Marcus jerked into wakefulness after what felt like hours of falling through a spiraling void of colors. Startled, he took a moment to get his wits about him before looking around, only to find himself inside a bus.
Seated next to him was a woman who looked to be somewhere in her 60's, who looked about as frazzled as pretty much every other person in the vehicle his eyes fell on. Clearing his throat as a reflex after what felt like hours of screaming - despite the lack of any actual physical discomfort to his throat - Marcus turned toward the woman, his tone polite as he spoke.
"Excuse me ma'am, I don't mean to trouble you, but would you mind telling me what's going on, please?"
The woman turned his way, her frazzled and mildly-irritated expression softening slightly before she answered.
"Oh dear, you were asleep until just now, were you not?" She gave him a sympathetic look before continuing, "The car seems to have had a sudden problem of some sort mid-drive, so we all got battered up a bit before the driver managed to pull over to a stop."
"Oh!" Pushing his own confusion aside, Marcus leaned forward slightly, his expression worried as his eyes assessed the older woman, "Are you alright, ma'am? Did you get hurt? Do you need help?"
The woman's expression softened further at the young man's concern, before she responded.
"This old lady is a tough bone to chew, dearie. I've survived near-on two decades in the same city as the Teeth, it's not a bus kerfuffle that would have me kicking the bucket."
"If you're sure, ma'am…" Marcus hedged, only to get a nod from the woman.
That interaction done and settled with, Marcus took a moment to look over the rest of the bus, and seeing that no-one looked hurt, leaned back into his seat in relief. With that concern out of the way, he turned his focus toward figuring out his situation.
He reached into his pocket, pulling out a wallet and a flip phone. Putting the phone aside for the moment, he started rummaging through his wallet before pulling out some ID.
'Marcus Phoenix… Good to see I don't have to get used to a different name at leas-'
His thoughts were interrupted by a series of flashes going off in the back of his mind, filling him with 16 years worth of memories. Like him, this Marcus Phoenix had also grown up in a state-sponsored facility, but this one in Mott Haven, one of the roughest parts of New York.
His unwillingness to join the world of crime, violence and gangs had him alienated from most of the other kids in the home, which resulted in many, many fights. Administration seemed to have finally considered things to have gone too far when one of the fights involved a crowbar, a baseball bat, a pocket knife and three broken arms, so they chose to draft up transfer papers for Marcus, as he seemed to be the 'agitator' in the situation.
Taking a single moment to marvel at some of the parallels in their experiences while growing up, Marcus put his ID away with a newfound sense of practiced ease before reaching into another flap of the thin, ratty, fake-leather wallet, before his fingers came off with a bus ticket.
'New York-Brockton Bay… If Marcus already existed here before I got slipped inside I'd say fate was pretty cruel to him. Managing to make it out of that bad environment only to get tossed head-first into Brockton…
'Talk about an L-train.'
Shaking his head, Marcus slipped the ticket back into his wallet and the wallet into his pocket, before turning his focus toward his phone.
The device was a Motorola I730, an utterly outdated 2003 flip phone Marcus had picked up on the cheap with what was left of the money the head of the facility had given him for his travel expenses. That money was supposed to be used to pay for food and other small miscellaneous expenses he might have come across until he reached Brockton and officially became "Someone Else's Problem", but between the stash he'd been building up so he could bolt and skip town as soon as he turned 18 and the fact that he wanted to finally join the 'era of modern communication', Marcus found it to be an acceptable expense.
Using the device came with ease as, even though this Marcus had just recently purchased it, Marcus himself had years' worth of memories of phone use, from bricks to smartphones.
'Hell, this press-the-button-three-times thing is kinda making me nostalgic.'
The contacts list was just what he expected, with the only numbers on it being the emergency services numbers that came pre-packaged with the phone. The PRT emergency line was part of these contacts, which shouldn't really be a surprise given the context of the world, yet was an interesting thing to take note of all the same.
His investigation of the phone over and done with, he finally turned his focus toward the elephant in the room - the one other than his identity, of course.
His abilities.
'Turning his focus inward' was something that Marcus usually saw as either a metaphor for engaging in introspection, or some sort of abstract state of mind related to in-depth meditation, something he'd never had the time or drive to engage with in either life due to the very dynamic and physical-based lifestyle(s) he'd gone through.
Now, though, turning his focus inward was an indescribably, unquantifiably easy deed to perform, allowing him to 'look within himself'. Or rather, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he possessed a constant sense of awareness of himself, mind, body, and now even soul, that was almost scary in how pervasive it was.
To give a sense of scale about this self-awareness, one could use the concept of proprioception as a comparison tool. Proprioception was the body's intrinsic ability to sense movement, action, and location. It referred to your body's ability to automatically shift and adapt to different physical stimuli so as to ensure that something like picking up a stack of newspapers didn't require conscious effort to move each and every single muscle fiber, tendon, or joint involved in the motion, its ability to recognize its position and location in space, such as how close or how far one is from something or if you're lying down or standing up, as well as being the reason behind the ability to act reflexively in the face of whichever scenario required a reflexive response.
While he still had all of those autonomous, reflexive aspects, he also had an innate sense of understanding of each and every part of his body, down to each and every muscle fiber, or even cell. He could walk by simply willing himself to and letting proprioception do the rest, or actively take control of his entire musculoskeletal system and 'manually' make himself do this.
Easily too, to boot!
And body control wasn't the limit of his 'sense of self'. He could actively feel the function and activity of the various components of his body's various systems, from the constriction, relaxation, expansion and contraction of the blood vessels, all the way to the intestine's collection of nutrients and vitamins from the foods he ate. He was even aware of the oxygen being absorbed into and carried through his bloodstream, where it went, and the fact that his body could do without it for a ludicrously long amount of time. Indefinitely even, based upon a certain factor.
Demonic Power.
