The no good, very bad day...part 2.

[basic_powers]

[OOM: Dear Journal,

I didn't get any doors to Milliways today, or for the past week, and man I really wish I could have gotten Usagi or Ray's help with what happened today.

I'm too tired to write more about it...I just wanna take a bath and go to bed...]


'Beauford Tannen' left the grounds this morning after a quick calender check and won't be back for a while.

This evening, a very tired looking young boy walks into the bar rubbing one arm tiredly before he looks up and realizes where he is.

One second after that he's looking for any familiar faces to talk to.

It's been a long two days.

Comments

[basic_powers]

He's almost ten. But somedays, he's got the mental maturity of someone about where Adrian's guessing.

It's another moment before Tyler starts getting his breath back and wiping off all the snot and tears from his face to look up at Adrian.

"...can I have an Ovaltine?"

[hecu_marine]

"Yeah, sure," says Shephard. "You, uh... here."

He makes a point of carrying something on the order of a hanky with him when he goes out hunting, since blowing your nose on your shirtsleeve's a great way to screw things up when you're trying to stay inobtrusive in a tree stand.

"Use that as much as you need'n then we'll git you that Ovaltine, mm'kay?"

[basic_powers]

"'Kay." Tyler replies back quietly, blowing his nose and wiping off his face with the cloth, and blowing his nose a couple of times to clear it.

"...thank you."

[hecu_marine]

"Y'welcome," says Shephard gruffly. "Ain't like there ain't times I want to do as much myself. You sure you gon' be okay for now?"

[basic_powers]

"For now..."

Then it's taking a deep breath.

"I don't think I told you about my world at all...and I know I'm going to need Ovaltine for that."

[hecu_marine]

Shephard nods. "No problem," he says, and starts heading back to the Bar. "I c'n listen. I got pretty much all day."

He may take the precaution of getting graham crackers and some marshmallows or something like that along with the Ovaltine; he dimly remembers those being an old favorite when he was a kid.

[basic_powers]

Tyler's quiet for the entire walk back, and he does brighten up a little when Adrian comes back with the big Ovaltine mug, and a little plate of peanut butter and banana graham cracker sandwiches.

Bar knows this kid all too well. It's a couple of gulps of Ovaltine before he starts talking.

"...okay...my world is one where superheroes, the kind like are in comics in your world and some others are completely real, and real people."

[hecu_marine]

"Huh," says Shephard. "Okay, that's... that why you was barkin' some back there? You got some kind of dog powers or somethin'?"

What? It makes as much sense as anything else.

[basic_powers]

...One sec, Tyler's just going to put his face to the table and take one deeeeeeep breath.

"..no, no I learned how to speak dog from Uncle Ray in here. It's handy." Another deep breath before he looks up again at Adrian. "I don't have any superpowers at all. Both my mom and my dad do though, and they sent me to this school with other kids who do have powers because they thought it'd trigger any powers I might have that would be just under the surface."

"...and I kinda don't like talking about that cause 4 times out of five, the first thing people ask me after finding out either about my parents or my world is 'what's your superpower'."

So very little of his world makes sense.

[hecu_marine]

"Oh. Huh." Shephard shakes his head. "Shit, kid, sorry I brought it up then. I, uh... I got an idea what it's like when folks start assumin' shit 'bout you based on where you come from."

[basic_powers]

Tyler just nods along with that. It's the same thing and kind of not so much the same thing.

"I also kinda didn't tell you cause I liked...just pretending things were normal for a while here." He's entitled to that much. "...I kinda owe you more of and explanation after the punching bag though."

[hecu_marine]

"Ain't a problem," Shephard says. "Take your time about it. I'm listening."

And he's pretty good with the Ovaltine he got himself. Not like he can get that at home.

[basic_powers]

It's a few pb and banana graham sammiches before Tyler starts where he thinks is the best place to begin.

"The really big stuff started happening yesterday at school...but it started with smaller stuff before that. Before I started coming here to the Bar. See, towards the end of first grade I caught a fifth grader stealing a whole bunch of snacks from the supermarket, and the clerk kicked him out of the store. After that Charles Brigman always made it a point to pick on me or beat me up, or have either of his goon-headed friends do it for him." Slurp. "The school has two parts, the superkid side where everyone gets special training, and the normal kid side where no one knows about the superkid school. Charles was part of the normal-kid side, and one day after I had been showing the new kid around the school he decided it'd be funny to pick on me and Malphast for a third time that day..and Malphast got mad at that, and did some spell that took Malphast, me, Charles, Cecil, and a bunch of other kids to some parallel place so Charles'd get judged by Order and Chaos in a game of four-square. Malphast managed to win, but only cause Charles violated his own 'no powers in play' rule...by teleporting. And because Charles lost, Order and Chaos wiped the memories of everyone there except for me and Malphast. That's the first small part that happened."

[hecu_marine]

"... four-square."

He's pretty sure he followed the other parts all right, but that's the bit he wants to be sure of.

[basic_powers]

"Four-square." Tyler replies. "Charles started picking on us there the third time, and Malphast summoned the court to some place called the Rock of Challenge."

