Chapter 3
Once Tiff got home, she fled her mother’s worried embrace and shut herself up in her room. She decided she needed to take her mind off things, so she pulled her schoolbooks out of her backpack and started finishing her homework. It was only Tuesday, but Tiff was somewhat lazy at heart. She would gladly do the work right now to goof off and relax later.
Perhaps no ordinary teenager would escape to their room to do homework after being essentially pulled out of school for a day, but Tiff wasn’t an average teenager. She paused, laughing darkly. Oh, how her tune had changed from this morning! She didn’t know what she would give to go back to being normal, unremarkable. But from what little she understood of the System, it didn’t give out Classes and Affinities often, so when it did, it was very hard to change them. Just one more thing added to the list of things she wanted to ask about, but didn’t know how. Sighing, since nothing could be done about it for the moment, Tiff buckled in and got to work.
“Hey, munchkin, you okay in here?”
Tiff looked up from her trigonometry textbook to see a figure standing in her doorway and smiled. Victoria VanDyne was her older sister by 3 and a half years and was a miniature version of their mom. The irony wasn’t lost to Tiff, because calling Victoria “mini” was laughable since most people looked like children standing next to her. So when she stood next to their mother and looked like the child, what then did that say about normal people? Or Tiff herself, who barely came up to her mother’s waist? Living in a family blessed with powerful builds could be troublesome at times.
“Little Sis said you were sulking.”
Tiff furrowed her brows and bristled.
“I am not sulking.”
“Okay, fine. Now you’re bristling.”
Tiff’s mouth formed into a pout.
“Haha, easy there, munch. What’s got you all bent out of shape?”
Tiff turned briefly away from her sister, who was busy leaning against the door frame, to put away her homework. She’d been done for the last hour and was mindlessly skimming pages, bored.
“Why did Amy say I’m sulking?”
“Dunno. Apparently, she came in to pester you or something, but you didn’t pay her any attention, so she left.”
Tiff cocked her head.
“When did Amy come in? Actually, when did she get home? She didn’t come with Mom when she picked me up.”
“A while back,” Victoria shrugged, stepping into the room to sit on Tiff’s bed. “It’s almost dinner. They sent me up to get you in case Amy did something to annoy you.”
“Dinner?” Tiff glanced at the clock. Has it really been 3 hours? “I don’t know if I’ll eat. I’m not hungry.”
Victoria hooked her toes around Tiff’s chair and spun her around to face her.
“Hey. What gives? Something’s up; you’re usually not this down. Maybe you aren’t bristling or sulking, but something is wrong.”
Tiff gauged her sister in her eyes, weighing her up to see how much she actually cared. She was about to brush her off, but at the last second, Tiff lowered her head and mumbled.
“Got my System today,” she sighed, barely more than a whisper.
“Ah,” Victoria gave her a sad smile and picked her up, hugging her on top of her lap. “Didn’t get what you wanted?”
“System Depression” was a real thing. People tried everything they could to give themselves or their children any possible advantage for when they Awakened, but it rarely turned out as they wanted. Mostly because the majority of humanity Awakened as normal, everyday Citizens. People who went to extreme lengths or spent fortunes on tutors and mentors to try to get a leg up, so to speak, were inevitably let down when the System did not reward them for their work.
Tiff had the opposite problem. She found the words spilling out of her mouth before she could think. Was it because she loved her older sister dearly? Or maybe because she was the closest person to Tiff who had Awakened most recently.
Most likely, in truth, because Victoria chose to remain Neutral, not trying to get into the “hero path”.
“Not really. Got something I didn’t want.”
“Oh?” Victoria quirked an eyebrow. But instead of leaning forward and demanding juicy gossip, she quickly scolded herself into a stern expression.
“Tiff,” she said firmly. “You don’t need to tell anyone anything about your Status if you don’t want to. Not now, not ever.”
“Yeah, I know,” Tiff replied easily enough. It was one of the first things they learned in IPSS. People had a right to privacy, and circumstances where they were required by law to divulge information were extremely rare. Affinity, strangely, was not one of them. It was not, in fact, illegal to be a villain. Just, mostly what a villain did and stood for. Things like involuntary telepathy, however, tended to get a bit more problematic.
