Chapter 234 - My SI Stash #34 - Teenagers Suck by Mizuki_Stone (Worm) (1/2)

-Recently revived fic, was dead for 2 years~ SI as a student of Winslow High with Warlock Powers, it's prettty much a slice of life!

Sypnosis: ???

Rated: T

Words: 120K

Posted on: forums.spacebattles.com/threads/teenagers-suck-worm-cyoa.343807/#threadmark-category-16 (Mizuki_Stone)

PS: If you're not able to copy/paste the link, you have everything in here to find it, by simply searching the author and the story title. It sucks that you can't copy links on mobile (´ー｀)

-I'll be putting the chapter ones of all the fanfics mentioned, to give you guys a sample if you wan't more please do go to the website and support the author! (And maybe even convince them to start uploading chapters in here as well!)

Prologue + Chapter 1

Have you ever felt like your life isn't your own? Like you're stuck in a role you weren't meant to play?

Welcome to my life.

My name is Dwight Underwood. Or rather now it is. And I'm fresh into my sixteenth year of life... while remembering being in my mid twenties not too long ago somewhere else.

Yeah I know, sounds crazy right? Not crazy 'haha' but crazy in the 'you should get some counselling for that', which I would except that I can't talk about it.

And I don't mean that I can't talk about it because I'm afraid of something bad happening on my record I mean I literally cannot talk about it. I open my mouth to say something and just... nothing comes out. A secret locked inside my head I can't tell anyone.

Which is creepy as f_u_c_k.

But then again, capes are supposed to be messed up right?

Oh, right, capes. Capes are... well people in capes. Well not literally capes. Costumes. Superheroes and supervillians. Some of the costumes have capes but those fell out of favor early. Crazy people with superpowers basically. Those are a thing.

Annnnd I am one of them. Minus the costume part anyway. Though my powers are kind of lame in the 'super' department. I mean they look cool, but... Not really that practical in the face of stuff like handguns and things, but they certainly had some cool presentation to them.

I mean, everyone wanted to be a blaster. Well if they couldn't be an Alexandria Package anyway. Super strength, invulnerability and Flight were a hard mix to beat.

But on the other hand, my powers could grow with time. That was an edge few could boast. And magic types were rare, even if most ended up mocked if they openly called themselves that. Give me some time and I could get one of those 'top of the line' powers, maybe fake another one, and hit hard in my own way by developing what I had. Legend was just as cool as Alexandria after all.

...Here I am talking about coolness like I really was a teenager. Well I guess in terms of glands and stuff I was. Or was I just a teenager with a lot of information downloaded into my brain?

I was definitely going to try and test out of school though at least, regardless of anything else. Winslow s_u_c_k_e_d.

Or maybe I should really think about joining the Wards? I mean that was the heroic thing to do right? But at the same time I had to seriously think on how I wanted to approach that. Being a hero sounded awesome but... would I really be able to do that sort of thing? Walk around in spandex shooting fiddly little lasers?

It seemed... smarter to level up a bit first. Spend more time thinking on my options and trying to get up to the level of something useful.

Or maybe I was just procrastinating because the idea of entering combat with weak powers scared me.

Then again that was just another thing to think about wasn't it?

Adjusting my backpack I continued my trek to the hell that was highschool. At least I'd have a few more minutes before the glory that was the American Educational system went too work doing its best to scrub any semblance of thought from my brain.

Chapter 1: Setting the Stage

Part 1

To call Winslow a hellhole was an insult to hellholes everywhere. I'd known it was bad before getting powers, but now I actually had some basis for comparison.

The building itself wasn't in great shape, it wasn't exactly 'half a step from condemned', but it was understating things to say some of the rooms could use a coat of paint and the library held the firm and rustic smell of mildew to it like water in a sponge. The equipment wasn't exactly great either, the chairs were uncomfortable, the PA crackled, the textbooks were a decade old in the better cases, and the computers were old enough that they didn't need to worry about the gangs stealing them.

Actually now in hindsight, that last one might actually have been deliberate.

But those weren't the real problem.

No the real problem was the gangs.

Brockton Bay, among its many other notable titles, was the neo Nazi capital of the US. It wasn't bad enough that I could expect to see someone walking down the hallway with a red arm band but I wouldn't really be surprised by it.