Marcus could feel what he instinctively knew to be Demonic Power filling his body from head to toes, from the tip of every strand of hair, down to the end of his toenails. Despite flowing all through him, however, he could only claim that it was 'within him' in the most ambiguous sense, since it sprung from something that felt like it occupied the same space as his body, yet was not his body, something that he knew to be his Soul.
As long as he had sufficient amounts of Demonic Power, his body would be capable of running at full performance, regarding such normally essential things as food, air, and rest as trivial. Considering the fact that he had a Perk that constantly gave him a full mana bar… Well.
On the subject of Perks.
Just as he could feel every part of himself and his Demonic Power with this supernaturally exaggerated sense of Proprioception, so too could he feel his Perks. He knew with certainty that a single moment of what couldn't even be considered an 'exertion of will' due to the complete and utter lack of difficulty or struggle in it could result in an army of clones springing from him, each of them armed with a downgraded version of his basic abilities.
The same applied to every other perk of his.
'Man, this build is really busted!'
The bus door snapped open, cutting Marcus' train of thought short, and attracting the attention of everyone inside, before the driver, a burly 40-something year old with a thick mustache in a blue-and-gray uniform, stepped into view, some grease spots on his cheek and shirt, and a dirty rag in between his hands, being used to wipe them clean.
"There's no need to panic, folks. The engine's a bit banged up but I can take care of it, so if you could just wait for a couple of hours-"
Multiple groans could be heard from the other passengers, to which the driver sighed at before speaking.
"I know, I know, none of us want to be delayed and spend any more time than necessary on the road, but unless someone with a better understanding of mechanics than me or some convenient engine-related cape powers helps us out, then we're sitting pretty while I work on the issue."
Marcus' enhanced hearing picked up multiple instances of grumbling and multiple expletives, even as the driver kept talking.
"I bet a lot of you are tired of sitting down on some moving bus, so you could even use the opportunity to go out and stretch your legs if you want to. In the meantime, I'll be working on trying to get us back on the road."
Having said that, the man walked right back out of the bus, picked up a toolbox, and, with the rag over his shoulder, walked right back to the engine.
With nothing to read on him, and no mobile data on his phone, Marcus was just one of many who chose to leave the bus, taking a moment to stretch and feel the sun on his skin, before looking around him.
Their bus had broken down in a semi-rural area at the far edges of the state of New York. Unlike the New York Marcus knew of, rather than a bunch of skyscrapers with many smaller buildings in-between built so close to each other as to create some sort of 'metropolitan squeeze', this place had a few buildings scattered here and there, many of them visible in the distance to him only due to his recently improved eyesight.
Other than light posts and electrical pylons, the closest sign of civilization in the area was a small diner.
Mentally reaching into his pocket space - into which he'd immediately dumped everything of value on his person the moment he went out of sight - Marcus checked on his stash. Looking into a cool $3000 which was no longer consigned to the starving, bottomless, gaping void that was the New York rental market, he decided that peeling off a $50 or two for a quick and filling meal wasn't a big deal, especially since all of his expenses were to be taken care of when he reached Brockton.
With a smile on his face and a pep in his step, Marcus started walking toward the Diner.
He couldn't help but notice the fact that while the other bus-goers who'd chosen to stretch their legs were focused on their own activities while he was still and quiet, their eyes started automatically moving toward him when he started moving.
His response to the extra attention was to wave and smile, but he could see how this type of attention could lead to bad outcomes. The world he'd come from allowed anyone to receive heaps of attention from strangers on social media platforms, usually leading to either what started out as good, grounded, relatable people turning into absolute douches and monsters, or into mindless zombies, so addicted to the clicks, the attention and the validation that they chopped their personality off by bits and pieces, gluing on whatever was 'trendy' or 'in' at the moment, regurgitating whatever they were told was cool and popular, and putting themselves and others in danger by doing stupid and dangerous 'challenges'.
Attention was a dangerous drug that one could easily get addicted to if they weren't careful, especially someone unused to any form of positive input or feedback.
Shrugging those thoughts off, Marcus walked into the diner.
The ringing of the bell on the door caused a few heads to turn his way, which then became staring, but a bit of eye contact, a smile, and a nod had these people embarrassedly nodding back before conspicuously turning away from him.
Marcus' eyes roamed around the place a bit, spotting a series of square tables spread around the place with a few chairs on each, and some booths off on the side, with the stereotypical high-backed red benches on them.
Spotting what seemed like an empty booth, Marcus made his way there, sliding onto the seat with the back facing the diner's door-
"OI! WHAT THE HELL DO YA THINK YA DOIN IN MY BOOTH!?"
Only to blink in surprise at a sudden, Boston-accented shout coming from right beside him.
His head slowly turned towards the source of the shout, his mouth twitching awkwardly as he took in the figure's features.
The speaker was a woman, her skin white enough to display a big degree of caucasity, though with a slight tint to it that hinted at some sort of mix, maybe latino or asian. Straight black hair hung loose down to a pair of trembling shoulders, pale blue eyes glared acidly from behind a pair of thin metal-framed glasses, a small 'button' nose flared its nostrils like as much as a raging bull, and small, pouty lips were pulled back into a scowl that could curdle milk. Her torso was leaning forward, a pair of breasts very noticeable even through a scholarly and very much modest blue button-down shirt, which he noted to be tucked into a knee-length skirt, over which a pair of balled fists rested, and under which were a pair of black stockings.
Most notable fact of all, though, was the fact that even with both of them sitting down, she looked tiny next to him.
Marcus, back in his regular body, stood at a 6'2", a height that gave him some issues while growing up due to constantly outgrowing whatever it was he was handed, resulting in him having to receive "new" clothes more often than the other children, another point that led to his alienation from them.
This body thought? Whether it was as a consequence of Devil genes, his perks, or if this Marcus just rolled a different dice for the genetic lottery, he ultimately ended up standing 6'6" at 16, which completely dwarfed the woman seated across from him, who, with a cursory look, seemed to be somewhere between 5'2 and 5'4.
