Stumbling into Victory 5
Jonathan YukawaBrockton Bay, NH, USA
I pounded the heavy bag with a methodical rhythm, ignoring the stinging in my fists. The patterns came, not quite naturally, but close now. I could allow my mind to wander a bit while I put myself through the basics. Maybe it was my imagination, but I could feel that I was stronger than I’d been just a scant few weeks ago.
Last night’s encounter played in my mind. It’d gone about as well as I could have hoped for. I introduced myself to law enforcement, showed I could handle nonviolent arrests, and met an established hero. Most importantly, I got ahead of any suspicions about me being a biotinker, hopefully staving off a potential witch hunt in the future.
I expected the PRT to ask me to come in for power testing, but I planned to decline. They’d have to settle for an incomplete list of the monsters I had. There was no way I was going to go through every Yugioh card. Even just the ones used during Duelist Kingdom were too many to name.
In the end, I settled on a name I hadn’t considered until after my patrol: Konami. That was the name of the company that published Yugioh cards in my old world. The name implied I was a Japanese hydrokinetic, “konami” meant “little wave,” but I supposed it didn’t matter. It was a reference I understood and that was good enough for me.
PHO verification was pretty simple. This morning before I set out for the gym, I took a photo of myself seated against a blank wall in my dorm. Silver sat next to me and Firegrass croaked happily on my lap. Already, I was getting shit from internet trolls about why a man called “Little Wave” had an Eye of Horus around his neck. The internet will internet.
“Good focus, kid,” James Laborn said as he clapped my back. “Start cooling down. I want to talk to you about something.”
“Yes, coach,” I grunted.
I stepped away from the heavy bag and picked up a jump rope. One hundred light jumps and final stretches before heading to the showers was the routine here.
When I came out, James called me into his office. The space was not much bigger than a janitor closet, with a small, plywood desk and a foldable chair. The desk space was covered with an old computer, jerseys, and occasional paperwork scattered seemingly at random. An uncovered light bulb swung slowly from the ceiling.
James Laborn was a bear stuffed inside a locker. His broad shoulders looked cramped behind the small desk. Behind him was a filing cabinet and a single family photo. The office said a lot about the man: If it was functional, it was good.
“You wanted to see me, coach?” I asked as I shut the door behind me. I unfolded another folding chair from behind the door and took a seat.
“You’ve been here for what? Two weeks? Three?” he began. “You’re a solid kid, Jon. You’re on time, you work hard, and don’t bitch about getting roughed up a bit.”
“Thank you?” I said, almost hesitantly. That really was high praise coming from the normally taciturn man. It sounded downright weird. “What’s up?”
“Look, kid. Brian said you had some learning issues when you were younger. Couldn’t keep focused and shit.”
“Uh, yeah, we talked about that a few times. My grandmother made me fold paper cranes to keep my hands busy. I started picking up a bunch of random hobbies after that.”
“Good, I want you to tutor my daughter,” he said, gesturing to the photo. Brian. Aisha. No Celia, though. It must have been taken after the divorce. “She’s thirteen, eighth grade.”
That caught me by surprise. In a way, it was what I’d been angling for by coming to this gym, a connection to the main cast. And yet, I hadn’t expected it to come like this. I figured I’d meet Brian and get my shit rocked for a few months before Leviathan. Maybe, if we hit it off, I could have a friend and leverage the connection to smooth things over later if I needed to cooperate with the Undersiders.
I knew about Aisha of course, but she hadn’t really been a consideration. Not only was she a kid, she hadn’t even triggered yet. If I remembered right, she triggered post-Leviathan. She and James would get assaulted by scavengers and she’d trigger with the power to affect perception and memory, going unnoticed even by her own father.
“I… I mean, why me?” I asked. “I’m really not smart enough to be tutoring anyone, boss.”
“You’re smart enough,” he said with a scoff. “This is middle school shit, Jon.”
