Fief - Alan 2 (Patreon)

Fief
Alan 2

-VB-

Alan sighed as day approached. He’d been unable to sleep for some reason, and oddly felt no desire to sleep.

During the night, he’d thought about many things he’d been through, and he couldn’t help but think that some sort of catastrophe had been involved in the process. How else would he appear on Earth Bet as a Case-53 with memories of this planet’s future from a perspective not his own?

The newspaper he’d stolen spoke of fledgling heroes fighting dastardly heroes while the government continued to flounder about the whole parahuman population. It was clear that not much was known about parahumans in general, nevermind Case-53’s like himself. 

It also told him where he was; he was in the city of Brockton Bay, where the future events would unfold. This also meant that he, a firm believer in the Butterfly Effect, needed to get out of this place. 

But it was now day, and he had to go out to look for food if not in the city, then in the countryside. 

Being a Case-53, however, made any kind of interaction tense as people would be unused to him. Hell, twenty-five years from now, they would still be unused to his kind and continue to call Case-53s as “monster capes,” even if such phrases weren’t used in polite company. 

It would be best if he continued to lay low...

Growl….

Alan grimaced as his stomach growled.

But he didn’t quite have a choice, though.

He stood up and left the unobserved corner of the warehouse. There were a few people out now, but he easily avoided their gazes with his soft footsteps and plenty of obstacles like the numerous large and tall freight containers littering the area to cover for him. 

He was out of the Docks in half an hour, taking alleyways to remain hidden.

Unfortunately, Alan ran out of luck when he stumbled onto a mugging scene. He turned a corner between an intersection of alleys when he saw a dirty white man with a switchblade in his hand grabbing a woman and tossing her to the wall.

While Alan wasn’t keen on revealing myself to the city, he didn’t want to ignore what was happening in front of my eyes either.

Besides, how much could a single switchblade hurt me really when he was a three meter tall monster?

So.

He stomped.

The sound of rough flesh hitting the wet concrete pavement alerted the mugger to a newcomer to the scene, and he snapped his face towards him. The mugger’s face paled as his eyes slowly moved up followed by a slight upward tilt of his face. Alan stepped fully out into the alley and grunted.

“Get the fuck out,” he growled, and the mugger ran away screaming. 

As the mugger ran out of the alley, Alan slowly approached the woman slumped against the wall.

He reached down-.

-and got blasted on the left side of his face.

He reared back, screaming in pain while clutching his face. Hastily, he stumbled back and looked towards the entrance of the alley where someone else stood. Dressed in black and yellow leather jacket and a pair of black jeans pants with a motorcycle helmet, it had to be a cape.

“What the fuck was that for?!” he shouted in pain and realized soon that his face was putting itself back together in seconds, removing traces of whatever damage he’d received. If he didn’t have that healing, then … then … could he have died?

“You are the one assaulting a good citizen of this city! Surrender peacefully and I, Wasp, will be lenient with you!”

The fuck!?

“Fuck off!” Alan shouted but stepped back. He did not want to fight right now. He couldn’t have that kind of issue hounding me. “I’m not the-”

“Then so be it!” ‘Wasp’ interrupted me. Then he shouted and punched from where he stood, but at the end of the punch, a yellow blast of energy shot towards me at subsonic speeds. Somehow, Alan dodged it, but at the same time, he knew he could do the same thing this hero-wannabe just did.

He felt something form in my mind. He took a hold of it, but instead of punching, Alan slashed.

Four lines of the same yellow energy fired from the tips of his fingers, and the shocked “hero” stood still for a second too long before getting blasted.

He flew away like a rag doll and tumbled to the ground.

And then laid still.

Soon, a pool of blood began to grow underneath the cape.

“... Oh shit.”

People began to scream and shout on the street beyond the alleyway.

He took a step back, away from the street and the probably dead cape on it. 

Several people began to 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Alan hissed as he ran deeper into the alleys. 