All of this information was taken in and processed in an instant, at which point Marcus slowly raised his hands in the air in the universal 'surrender' motion, a slightly awkward smile on his face as he spoke.
"Sorry, didn't mean to force myself onto your seat, I kinda just… Uh… Couldn't see you from the entrance, with the bench in the way."
The two sat like that for a moment, the diminute woman huffing and puffing like a mad bull while Marcus tried to deescalate a situation in which he technically was the wrongful party, even if by accident - a situation the irony of which had not escaped him, by the way - his body taking as non-threatening a posture as possible, while the rest of the diner watched with ill-concealed interest.
The woman glared at him for a bit longer before sighing, her breathing slowing to a regular pace, fists unclenching, and body just generally untensing, before speaking up, her Boston accent obvious and unconcealed.
"Apology accepted," she grumbled, before picking up the cup of black coffee resting in front of her, taking a sip of the black sludge, and then angrily slamming the cup back on the table.
Marcus stared silently at the woman for a moment, before speaking up.
"Are you ok?"
"Just peachy," she half-grumbled, "Can't you just feel the okayness dripping from my radiant smile or sunny disposition?"
"Wanna talk about it?"
"I don't even know you." Was her deadpan response.
"The best advice often comes from an outside perspective."
"...What the hell," she said with a shrug, "Bit of venting can do me good, plus, the odds of us ever meeting again are so astronomically low that I don't need to worry about accidentally saying something embarrassing."
Marcus' body language changed, his hands going down from the air to the table top, while his whole body was slightly turned toward the woman in an open, inviting fashion.
The woman stared down into her coffee for a moment, running one of her fingers around the rim of the cup, before turning toward Marcus.
"Have you ever felt like your abilities are… Underappreciated? Undervalued? Like people look at you, but rather than giving you the credit that you rightfully deserve, they scorn and sabotage you out of envy instead?"
Marcus stared at the stranger, an inviting smile on his face and his head bobbing in small nods to show he was listening to the ranting lady.
"And the worst part isn't even that the old fucker envied my sheer genius enough to try and sabotage me," She said in a noticeably heated tone, the details seemingly slipping out of her tongue out of her control or notice, "But the fact that he thought that i wouldn't notice! I cross my t's and dot my i's, Professor Brown! I know when my math's good, and I don't forget to write proofs, so don't try to fucking bullshit me with a B- when I KNOW IT SHOULD'VE BEEN AN A!"
The woman's chest was heaving after that explosive outburst, before she seemed to finally get a grip on her temper, a grimace on her face as she turned toward Marcus, ready to say something-
"723 times 562?"
"406326" Was her immediate response.
"3348 times 6613?"
"22140324"
"9887 divided by 6542?"
"1,511311525"
"How would you have felt if you hadn't eaten breakfast nor lunch the Friday before the last?"
"Hungry and frustrated," She said before raising a curious brow his way, "Is there a point to all of this?"
"Yes." Marcus said with a nod, "Many people think that grades are a direct representation of someone's intelligence, and they can be to a certain degree, but it can similarly be just an exercise of regurgitation of information taken from a class or book that was not properly understood, and that will be forgotten in short order."
Marcus' words seemed to arouse the woman's interest, seen in the way she crossed one of her legs over the other while leaning towards him, her gaze focused on his face as he spoke.
"As far as I know, and I'm aware of the fact that my knowledge on the subject is limited in scope, three big indicators of intelligence are memorization capability, the ability to understand and conceptualize abstract thoughts, ideas and scenarios, and 'mental agility'.
"The fact that you can mentally do three and four-digit multiplication and division pretty much instantly shows that your 'mental agility' is pretty high, and your ability to understand and respond appropriately to the hypothetical I posed shows that you have a grasp over abstractions, something that may seem basic to you and me but many have a surprisingly hard time with.
"I can't think of an immediate memorization exercise I can put to you other than ask you for dates and historical facts, or how many digits of Pi you've got memorized-"
"246 before I got bored."
Marcus couldn't help but snort in amusement at the woman's prideful interjection.
"-But all of this proves that you're a very intelligent person. As far as whether or not your professors or the world accept this or not…
"Who cares? You know you're intelligent, and you have the metrics with which to prove it. If other people choose to reject observable reality in any scenario other than indetermination or the absence of further data, well… That's on them. Why would the opinions of those people about your intelligence matter?"
The woman stared at Marcus with a gobsmacked expression on her face, before a murmur of "...doesn't matter…" left her lips.
She then looked up, her eyes widening to the extreme as if she'd just found out the secrets of the universe as she addressed Marcus, excitement nakedly audible on her voice.
"You're right! I'm a Genius! Why should I allow the opinions of knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, room-temperature IQ morons affect me?"
Marcus' own smile faltered slightly at that point.
"Wait a minute-"
"If they're such enormous idiots, then not only should I not care about whether or not they acknowledge my intellect, I should see their lack of acknowledgement for what it is, which is a demonstration of their inability to keep up with my raw intellect!"
"That's not what I-"
The woman silenced Marcus with an utterly beatific smile that made it seem like the sun were rising from behind her, before speaking.
"Thank you for helping me realize the reality of my situation. Truly, only a fellow intellectual such as yourself could help me comprehend the incomprehensible chasm between my intelligence and that of the average individual around me, and how that chasm translated into the realm of personal interaction."
Marcus thought of pushing back on her a bit, help by deflating her ego and reining back her arrogance, but seeing the happiness in her body language and contrasting it with the anger and violent intent that was first there, he ultimately chose not to.
After all, as long as she was happy. Plus, it's not like a bit of an inflated ego was too abnormal in academic circles, and a little bit of arrogance wouldn't really hurt anybody, right?
So, with an awkward smile on his face, there was only really one thing he could say at this point in time.
"Happy to help…?"
She gave him a happy nod, before leaning further forward toward him, her half-lidded gaze meeting his as she spoke.
"I never got your name…"
"Marcus. Marcus Phoenix."
Her lips split slightly, her teeth revealed in what was ostensibly a smile as she spoke.