“Maybe, but still. There’s gotta be someone better. Leilani? She’s pretty sharp, too.”
“She is, but Aisha’s like you, got that ADHD or whatever. Look, I don’t need straight As. I just want my little girl to do her homework and for her to not have to feel like a failure whenever she cracks open a book.”
“There’s medication for that. I mean, I’m not sure what I can do for her.”
“Boy, you think I have pill-money? The best I can do is waive your gym membership,” he said with a tired shake of his head. “Sit with her, teach her a few tricks that worked for you, and walk her through her homework assignments. That’s all I’m asking for, kid.”
I was reluctant. It was yet another promise, a commitment on my already taxed schedule. I wasn’t unsympathetic, but I never liked rearranging my life around someone else. It was one of several reasons why Anne and I hadn’t worked out.
James Laborn was not a good father. He did well enough raising Brian, teaching him to be a principled kid who stuck his neck out for his sister, but he failed to give Brian the tools and skills to do that the right way. And with a little girl with developmental issues, James had no idea what to do with himself.
Even so, he was trying. He found someone who might understand his daughter’s issues and was reaching out in the only way he knew how. All else said, he cared. I couldn’t find it in me to fault that.
‘What do you think, Atem? I already work at the library when I’m not here or in class. Then there’s my cape life to think about,’ I asked him. My social life was practically nonexistent as it was.
‘Why are you asking me? This is your life, and your choice in the end,’ he said plainly. ‘It seems like a simple question to me: Do you want to help him?’
‘I do. I mean, beyond having read about Brian and Aisha, this is something I can do to concretely help someone, right?’
‘Then help. Besides, wasn’t it you who told me that it was customary to steal from villains? Can you not quit your job at the library and acquire funds from your work as a hero?’
‘That’s true, but we don’t need to resort to that right away. I should be good for a month or so. It’ll be hard, but I think I can make it work.’
‘Then do as your heart leads. If you wish to act, act. Do not complicate matters, my friend. That is my advice for you, now, and in all things.’
With those words, the ancient pharaoh fell silent.
“Alright, coach,” I said with a nod. “I’ll give it a go. I have classes too so I can’t do this every day, you understand?”
“That’s fine, just a couple times a week to touch base,” he said with obvious relief.
We agreed that I’d change up my gym schedule a bit. I’d show up in the afternoons now on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. That’d give me the chance to attend morning class and grab lunch before jogging over. James said he’d have Aisha over from school by the time I finished my workout. I’d tutor her in his office, right here.
For now, the goal was just to help her finish her homework and keep her from running off. This way, he could also take the chance to make sure she’s been eating more than junk food. That was already better than anything Celia was doing.
X
Quitting my part-time job made for an awkward conversation. I actually enjoyed those quiet afternoons as the assistant librarian. The college librarians were nice and I was largely left to my own devices. Alas, the job just didn’t fit my schedule anymore.
Well, it could, but I refused to give up the time I’d already carved out for my hobbies. Was I ever going to need to know how to brew authentic yerba mate or make zimbuleh? No, but it was fun trying. Was I annoying my dormmates by doing it anyway? Possibly. Would I choose my weird, niche hobbies over a literal job that paid money? Absolutely, so long as I wasn't starving.
Regardless, I got it settled. I now had class, worked out, and would tutor Aisha. That was about all the social obligations I was willing to consistently commit to on top of my cape life.
I took a final sip of my probably-did-it-wrong mate and got ready to go out again. Having given up my job, this was no longer just about being a hero. Now, I was looking for a payout, something substantial that could hopefully bolster my limited savings. I had a month before I’d be forced to do something silly.
That simple reality made this feel more grounded, more real. I didn’t hate the feeling. After all, being a cape, being a hero, ought to have a bit of gravitas in a person’s life.
