional stuff, and your power generation, but if it's the very first thing you build, if you build it as perfectly as possible… what won't you be able to do with it?
[] Power modification. You burned this out last time with Uber, but… if you built something to let you commune with your power, maybe hack it into giving you whatever you want. Only problem is that this one's a wildcard. Would your power really let you build something to brainwash it?
You're also able to write-in your own options for this quest. Feel free to come up with something- but the more advanced, the longer it'll take to get the supplies and tools. There will be more advanced mechanics in the future, but for your first piece of tech, it's a freebie.
Right. The easiest and most direct way to mess with your limitations… is also the most reckless one. If you could interact with your power, maybe rewrite it, alter your restrictions…
At first, through nothing but habit, you find yourself casting back through the list of stuff you'd worked on in the past. Previous projects you'd started that were similar to this… and then you forcefully stop yourself.
Things are going to be different now. You're going to do things differently.
Most of your first day back in the past involves standing quietly at a desk, Mindnumbingly bored. During your lunch break you buy an overpriced notebook from the boardwalk, and spend the rest of the day sketching out a basic design. It's a little surprising how much it reminds you of Balminder's brain scanner, but for all you know your respective powers are drawing information from the same source.
Tools are going to be an issue, as always. You don't have the freedom to build whatever niche tools your power is telling you you'll need. That had been the first trap you'd stumbled into, back when you started. You find yourself making the design larger, bulkier, and clumsier. This way, rather than requiring advanced tinker tools, you simplify it down to the point where the most delicate, precise tools you might need would be a watchmaker's set. Tiny delicate screwdrivers that are still technically mundane. It wouldn't be any less effective, just more time consuming, taking up more resources… but most importantly, it won't take crazy-advanced tools like a magnetic alignment driver.
Use mundane tech whenever possible. That's become your best advantage against your power. Too many tinkers deal with building little energy cells and advanced computational substrates when all they really need is a hobbyist's circuit board and a wall socket.
"Hey, Stu!" Uber's voice knocks you out of your fugue. You fold up your note pad and shove it into the apron. He's the only person in the building, stepping in through the automatic doors. Zach from 2009 isn't the swollen hulk of muscle you're used to, and the difference in physical appearance throws you off a bit. But at least it's a little easier to reconcile him with who he'd become in the future.
"Zach," You respond. "What's up?"
"Dude, you hear about that new cape?" He asks, eyes full of passion. Right, he'd been a cape junkie. "The New Wave one."
"No, I've just been here," You say.
"Right, well, New Wave's got its own new Alexandria. Flying and invulnerability. They're calling her Glory Girl, because she's got a big glowing shaker effect," He says, throwing his work shirt on over his T-shirt. "Dude. Wouldn't it be fucking awesome to be a cape?"
"Yeah, sure would," You say.
He pauses. Gives you an even look.
"You doing alright, man?"
You stare back at him for a moment.
In another life, you'd been stunned with possibility, ideas bursting at the seams. In another life, you'd have told him that you could make him a cape, the idea burning itself into your mind. And you would- you did- in a completely different way than those Cauldron folks, with their problems and inefficiencies. In another life, he would have followed you everywhere… and the more you think, the more you realize all the worst ideas were his ideas. The streaming. The videogame theme. Extreme levels of violence. Joining Bakuda, and then later Coil. Even Tijuana was his idea.
His eyes are the same. The exact same eyes that looked back at you as they left. Abandoning you to Balminder.
"... Fuck off," You respond, your voice cracking. "I don't need your shit right now."
"Wow, fine, jeez." He rolls his eyes. "Touchy. What, you finally find out why your mom's spending all her time at my place? Hint, it's my diiii-"
"Fuck off," You say again, rolling your eyes. He laughs, somewhere between good-naturedly and assholishly, and you continue to stare out at the entrance to the store. Biding your time. Waiting. The schematics in your mind.
Your shift ends as Zach's starts. You give one last look at your coworker- the man who'd been Uber in another life- and move on.