"Nice to meet you Marcus, I'm Anna. Anna-Lee Watanabe "
"Nice to meet you too."
"Say, what do you think about ditching this place and-"
The bell to the door rang again before a man took half a step inside and spoke up.
"Hey, to everybody that was on the Bus running the NY-Brockton Bay route, the bus driver managed to get the engine working with help from the local mechanic! We're leaving in five!"
Marcus stood up at that, relief hidden behind a polite smile as he spoke.
"Sorry to cut this short, but that's kind of my bus."
"Oh. Are you traveling for a visit?"
"Moving, actually."
"That's a shame," The woman said with genuine disappointment before her eyes lit up, "How about we exchange phone numbers? That way I'd be able to get in touch with the only person I know whose intellect even borders on mine!"
She followed that up by whipping out her phone, a thick square with a big glass screen and only three bottom buttons that marked the first generation of smartphones, something obsolete in Marcus' previous world, but absolutely top of the line - as well as prohibitively expensive - in this world.
Marcus thought of rejecting her, of making up some sort of excuse to politely remove himself from the situation, or maybe even giving her a false number, but seeing the earnestly excited look on her face, like that of a puppy meeting its very first playmate, he couldn't help but relent, recording his recently-acquired digits into her contacts before handing the phone back to her.
She immediately dialed him, a dangerous-looking smile spreading across her face when his phone, temporarily brought over from his pocket dimension into his physical pocket, rang loudly, before giving him a wave of the fingers.
"Bye-bye, Marcus! Talk to you soon!"
"...Yeah, same to you Anna-Lee."
After that, Marcus hurried out of the dinner and back into the bus as inconspicuously as he possibly could, all the while feeling a pair of eyes staring intently into his back.
A few minutes afterward the bus rode off, and Marcus could finally let out a sigh of relief at the end of such an awkward situation. I mean, he could have to occasionally deal with the calls from the odd girl, but it's not like they'd ever meet again, right?
'Marcus was right,' Anna-Lee thought idly to herself as her hands moved on autopilot, 'I don't need to prove my intelligence or gain the acknowledgement of the unintellectual, unwashed masses.'
A nail clipper stripped bare a toaster's wire, before she pulled another bared copper wire and twined both together, only rub a ball of a black half-melted waxy-rubbery compound on it, which quickly dried into an almost factory-perfect seal.
'Bombing Cornell? That would have been a waste of my time and efforts to try and gain the attention of those whose level of intelligence is comparable to that of a bunch of turd-flinging chimpanzeesA press of the fingers pushed an opaque, rounded, yellow lens of a plastic-like glass into place on a pair of goggles.
'My genius, my power… It deserves a wider stage to shine on. Something much more… Grandiose, than a mere Cornell university.'
She put the finished goggles down on her desk beside a metal mask, before turning toward her computer screen, a before and after photo of what used to be thriving port city, and its current dilapidated state on it.
'Brockton Bay, huh… Cape Capital of America, ran in a four-way power struggle between a neo-nazi super gang, a pan-asian gang with the cape who fought Leviathan to a standstill in Kyushu, a bunch of drug-addled maniacs, and an overburdened and underfunded PRT branch charged with keeping everything from exploding. A city in despair and disrepair, in the need of powerful, intelligent leadership…
'That sounds like a much better stage to display my absolute brilliance at! Plus…'
The woman unlocked her phone to it's contacts, her finger hovering over one "Marcus Phoenix".
'There are other perks to that city…'
Something that Anna-Lee would have described as a joyful smile, but most reasonable people would have called a terrifying, deranged grin split her face.
'Bakuda shall descend upon Brockton Bay with a Bang!'
"WELCOME TO BROCKTON BAY"
Marcus, having just recently alighted from the bus, looked up at the sign that met his gaze as soon as he took one step out of the station.
The frayed edges, the rust patches, the paint peeling off of the lettering, and the multiple gang tags sprayed over the sign's rendition of a sunny beach with people smiling invitingly while ships dotted the water aroused within him a sense of amusement derived from the sheer irony.
'A once beautiful city now frayed, worn down, and carved up by the gangs. It's almost as if the city itself is trying to warn newcomers about its dangers and convince them to stay away.'
Marcus' darkly amused grin twisted, his nose wrinkling as his enhanced senses picked up a stench of rot, decay, and despair, with an underlying taste of sea salt. The fact that he could now identify what despair smelled like with unerring precision was almost cool, were it not for the fact that it smelled absolutely miserable, like a thousand moribund dreams lying within a shallow ditch, atop the corpses of thousands more.
Sparing a moment to drop $10 into a homeless man's hat, Marcus looked around the area until his gaze stopped on a slightly overweight, haggard-looking balding man in a rumpled green-and-brown plaid-patterned suit holding a paper sign with his name on it.
Walking up to the man, Marcus spoke up, a smile on his face.
"Hello, sir, would you happen to be Mr. Jackson?"
The 5'10 man paused, his head tilting upward and upward so that he could meet the young man's gaze, his head nodding absentmindedly before he spoke, a few nicotine stains visible on his teeth.
"I… Yes, yes I am. Ian Jackson, CPS agent." One of the man's hands left the paper and went into his shirt before he pulled out a badge with his name and professional information, "A-are you Marcus Phoenix?"
"Yes sir."
The man stared up at the teen in awkward silence for a moment before clearing his throat and speaking.
"I'm here to take you to your new home."
The man sweated nervously as the teen gave him an extended evaluatory look before ultimately shrugging and smiling.
"Alright."
Ian sighed in relief, wiping his forehead with the back of his shirt sleeve.
"Alright. My car's parked right around the corner," He then looked around Marcus, confusion on his face, "Where's your luggage?"
"Don't worry about it."
"...Alright, I guess," The man hedged before turning around and making off for his car.
Marcus followed after the man, only to end up with his legs tucked in with the knees almost to his chest just so he could fit into an old - but very obviously cared for - beige-colored 1980 Toyota Starlet.