He ran away, crying as he realized that he just became a murderer.

He wanted somewhere safe! He didn’t want to be involved in this crazy world! 

-VB-

Finding a sparsely used building was hard, but he found one in the end.

It was an abandoned house right in between what looked like the commercial district and the suburban area. There were a lot of gang tags on the house and the glass windows had been shattered. Rust covered what few metal parts were exposed to the elements, and the wood seemed to be starting to rot as well.

This was in a different area of the city from the Docks, and because of the zig-zaggy path he took to get here, he wasn’t sure where he was. All he could tell was that he was somewhere west from the position of the sun.

“Fuck,” he muttered again as he tried to get his mind back in working order.

He just killed a person. Sure, they almost killed him too, but at the end of the day, he was the killer, not the dead guy.

Alan… didn’t know what to do.

The only memories he had were of this world’s future. They whispered to him of how shitty this place would be.

“I have to get out of here,” he decided. The precognition told him that this city, this Brockton Bay, would be kept artificially untouched by authorities for the purpose of determining “parahuman feudalism.” If he stayed here, then he would be fucked, stuck in that same experiment. 

But then if he left… he would be hunted down. He was already a killer in a world that didn’t yet have a supportive system for aesthetically different people. People were already biased against him for being “parahuman” (his memories proved that much with Canary trials).

Brockton Bay offered safety in being “untouchable” by larger outside forces. Cauldron, a stupid name for a stupid organization, wanted to see exactly how parahuman feudalism would come about. 

Alan may have lost a lot of personal memories, but even he knew that whatever design Cauldron had for Brockton Bay was faulty. The world as it was worked on interconnected relationships. Unless someone or something powerful came about and isolated a region from the rest of the world, no part of the world was ever truly isolated. 

To deny normal resources that should go to a city was to temper with data. 

… He was ranting in his mind. Was this going to be normal?

‘The point is,’ Alan tried to get his mind back into track. ‘Leaving the city after I’ve killed? I will face more dangers outside of it than inside.’ This was what he believed. 

And Alan was a coward. He took the safe option. He would stay in this fucked up city, regardless of its own dangers. 

1987. That was … not a year he was familiar with, most because whatever missing personal memories that had impacted his practical knowledge centered around the early 21st Century. 

‘Let’s see, my definitely-not-my-memories tell me that 1987 should be around the time that Slaughterhouse Nine killed its original leader, King. The Protectorate is not a name for an organization but the four original members, Hero, Alexandria, Eidolon, and Legend. Brockton Bay is currently more or less a blank slate, but Allfather, the founder of the Empire Eighty-Eight, a white supremacy organization, might be around. Would Marquis be around?’

Not enough information…

But then again, Alan had filched a newspaper. He still had it with him, actually. Tucked between his lower back and the shower curtain-skirt, it was a little wet from his build-up of sweat from running.

He gingerly pulled it out so as to not damage it further and began to read in depth at the articles and columns.

-VB-

Alan grimaced as his stomach growled in hunger while his fingers flipped another page of the newspaper.

He’s been in this house for three hours now, just reading the newspaper and going over even a scrap of information that seemed irrelevant. 

He flapped the newspaper close and frowned. 

He had a lot of information he needed.

It was time to go raiding for food. 

-VB-

Worm CYOA v.5 Gimel 

Revealed choices so far...

Golden Morning (Alan 1)
Case 53 (Alan 1: tall, brick red skin, ?)
Abaddon (Alan 1)

Gift: Metaknowledge (Alan 1)
Memory Death (Alan 1)
Drop-In (Alan 1)
Humble Beginnings (Alan 1)
Regeneration, Second Trigger (Alan 2)
Noctis Cape (Alan 2)
Unlimited Shard Works, Second Trigger (Alan 2)

-VB-

Unlimited Shard Works
Collected Shard Imitations

Blaster - Detonation - launches energy constructs at Mach 0.76 that explode on contact.