Chapter 6
Victoria might have been a touch dramatic.
But, Tiff eventually saw the value in her words, and either because she trusted her big sister completely or simply because she had no one else to turn to, she agreed to be taken to the Adventurer’s Union.
They were going to go in, find out if they could see a doctor without an appointment, and go home. No big, long explanations or complicated ruses. Maybe she’d look really weird clamming up and refusing to say a thing, but she didn’t want her debut as a Supervillain to feature a monologue. That would be pure evil.
When Victoria said they’d go to the Union, Tiff thought they would head to downtown Fullerton, over by the college, where she was pretty sure a bunch of Meta-related offices were located.
Instead, they drove mostly in the opposite direction.
Victoria gave Tiff her word that she would protect her, and Victoria took her job as a [Bodyguard] very seriously. So much so that she steered them very clear of anyone or anything remotely connected to a Hero. Tori’s crappy old Camry realistically had no reason to draw extra attention, but they took the long way around on their way to the Adventurer’s Union.
The really looooong way.
The main branch for the Department of Metahuman Affairs for Los Angeles County was, as expected, in Downtown Los Angeles, nearly 40 miles away. Tiff wouldn’t have expected to go all the way out there even if she’d Awakened as a Citizen like everybody else. But that wasn’t the only branch, just like the DMV, which had a ton of offices scattered all around and yet was still overbooked and understaffed.
Tiff wasn’t really thinking straight as Victoria parked her car in a parking structure in downtown Irvine. She was busy being paranoid that every eye was on her and had just about convinced herself that the streetlights had security cameras installed when Victoria got out. She walked around the car with a sigh, opened Tiff’s door, unbuckled her, and nearly lifted her out of the seat as she set her on her feet.
“Look, it’s going to be fine,” Victoria said. “It’s why we spent the last 30 minutes fighting traffic on the 5 to come all this way. Irvine’s DMA is on the other side of town and Anaheim’s is the other way. There’s no Hero team anywhere nearby, and if there were, they wouldn’t be loitering around picking up community service. If they’re on the streets, they’ve got bigger fish to fry than a 16-year-old going to get herself Assessed.”
“But what if they take one look at me and lock me up?” Tiff asked. “What if the doctor runs his tests or whatever, sees that I’m a…you know…and throws me in prison?”
“First off,” Victoria chuckled, “That’s a pretty big jump from doctor’s office to prison. You think you’re bad enough to skip jail and go to the big house with the big dogs? Tiff, you wouldn’t even get sent to juvie if you stole a candy bar, and I know how you are about that.”
“But what-?”
“Listen,” Victoria squeezed her hand as she led her forward. Tiff was stalling and it was time to move. “We could talk about buts all day. But this, but that. There’s always another scenario. But…we are here because we are doing everything we can to mitigate our risk. The doctors here are just as skilled as doctors at the DMA. You don’t have to worry about anything.”
“How do you know?” Tiff asked.
“I came here myself to get Assessed,” Victoria shrugged. “Well, not the Irvine branch, but you get what I mean. They ask you some questions, hook you up to a machine that takes readings, and run a few tests based on what it shows. They never even have to look at your System Stats if you don’t want to show them.”
“But what are they supposed to put on my registration if they don’t see my stats?” Tiff asked. Victoria chuckled and shook her head.
“A lot of people get hung up on being ‘registered.’ It’s not nearly as all-encompassing or invasive as Hollywood might have you believe. In fact, you’re already ‘on record’ in so many other ways; this is just another paper in the file. Your social security number? Your birth certificate? Tiff, people give out their fingerprints for jobs all the time. There’s a database for everything.”
“So what are they actually searching for then?” Tiff asked, deflating somewhat. She’d worked herself up, and now she didn’t know what to think.
“Basically, control,” Victoria said. “They want to make sure you’re not involuntarily a danger to those around you. That, and telepathy. Telepaths need to be registered in a database. Oh, shapeshifters, too. Anything that can impersonate someone or rob somebody of their free will.”
“Oh god,” Tiff groaned.