The stink of cigarette smoke stuck strongly to the entirety of the car's insides, from the seat covers to the window cranks, as did the associated dark stains, and the car's ashtray was stuffed to the brim with ash and crushed butts.
The car ride was mostly silent, a consequence of both a busted radio and Marcus' focus being turned toward taking in the sights of the passing city as well as memorizing the paths they were taking.
A frown pulled on Marcus' lips as a consequence of many things he saw during the 45-minute car ride that took them through some utterly dilapidated areas that he could, despite being new to the city, accurately call out as the 'bad' parts of town.
Despite the fact that Ian had accelerated when going through those areas, Marcus' senses and abilities ensured that he could capture each and every detail of the journey.
Homeless individuals strewn around in different states of dress, some of them just lying on metal benches, newspapers, cardboard, or even the occasional moldy, half-rotten mattress or couch, but most of them just on the ground.
There were multiple circles of homeless doing drugs, some popping pills, some passing around glass pipes, and some even shooting up with shared syringes.
Peering into a few darkened alcoves or other out-of-the-way spots allowed Marcus to spot many a male or female on their knees, back, or bent over, offering others 'favors' in exchange for baggies of drugs.
He couldn't help but clench his fist at the fact that many of those people 'offering favors' were very noticeably not adults.
Another thing that stuck out to him was the fact that the people offering, selling, or trading the drugs for favors seemed to have a common theme to them.
They were rather dirty and unkempt, though their fashion sense was less the homeless 'wear whatever you find' and more a trashy, 'street' fare of frayed or distressed everything, all of which bore a fair share of stains, as did their skin and teeth. The ones that were not bald often had their hair greasy, matted, or showing some other form of dirt, and all of them, with no exception, had circular marks around their arms, some of them old and faded, others reddened and inflamed.
'Degenerate, drug-abusing drug peddlers… If I recall correctly, the gang that was like this was the merchants, and these people are likely members.'
The trip did not become particularly idyllic once that scene left Marcus' sight, though, as he saw multiple signs of the presence of the other two gangs in the form of roving bands either of swastika-wearing men and women, quite a few of them skinheads, or of different denominations of Asian guys in red-and-green.
Tags demarked different areas as different gang turfs, a stylized 88 in black arranged into some form of partial swastikas surrounded by white borders in a red background obviously for the empire, a capital M with two vertical bars in the vein of a cifrão for the merchants, and the letters ABB stylized to resemble Kanji in green and red for the azn bad boys. Some of the signs were sprayed atop another, or multiple layers of other signs, denoting past territory struggles.
Their journey ended with Ian parking at the lot of a cheap-looking motel that could be considered outside of the bad part of town, but just barely, with improperly painted walls, an empty in-ground pool, some yellow plants in dire need of watering, pink plastic flamingos spread across the front yard, and a flickering neon vacancy sign.
Marcus turned toward Ian and raised a brow at the man, all ready to smack him around if he said or did anything shady, and the man seemed to notice that preparedness for violence, prompting him to raise his hands in the air as he nervously spoke up.
"H-hey, calm down, it's not what you think! This is the place you'll be living at from now on!"
Marcus stared silently at the sweating man, turned toward the motel for a moment, then turned back to him and raised his other brow.
"I don't ever recall having a case worker take me to a cheap motel, and any stories of such things happening that I heard of never had a good ending."
Sighing, Ian lowered his hands, cranking down his window before pulling a pack of smokes out of his pocket. A flick of the finger to the bottom of the pack had a few of them pop up above the hole on the foil packaging, which he took between his lips, before holding the pack out to Marcus in an inviting fashion.
"I don't smoke."
That answer got a chuckle out of the man, who put the pack down before lighting up his cigarette and taking a deep puff, before leaning out the open window and breathing it out. His nervousness quelled by the cigarette, he turned back toward Marcus and explained.
"Normally kids within the foster system are either sent to foster families to be taken care of or, if they're considered special cases or are constantly being kicked out of or running away from foster families, remanded into facilities like your previous one where they live with other 'problem children'. Brockton, though, does things… Differently.
"Foster care kids already have a higher propensity to end up as criminals than the average child, something that is worsened by the pervasive presence of the criminal gangs in this city. This resulted in our branch of CPS making certain choices that would be considered questionable pretty much elsewhere in the country, but make an unfortunate amount of sense here.
"Rather than have our agents split their time, efforts, and attention between all the kids, we instead separate the 'salvageable' kids, putting all of our efforts into trying to find them a good home, and having them go through all sorts of education and rehabilitation programs if needed, while the 'rotten' kids are bundled together into groups and handed over to one or two 'overseers' who are tasked with spinning a polite fiction that their needs are being seen to.
"This means ensuring that they have a halfway decent place to sleep in, food to eat, and school. Whether or not these kids ultimately end up making use of these things, or if they choose to run off and do whatever is not really a concern for the department as much as maintaining the illusion on paper, to keep the higher-ups at other branches and at central satisfied."
"So I'm considered one of these 'rotten' kids who've been given up on, and I'm being dumped at this cheap motel then?"
"Yes," The man answered in a straightforward manner before taking another puff from his cigarette and blowing the smoke out of the window, then continuing, "Which seems pretty unfortunate since you don't really strike me as one of the bad kids, previous record of getting into fights notwithstanding. If I could I would've gotten you a good guardian and enrolled you into Arcadia, but instead you'll have to make-do with a cheap, roach-infested room in this cheap motel with real problem children as your neighbors, and attending school at that god-forsaken shithole Winslow."
"I understand the thought process behind those choices, I guess," Marcus spoke up, getting Ian's attention, "But how can your organization get away with this stuff?"
"Because it's Brockton Bay," Ian shrugged, "We have a gang of neo-nazi white supremacists, a gang of Asian-supremacist sex slavers, and a gang of degenerate druggie drug-pushers all but running this place, with the authorities only managing to maintain the hold they have because the other three consider each other to be a bigger threat to their dominance than the PRT. With all the terrible shit occurring here on a daily basis, who will take the time to care about a few 'problematic teens' not being as well taken care of as they should?"