Victoria blinked at her smallest sister. With Tiff in her lap, she was close enough to feel her slow and steady breathing, let alone any involuntary motion like tensing muscles or shivering. Tiff did neither of those. Her normally shy and timid little sister was comfortable around her despite the obvious size difference, something that was hard to overcome, no matter how much time they spent together. Victoria was a good judge of character and she knew when people were bluffing. Tiff wasn’t doing anything of the sort.
“Don’t let people bully you into it,” she frowned, thinking of her own time in school and some of her weaker classmates. Nobody ever tried that with her; it didn’t work when she was a foot and a half taller and usually had a hundred pounds of muscle on them.
“Ha,” Tiff snorted. “Don’t worry. I can’t be bullied.”
That was…a strange way to put it, and Victoria filed that away. She didn’t know how to bring up her sister’s odd behavior tonight gently, so she resorted to rocking back and forth as she floundered on what to do.
“Tori,” Tiff eventually muttered softly, “You have Skills, right?”
Just because a person didn’t have to tell anybody about their Status didn’t mean they couldn’t. Victoria was very much open with her family about who she was and what she wanted in her life, much to her parents’ consternation. Victoria laughed.
“Sure. I’ve got a couple.”
She lifted her hand from where it was rubbing Tiff’s back and made a complex motion in the air. Like a special effect from a video game, a small blue box, like a transparent window pane, pixelated into existence. No matter how many times she saw it, Tiff was always impressed. People could bring up their Status however they liked, and most didn’t bother learning anything more than a simple summoning: one second there was nothing, the next, a floating blue box. No transition. Victoria, as with everything in life, did hers with gusto and flair.
It was impressive for a 19-year-old, but in the grand scheme of things, fairly ordinary. She had two Skills, each devoted to her Class.
Skill: Hand-to-Hand Specialist. Improved mastery over various forms of unarmed combat.
Skill: Grappler. Holds are harder to escape from. Pins are more difficult to break.
“I’m a [Bodyguard], right?” Victoria jiggled Tiff on her lap, who continued to stare at the open screens. “These are pretty common for melee Classes. I started as a [Brawler] and got these after a few Quests. They stayed with me after I Class Upped.”
Eventually, Victoria dismissed her screen with a wave of her hand, and it broke into a million tiny pixels that floated away. Tiff took a deep breath and came to an unspoken conclusion,
“I got a skill,” she said in an airy, lighthearted voice she hoped sounded off-handed. She felt her sister’s arm around her tighten and she closed her eyes.
“I think it’s probably really rare and really, really strong. It’s called Indomitable, and it makes me immune to stuff like fear and intimidation.”
“You got that as a skill?” Victoria gawked. “Oof, I know tons of people who’d kill for something like that. What’s the cost? Or cooldown?”
“Umm, none, pretty sure. It says it’s passive.”
“It says…,” Victoria trailed off. “Holy. Yeah. Yeah, that’s a very strong one, Tiff. Passives are rare, and they’re generally really good. I know you’re a smart cookie and you can do what you want with your Stats, but I’d recommend keeping that to yourself. Thanks for sharing with me. I won’t tell a soul.”
“Yeah, I didn’t want to tell anybody, but I need to get it off my chest. Keeping it a secret feels so…suffocating.”
“And you didn’t go to Mom or Dad?”
“No!” Tiff said a touch too quickly and loudly. “I can’t. I don’t want to tell them, not yet. And I can’t lie to them either. Honestly, that scares me more than anything.”
“Then don’t,” Victoria shrugged. “If they ask anything, just give them a non-answer. Or tell them you didn’t get anything special-“
“You don’t understand!” Tiff practically wailed. “I can’t. I can’t!”
Victoria froze in her gentle rubbing as Tiff calmed herself down. After a few steadying breaths, she took a big gulp of air.
“I also got a Quirk,” she said conversationally, too engrossed with her own thoughts to feel her sister suddenly go rigid. Victoria knew what that meant. There was a pause, a half a breath of indecision before Victoria’s gentle rubbing resumed, maybe a bit intensified. She furiously worked at her little sister’s tense shoulders and knotted back. It was much too stressed, more than any poor 16-year-old had any right to be. Tiff let out a sigh of contention and leaned harder into her sister, oblivious to Victoria’s thoughts.