Victoria led them into a tall office building, filled with people a shade more rough around the edges than even those Tiff had seen in Tori’s guild. The Adventurer’s Union was like…professional league slums. There weren’t obvious homeless encampments, but the sterilized, whitewashed, clean-and-tidy look painstakingly maintained by the city ended abruptly at the sidewalk out front. The planters around the large trees were cracked from years of root growth and neglected maintenance; the paint on the walls was faded and stained with the shadows of dirt and water runoff; and more people than not had bags under their eyes or week-old chin stubble. The clothing on a group of people loitering near the entrance was roughly patched and caked in mud, and they stank. Tiff pinched her nose and wafted her hand in front of her face without realizing what she was doing, earning a few crude guffaws from the crowd.
“50-50 odds on if they’ve washed in the last week,” Victoria whispered sardonically as she held the door open for Tiff. Tiff’s wrinkled nose was scrunched so bad it was getting hard to breathe.
“Their clothes or themselves?” She asked.
“Yes,” Victoria smirked. Tiff rolled her eyes.
“When I become overlord, I’m making it a rule that showers are mandatory,” she declared. Victoria raised an eyebrow but grinned.
“Good to see you getting in character. Will you show mercy to your underlings, or must I bathe too?”
Tiff gave Victoria the stink eye before eventually cracking a smile.
“But seriously, are they adventurers or transients? Is this the only place they can hang out at?”
Victoria pulled Tiff over to the side and stared at her seriously.
“Hey. I know we joke, but maybe give them a little grace, yeah? We don’t know their situation. For your information, many homeless people are adventurers. In many ways, adventuring is the most accepting occupation. Anybody and anyone can join. It’s not always smart, but it’s always there. And,” Victoria smirked, “There are no showers inside a rift. Delving is sweaty work and pits stink.”
Tiff followed Victoria to the counter, only vaguely paying attention as they booked an Assessment appointment. Normally, Tiff might be more inclined to know exactly what she was getting herself into, but she was still overwhelmed by a walk of life she was vastly unprepared to discover. One large man, wearing black leather with spiked shoulderpads, was finishing up his business and leaving. Tiff didn’t want to stare at the man, but she was transfixed; he had a massive scar over his face, blocked by a rough patch slung crudely over his eye, and his left arm ended abruptly at a nub. He didn’t have a hand. The injury was gruesome and horrifying, but Tiff felt surprisingly little shock, where once her stomach might have involuntarily reacted.
She stared too long. The man jerked his head down in her direction and they locked eyes. Though he was much larger than Tiff, she met his harsh gaze coolly. The man’s eyes flicked up and down her small frame, judgingly, before he scoffed.
“This isn’t the place for you. Leave now.”
He wasn’t being loud or obnoxious, but Tiff heard him plain as day. She could feel him try to exert some sort of menacing, threatening pressure, but strangely, she felt nothing. Like an observer passing judgment on a piece of art.
“Thank you,” was all she said, nodding once curtly. The man’s good eyebrow rose, but he said nothing and kept walking. Eventually, Victoria pulled Tiff to a set of benches where they could wait.
“What was that?” Victoria hissed. Worry was etched on her face, and her tone made it clear she was concerned, but Tiff merely shrugged. It wasn’t until she sat down that she started shaking.
“Easy,” Victoria said, bringing Tiff into a tight hug. “It’s going to be okay.”
“Tori,” Tiff eventually said, trying to keep her voice from cracking. “I’m scared.”
Victoria nodded. She understood. The first time she walked into the Union, heck, even the first time she walked into her Guildhall, she was overwhelmed. It was a big, new, scary place, full of intimidating people. But that didn’t match up with Tiff’s skill, and from what Victoria saw, Tiff was the very image of unflappable aloofness.
“Really?” Victoria asked. “Didn’t seem that way to me.”
Tiff glanced up at her and tilted her head.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Not from that guy. He didn’t scare me, though I think he might have tried. I felt something, I don’t know, wash over me, like stepping into an air-conditioned room after walking around in the sun. Something mild, maybe not pleasant exactly, but I wouldn’t call it uncomfortable. And then I was looking up at a guy who had to be over a foot and a half taller than me, probably weighed twice as much as me, glaring at me like I’d kicked his dog. But honestly…instead of cowering in fear as he, I don’t know, exerted his presence or whatever, all I felt was…mild annoyance at best. No threat at all, like his words were just that: words. I just felt apathetic, like, sure thing bro. That’s…that’s not me. It was my skill. But now my skill is me, and I don’t know who I’m turning into. I don’t like it. I hate it. I don’t want to change!”