The two fell silent for a few minutes after that, time in which Ian finished his cigarette, before stepping out of the car, gesturing for Marcus to do the same, and then making his way to the motel entrance.
"Aren't you going to roll up the window or lock your car?"
"Nah," Ian shook his head, "If someone wants to steal from it, they're gonna do it. Much easier to leave the car unlocked and the window down than to spend the money buying a new pane. Radio's fucked, AC is incompatible with what today's Chop Shops are taking in and I don't have anything valuable in there anyways, so the most they'll take is the ash and cigarette buts in the ashtray."
The two made their way past a beat-up plywood door with a layer of white paint peeling off of it - Marcus having to crouch slightly to avoid hitting his head on the doorframe - and into a sleazy-looking lobby, the floor covered in a cheap checker-patterned vinyl mat, a few plastic plants strewn around the room, a cheap mail locker that looked about as secure as a bank vault made of sand in the middle of a hurricane, and an old, beat up desk, behind which an old, overweight middle-aged woman sat, gut exposed from under her stained sleeveless crop top, arms wobbling with cellulite, rotten teeth, and stringy hair pulled up into curler rollers.
The woman looked Marcus up and down before turning toward Ian and speaking up, her voice sounding akin to gravel being forced down a paper shredder, which, based on the absolutely stuffed ashtray right next to her, was likely a consequence of decades of smoking.
" 'Nother one, Ian?" Her gaze then turned toward Marcus, "What's your deal? Theft? Drug use? Arson? 'Cause I ain't putting up an arsonist again, I've learned my lesson on that one."
"No theft, no drugs, and no arson, Agnes," Ian said to the woman, "Just get him a room."
"Alright, but you know the rules," The woman rasped out, her gaze on Marcus as she spoke as much as a reminder to Ian as she did as a warning to Marcus, "You fuck something up in your room, you either replace it or learn to live without it. You fuck something up that affects the rest of the motel, you pay for it and get the boot. We understood?"
"Yes ma'am," Marcus said with a serious nod, prompting Agnes to raise a surprised brow at him.
"Alright then," Ian said before turning toward Marcus and handing him a card, "Try to settle in as best as possible. Unfortunately, I have to go now, but if you need anything just call the number on that card. If you don't got a phone of your own, just head here to the reception and Agnes will help you."
Having said that, the man rapidly walked out of the motel, phone going up to his ear as he climbed into his car, his lips moving as he peeled out of the parking space.
Marcus' gaze then turned towards Agnes, who silently stared back at him, before rasping out.
"You can take room 305. Third floor, on the left," She handed the young man the key to the room, then paused, "You don't got any luggage?"
"Don't worry about it," He waved off the woman's concern, "And thank you for having me, ma'am."
The woman's lips twitched slightly at that as she shook her head, before breathing out a muttered "Not a disrespectful shit like the other brats", and then rasping out again.
"There's no water heaters here so you'll have to get used to cold showers, there ain't no fancy-shmancy room service here so keeping your stuff clean is on you. We don't provide food, but there's a 7/11 down the street that has shit on the cheap, and it's right next to a laundromat. Don't be heading down that way after lights out though. It don't matter that people say this place is not in the 'bad' side of town, if you ain't up there in the rich people's homes, going out at night is always a risk.
"Especially considering your… Complexion."
"Thanks for the advice, ma'am. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be heading up to my room."
Having said that, Marcus left the lobby, walked around the building to a set of surprisingly well-kept stairs, and went up to the third floor, making his way to a worn-out door that looked like it could give someone a splinter if they stared at it wrong, a rusty metal plate with the number 305 carved into it marking it as his own.
Unlocking the door took all but a moment's effort, allowing Marcus to step into what would be his new home for the foreseeable future.
The room wasn't particularly spacious, most of the space being a combined living room/kitchen/bedroom, with a couple of single beds pushed up against a beige wall with visibly peeling paint. Across from the beds was a wooden stand atop which rested an old, black-and-white television with an antenna that was visibly damaged and patched up with some duct tape and aluminum foil.
There was a wooden table in a marginally better state than most of the furniture with four rickety wooden chairs arrayed around it closer to the 'kitchen' area, which was pretty much just a counter with a crusty metal sink and a hot plate on the opposite ends, and dusty overhead cabinets, which were empty other than for a single, cracked plate.
There was a door on the other side of the room, opposite the entrance, which led into the bathroom.
The good news? Unlike what the rest of the room indicated, the bathroom was spacious enough for Marcus to make use of comfortably. Barely.
The bad news? The space was the only acceptable thing about the bathroom's status.
A cabinet with a couple of cracked mirrors - with its insides completely empty, of course - rested atop a stained sink with a rusty, crusted-over tap. The toilet was set opposite to the door, meaning that it was the first thing someone in the room would see if the door were open, and there was a shower area that was just a drain on the floor with four short ledges raised slightly above the floor level to keep water inside, a rail with no shower curtain, and a height-adjustable rainfall-style showerhead that was just as filthy and grimy as pretty much every other surface.
His enhanced senses also allowed him to notice through hearing and, unfortunately enough, smell, the presence of many different critters in the apartment/room, from cockroaches, to moths, to rats, and pretty much anything else one could expect to find in an improperly cleaned place.
If the beds weren't veritable colonies of bedbugs, he'd eat his shoe.
'Yeah… No. I'm not living like this.'
Leaving the bathroom, Marcus closed the blinds on the windows into his room to ensure maximum privacy, before tapping into his Demonic Power and releasing it in a series of pulses of sheer, overwhelming malice limited to the area of his room.
It didn't take long for a veritably biblical swarm of pests to rush out of whichever hideout they were in and out of the room, ridding the place of one of its many nasty problems.
