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A daring synthesis by Ironypus

Books » Worm Rated: T, English, Adventure, Greg, Words: 194k+, Favs: 588, Follows: 677, Published: Aug 2, 2018 Updated: Mar 12, 2021

311Chapter 2: Fuck that gay wizard shit 1-2

"Hello, I would like to join The Wards please."

The receptionist never lost his sunny grin, "Of course-"

"Awesome!" I beamed, looking around the lobby of the PRT building. "Can I see Miss Militia? She's my favourite, really makes the Army look work if you know what I mean. Plus, sick guns, man. I have her PS4 shooter, do you know her rank? Anyway, I'm Plat I bet I could 360 noscope her ten times out of ten. Probably tell her this is urgent though, Coil's after me."

I tapped my nose, giving him a significant look.

"Of course he is," the receptionist still grinned. "Why don't you take a seat over there?"

He pointed to a neat row of chairs along a wall.

"Thanks chief!" I tipped him a quick, two finger salute and strutted to the chairs. I plopped myself into one and equipped my phone into my hand.

xX_Void_Cowboy_Xx: just checkin in to the join the wards lol

GStringGirl would love this, I was a cape now and bitches love capes. Also she was a bigger capenerd than me somehow, and she'd kill for any insider info. And now, for her, I could be the biggest PRT security breach ever!

I was a good friend.

I put my phone away and tapped on my knees to the tune of some J-Pop, joining the Wards was a good decision. I'd researched, of course. Sure for the first year or whatever I'd be making minimum wage, but I'd still be getting that crisp 50k trust fund. Plus I'd be famous, especially after the first year when my powers were really growing.

Or at least I assumed that was how they worked, like, I was an RPG character now or some shit and they all got to get crazy strong at max level. Even if for some reason I got no extra skills and capped out at max human stats, I still healed to full health every hundred minutes and could Observe.

Triumverate tier, no doubt!

"Are you ready, sir?"

A voice jolted me out of my contemplation of my own awesomeness. I looked up to see a hefty security guard giving me a bored sort of customer service smile.

"Absolutely!" I pop and locked to my feet. "Lead the way!"

I followed him as he started walking towards the exit for some reason… No. This was a test!

"Nice try," I said smugly, stopping and putting my hands on my hips. "But you won't fool me with that, a faker would have fallen for it but I'm the real deal, right down to the marrow of my bones."

The guard sighed, a long drawn out exhalation of pure uncompromising Done With This Shit.

"Get out, boy. I won't ask again."

I scoffed again, but even to me it sounded weak. Uncertain. Did they really not believe me? The guard gave me a hard look, but when I didn't move he stepped forward and grabbed my wrist, dragging me like a child's toy.

"I see you know your Judo well," I stammered, resisting. "I-iyada! This is democracy manifest!"

He yanked, sending me stumbling forward.

-1hp

"Ow!" I cried, tears springing to my eyes. "W-why?"

He pushed me out the door and stood, an impassable wall to my destiny.

"We don't need any more Militiamen, d'you know how many of you creeps we get a week?" he crossed his arms. "Get!"

"F-fuck you, I'm not," I sobbed, lashing out at the wall with a fist.

-5hp

"Fuck!"

You have gained the skill Resist Damage [Physical]!

The tears stopped. Oh. Oh right, I could just show them I had powers. I sniffed and wiped my eyes with my sleeve.

"Behold!" I raised a hand and cast it down, dark blue smoke bursting into appearance, covering us. "Smoke bomb!"

I posed smugly amid panicked shouts, klaxon wails and… oh no. I'd read this fic before when the SI got forced into a life of villainy when he accidentally spooked the PRT by doing pretty much this. Shit! Fuck!

"That wasn't an attack," I shrieked through my smokescreen, throwing my hands as high as I could. "It's not poison gas! I surrender, don't tase me bro!"

There was a clunk and a harsh whirr, I felt a breeze and my smoke was sucked away into a series of vents inside the building revealing a half dozen PRT troopers fully decked out in Kevlar and Kalashnikovs.

My knees wobbled, a tinnitus like ringing drowning out whatever orders one of them was barking. The scene blurred through tears. So this is how it ends? I hoped my parents didn't go through my hard drive.

"Wait!" a reedy voice cut through the stretching silence and the dumbfuck receptionist stumbled out in view. "I didn't think he was a parahuman."

The trooper captain rounded on him, "explain."