“I can’t lie anymore, Tori. Honest to goodness truth.”
“I mean, that’s…,” Victoria laughed weakly, but there was no mirth in it. She wanted to say “silly” or “stupid”, but those words died on her tongue. If it was given by the System…if it was an actual, genuine Quirk….
“I want to show you, but I don’t know how.”
Victoria closed her eyes and almost swore. This was not how she saw her day going. She wanted to get off work, come home, decompress, and maybe have stew or pot pie or whatever mundane, homely thing her mom was making for dinner.
Not dealing with…this. Whatever this was.
And then she laughed, thinking about what she was about to do.
“That’s okay, I can show you,” she finally mused after calming down. “They’ll teach you in school and eventually summoning your screen will become second nature, but the first time is always weird. It’s awkward, silly, and you’ll feel like the world’s biggest idiot, but that’s okay. We’ve all been that idiot before.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, all you gotta do to summon your Status is summon your Status.”
“Huh?” Tiff asked, looking up at her with large, nonplussed eyes.
“Stupid, right?” Victoria grinned. “How are you supposed to do something with instructions like that?”
“Yeah…?” Tiff agreed warily.
“It’s different for everybody. Some people get it on the first try, others it takes…an embarrassingly long time. And while eventually you can do it with a thought, that’s not how it starts.”
“Don’t tell me…,” Tiff groaned.
“Yep!” Victoria actually laughed out loud. “You gotta shout it out!”
“Don’t make me!” Tiff wailed.
“Apparently, I can’t!” Victoria teased right back. “Not with a Skill like yours!”
It took Tiff a solid 15 minutes of saying “Status!” Out loud before she was eventually able to feel movement. She needed to focus on her Status screen as if it were an extension of herself, but that was much easier said than done. She could will it up in her mind’s eye easily enough, but making it manifest was another thing entirely. She stared at it, focused on it, and muttered vague and increasingly violent threats toward it and its children before eventually screwing her face up so tight in concentration it looked like she was constipated. Just as she feared she was going to have an accident while sitting on her sister’s lap, the air in front of her began to shimmer.
“Ah!” she exclaimed, waving her hand excitedly. “I did it! Do you see?!”
Her excitement was instantly doused by a bucket of ice water as she realized that her whole Status was on display, not just her Skill and Quirk. That included her name, which was obvious…but also her Class and Affinity. Two things she desperately wanted to remain hidden. She quickly waved both hands, as if rapidly wafting away a deadly fart, and Victoria just chuckled some more.
“No, I can’t see, calm down. You need to share it with me.”
Tiff could feel her heartbeat slowly return to normal. The first time she summoned the screen took so long, but the second only took a little more than a minute. She still felt like an idiot muttering “status” under her breath, but she was no longer gesticulating like a used car salesman trying to sell somebody on a real junker. She frowned at the innocent, yet apparently invisible, blue box floating inches from her face.
“Okay…now what?”
“You need to share it with me,” Victoria repeated. Before Tiff could complain, Victoria explained.
“I think of it like a tablet,” she shrugged. “I pinch the corners of the zone I want to share, and then I spin it around, so like it isn’t just facing me, but everybody else. Does that help at all?”
Not really, Tiff muttered, but she tried it. And it helped! Her screen was there even though it wasn’t. Her fingers passed right through the semi-transparent field, but as they did, the screen seemed to quiver. Tiff tried to grab hold of it and found that, yes, she could move it around. She moved it up a few inches, where it hung uncomfortably high above her vision, down low to where she couldn’t read it, and even left and right. She made sure not to jostle it too much, just in case she actually turned it around. After several moments of playing around, she eventually pinched the top left corners of her Skill and Quirk boxes to keep them steady while awkwardly jiggling the rest of her arms to shoo the rest of the screen away. As silly as she felt, it worked: she was left sitting with only two boxes of her status, her Quirk and her Skill.