One side-effect of having so much experience working in your theme is that despite how badly your tech actually works, or the chance of misfiring, you're pretty good at making things look good. Fashion isn't exactly a super power, but it's something you like to think you're at least passable at. Beyond that, you like to think you're pretty good at actually fabricating things.
Any other tinker at this point would be looking at a crazy hodgepodge mess of cables and emitters strapped to a threadbare baseball cap. You're not looking at something like that- you're looking at a sleek bicycle helmet, emitters pressed into the helmet's holes at the right points, cables neatly tied off, fitted into the helmet's foam. You tap at each of the connections with a watchmaker's screwdriver, making sure nothing is loose, none of the solder is coming off. Then you go over them with a voltage detector, making sure it's all as efficient as possible. Finally, the glue gun. Making sure it stays secure, keeping down the level of maintenance. The plastic outer casing of the bicycle helmet even fits back on, with holes cut out for the small plastic box for the batteries and the nine extra coaxial cable ports.
Once that's done, you feed the cables to the custom circuit-board installed in your PC, twisting them into place. You're pretty fortunate that software to run this stuff doesn't really count as a 'component', as far as your tech goes, but as the 'skill required to use it'. It's one of the few benefits of your power. You couldn't even count the number of times you'd redesigned your omnicamera's movement routines.
The tools had been only the second-most expensive part of this endeavor. The real expensive parts was the high quality electronics. You'd gotten a deal, of course, buying old broken down computer parts from people over Craigslist. It won't work forever, especially after people know there's a new tinker in town, but Brockton Bay is surprisingly free of tinkers at this point in time. No Kid Win, no Chariot, no Squealer, Bakuda… no Leet, either.
You're feeling good. It's a change from normal. Before the beatings and burnings, the fires, the explosions that wore your body down, before you bore the aches and pains of a professional athlete without the associated fitness.
Just in case you're about to ruin your health again, you stretch, your neck and back popping and cracking as you do. Just one last chance to enjoy it.
Then you look down at the helmet again. On some level, it looks drab and boring. Silver, with blue glowing lights in the neural emitters.
The product of weeks of work. You take a deep breath.
You pull it on. You turn to your computer, and tweak the settings and parameters. Your power's buzzing in your mind, buzzing strongly. It's almost pushing you onward, feeding you the parameters to enter. The software boots up, the display showing you the response from each emitter... Green across the board, one by one. There's one blue- and you have to adjust the parameters slightly for that emitter until it switches green as well.
"This is stupid," You say.
Then you press the huge (THIS IS STUPID) button on your software, and the helmet you're wearing begins to buzz and shriek-
Agent Interface Device Result: 78.
You're somewhere else.
You're in a dark, eternal abyss. You're staring at a brain. It might be your brain. It might not. You're not sure for a moment. But as you focus, you're looking closer and closer, your perception warping and distorting, almost zooming in.
The closer you look, the more you realize that it's not a brain. It's a shell, shaped like one. A machine. It's cracked and worn, ancient beyond belief. Shards of crystal split where it's been ripped up, revealing biomass and ooze poking through. You look even closer… and you see yourself.
You're so small that the rest of the thing you're standing on is large enough you can barely see the curvature. Planetary scale, maybe even bigger. From this close up, it doesn't even look like a machine. It doesn't look like a brain, either.
The floor is made of smooth, grey material, crystalline in nature.
You look at yourself- and realize you hadn't been looking at your body. You don't have a body here. You're a nervous system, strapped in place. A brain on a pike, winding nerves and grey matter stretched out across the surface of the machine. On one level, it's grotesque. The most grotesque thing you've ever seen, and you'd met Echidna. But on another, it's hard to recoil from. It's hard to react, because somehow you know it's always been like this.
Streams of power roil off your grey matter, stretching up into a tree of electrical signals. Your Agent Interface. The programming unspools, developing itself, expanding like a web. The signals grow more and more complex, more and more layered. Like runes carved into the world.
It buzzes. A loud shriek, the world screaming at you, and somehow- like a lucid dream- you understand it, understand what it means. The world-machine you're strapped to is asking you a question. More than one.