"He said he was here to join the Wards," the man looked stricken. "He said he wanted to see Miss Militia, I thought he was just another one of her creepy fanboys so we kicked him out. I, he really didn't seem legit!"

I sank to a crouch as the guns were lowered and everyone in the lobby started murmuring to each other. Wew, 0/10 on RT, would not do again. I took this brief intermission to dry my uncool tears and get my shit together.

Ok, we cool Greg?

Yeah, bro, we cool.

"Yeah I fukken told you so," I rose to my feet, pointing at the receptionist dramatically. "Now bring me to Miss Militia for I much desire to speak with her."

Eventually they got around to driving me out to the Rig, where we would meet up with my parents and Armsmaster because he 'apparently' had to handle shit like this. But he was my second favourite local hero, so I could fucks with that.

And then, the very moment I set foot into the Rig-

Quest 'Flee you fool!' complete!

Tattletale and Coil can't follow you into here, you're safe!

Rewards: 100xp

Level up!

+5 stat points

+1 perk point

Swiggety swooty. I knew I got perk points from quests as rewards and every five levels, but I was expecting one at level five! Next one at seven then I guess. I hummed jauntily as I was led to wherever it was exactly I was going, mentally browsing my stats and perk choices.

Oh you motherfucker! They were hidden behind stat walls! Good thing I was smarter than literally seventy five percent of people or else I wouldn't even be able to get the INT perk. Aw, but I was going to be a DEX pure, not fuck with any of that gay wizard shit.

20% increased memory capacity and retrieval was nothing to scoff at though. All the DEX one would give me was Ambidextrous, which was cool and all but… I clicked my tongue. All the first tier perks were sweet, I wanted them all so I may as well pick Memory now and put my points into DEX after doing a bit of agility training.

I mentally accepted Memory and the perks! Better memory, increased Crafting tech level, attention to detail and fucking Mana Control was the only one hidden behind 30 INT?! I mean, folklore ninja were basically wizards right? That's how they were in my favourite Aleph manga, Menma, which was like ninety nine percent of my inspiration and- I sighed, putting everything into INT.

"Uh," a confused voice interrupted my very important Build Managing. "Are you ok?"

I looked at my armed guard, "What?"

"You were miming a lot," she made a few jerky puppet like movements. "Are you feeling ok?"

"It's a power thing," I said sagely. "You'd understand if you ever played old-school RPG's."

"Ah."

"It's some real FFII type shit, namsayin? That's my life now, the grind. Imagine playing Runescape but it's for real, and I put like five thousand hours into that shit so this'll be a piece of cake. I'm basically my own Isekai protagonist, and really there aren't enough animes like that I really like the Isekai genre."

The trooper grunted.

"The LN just isn't the same, and it's a shame there's no western comics with that theme I reckon there's a lot of money to be made there; y'know I've sent so many emails to the publishers about this and not even once have I gotten a reply."

"Terrible."

"Oh you don't even know the half of it, Hombrero," I shook my head despairingly. "A guy tries to do good and the establishment can't handle it."

"We're here," she pointed way up the hallway and sped up.

We hustled around two more corners and up a flight of stairs until we came to a door, slightly ajar. Clearly she took her job very seriously. Good, that's good. I'd need professionals to initially protect me from Coil until I could steamroll him effortlessly.

I made to kick the door open, but noticed at the last moment it swung outward so I was forced to merely fling it open and step in.

"Ok," I clapped. "Lets do this!"

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A daring synthesis by Ironypus

Books » Worm Rated: T, English, Adventure, Greg, Words: 194k+, Favs: 588, Follows: 677, Published: Aug 2, 2018 Updated: Mar 12, 2021

311Chapter 3: Fuck that gay wizard shit 1-3

My keen, piercing gaze swept over mum, dad and Armsmaster; nice stats Colin, not a one under twenty. Except WIS, imagine being such a WISlet, lol. Noob alert.

"Here he is," dad turned to mum, then back to me. "You really a parahuman, Greg?"

"Yeh breh," I vanished my mask into my inventory.

"Oh Greggy," mum simpered patting the chair next to her, barely concealing the full blast of her excitement behind a deftly controlled expression. "Come, sit."

I bounced into the chair and dad leaned across to give me a fist bump while mum ruffled my hair.

"Excellent," Armsmaster relaxed into his custom chair as much as his power armour would allow. "It's good to see you're all so excited about this. Joining the Wards program, even if only until you leave school, can be a massive boon to whatever you choose to do in the future. Not to mention the protection and support that you, as a young parahuman, are likely to need in this kind of city."