[hecu_marine]

"Yeah, okay, I figured-" Shephard shakes his head. "Wasn't the sort of game I was expecting, is all. Poker or chess or somethin', maybe. Anyway, go on."

It's starting to sound like his own sort of bad day's kind of a step up.

[basic_powers]

"The second part happened during something bigger that I still get nightmares about sometimes, and it only happened for about 30 minutes." He goes on. "It had to do with time travel and stopping one of the not-so-nice supergenius kids in my school from messing around with it. But during the course of that, I ran into a kid name Harold Nelson during 1967. I didn't find out more about him until after that was over, and then it was only cause one of the magic users here got a vision about him. That was when I started finding out about the first Rainmaker project."

A much bigger slug of that hot mug of ovaltine. Have to finish it before it gets cold.

"That was a government project where they tried to find out where superpowers came from, by testing on a kid who didn't have powers that were any good in combat at all. Harold Nelson could summon up rain clouds, and he was a little older than me when he was taken out of an orphanage for the tests."

[hecu_marine]

There are three things in the world that Shephard fears, but there is one underlying terror that runs so low it scarcely even registers until someone brushes their fingers across it. Shephard was six when a century flood struck the Cheat River. He'd be willing to bet there was a lot more combat capability in a kid who could make it rain than most folks think.

He holds off a shiver and says, "That don't sound good. At all."

[basic_powers]

"It didn't get bad until...Until they brought in a sopervillian scientist who was on some kind of work program...except I think he used his ability to manipulate people's thoughts to get onto the project. When he was on there his first experiment was one to try to alter and amplify Harold's powers....and it worked." He rubs his arm for a bit before continuing. "His experiment made it possible for Harold to start summoning up storms up to the point where they could cause floods...and gave him the ability to amplify powers of other heroes to the point where not using their powers would hurt them, to take them away completely....o...or to bring out hidden ones in other people."

Tyler's just a little paler at that.

"The name of the villian was Dr. Irons, and he had built himself into a robot body that could send signals to hypnotize people by talking to them. And he and Harold escaped from that center, but I think he used Harold to...to.."

[hecu_marine]

"Tyler."

Shephard's not Ray, but he's got a good hand on the no-nonsense, don't-bug-out voice.

"Git yourself a good long drink, then a good deep breath, 'n then decide if you want to keep on talkin'. You're too young for a fuckin' coronary."

[basic_powers]

It's more nervous habit than from pain with the arm rubbing but...

Yeh. You wanna freak the poor kid out, put him around something guaranteed 100% to give superpowers.

He's not about to argue with that sort of voice and just sips at the ovaltine for a good long while.

"I think he used Harold for his powers. I dunno why but that's what I think he was trying to do with both Rainmaker projects." Deep breath. "Thanks to the timetravel, I ended up dropping both of them off in 1976, which by then the government guys had stopped looking for them. I didn't see either of them again until yesterday"

[hecu_marine]

Shephard hadn't really noticed the arm rubbing. He just thought the kid looked like he was going to blow a blood vessel.

"Ain't nothin' good about fuckers like that'n time travel," he says. "I been dealin' with that shit long enough to know."

Normally he wouldn't curse around the kid near as much as he's been doing, but: flood. And evil time traveling bastards. Maybe not the Greyface, but.

[basic_powers]

He's not gonna argue he's just gonna nod, because Zodon with a reliable time travelling device is just...blargh.

"It all started yesterday morning, some older guy with a beard, crummy clothes and a big old paper shopping bag came into the school. I didn't recognize him cause of the beard but it was Harold carrying around Dr. Irons' robot head in that bag. They went into the school and..." Pause. "They went into the school and kidnapped the new Rainmaker students. When my school started, they also had a section for the kids whose powers weren't really superhero material. Like Vera who can see the past of things, or Vern who can heal, or Kathy who repairs stuff just by touching it. And it wasn't anything like the project Harold had been in, but Dr. Irons'd messed with his head so much he thought he was saving those kids from what he went through at the center in Iowa."

"And the superkids in school tried to stop him...and from what I heard some of them got hurt and one got really sick because he turned her powers all the way off. Right after-" Another pause. "Right after that I called another hero I knew kinda personally cause he'd been teaching me how to survive getting pulled into fights with metahumans while not having any powers. He and I followed after Harold as he took the Rainmaker kids back to where it all began for him."

[hecu_marine]

Adrian sucks in a breath between his teeth. "Aw, hell. That don't sound good neither," he says. "Damn."

[basic_powers]

"We were an hour behind them cause I had to run away from the school to get picked up...and that gave Dr. Irons time to do his mind-altering thing on all the students he took with him, to build him a new superhuman body, with Harold amping up all of their powers..2 of them were passed out when we got to them. I managed to break through to Harold, and he took down all of their powers to null levels...but not before Dr. Irons almost escaped. I don't know if that guy is still alive or not. He had a whole helicopter explode on him...but that might not have been enough." Big old damn gulp of the Ovaltine. "His old body got destroyed, so at least he can't hypnotize anyone anymore."

"Then we had to get all the kids back to school...and that turned out harder than finding them."