A short trip down to the 7/11 left him $200 poorer, the money spent on both cleaning supplies such as bleach, sponges, gloves, brushes, a couple of trashcans, a mop and some buckets, drain cleaner and all manner of cleaning chemicals, as well as a takeaway meal and a sleeping bag, since the sheer thought of lying on either of the beds back in his room made him cringe to the extreme.
Back to his room, Marcus set down the bags loading up his arms before covering both his hair and his mouth with two different pieces of cloth and making active use of one of his perks for the first time.
Five clones emerged from his skin, perfectly identical to him down to the clothes they were wearing.
There was no need for him to vocalize instructions, as not only were the clones spawned by him with the specific commands in mind, but they also had a form of mental link to both the original and among each other, allowing for commands to be sent down by the original, and for information to flow freely within the whole 'system'.
The clones each put on a pair of gloves, before picking up a cleaning implement and going to work.
It took a good few hours and many exclamations of disgust and frustration flowing within the 'Marcus Network', but the apartment eventually went from "could be a set for a saw film" to "not the worst thing in the world".
It was still not a room the floor of which one'd be willing to eat off, but it wouldn't give them the impression that they'd get tetanus, dysentery, appendicitis, and the bubonic plague from just existing within the same ZIP code.
His clones dismissed, Marcus finished his cleaning efforts by dragging both of the mattresses out of his room and dumping them next to the emptied pool, prime for the taking for anyone with a want or need for them.
His cleaning efforts over and done with, Marcus sat at the table and dug into his food, consuming the slightly too oily fried steak with coleslaw with gusto, with a side of bottled water.
He'd opened the taps on both the kitchen and bathroom sinks and regretted it immensely when the water came out the same color as his skin.
Finishing his meal, Marcus lobbed the empty styrofoam container into the trashcan he'd set up beneath the kitchen sink, hopping back up to his feet.
'Alright,' He thought, 'I have a feeling trying to shower with this place's water would leave me dirtier at the end than at the start, so that's out from the get-go. Mhm…'
Looking at the time on his phone, Marcus nodded to himself before jumping to his feet.
'It's still pretty early, so the stores and such should be open still. Guess I can go out and fix some more problems.'
His choice made, Marcus left his room, locking the door behind him, and headed into the city.
The first thing he had as a priority was a place to deal with his hygiene needs. He could still make do with a bottle of mineral water back in his room when the subject was brushing his teeth, and the toilet was perfectly usable as long as he prepared usable water to wash his hands afterward, but showering there was absolutely unacceptable.
That need for a shower ultimately resulted in Marcus choosing to kill two birds with one stone in the form of a gym membership.
With a gym membership, he'd have a place he could swing by whenever he needed a shower where the water didn't look like it was pumped directly from Flint, Michigan, and he'd be able to make full use of the lack of diminishing returns through their training equipment, pushing his body to higher and higher levels.Hours of ambling through the city and scoping out multiple gyms led him to Fitness Global, a bodybuilding gym that ran from 5 AM through to 11 PM, Monday to Sunday. Between its relative proximity to the Boardwalk and the fact that its many patrons were mostly massive guys both height and muscle mass wise, it was a pretty safe place to be, making it worth the $75 membership fee.
After the gym, Marcus popped into a mattress store, dropping another $600 into buying a King-Size, leaving him at $2125 from the $3000 he'd started the day with.
Telling the shopkeeper that he'd swing by within a couple of days to pick up the mattress, Marcus left the store, not missing the fact that the Broadwalk was much less full and active than it had been when he'd first gotten there, a consequence of the sun's slow dip into the horizon, its luminosity gradually replaced with the incandescent glow of Brockton's street lamps.
Offering one of the armed enforcers a friendly nod, Marcus left the Broadwalk, his path back home suffering a small detour in the form of a dip into an Italian restaurant so he could secure himself some dinner.
The restaurant's staff had been perfectly polite toward him from the start of the interaction all the way through the time when the money and the takeaway changed hands, but as he left the eatery, he did not miss the three caucasian, bald-headed gentlemen who'd been shooting him dirty looks back inside get up from their own seats and follow him.
Dorian, Clyde, and Jonah, three skinheads and proud members of the E88, couldn't contain their anger.
They'd been having a nice dinner at a good and proper restaurant, served and waited by a proper staff, surrounded by other proper patrons, and eating proper food, only for a mongrel to interrupt the flow of things.
Not only did the filthy nigger spoil their appetite by his very presence, but the fact that it had the gall to stand there completely oblivious of the fact that he wasn't welcomed or wanted was also enough to make them very, very angry.
It was for that reason that they'd gotten up shortly after it left the restaurant, each of them picking up a useful tool from the bed of Clyde's truck before following it, intent on doing the city a favor by reducing their numbers by one.
Dorian couldn't help but snort in disgust as their target walked on at an unhurried pace, a hummed tune on its lips as it did, acting as if the city was all his to walk over.
The fact that these types felt safe enough to walk around like that just strengthened his belief in Kaiser's message. The filth was far too comfortable moving around in the open, rather than scurrying around the cracks and gutters of society as they were wont to do, and it was their duty, as good and proper Aryans, to change that status quo.
Jonah let out a nasty chuckle as their target made a turn into what the three knew to be a dead end.
Clide jingled his chain, Dorian shouldered his baseball bat, and Johan patted his pipe on the palm of his hand as they walked into the alley after their target, only for the three to blink in confusion at its absence.
Another figure was in the alleyway, the poor illumination giving the three the impression that it was the same person due to similar statures, but they discarded any thought of similarity when they got a better look at the person currently in front of them.
It was a darkie, like the one they'd been after, but the two were just… Completely different. It was as if their faces, shape, and even their posture were so far away from the one they'd seen back at the restaurant that the thought of those two being in any way akin to one-another couldn't even go through their minds.
A prime example of the difference between the two was in the hairstyle. Like a sissy, the first one kept its hair in a ponytail. This one, though?
This one's hair was was mostly slicked back, with a few loose bangs hanging over its face.