Not that they would. Shaved heads, and 'subtle' display of the number eighty eight was one thing. Flying colors that blatant on the other hand was just asking someone to bust a cap in your ass. Probably by someone wearing a dragon.

It's funny, you'd think an organization the Empire Eighty Eight (said neo Nazis) would all but own this town. They had like a dozen supervillians, money, borderline military level munitions and resources. Once you added it all together, the local Protectorate were just plain out numbered and out muscled, even if you factored in independent heroes like New Wave helping them.

And honestly they would. It's a freaking terrifying thought. Particularly for someone who could remember listening to horror stories about the original flavor of Nazis, but by all rights Kaiser, leader of the Empire Eighty Eight should have taken over at this point.

But he didn't.

Because there was a scarier monster in town.

And whenever someone objected he crushed them like a bug. Normal person, cop, soldier, superhuman, team of superhumans, it didn't matter. He just... walked in one day, picked a fight with the entire local Protectorate and sent them running. He did the same to the empire, and to everyone else stupid enough to face him.

And then he claimed his spot, and ruled it like a tyrant.

The Azn Bad Boyz better known as the ABB. A paradoxical pan-Asian supremacist gang, that gave no care about the wildly diverging and often traditionally conflicting cultures scooped up under the term 'Asian' ruled by a freaking dragon.

Drugs, protection rackets, kidnapping and exportation, outright human trafficking... they did it all, and not a single person alive could stop it. The most the government and its affiliate heroes could do was stake out hunks of turf that they wouldn't budge on. Certain rules that they abided by.

It was probably those exact rules that were the only reason a place like Winslow could still stand with members of both gangs openly operating inside with anything resembling peace and order.

Scary shit huh?

Even two days ago the best I could do was hunker down, keep quiet and hope to whatever gods might be listening that no one drew their attention towards me.

But now... now I had power. Not a lot of it, but...

Was this what it felt like to own a gun maybe? The heady feeling of being able to fight back, to know that if someone went after you that you didn't just have to stand there and take it.

Not that fighting would get me far. My powers s_u_c_k_e_d. If I fought back openly that'd just get attention that would crush me like a bug. At least with what powers I currently had available. All that aside if I just busted out the arcane asskicking bullshit on a hares breath then how was I different from the gangs in the first place?

But... maybe with some practice that could change? I was already one link higher on the food chain. If I just kept climbing higher then eventually I might be able to make a real difference. With great power comes great responsibility and all that right?

I had to figure out how to strike a good balance. Find some point between where I could live with myself and just plain live.

The bell rang.

I blinked.

Of course that could wait until after class!

Part 2

Math class was... math class. For some reason people thought that if you were good at something that you had to like it.

I was good at math. Too good honestly, I could do everything up to basic exponents in my head but in a class that graded by 'showing your work', that didn't mean much. All responses were meant to be punch card perfect. The properly listed process for the properly listed result, even if I could get the actual answer out onto the paper with half the actual work.

It s_u_c_k_e_d, and sapped dry whatever little amounts of enjoyment I could find working on this educational assembly line. I didn't even have any friends in this class.

Well there was Tony, but we'd grown pretty distant since he shaved his head. He had his reasons. I knew them, even kinda got them, but I didn't agree with them.

Hate couldn't be fixed with more hate. Not unless you were willing to carry it all the way through, and the price of that... wasn't something I felt was worth paying.

His mother agreed with me.

His father... was less vocal.

I wondered if I went hero, would I end up fighting him one day? Like... not an argument, but literal bullets and energy blasts fight?

The idea made the little pit in my stomach sink a little further.

Then again it wasn't like the alternative was on the plate either. If I didn't bend my knee to Kaiser before I got my powers, why the hell would I now that I might be able to fight back?

My work was done, I was expected to 'free study' now. In short keep quiet and let the other little cogs turn in the grand machine that was the school system while playing around with my cellphone.

Except that I wasn't.

Ideas...

Where the hell was I going to get a costume? I wanted something... useful. Practical. Something that could help me survive some.

Armor? Well maybe I could manage with some sports equipment. The good motocross stuff was pretty protective right? Not bulletproof vest grade but...