“Shh,” Victoria cooed calmingly as she hugged Tiff. “You’re not going to change. You’re still going to be you.”
“So with awakening comes many changes. One day, we wake up, look in the mirror, and wonder who it is that’s staring back at us.”
Tiff gave Victoria a flat, judging stare as the doctor gave them the introductory spiel as he seated them in an examination room. What was Victoria just saying? But Tiff couldn’t sass her sister because the man was still rambling. At first, she hadn’t taken the man for a real doctor.
He had a lab coat and scrubs on, but otherwise resembled many of the other occupants of the building in the fact that it looked like he hadn’t seen a razor in days. But instead of looking wild and homeless, it gave him a sort of rugged charm…which only mildly detracted from his doctor-ness. He finished giving his pre-packaged Awakening speech by running a hand through his unkept hair, running his fingers through the luscious brown locks in a way that made Tiff fidget.
She didn’t realize there was a market for calendars featuring rugged doctors, but there was now.
They don’t even have to be shirtless. They can just pose with random things like stethoscopes or tongue depressors…or, okay, maybe one or two buttons on the shirt can be undone….
Tiff shook her head, realizing the man, Doctor Mark Waters, had probably just asked her a question, and she was spacing out like an idiot. Part of her wanted to play it off cool, but that pesky Quirk of hers made itself known as she opened her mouth.
“Are you really a doctor?”
The man wasn’t insulted by Tiff’s bluntness. In fact, he laughed.
“You bet!” He said with a massive smile. “I’m a [Combat Medic]. I might not look like your standard hospital suit, but I’ve got my degree right there.”
He pointed at the wall, where, sure enough, a framed diploma hung…slightly off-center. Tiff wanted to jump off the examination bed she was sitting on and straighten it out, but now was not the time.
“So how about we get right to it, yes?” Dr. Waters asked with a kind smile. “I’ve been told you’ve just Awakened and, well, I’ll be honest, bedside manners have never been my strong suit. You’re here because you want to avoid some of the Affinity questions going to the DMA might bring up.”
Tiff stared at the man. He certainly didn’t mince words. He wasn’t wrong, though, and she glanced at Victoria, wondering what she had said when booking their appointment that tipped them off. Had she been as blunt as this guy? Perhaps it was for the best.
“Yes,” she said eventually. One strange tidbit that had always stuck with her from everything she had ever heard about doctors was this: don’t lie to your doctor because they’ll find out the truth anyway.
Not that lying outright was a problem (or possible) for Tiff, but she didn’t feel the need to try to deflect either.
The man seemed interested as he crossed his arms over his chest and raised an eyebrow.
“I take it you woke up on the wrong side of the Greyscale?”
Tiff felt her mouth thin into a narrow line.
“I’d rather not say.”
“Fair,” the man shrugged and dropped it. “Well, you’re obviously here because you Awoke to a Class with stats above C, or else your guardian probably wouldn’t have brought you here. What your class is…isn’t really relevant, unless you're a Telepath.”
The man paused as he picked up a clipboard and jiggled the mouse on an ancient-looking computer to wake it from sleep mode.
“Are you a Telepath?”
“No,” Tiff stated firmly.
“Right. So, you’re 16, congratulations on Awakening, by the way. Have you started PISS yet?”
“People actually call it that?” Tiff balked. Victoria smirked and nudged her playfully.
“Ah, no. We’re still in the introductory lessons. I was the last in my class to Awaken.”
“Well, I don’t want to steal your teacher’s thunder, but it’s boring as hell. If you don’t sleep through half of it, as most kids do, you’ll learn that the government requires any person who achieves a Class with a stat greater than C to be Assessed. C stats are the baseline of humanity. Lower generally means you’ve got some physical condition or disability. Anything higher means you are essentially a Metahuman…and the government wants to make sure you can’t break boulders with your mind. Or, if you can, you don’t use it on other people’s skulls.”