Like yesterday, I rode on Silver’s back. The city streets vanished beneath his loping strides. The moon at our backs illuminated every shadow, allowing us to glance into each alley. Feeling a bit more confident, I steered Silver on a path through one of the less friendly neighborhoods on the outskirts of Empire turf.
It turned out to be another uneventful patrol. I stopped a handful of muggings and broke up a fight between two drunks behind a parking lot. I didn’t have to do much, just show my mug and say hello. Good sense won out and one guy was led away by his friends while the second let me call him a cab home.
That was nice and all, but I was fifteen bucks down on cab fare. Given I started this patrol with the intent to make money off my heroics, this wasn’t good. I had a vague plan in mind to punch muggers and mug them back. Or maybe, I could follow a Merchant drug dealer back to his safehouse. Unfortunately, reality was turning out to be rather uncooperative.
‘You know, I am no great expert on heroics, but it strikes me that muggers would not be muggers if they already had disposable income,’ Atem said with a dry chuckle. The bastard wasn’t even trying not to laugh.
I flipped through some poor schmuck’s wallet. He had six bucks. I tossed it on the ground in annoyance. ‘Yes, the fault in my plan is rather obvious at the moment.’
‘You will have to raid a gang safehouse, but finding one might be tricky.’
‘You’re right. This is fine. I’m not in a rush. My savings should last me a month or two if I’m frugal.’
‘As you say.’
We kept moving. Eventually, I ran into another group of four boys. Three were wrestling a fourth, younger kid to the ground. At a guess, the kid was thirteen or fourteen while the three were a few years his senior.
Two held him down, one for each arm, while the third laughed about it and looked for something in his pocket. They were so distracted that the literal moon at my back didn’t catch their attention. I settled on a nearby rooftop and called Man-Eater Bug.
Summoning monsters was still a strange feeling. I could feel a spiritual tether between them and me, but I couldn’t command them telepathically yet. What I could do was give them impressions during the summoning itself, a set of initial operating commands to get them started. In Man-Eater Bug’s case, I had him circle around and lie in ambush.
Then, Silver and I landed on the other side of the alley with a dull thump. That finally got their attention. The three boys turned to look at me. Their eyes widened as the moon illuminated their faces. I could see the dilated pupils and the gleaming needle gripped in one boy’s hand.
My eyes hardened as I slipped off Silver’s back. Patting my wolf on the shoulder, I urged him forward. “Rush them down. Nonlethal, but don’t be too gentle.”
“Shit, cape!” one shouted as the three of them stumbled to their feet. He sounded like he was going to say more, but Silver was already upon them.
Silver was a good boy. He had orders, and “nonlethal” meant “no fangs or claws.” That meant the idiot didn’t get himself disemboweled within the second.
But in the end, Silver Fang was a duel monster, a spirit beast with all the brutal mass of a warhorse and the deadly grace of a direwolf. The one with the needle in his hand stood up and turned around to run, only for Silver to shoulder him into the alley, hard.
The other two got four steps to the other side of the alley before Silver caught up to them. And that, only because he had to gently paw around their victim. That one had given up trying to stand at all and was doing his best to make himself look as small as possible. Honestly, it was pretty helpful.
The second boy went down when Silver placed both paws on his back. No claws, just weight alone was enough to bring him to the ground. If his collarbones cracked from suddenly supporting the weight of my pet wolf, I chose not to care.
I walked into the alley whistled, calling Silver back. He let out a low, rumbling growl that kept the two boys still. Slowly, I pulled the victim to his feet. He was a slightly chubby kid, not quite into puberty yet.
“You good?” I asked, giving him a quick once-over.
“Y-Yes?” he said, though it came out more a question than an answer. “I-They…”
“Yeah, sit there and catch your breath. Call the cops if you’ve got a phone.”
“R-Right. That guy’s getting awa–”
“He’s not.”
I turned to eye the third one. He looked back at us in the alley. For a moment, a look of triumph crossed his face. He thought he got away, that I wouldn’t chase him if he left his buddies behind to keep me occupied. After all, what was honor among thieves?
