He looked down. Boots fastened, bag over his shoulder, he looked like your average 24th century hitchhiker. Just minus the scruffy, road wise look, and the capability to stow away on your average space freighter.
But as he walked along the freeway, making sure to duck his head low to not be seen in the headlights of the vehicles zipping by overhead, he wasn’t going for a port, nor was he looking to hop in a stranger’s vehicle. He had a different destination in mind.
It was right where the forum had said it would be. The door, unobtrusive and unassuming. Except of course, for the fact that it was a wooden door sitting under an industrial freeway. He stared at it for a moment. Was he really doing this?
His mind flashed to being called a mutant and a danger. The walk of shame from the registration office to the door, with everyone knowing where he’d come from.
And suddenly, he didn’t have any hesitation, he opened the door, and stepped through, fully expecting to hit a blank wall and have to trod home in the dead of night.
Instead, he found what he wasn’t expecting: It worked. He was suddenly in what looked like the common room of an apartment or flat. Large, spacious, and windowless, the room was decorated with holotables, kitchen gear, and a fabricator to boot. There were lights on, and the thought of how they got electricity crossed his mind, but he shook it off. Plenty of ways to do that.
He called out with a bit of nervousness in his voice.
“Hello? Anyone home? It’s uh-”
Right. His screen name.
“MagentaTidings!”
He winced. So lame.
He heard a door open. Someone else stepped into the room. Another guy, good looking, probably a little older than him, had a sweep of blonde hair, and well tanned skin that almost made him look like the sort of model you saw advertising supplements or telling you to sign up for the Alliance Army. He smiled.
“Hey-glad you made it! Dorian said he left the door for you-”
Dorian. Online, he’d been DoorMaker. Not very subtle.
“-I’m Pietro. Or, uh-” He laughed, a little awkwardly. “Remember_77%. If you’re so keen.”
“Oh-uh. My actual name is Atlas. The Magenta name, it wasn’t-anything.”
Pietro nodded.
“Good to meet you Atlas. I’d get the crew out here, but we’re scattered across the system at the moment…” He said, with a shake of his head. “But hey. In the meantime…remind me what you do?”
The question caught him off guard.
“What do you-” Alas started, unsteady in his words.
“Your powers. What are they?” Pietro clarified, gently.
“Oh. I…” Atlas’s face scrunched. Trying to think of how to explain them. “I light fuses on…things. Then they explode. The explosion radius is random, and it’s just raw…force.”
The best way to describe it. The first time he realized he could do it, his math teachers glasses nearly tore his head off.
“And how long ago were you exposed?” Pietro asked, following up.
“…A few months ago? I only found out about…this, a few weeks ago.”
He had to think about it. The past few months had been a blur. Being exposed to the cosmic radiation on the way home from school, being rushed to the hospital. Getting released, and accidently making his neighbor’s car explode by looking too hard. Having to go get registered, the ridicule, the…
His parent’s had looked up to see how much it would cost to send him away to a training facility. Apparently too much for them to do it.
“Well, you’ll be right at home here, Atlas. You can stay as long or as little as you want. Until you can find a better spot in the system somewhere. Dorian can send you to anywhere in the core planets. He maintains the space, too-I keep telling him he’s got the best powers out of all of us. He’ll get you a room added when he’s awake again.”
Atlas smiled, for the first time since getting here. At least, genuinely.
“How many people stay here?” He asked, curious. How many people like him were there?
“Seven, currently. Five who will be here awhile, two who will probably move on soon. Not including you. Those of us that stay here tend to have…warrants out, or more nasty business. We try to stay honed, in case the Alliance or Empire intel division manages to find our hideout.”
Pietro said all that fairly nonchalantly. He didn’t seem worried, so Atlas wasn’t either. A question did pop into his head, though.
“Hone…?” He said, with a bit of curiosity.
“Oh. We try to keep our powers in shape, and make sure we’re ready. Sometimes that involves target practice, or a bit of a heist. They don’t treat us right, we don’t treat them right, I say!” With enthusiasm, he said that.
Atlas paused. Target practice? Heist?
“You should come with us next time we go out?” Pietro continued. “It’d be a good way for you to get to know everyone.”
That sounded…nice. Atlas realized. So he nodded, and Pietro smiled nice and wide.
Nine days later, Atlas was sliding on a mask shaped like a cartoonish bomb, with his hair coming out in a ponytail where the fuse should be. Pietro slid on a mask, and so did the three others. He barely remembered their names. He was nervous.
Dorian had opened a door, and motioned them through.
“Don’t get killed, don’t get caught, yeah?” He said to the group.
Everyone else said yeah, or something similar, Atlas mumbled his.
And then they were off. Into a cold night in one of the colonies, a small town on a wooded planet. An alleyway now held the wooden door that Atlas knew was out of place.
But it didn’t really matter. Pietro stepped forward, putting a hand to the wall, and came away with a knife made from the same synthetic material as the wall. And he threw it.
It sank into the neck of a passerby. Dead in an instant. As the rest of the group began to fan out, and began practicing.
At first, Atlas was cold, surprised, confused at the violence. He mostly just practiced on the parked vehicles and people’s front windows. But then, one of the girls in the group used her powers on him, and each person he saw was a familiar face. His parents, the receptionist at the registration office, the stupid math teacher.
The warm splatter of blood on his front got easier after that. The screaming, though, he never got used to.
Kindling And Miscellany 