That was irrelevant at the moment, though. The three men were frustrated at the loss of appetite and of their target, and this new one was going to be the one cashing that check.
"Hello gentlemen," Marcus called out to the skinhead trio, "What can I help you with on this fine evening?"
Their response to his question was to spread out so that their bodies were completely blocking the alley's entrance before one of them spoke.
"We don't much like your kind around here, boy."
"Well, that's unfortunate," Marcus responded blithely, "But I don't see how that's my problem."
"Hehehe," One of the three, the one with the chain in hand, chuckled maliciously, "You're gonna figure it out soon, boy. Last thing you'll ever figure out, too."
Letting out a put-upon sigh, Marcus met the gaze of the one who seemed to be the leader of the group, the man with a pipe in hand, before speaking again, his tone one of advice.
"You don't have to do this, you know."
"Oh, but we do," That same man answered with a disgusted sneer, "It seems your kind forgot the fact that they shouldn't be out here polluting the city. You're gonna become a reminder."
"You can still make a good choice," Marcus spoke once more, "Turn around and go home, reflect upon yourselves, and choose to become better people-"
He took a small step to the side, avoiding the chain swung by the most impatient one of the trio, and stepped on it just as he was about to pull it back, before speaking up once more.
"You know, even disregarding the morally contemptible nature of your actions, you should still know better than to just randomly attack anyone you see out on the streets. You live in Brockton Bay, the cape capital of the country. As far as you know, any random person you walk across in the street could have the ability to breathe fire, shoot lasers out of their hands, or just make you go up, forever.
"And this thought doesn't even cross your mind when the person you're cornering at 3-to-1 odds is completely calm even with their back against a literal wall."
Marcus' words seemed to spook the three, who took half a step back as he raised his hand in front of him before a flash of blue light engulfed the alley.
By the time the blue light faded and the three recovered their vision, they were met with the sight of their previous target clad in a black coat with silver accents, a button-up vest of overlaying dark blue layers underneath that, black leather pants and boots. Black fingerless gloves covered his hands, one of which held a sword almost as long as the man was tall.
"SHIT, CAPE!" One of the three cried out, "RUN!"
The three didn't hesitate to drop their weapons, turning around with the intent to run, only to freeze in place without taking a single step forward as the sword-wielding cape was somehow already blocking the exit to the alley.
"I gave you a chance to walk away and you chose to attack me instead," Marcus said mildly, "Now? Now it's too late."
Their leader, the previous pipe-wielder, raised a hand, finger pointing at Marcus and mouth opening as he was about to say something, likely bluster about the E88, only for a CLICK, seemingly simultaneously as loud as an explosion and as soft as a whisper, to reverberate within the alley.
An instant after the click, the three men couldn't help but look down at their right hands, which for some reason felt burning hot and ice cold at the same time, only to gape in shock as their hands slid out of alignment from the middle of their forearms, before everything below that point simply vanished into a red mist.
Shock kept them silent for a few seconds before beads of sweat dotted their foreheads as the pain started rapidly setting in.
"AAAAAAAARGHHHHHHHHHHH!"
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
"FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKKKKK!"
This culminated in a trio of pained shouts as the men's still-present hands reflexively flew toward their bleeding stumps. Uncaring about the men's pained cries and tears, Marcus spoke, his tone just as mild as it'd been from the beginning.
"The three of you have belts on. Use them as tourniquets and you may avoid bleeding to death."
Spurred on by the word death, the three started singlehandedly - literally - fumbling with their belt buckles, trying to somehow get them loose.
"If any of you make it out of this alive, remember to tell your empire friends that this is your first, and last, warning," Marcus addressed the three, his deceptively mild tone backed by a concentrated pulse of Demonic Energy in the form of raw malice, "Next time I come across one of you endangering someone else's life, I'll aim for the neck."
After saying that, a light corona of blue light engulfed Marcus before he was suddenly back in his motel room. First ensuring that he was still alone, Marcus finally let out a deep sigh while running a hand through his hair, causing it to go from the slicked-back spiked do with front bangs to a loose side part, feeling as both Yamato and his Vergil outfit vanished back into whatever metaphysical space Devil Arms went to, and his identity obscuring perk shut off.
It was still hard to believe that something as simple as running his hand through his hair was enough to not only cause it to adopt the exact style that he'd been picturing without needing anything as mundane as hair gel or a brush, but to make it so that the breakage of sight of a simple turn into an alley rendered him completely unrecognizable to the people that'd been following him, regardless of the fact that his height, build, face, and even his clothes - before he'd drawn on the power of Vergil - were the same as when they'd first spotted him back at the restaurant.
Pulling his dinner back from his pocket space and setting it down on his table, Marcus took some time to play with his hair, his chosen aesthetic trait to trigger the perk, in order to figure out specifics of how it functioned.
What he figured out is that while the perk description said that it worked in a binary between two different states, he could somewhat fudge the definition by setting one of the states as his 'Vergil hairstyle', and the other state as 'anything other than the Vergil hairstyle'. With those set as the parameters for the perk, Marcus experimented a bit more, putting his hair up in a bun, a ponytail, letting it hang loose all the way down to his neck, and many other styles - for all of which his hair all but shapeshifted into the desired shape, making hair products pretty much unnecessary - and the only time he felt the perk trigger was when he ran his hand over hair with the deliberate desire to once again sport the Vergil 'do.
That series of experiments over with, for the time being, Marcus set his hair back to the side part, before unpacking his dinner.
As he did so, he couldn't help but think about the level of rot in the city, and the fact that the people tasked with resolving the issue were either incapable or unwilling to take care of the problems.
'They can't, or won't, clean up the Bay,' He thought while opening the container of his pesto pasta, 'But I can, and I will.'
Having made that resolution, Marcus allowed himself to turn his focus toward his meal, polishing it off with ease, before slipping into his sleeping bag, allowing himself to rest after what was an eventful first day at the Bay.
-CHAPTER, END!-