“Noted,” Tiff said dryly. With a Might stat of D, she wouldn’t be breaking boulders anytime soon…physically, at least. She also wondered whether that was why she had been sleeping so much recently. Did the system make her weaker? Was her exhaustion more than simple Awakening recovery?
“And,” Victoria cut in helpfully, likely to try and ease Tiff’s nerves, “All they need to do here is check your stats and log them. They don’t need to record your Class or Affinity.”
“Your sister is correct, Miss VanDyne. It doesn’t matter what the Greyscale says.”
“Even if I’m darker than neutral?” Tiff asked. She wasn’t sure why she put it like that. It made her sound…lesser. But she hadn’t done anything wrong, not yet.
Once again, the man raised a brow.
“I’m really curious what you could have done to start out on the bad guy path,” he mused. “Are you a Rogue? A Henchman? No shame in either. As a Mercenary, I gain and lose color depending on my choices.”
“But you’re a doctor?” Tiff blurted. In her mind, saving lives was a Heroic thing. The man gave a wry smile.
“A [Combat Medic]. My main Skill is [Triage]. I get to choose who lives and who dies. Not everybody appreciates my decisions.”
Tiff swallowed her retort and nodded grimly. She never thought about it that way before. After several seconds of silence, she opened her mouth.
“I didn’t do anything. The System decided it needed me to be something I don’t think I am.”
And that was all she said. The man seemed to understand the finality of Tiff’s statement, so he snapped on a pair of gloves and picked up the clipboard.
“Shall we?”
The examination and Assessment process was unlike anything Tiff had experienced before. She’d had a physical once, at the beginning of her freshman year, when the school required every student to get a checkup. The doctors and nurses who came in to do it were all professional and detached, but it left her feeling violated in a way she never expected, simply because she was vulnerable.
Here, in Dr. Waters’ office, she wasn’t even half naked.
The man did go through several familiar motions of checking her blood pressure and listening to her breathing, but then things started getting weird. He held up a device which could only fit the description of “1950s sci-fi raygun,” crossed with a phaser from Star Trek. He explained that it was a StatSensor (™?) and gauged power levels.
Personally, Tiff thought anything that read “power levels” needed to be a headpiece that covered a single eye with a small clear window, so the user’s face could be clearly seen, full of disbelief and shock when it read over 9000.
Obviously, Tiff was biased.
Instead, he pointed the sensor at her and pulled the trigger. Tiff’s imagination supplied several rings shooting at her, starting small at the tip of the gun and growing until they hit her, but nothing visible happened. The gun did make a fantastic sound resembling those flying cars from the Jetsons, a sort of woo woo woo woooo as he panned it over her body. But the machine was harmless, or at least Tiff felt nothing, not even a pleasant tingle.
However, on the old black and green monitor behind them, lines of text started pouring in, and after woo wooing all parts of her body, a printout started churning out of a giant, clunky machine built into the wall. The printer kept printing long after the doctor was done, and everybody waited impatiently for the results.
Or maybe that was just Tiff.
Dr. Waters ripped off the page when it finished and scanned the analysis. His surprise was apparent as his brows slowly vacationed toward his hairline.
“Two S’s and a D?” He whistled. He glanced over at Tiff appraisingly, as if looking at her for the first time. “I can see why you might be worried. If this were some script, somebody’s setting you up for some really cliche stuff. Those are some real Villainous stats right there.”
The man chuckled, but Tiff was unmoving, her features schooled into an iron mask.
“Don’t worry,” the man laughed. “It doesn’t change anything. You’ll be fine, I’m sure, but we will want to give you a Might test. Being below C isn’t good, but a D isn’t an F, so we’ll just want to make sure you’re not extra brittle or anything. Do you have any known conditions or diseases?”
“No,” Victoria answered for her. “As I’m sure the records you already have state, her medical history shows no complications. She’s never even broken a bone.”
“And let’s hope we keep things that way,” he answered with a smile.
Dr. Waters brought out several small tools to test Tiff’s physical condition. Might wasn’t just, “How much do you lift (bro)?” In addition to physical strength, it also tested endurance and durability.
Melissa, Tiff’s mom, had an overall A, but if broken down into the three specialized categories- power, endurance, and durability -she would be S, B, and A.
Meaning, if she put her mind to it, Melissa could lift upwards of three tons. She regularly acted as a human forklift.