Some of the questions, you don't know the answer to. In others, the context is missing.
"I'm here because I want more," You say. You don't enunciate the words. You don't have a mouth, you just... say them. Somehow. "I don't want to get weaker over time. I don't want to lose my power. I don't want to be sabotaged."
It seems to draw something from you. It rips painfully at you, pulling at your knowledge. Your memories. The memories of loss, of pain, of dwindling down into nothing.
After a heartbeat, you get the impression of a woman smiling at you. The impression of the chair in your hands as you beat a man to death.
You're shoved outward, away from the world-machine. Into the eternal abyss. You're thrown away, far away, your perception expanding and expanding. Taking in more and more and more nothing. More and more lack of anything. You're struck by how isolated the world-machine is, and the impression that this isn't how it wants to be. This isn't how it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be part of a network. Many world-machines, hooked together. Aligned to one purpose.
You're sitting in your chair. Your heart is pounding, mouth dry. The tendons and bones in your body seem to ache. Your desk and monitor are covered in black ink, a sharpie in your trembling hand.
The scrawl is in the shape of a blueprint.
It's not a blueprint you've seen before. But it's one your power had drawn, using your hands as its tools.
It's… reminiscent of the Agent Interface Device you'd just built, you'd just finished. But the changes are with the emitters. They're… not harmless. They're strong, maybe too strong. Resonators, tightly coiled lasers. Strong enough to possibly damage the brain of whatever cape you put it onto. But as you copy it onto your notepad, fascinated, you realize that it's meant to be attached to the Interface device. That the software scratching at your brain is designed to forge a connection between you and the wearer of the device.
Your power had even titled it. The Tinker Leech Device. A peripheral for your Interface. The Interface goes both ways, but the Leech only downloads. Only steals. You're not sure how long you'd need someone to wear it. You don't know what side-effects it may have. You're not even sure what it does. Just that your power had given you a tool. A way to… to restore used technology trees. A way to give you permanence.
You're suddenly reminded of the fact that there aren't many tinker capes in town yet, other than you and Armsmaster. And you're not sure when they'll be showing up. Your memories of the early few months of your power weren't too clear- you spent most of it in a fugue.
You take a deep breath, and with shaking hands, stuff the notebook into your desk.
Which is precisely when you hear sirens going off. You shoot to your feet, running to the blinds of your little apartment building. In the distance, you see it, the flickering light.
Lung. It's been a long time since they let him get this big. In fact, now that you think of it, there was only really one time he was that big, and that's when he first entered town.
You glance at him again, at the moving forms of the capes trying to hold him back, the barely-visible glints and motions in the setting sunlight.
Which is when you realize.
This is before they knew about Lung's power, about the specifics. Before he took over a handful of gangs- Raijin's small group, or Oni Lee's gang- and welded them together into the ABB.
Before he killed Challenger. You know events are already going to change a lot, when you're not being Leet. But maybe this is something else you can change.
You have gained the following traits:
-Wildcard: Your Misfire Chances are now DOUBLED. Beyond that, you now get a Critical Failure on rolls of 1-5 instead of just 1, and a Critical Success on rolls of 95-100 instead of just 100.
-Imprinted Design: If lost, stolen, or damaged, you can recreate the Agent Interface Device or Tinker Leech Device with a minimum chance of misfires.
-The Contract: You have minimum Misfire Chances for any devices that fall completely under the specialty of a Tinker you've used the Leech Device on, and may permanently gain traits from tinkers who do not have specialties.It's pretty surprising how straight the roads are, how balanced and even they are. You're too used to the aftermath of Leviathan, with flooded streets, worn down roads, even the small potholes had become larger ones.
Your bike had seen a lot of use, over the years. You'd ridden it to Winslow and back every day, halfway across the city, and even now you still need it to get to work and back. You give yourself a sardonic grin as you lean forward, weaving around a pothole. The you from last month- before he received your memories- never would have expected he'd be using this bike to ride straight toward a cape fight.