"Yeah that's cool and all, but before I make my final decision can I have the contract to look over?" I skilfully bluffed as though I wouldn't sign anything he put on the table.

"Of course," Armsmaster reached down next to his chair and pulled up a briefcase, rifled through it and handed over a fuckhuge stack of papers in a binder.

"Reassuring," I said sardonically. Still going to sign, but that didn't mean I wouldn't pretend try to squeeze every last concession out of them first.

As I did my best to read all the relevant sections Armsmaster tried to fish for information from my parents. It all seemed ok, I mean yeah I'd have to work every day. Or come in to work, at least. Be On Premises, since all the rest of the shit like patrols wasn't mandatory. And there were various other freedom limiting bits and pieces I wasn't super keen on, but such is life.

I tossed the binder back onto the table and leaned forward, steepling my fingers, "this… 'training' mentioned, what is it?"

"It's mostly about PRT and Protectorate protocol, some leadership training, perhaps basic self defense," Armsmaster waved an airy hand. "But those are mostly for if you don't seem to be fitting in or getting along well with the others. You seem like a proactive kid so I don't think you have to worry about having to sit through many boring extra classes."

"You misunderstand, Armsmaster," I drawled. "What I want is training that might go beyond the scope of what you traditionally offer."

He sagged minutely, "I would have to bump it up the chain."

"And this 'creative control' over my Cape identity the Branding department would have," I tutted, wagging my finger. "I want full control over my image."

"You would have the same privileges as everyone else."

"And what if," I paused for dramatic effect. "I had information to trade. Information about Villains you won't get anywhere else."

He straightened in his chair, jaw set. "That isn't how this works."

I smiled smugly, "would it work that way if I complained the PRT security guard manhandled me with unnecessary roughness, when I was so rudely ignored when I went to the main office? If I didn't heal I'd've bruised."

"Greg," dad cut in with a resigned little laugh. "Don't antagonise Armsmaster. You like Armsmaster."

"Aw, but I was being cool," I looked imploringly at my parents. "You guys always say I can be cool."

"I give it a three out of ten," mum chided. "Trying to be your Deathnote show is unoriginal and doesn't fit the context."

"I beg all your pardons," Armsmaster seemed to gawp. "But what are you talking about?"

"Don't worry about it," dad said, one beardman to another. "He's just being silly."

"Does that mean you don't have information?" Armsmaster rapidly tapped his gauntleted finders across the desk. "Because I'll tell you now, Greg Veder, in the Wards we d-"

"Kek," I laughed. "Tattletale's real name is Sarah Livsey, her power lets her make insane inferences on almost no information and she and the Undersiders all work for that Coil guy. I wouldn't jerk you around like that bro, Coil knows I know."

Armsmaster snapped his open mouth shut with a clack and Despair popped up in his CONDITION's tab for some reason.

"Greggy," said mum in an uncharacteristically stern tone. "Now this is serious. Why do you think Coil is after you?"

"I was minding my own business, just hanging out in town," I dissimulated smoothly so as not to give away my Dr. Wu persona. "Then Tattletale picks me out of the crowd. No doubt she inferred who I am, so she comes up and is like 'Hello there' then I read her with my power, but she was reading me with her power; so I made a tactical retreat. She chased me up the road, but I outran her. If Coil was going to sick his hired Capes onto me I knew I had to lose the heat-"

"Hang on a moment," Armsmaster's voice cut through my explanation like a knife. "Your power let you read all that in one brief meeting?"

"Yeah, but I also got some useless shit about how her brother killed himself and she hates her parents for trying to exploit her," I made a fifty fifty gesture.

"And you can do this to anyone?"

"Absolutely can, Col-"

Armsmaster moved suddenly, slapping the table with an ear splitting crack! "You need to understand how important it is for some Capes to keep their identity secret. People kill over this. Half of the villains in Brockton Bay would murder you on the spot if you hinted you knew who they were."

"Duh," I said. "That's why I'm here."

"Ok!" dad stood up. "We're signing him up. Sometimes he comes home with a split lip from school for running his mouth, if the stakes have already been raised then by god you have to help him."

And like that I was a Ward.

Just before I left however, Armsmaster asked the million dollar question.

"By the by, Greg, what are you powers? A main thinker with minor striker? I want to be able to give the tech guys a heads up on what they might need."

I inhaled deeply, assuming an exaggerated thinking posture. How best to answer this… Yes, yes of course.