Then, he turned around and the loudest, highest pitched shriek I ever heard filled the night. Man-Eater Bug had finally chosen to reveal himself. Apparently, the way-too-fucking-big mantid had a sense of humor because he’d silently crawled right behind the last punk, only to rise to his full height the moment he turned around.
Strictly speaking, discounting game mechanics, Silver Fang was the stronger monster. I could feel it in the amount of ba they each cost me. Even just by size alone, Man-Eater Bug was a lot smaller than my wolf.
Then again, the insect monster was clearly an ambush predator. There was something viscerally, primally terrifying about a man-sized mantid who could move that silently. I now knew that yes, a man could in fact faint from terror. Almost sheepishly, my bug dragged the last punk back into the alley.
“Thanks, bud,” I said casually, as though I was speaking to just another person.
‘Is this… normal?’ Atem asked. Gone was his usual good cheer, replaced by the cold, judging voice of the pharaoh.
‘Bullying? Or these chumps trying to forcibly inject drugs into someone else?’
‘The latter. I am not unaccustomed to schoolyard bullying. This is worse than even anything Joey did to Yugi.’
‘Yeah, well, this is just how Merchants conduct “business development” around here,’ I said sarcastically. Truthfully, this was my first encounter too, but I’d heard about it from my dormmates. ‘There’s a reason the Merchants are looked down on more than the literal Nazis.’
‘This deserves punishment. Perhaps they would like a taste of their own medicine?’ he suggested darkly.
I was reminded then that this was not Yugi, but Atem. This was the pharaoh who grew up in a time of great tragedy and conflict for his people. He was a genuinely kind man, but also a man who understood the language of violence like few others in modern times.
Once upon a time, he’d levied some truly horrific judgments upon some of Yugi’s bullies. Some were driven insane. Others literally died to complete their “penalty games.” Now that I thought about it, I was pretty sure Atem burned some kid to death before. The shadow games were very real, and he was their undisputed master.
‘No, I’m not going to inject whatever’s in those needles into the perpetrators,’ I said tiredly. ‘Is that what justice was like?’
‘It was,’ he said without shame or reservation. ‘They sought to ruin a life for personal gain. It is only right that they experience the same ruin. One could argue that the scales are thus balanced.’
‘I suppose so, from one perspective. But I want to believe that morality is not something that can be weighed.’
‘It is, quite literally so. One day, all will be weighed against the Feather of Ma’at.’
‘That day is not today, Atem,’ I said firmly. And wasn’t that a trip, direct confirmation of the afterlife from a guy who’d literally been there before. ‘I am neither wise nor a god. Let such a being judge their sins.’
‘Yugi believed the same,’ he said with an audible smile. ‘You two are more alike than you know.’
‘Were you testing me?’
‘No. I truly see nothing wrong with inflicting their own poison upon them. I merely offer an alternative perspective.’
We waited with the victim. Silver, being a whole lot more empathetic than Man-Eater Bug, allowed the shaken boy to pet him while we waited for the cops.
Things progressed smoothly after the cops arrived. At this point, they knew of me and the handoff was just a few minutes of getting our statements. My new insect monster creeped them out a bit, but it wasn’t hard to show them I had him fully under my control.
X
We found no more criminals for the evening. We were about to head back when we noticed someone approaching. He was a cape, that much was obvious by the way he hopped across rooftops, but I didn’t immediately recognize his outfit.
The man’s costume was well-made. His helmet looked like a cross between a motorcycle helmet and that of a Roman legionnaire’s. He also wore a thick, leather jacket and a pair of obviously tinkertech skates. They looked massive on his slim frame, like clown shoes worn by a seventies era roller derby enthusiast.
As I watched, he leapt the last gap between the rooftops. His skates took him much higher than logic dictated and he almost seemed to float, as if he’d jumped on the moon instead of earth. I tried to recall a tinker who specialized in rocket shoes, or maybe gravity tech, and came up blank.