How much were those vests anyway? I mean sports kit was pretty expensive. A full set could cost a couple hundred if it was new. I could reach that but it wasn't exactly small change to me either. It also wasn't really optimal for the job.

But those vests got kind of bulky... and weren't knives supposed to slide through them pretty easily as well? Super fights used blades more often then bullets right?

So... maybe I should go medieval on their asses? Chainmail or something like that? That'd be even harder to find, but you could find it. Online order from one of those Renaissance fair, old style blacksmiths...

How do you block metal blades and fire blasts with stuff like that? You don't. So... was armor worth it?

...Duh, of course it was. For every forest of blades and raging fire dragon there were also pocket knives, nine millimeters and basic bits of shrapnel.

So... I probably wanted to start with the motocross stuff. Less complicated then trying to make something piecemeal and it covered everywhere. I could get the thing cash, over the counter as well, making things a lot less easily connected to me.

A memory from the other life hit me.

I could also modify it with plates of heavier stuff over top. Probably wouldn't do as well as full out plate-mail with Kevlar inserts, but I could leave little spots for inserts for Kevlar later.

...Or maybe I could take up sewing and find out how much Kevlar cost piecemeal?

The motocross stuff would be a good base layer though. It was padded, meant to help people survive big cashes, and it was low profile for armor. It'd be a good starting ground.

What about the helmet though? Head protection was nice, but I was trying to go hero. Some heroes got away with that sort of stuff but most showed at least part of their face. Either way just walking around in a bikers outfit didn't seem very... super... person... like. I mean who did that? Maybe if I had biker themed powers...

Alright, I needed to work on the helmet idea some. Maybe approach that more from the hard armor angle? Some of the medieval style helmets were-

The bell rung.

Automatically I started putting stuff away. Computer sciences next. AKA how to use the office program of a OS three generations out of date.

Joy.

Maybe I should just skip it and swing by the drama room?

...ooor I could just speed-blitz the class again and use the opportunity to look up everything I was just thinking about.

Huh, suddenly school didn't seem so bad!

I twitched, right... let's just hope Murphy wasn't listening to that.

Part 3

The computers in computer sciences were... well to be blunt they were horrible. They had the old school box head monitors, ran collectively on a single high speed connection degrading web surfing to around the league of dial up, and if not for the mainframe letting them share key memory would probably be hard pressed to have two gigs to rub together.

They were also free to use once your class work was up. Which was nice, even if your cellphone was actually better for surfing the web.

Getting said work done was no problem. The otherworldly knowledge that came with my powers filled in the blanks about as quickly as I encountered them, turning a forty five minute class into a fifteen minute cl_i_c_k_i_n_g session of paperwork.

Heh, the upsides seemed to be without limit. Yeah my energy blasts s_u_c_k_e_d but I had anti-homework superpowers! The envy of teen heroes across the globe.

...Actually in hindsight I should probably keep my lips tight on that one, or I might legitimately piss off someone who had combat effective superpowers.

With the image of Rune crushing me to death with a car, a look of outrage on her face firmly in my mind, I went to work researching.

Research that was very important, utterly practical and not even slightly d_i_c_king around.

Incidentally I found out that you could get a full length tailored trench coat for the surprisingly low price of nine hundred US dollars on the dot!

That was unfortunately a bit out of my price range. Luckily a more traditional basic vest only cost about a hundred and seventy. The full motocross suit cost only forty on top of that, which was kind of mind-blowing really.

Chainmail however was going to wrack me up by something like two hundred alone. Plate armor significantly more so.

I winced.

So... including shipping and everything, five hundred dollars for the most basic protection I could think of. That wasn't even including the actually flashy bits of costume.

...Well I'd been planning to wait a while to train my powers to begin with.

Actually... Maybe I could kill two birds with one stone? I'd wanted chain over rough bolted on plates, but adding some hard plates at key locations would be a smart move right? I could go down to the boat graveyard and practice my power carving out useful bits of it!

...That... was probably a horrible idea.

...Wasn't it?

Okay, my powers were flashy. I still needed to practice them. Boat graveyard was pretty damned abandoned. No one gave a damn about someone roughing up the resting lumps of scrap metal, so I wouldn't really have to worry about legal problems either. The metal was tough enough for ship hulls, so... why not?