“There, can you see it now?” Tiff asked a little impatiently. She managed to turn them around…but the first time she spun them, they kept on spinning. Apparently, intangible, invisible boxes didn’t have friction and she had to will them to stop.
“No,” Victoria corrected her gently. “You have to share them with me. Intent matters. I don’t know how else to explain it…I’m really sorry.”
Tiff closed her eyes and tried mentally pushing them toward her sister. Not physically. She was afraid that if she tried that the System would take her too literally and her box would float away. She scrunched up her eyes and felt a small pressure build in her ears, like they needed to pop. And then they did, without actually popping. She opened her eyes to find Victoria staring down at her, focusing intently.
Tiff worried at first that she’d given too much information away, but she had checked and double-checked what she’d shown. It was only the System-generated description, the less-than-helpful little blurb that was blessedly inoffensive.
Skill: Indomitable
Passive, always on.
Cannot be disabled by normal means.
Immune to mental effects.
Quirk: Your Word Is Law. You cannot lie.
“Holy shit,” Victoria eventually muttered. “You’re right, Tiff. This is incredible. If I were you, I’d only share this with people you really trust.”
“Yeah,” Tiff muttered, relieved.
“I’m glad you consider me in that group,” Victoria grinned.
“Heh,” Tiff smirked.
“And would you look at that?” Victoria waved to where the box was, even though it had long since vanished. “You’re gonna be a real hard ass now! Ain’t nobody pushing you around with a skill like that!”
“Right?” Tiff smiled…before frowning. “But, like, it’s not fair! Nobody else can make me afraid, so why is it that when I think about eventually showing my Status to Mom and Dad, I’m scared out of my mind? That’s not cool!”
“Eh,” Victoria shrugged. “I guess the only person who can tell you what to do is you yourself.”
Dinner was an unsurprisingly subdued affair. It was a simple meal of chicken breast, steamed vegetables, and mashed potatoes; uninspiring and bland. Tiff felt exactly how the mashed potatoes looked: beaten and lumpy. She pushed some things around on her plate and tiredly dodged more questions about her day.
Yes, she Awoke to her System today.
No, she didn’t want to talk about it.
Yes, she got hit in the face with a dodgeball.
No, she didn’t need any member of the family to go to school and beat anyone up.
And very much no, all the “jokes” about the game being called “dodgeball” and not actually dodging the ball were not, in fact, funny.
Her parents got the hint straight away, but Amy was having a hard time changing the subject. Maybe it was because she was young, and that was what her attention span settled for? Despite the fact that ordinarily it would drift like a raft without a sail. Or maybe it was simply the fact that now she was the only one in the family who hadn’t awakened. She pouted at that something fierce, but she only had one year and two weeks left before she turned 16 and would be in the same boat as everybody else.
“It’s not fair,” Amy grumbled and stabbed into her chicken with a little too much venom. “She even gets to stay home from school tomorrow.”
“Amy, you know why she’s staying home,” their dad said tiredly, having explained this to her three times already. “She needs to rest. Everybody takes a day off after they Awaken, just in case they have trouble adjusting.”
“Yeah,” Amy grudgingly agreed.
“And you’ve seen how out of it she’s been all day,” Victoria pointed out.
“Yeah,” Amy admitted again in a small voice, once again defeated.
“Actually, I’m going to keep her home the rest of the week,” their mom declared. Tiff and Victoria looked surprised, but Amy looked downright mutinous. Melissa took a bite of food, and Amy was about to open her mouth to protest again, but she held up her hand.
“She took a big hit to the head. She then slept for several hours at the school, and she’s been uncoordinated and distracted ever since. You said you felt dizzy and dazed, yes?”
Tiff nodded. She still did, in fact.
“See? The last thing we need is for her tripping up or down some stairs.”
Amy smirked before eventually settling down. Tiff agreed. She didn’t need any more risk of embarrassment (or injury) right now. Today was bad enough, and that was limited to mostly dodging her family’s curiosity over her Status.
Eventually, Tiff excused herself from the table, and even though it was early, she got ready for bed. She planned to do some light reading or simple studying while sitting on her bed, but she ended up dozing off. Maybe it was her soft jammies or her warm blankets, or her System really did wipe her out more than she realized.