"I'm the Crawler of the Dauntless genre."

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A daring synthesis by Ironypus

Books » Worm Rated: T, English, Adventure, Greg, Words: 194k+, Favs: 588, Follows: 677, Published: Aug 2, 2018 Updated: Mar 12, 2021

311Chapter 4: Fuck that gay wizard shit 1-4

"Ok," Enrique the PR and Branding head said, voice muffled by the hands covering his face as they had been for the last five minutes. "Ok, fine. If this is really as far as we can go to compromise on this, fine. Welcome to the Wards…" He sighed, hands sliding off his and onto his lap, "Dark Smoke Puncher."

"We Gucci fam," I extended a fist, ejecting a plume of mana smoke at the apex of the punch. "Ayyy!"

Enrique rolled his eyes and bumped it. I supposed I could understand the sentiment, five days solid of trying to hash out a Cape identity that was Family Friendly, Marketable and Absolutely Fucking Awesome was even wearing on me a little.

"Now get out. We'll call you when we need you for tailoring your costumes."

Quest 'Have it your way' completed!

You managed to keep most of your integrity and make your Caped identity yours!

Rewards: 500xp

Booyah.

I stalked from the room with a flourish of smoke and almost ran headlong into all six point six feet of Armsmaster's power armour.

"Guess who has two thumbs and a new Cape name?" I pointed at myself with said thumbs. "Dark Smoke Puncher!"

"I see you did settle on that name, despite my directions," Armsmaster tried to smile.

"Chyeah," I preened. "Just imagine the headlines! 'Dark Smoke Puncher to be next Triumverate member?!', 'Dark Smoke Puncher saves America!'"

"So you say," he replied evenly. "But you know, even I had delusions of grandeur in my youth. I quite strongly believed I'd outstrip Hero himself, before I realised powers have their limits."

I made a farty noise with my mouth, "yeah nah, give me six, six months and I bet I could beat you up."

New Quest 'A farewell to Arms'!

You've just issued the challenge, now can you back it up? Six months may seem like a long time but can you become a bad enough dude to beat Armsmaster?

Rewards: ?

Failure: ?

"That's not going to happen."

I made chicken noises and after a few seconds Armsmaster's helmet sprouted several new panels which slid down to cover his mouth, sealing him away from my taunting.

Kawaii as fuck.

"Now come on," he continued, now in a robot voice. "Before your fitness and power testing the Director wants to greet you."

Half an hour of driving and security checks later I stood in front of The PRT ENE Director Emily Piggot.

She inhaled deeply. "Dark Smoke Puncher. Welcome to the Wards, I hope you don't have any complaints so far?"

"Ummmm, not really. I mean the whole PR thing is lame af, but I get you guys have like reasons or whatever. And I guess it's also been boring that I've seen like no other heroes yet, and ah…" I shrugged.

"Yes, at least you finally understood why we couldn't have you name yourself The Guy, Kirito or Master Baiter-"

I snorted.

A muscle twitched in Emily's neck. "We have our rules, and you have to follow them even if you don't agree. As for having not seen any of the Protectorate, we had to verify what you told Armsmaster about Tattletale aka. Sarah Livsey. It all checks out, and that's the problem."

"Because of the security risk."

She nodded slowly, "yes, exactly-"

"And you're finally meeting with me because you've decided I'd be able to keep a secret or I'm not an enemy spy or whatever. So you brought me here to give me a stern talking to, bust out the NDA's and possibly threaten me because even despite that I could be an irreparable security leak I'll still have to be in the same room as people eventually and they'd really hate it if I knew their secrets."

Emily frowned.

"I'm very smart," I said smugly.

"You will find you won't get very far with that kind of attitude, Thinker type parahumans tend to have this very problem."

"I haven't even used that though, besides I'm not even a pure thinker. It's like I told Armsmaster, I'm-"

"The Crawler of the Dauntless genre, yes," Emily cut me off. God, how rude. "Which is another thing I'd like to talk about. What exactly do you mean by that?"

I bounced in my seat, I'd been working on a whole bit for this! I stood up and slid the chair aside. When the director opened her mouth to speak I shushed her, rubbed my hands together and winked.

Starting in my Terminator crouch I leapt to my feet, twirling arms swirling smoke. "Gashan!" I struck a JoJo pose of my own creation.

"Unlimited Powah!"

Emily steepled her fingers and watched me silently until the last of the smoke dissipated, "unpack that for me, please."