In the weeks you were preparing the materials for your Interface Device, you'd taken a few spare minutes to put together your own mask. The lack of theme made things surprisingly difficult- you're used to styling it after Zelda or Mario, and this time you just had to get something that looked good, something that screamed at your capabilities as a cape.
Of course, there's no tinkertech in its construction. That would have been a waste. It was more a helmet than a mask. Smooth, neatly-curved sheet metal had a visor taken from a pair of ski goggles, memory foam tightly fitted into your face shape and sitting comfortably. The paint respirator underneath the mouthpiece was a steal, and you were able to wire up a handful of LEDs and tweak them until it looked properly futuristic. A real tinker might be able to recognize it's a bunch of dressed up mundane parts, but you couldn't say the same about any other cape.
The ground shuddered as another stream of fire whipped through the sky, Lung's flamethrower trying and failing to catch a blazing Dauntless, his feet kicking off of nothing as light trails from his soles.
You redouble your efforts, pushing your bike harder and harder. You were in better shape, when you were younger. It's not a lot, and you were never (nor will you ever) be in the sort of shape Uber was, but it's nice to be able to push harder without your lungs trying to rip themselves out of your chest.
The water by the docks are sizzling and bubbling. Lung's been pushed back, waist-deep in the water, but he's growing quickly. Pre-wings, stage, but you can all but feel the earth quailing under his mass, his bellows and yells. You can see the forms of Assault and Battery waiting on nearby buildings, a blur flickering around the docks as Velocity accelerates. You can hear regular gunshots, the sound switching as Miss Militia changes her approach and weapon selection, but you can't see her from here.
You swerve your bike to a stop as someone- a figure with an oversized axe- leaps at Lung. With superhuman strength, she slams into him, making Lung stumble back half a step. A moment later, the two blur- the heat and fire making it hard to see- and he bats her away.
You barely throw yourself out of the way as Challenger skids across the asphalt, bouncing and skidding to a stop. She rolls herself to her feet, propping herself up with what little remains of her axe. Lines of golden light are curling around her body, a few inches off. Her shield- the one that grows stronger the stronger her enemies are.
"Who the hell are you?" She asks. "Go home, kid. This is beyond you."
"Yeah, no." You respond. "Didn't rush all the way here to let you get killed."
"Killed? I'm Challenger."
"Yeah, and Lung's a hard-counter to you."
She blinks. "Lung? You know who this monster is?"
"Kyushu cape. Fought Leviathan, vanished for most of a decade. He grows in conflict. Stronger the more capes are around."
"Yeah, I get stronger too-"
"Brute nine. Blaster six."
"Nine? Fuck."
"He out-scales you, and you don't get the heat resistance you'll need. Keep bashing your head against him, he's gonna crush your skull," You say. "Best option is to back out, let him cool down."
She glances between you and Lung. Her expression shifts slightly… and she charges.
"Sorry, kid!" She calls. "Can't stop now!"
A bolt of Dauntless's lightning slams down through Lung. Lung bellows, the ground shuddering. His wings burst free from his back. With a heavy thump of his wings, he begins to emerge from the bay. A shockwave of heat and fire and light washes over you, and you all but throw yourself behind a dumpster, dragging your bike toward it and into safety.
When the wave of fire is over, you poke your head out again. Challenger is bouncing off of Lung, throwing herself back into Assault, who (with the assistance of Battery) is blasting her back. A well-practiced, well-honed routine that makes the most of Challenger's boosted durability. Kneeling on the ground, crouching underneath a glittering, tinkertech shield that seems to have erupted from his bike, is Armsmaster. One of the compartments of his tech is opened, and he's fiddling with a melted patch of wires, rerouting them.
Then, you see it. You remember months into being a cape, with Uber, sitting down to watch stolen PRT records of this moment. Of Uber laughing and chortling, talking about 'those losers'. You remember feeling squeamish as you watched a woman die.