Todd would probably be worried.

Well... if I was seriously going to work on the hero thing Todd was going to be worried either way right? Maybe I should try and get him used to the idea of me being gone for large chunks of the night. Sort of... ease him into it. I mean it wasn't like I was joining a gang or something.

Alright, another plan set.

I spent my remaining time looking up amateur blacksmithing, and browsing onto PHO... entirely for vital research purposes! Know your enemy, know yourself and you will win a thousand battles and all that jazz right?

So it was only natural to watch Über and L33t's highlight reel for the rest of the class right?

Exactly.

Unfortunately before I could get far in the lunch bell rang, interrupting my vital research before they got to the first Glory Girl episode.

No matter, food was good too. Even superpeople needed to eat right?

I wondered what was on the menu...

Part 4

Lunch at Winslow typically went one of three ways. You ate in the cafeteria, you grabbed some inexpensive imitation food from said cafeteria and moved somewhere else, or you went to one of the many cheap and easy food distributing eateries that were open around the prime feeding ground that is a open highschool.

Considering the make up of Winslow, the going out for lunch issue could be... tricky. I mean I loved Colonel Chang's deep fried chickenballs as much as the next guy, but a freckle faced redheaded white kid walking into that place? Hahaha, no thank you. I would rather like to skip on the side order of lead that invited.

...okay that was probably going a bit far. I wasn't Empire or anything so they'd probably just rough me up. Actually even that wouldn't be supremely likely. But it was a restaurant with a bright golden dragon in its logo. You did not walk into a place like that looking like I did. Not unless you wanted trouble.

Likewise the fact that I was not Empire meant that the Subway down the street would be distinctly uncomfortable for me to stay at. I mean yeah odds are I'd just get some very 'friendly' smile and some polite nudging, but I could also get some much less friendly ones.

There were still options. The valuemart only a quarter block away had pizza slices on cheap.

Of course all of that was redundant to me because you needed to be a senior to leave campus for lunch, so I was stuck with options one and two. Or bringing stuff I guess. As things were, I'd risk the Caf's imitation food.

So I walked down, reached my locker, ran the combo through the cheap dollar store lock, dumped my stuff in and headed for said eatery.

There at least the tensions ran mostly on the posture level. A few harsh words thrown here and there, but outside of a modest divide of certain tables being 'claimed', there wasn't a problem.

Actually according to my new memories even that wasn't that weird. It was just that there was also a table full of skinheads alongside a table full of jocks, preps, stoners, etc.

I wasn't even exempt from that.

After waiting in line for ten minutes, grabbing a cheese burger in ten seconds, loading a plate up with caesar salad in slightly more than that, grabbing a coke and paying for the lot of it. I finally made my way down to my personal 'retinue' in the sparsely crowded mess.

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't a prep, or a member of the track team or anything. Though actually that last might be a good idea to look into if I was seriously going to do the hero thing.

Nah I just had some friends I played cards with over lunch.

”Lisa, Clair,” I grinned at my fellow vicious and merciless cardsharks. Glancing around as I slid over, ”Looking lovely as ever, where's Bel?”

”Home sick. Think she got the flu,” Lisa explained. She was a nice girl. Utterly ruthless card player, but surprisingly kind for a Hispanic girl trying to get buy in a city full of Neo Nazi's and Asian supremacists. I had no idea how she managed to walk in with a smile every day, but she did, and that made the world a little brighter in my opinion.

”Sucks,” I grimaced sitting down.

Clair promptly stole a bit of my salad, ”No fries?”

My eye twitched, ”Why no, I like being able to eat most of my lunch rather than have it mysteriously disappear on me.”

Clair shot me a mock-hurt expression on the border of full blown crocodile tears, ”That hurts Dwight! Such allegations! Where is the love? Where is the trust?”

”Missing with most of my lunch money,” I replied bluntly. ”We playing asshole or poker? Three person game is pretty tight either way,” I replied picking up my burger and biting into the salty savory taste of well masked newspaper.

Delicious.

Yeah, the cafeteria food s_u_c_k_e_d, what else was new? It wasn't like I or Todd had much cooking talent between us though so what else was I going to do? Bring peanut butter sandwiches?

”Asshole,” Lisa decided on the spot.