I sighed and moved my chair back to where it was and plopped into it. Some people just didn't appreciate the classics.

"My progress will go like," I traced a steep upward angle with my finger that slowly curved off into a nearly flat line. "That, with everything I do. Assuming there isn't a level cap somewhere I should just be able to autistically level grind forever, and that's only with the stuff I have now. In a little bit I'll start getting new powers, which I'll probably have some control over what they are and every time they'll follow that same progression. Can you believe Armsmaster totally didn't believe me when I said I'd be the new Triumverate member? 'Cause I'm gonna be the very best, like no one ever was. To catch…"

Shit, did my new points in INT not work on improvising song lyrics?

Emily hmmed.

"Anyway," I shrugged. "Power goes up forever."

"We'll soon see, won't we."

Soon? I mean… "Yeah probably."

"In any case," Emily said. "Welcome to the Wards ENE. You were right about why I called you here today. Unless you sign an agreement stating you won't divulge any of the information you read off of people we would have to continue to restrict your access to both The Rig and the PRT building to ensure the privacy of our employees is kept."

"Yeah no problem, fam," I got up and walked up to the desk as she slid a pen and a sheet of paper laden with text to me. "Just let me read this first."

I speed read the thing. Pretty standard all around, depending on the offence I could be fined or imprisoned and apparently I could sign this even as a minor because of some Cape law. Good shit.

I signed, in big loopy lettering, 'Dark Smoke Puncher'.

"What do you mean your power ate a book?" Armsmaster barked.

"I mean it ate my Japanese textbook!"

"And this is how you learned the language?"

"Obviously," I shook my head in disbelief. "How else would I?"

"Was it automatic?"

"No, that'd be shit design. There was a yes no popup."

Armsmaster visibly floundered like I hadn't spent ten minutes explaining my power came with a Heads Up Display. "Right then, I'm going to find some books so we can observe this in action. Get back on the treadmill, see if you can gain another 'point' in 'vitality'."

"But running's hard," I whined as he powerwalked out of the room. "Armsmaster!"

"Come on, Dark Smoke, you could do with it anyway," Jed the Power Testing Technician who I wasn't allowed to tell anyone sold weed said. "You've got to be the most unfit kid I've ever seen."

He was right, "But I'm quantifiably twice as smart as them," I grumbled.

"And now you can be twice as fit," he prodded me back over to the Darth Vader Conversion Chamber he called a treadmill. "In you pop."

"Kirai desu," I grumbled, reattaching the electrode patches and setting off into a shambling jog. Oh god it already hurt to breathe, and people did this for fun? Savages!

I had to give up a few times to avoid puking my lungs out, but eventually Armsmaster came back with a wagon full of books and Observe… heavy duty tinkertech monitoring equipment.

"Did you get another 'point of VIT'? Never mind, get over here and tell me which books work, don't absorb them! I want to have it all recorded as closely as possible," he began hauling his gear out and hooking it up to the shit they used to monitor my Smoke magic.

I ripped the electrode monitors off, despite Jed's directions, and staggered over to the wagon. I wiped a deluge of sweat from my brow with a thumb and flicked it all over the ground. The books he brought were probably about as varied as he could find on such short notice. Magazines, various genres of novel, a copy of How to Make Friends and Influence People which Observe told me Dragon had bought for his birthday last year; god I totally shipped that.

"This works," I said, holding up How to Sing by Lilli Lehmann. "Doesn't even have a stat requirement."

"As I expected," Armsmaster muttered as he glanced over at me. "Needs to be a concrete, trainable skill. But then why would How to Make Friends not work… I had hoped, blast. Never mind," he raised his voice, "Now get over here and sing directly into the microphone before using the book."

"Any song?"

"Whichever you like, just make sure it's the same one before and after. Jed, please take the regular wavelength monitor."

I took a few deep breaths, yeah I could be an Idoru. I could totally be an Idoru, and for this, I knew just the song.

Armsmaster gave me the signal.

"Somebody once told me-"

For some reason they let me sing the whole fucking thing.

"Like a goose with a head cold," Armsmaster whispered, which like I knew I wasn't very good but ouch. Armsmaster was so mean! "Now hold the book in front of these sensors and ready in three, two, one… Now."

The book exploded into blue shards that quickly disintegrated into golden motes before vanishing completely.

Armsmaster made an annoyed sound, "we'll have to do this again at a later date once I build something to measure whatever energy is being put out. Now sing the song again."

Chapter 1012 - a daring synthesis (2-4)