Lung catches Challenger like a softball. He slammed her into the pavement, pinning her in place, and with his other palm, with his pyrokinesis…
If you'd had some kind of tinkertech- any tinkertech- you could have done something. You could stop this. You could have…
You glance back at Armsmaster. His back is to you- it's like he doesn't even know you're there.
This is stupid.
This is stupid.
This is stupid.
But your power is singing.
Your feet are pounding across the asphalt. Your lungs are trying to punch their way through your chest, and the heat is uncomfortable, even at this distance.
Armsmaster doesn't even notice you until after you've plucked the Halberd from his hand.
Mechashift, half a dozen components. The most dizzyingly complex piece of tinkertech you've seen. Overcomplicated. This thing alone would take up half your power. Your fingers glide over the foreign tinkertech. You've seen it before in half a dozen forms. Hell, you've seen them all used against you and Uber, mostly.
Armsmaster was trying to replace an entire burned circuit-board like he was in a lab. Like he'd had time. But nobody else- no other tinker in the world- has as much experience with broken tech in the field than you.
You twist together two wires. The ArmsHalberd (or whatever it was called) makes a loud clang as three different components swing out simultaneously. You slam one of the flaps down with your hand, pinning it down long enough for the grappling hook to extend. You touch another two wires together- still running, winded, as Armsmaster is already beginning to catch up.
Lung catches Challenger.
You level the halberd… and aim. The grappling hook fires. It slams into Lung's free hand, sizzling through it.
The halberd chirps, small thrusters emerging from the side. Homing function. Right.
You shove your hand into the innards of the device. You reach up toward a different board… and drag your thumbnail along the board, scraping through just the right connections, cutting off just the right functions before the halberd rips itself out of your hand.
Lung slams Challenger into the pavement, pinning her there. He brings forward his other hand, focused pyrokinesis glinting.
The halberd doesn't return to Armsmaster. Instead, it flies askew, in the wrong direction. Toward Assault.
"Assault! Battery!" You bellow. Your voice screeches, but you push it anyway. "PULL!"
Assault catches the halberd, eyes goggling even under his visor. Battery gleams- and shoves him. Assault redirects the kinetic force, using their amplified strength to pull the halberd- and the cable attached to Lung.
Lung stumbles. Slightly. The cable snaps, but it's enough for Challenger to punch her way free, blowing his hand away. Lung's other hand is already spraying off kilter, pyrokinetic fire billowing from it like a flamethrower.
Straight towards you.
Right.
This was really, really fucking stupid.
You close your eyes, ready to burn.
The last thing you register before you lose consciousness is the heavy plating of power armor scooping you off the ground.
Action Result: 97, Critical Success.
A large portion of the bay is on fire. Lung is nowhere to be seen. Velocity is rushing around, and fire services are already on their way, according to the sirens.
It's a good thing you're still wearing your mask, because the smoke won't get into your lungs with the respirator.
"You with us, kid?" Armsmaster's gruff voice comes down to you.
Your heart settles. Your power is still singing.
"Y-yeah." You say, taking in a deep breath. You'd fainted. Who the hell fucking faints?
At least you didn't piss yourself this time.
"Are you in need of medical assistance?" He asks.
"I'm good. I'm fine." You say. "Unless I'm hurt so badly that I can't feel it. In which case, uh, you'd probably see it."
"You appear to be fine. My armor took the brunt of the heat. It was a near thing, at that distance."
"Thanks. For that, I mean."
It's so strange, to have Armsmaster looking at you like you're an actual person, rather than the scum on his shoe.
"Thank you," He responds earnestly. He waves an arm toward one of the PRT vans nearby, where you see Challenger pulling herself away from the medics. She's got a bad scrape on half of her body, and her skin is reddened- but she seems fine. She'll live long enough for Panacea to trigger, at least.
"You did warn me." Challenger responds. "Didn't expect you to go the extra mile. Who are you?"
Slowly, you pull yourself to your feet. You hadn't thought of that question before. You know you're not Leet. You'll never be Leet again. But that doesn't mean you'd thought of a different name. In that moment, a dozen pushed through your mind.