“Can I help you?” I asked calmly. Mentally, I got my spells ready just in case. I’d made a point of not revealing my ability to cast spells so Hinotama would probably catch him off guard.
“Ah, yeah, maybe?’ he said. He sounded young. I downgraded his age a few years in my head; he probably belonged in the Wards. “No, actually, it’s more about what I can do for you.”
I stared at him with an unimpressed frown. I wondered if he was a new trigger, one of those unmentioned capes destined to become a statistic. “Is that right? Fine, let’s start with names. I go by Konami. You?”
“Right, names. Chariot. I’m a tinker who specializes in mobility. You know, anything that moves transports anything else. I’m kind of a courier around here.”
Dots connected. Signals fired. I recognized the name, if not his appearance. He was a character around Taylor’s age. Now that he was so close, I could see that the skates added several inches to his height, which was why I’d thought he looked older than he was. In canon, he was a minor character who appeared post-Leviathan. I couldn’t remember if he had any appearances before that.
That made me cautious. Not of Chariot, his name was Trevor out of costume, but of the man pulling his strings. Chariot had been a part of Coil’s broader network of cape contacts. It could be that Coil recruited him long before Leviathan. Or, Coil found him in the wreckage and offered a desperate kid the devil’s bargain. I couldn’t remember.
“Is that right?” I asked slowly, mostly to buy time to think. “I did a pretty thorough search of any capes in the city. You didn’t come up.”
“Well, duh,” he said in that way only a teenage boy could. He held out an honest-to-god business card for me to take. “I’m a courier, not a gang cape. I deliver things from point A to point B and don’t ask questions.”
“Implying you don’t mind if they’re contraband. You sure you want to admit that to a hero?”
“Meh, everyone’s got a price. Look, a guy’s gotta eat, right? It’s not like I’m hurting anyone.”
“You’re hardly the worst thing in the city but you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t have any business for you, Chariot. Never mind being a hero, I don’t even have other contacts to send mail to in the first place.”
He chuckled sheepishly. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a phone. “Actually, that’s the thing. I have a client, see? He asked me to find you. Would you be willing to hear him out?”
“Who?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.
“His name is Coil.”
Author’s Note
Yerba mate is a drink that originates from South American indigenous people. That’s as detailed as I can get without offending someone. Seriously, people feel very passionately about this stuff and lots of Native American groups had it before the Spaniards fucked up the continent.
As for what it is, it’s basically a replacement for coffee from what I understand. It’s very herby, has caffeine, and is drunk from a ceramic gourd after being packed tight with herbs. It’s a communal drink that you sip then pass to the next person.
Atem is scary. Honestly, though? Yugioh’s earliest comics were really cool. For those who’ve never read them, the genre isn’t card games, but “shadow games” more broadly. That’s why Atem is the “King of Games,” not “King of Duel Monsters.” Bro used to be cold as fuck.
Fun fact: Chariot, Trevor Medina, was a part of Coil’s broader network of contacts over a year before canon. Well, the only evidence we have on that is Coil saying so, but it’s not so hard to imagine that Coil might want a tinker on retainer.
Animal Fact: Mallards can surf. Yes, they’re a type of duck. Yes, they’re usually freshwater fowl. But in Southern California, they’ve learned to ride the waves. The neat part is that even most saltwater fowl don’t like the breaking waves.
They will float, allow the coming wave to lift them along, then ride this wave until it breaks. At the point it breaks, they dive and “dabble,” like they would in any other pond. This muddling behavior lets them stir the sand and catch sandcrabs.
This is one of the few ways a bird can catch a sandcrab because sandcrabs, though abundant in shores, emerge from their burrows only when the water rolls in. By the time the sea pulls back, it’s already too late. Mallards have learned to use the brief moment of a breaking wave to snag them before they can escape underground.