But her endurance was her “weakest” point, despite still being far greater than a standard human, meaning she could only exert herself for so long before she got tuckered out. Still, being able to lift 5,000 pounds for 8 hours a day was insane.
To cap it off, she had an A in durability, meaning it would take more than a standard caliber bullet to pierce her skin, and she could literally wrestle a grizzly bear for kicks and giggles and come out unscathed.
So what did that mean for Tiff?
She was a solid D all around.
Mark set her up on a machine with adjustable weights. Tiff felt like she was back in gym class, but she had to begrudgingly admit she preferred these shocking discoveries to take place in a lab where her peers couldn’t make fun of her as she tested her limits. Tiff wasn’t particularly strong before, but now, on average, she was about 25 percent weaker than her personal bests in arm curls, bench press, leg press, and so on. Strength testing took almost an hour, and Tiff was thoroughly exhausted (and depressed) by the end of it.
This also explained her endurance. Tiff had to jog on a treadmill, and even though she wasn’t planning on joining the track team at any point in her career, she was reasonably certain she could run an 8-minute mile…something they had to do as their final exam in Physical Education last year. Tiff knew she could do this because she passed.
She didn’t think she’d pass if she had to do it again. After roughly 6 minutes, her legs felt like jelly, and Tiff was pretty sure she barely cleared the halfway point.
Durability…wasn’t something they could easily test. Most of the time, the test was being handled when the person being Assessed was above average, not the other way around. Dr. Waters had her place her arm in a machine that inflated a ring around her bicep like a blood pressure cuff, but it somehow gave different results. Thankfully, Tiff wouldn’t break into a million pieces if she fell down some stairs, but Dr. Waters warned her seriously about making sure never to get into any fights.
Testing Mind and Magic sounded like they should have been much more interesting…but sadly, Tiff had no idea how her new stats would even manifest.
Mostly, “Magic” represented things beyond everyday science. Stuff like summoning things from empty air, creating energy blasts, or projecting. Essentially forcing a person’s will onto the world and getting a physical result.
As opposed to “Mind,” which, in theory, had a lot of overlap with Magic, but the results weren’t tangible. Telepathy was the famous example, being able to read or cast thoughts, but also things like Technomancers. Technology, some might say, was very much not magic.
Some might argue that it is.
Regardless, a [Technomancer] uses their mind to influence something that already exists in the real world, not to create it from scratch.
Both the Mind and Magic stats also had three subsets: power, endurance, and durability. But as Tiff didn't know how to use her singular ability (and most definitely wasn’t going to try until she got somewhere very safe), she couldn’t really participate in most tests.
Dr. Waters ran her through several, confirming that she did not fall under any of the restricted Classes, and told them to visit any Appraiser if anything changed further down the line.
He clacked away at his keyboard, entered Tiff’s information, and eventually printed out a sheet and handed it to Tiff.
It looked a lot like a driver’s license (not that Tiff had one) or an ID. It had her name, picture (from before all the tests made her sweaty), and her relevant information like age, height, weight, etc. It also had her three Ms: D, S, S.
At the bottom was a strange little insignia that looked like a Venn diagram, with the word “undisclosed” in the middle of it. Tiff glanced up.
“Borromean Rings,” the man smirked. “As made famous by an Italian Renaissance family, the Borromeo. Well documented, with many members having very different Affinities.” The doctor sighed. “I figured you didn't want to declare your Affinity to the record. Most don’t. Especially since it can change, and it’s annoying to go in just to update it.”
Tiff nodded curtly. They thanked the doctor for his time, having been inside the Union for several hours, and Victoria made sure they weren’t leaving anything behind. As they reached for the door, Doctor Waters called out with some somewhat fateful words…at least, to Tiff.
“Good luck out there, with everything you plan to do,” he said harmlessly. “I promise you, the Greyscale isn’t as big a deal as it might sound at first. But, since it seems to matter to you, I’ll leave you with this. My daughter, who’s a little younger than you…well, you don’t need the details, but we were watching an old movie the other day, and there’s a line that I think is fitting.
“Heed the immortal words of Zangief, a fictional video game character making a cameo in an animated movie: Just because you’re a bad guy, doesn’t mean you’re a bad guy.”