The fall was longer, or perhaps he was just more aware of it this time. He wasn’t certain which it was, but he was aware that there was an extra element to it this time. Two of them, in fact. One was a spreading numbness through his entire body, something he felt he should probably be grateful for as he caught disturbing flashes of said body changing, flesh twisting and warping. The reason he could even see those flashes was the other change, as coruscating lights in many colors were flashing in, around, and through him as he fell through otherwise empty space.
Partway through the fall, he tried to gasp with his whole being as he felt himself connect to something. Then his brain felt like it was being overclocked and hit by a brick at the same time as information slammed into it at a rate he couldn’t possibly track. As it faded, he was left with knowledge about his new powers.
No. Not powers.
Power.
While it might look like a bunch of unrelated powers from the outside, he now understood how everything he’d input had been merged and melded together. The information almost seared into his brain. Tamaranean physiology had merged with Force Sensitivity. His strength, flight and energy bolts were no longer fueled by solar energy absorption, but by a connection to an esoteric energy that made up the boundary between Chaos and Order. It was neither, it was both, it was the thing in between.
It was also everywhere, just like Chaos and Order were, blanketing the omniverse in a way that explained how his pre-cognition could function. The energy itself was effectively limitless, every conflicting act of chaos and order making just a bit more of it to siphon as they repelled each other. He would only be able to hold so much of it at once, but it would always refill and his reserves could grow.
It even, he now understood, provided the energy for the Creation ability he’d gotten from Momo’s template. That ability was neither chaos nor order, but both at the same time. Chaos to fuel the rearrangement of energy from the paths it wanted to be by default, Order to give the new arrangement logic and sense, physics and rules. One to bring the unreal into reality, the other to give the unreality enough form to keep existing.
He marveled over his new, intrinsic understanding of the energy. A bone, blood, and soul deep thing he’d never have been able to quantify without having lived life without it first. Then, he was forcefully dragged from his wonder as he stopped falling and bounced. That wasn’t really what happened, any more than he’d really been ‘falling’ in the first place. But it was the best description he could give to feeling like he’d momentarily become a soap bubble that compressed and released as it hit something.
Then there was light.
No, not in some grand revelation of creation.
Just…sunlight. Admittedly somewhat dim sunlight which came with a lungful of the sort of smog only the most polluted of cities came pre-loaded with. The combination and the abruptness of it was almost more disorientating than the darkness and lights had been. His brain tried to reboot as he stared out at what he oh-so-slowly started to process was a rather gothic take on a modern city. He didn’t recognize it, not immediately, but he supposed he hadn’t really expected to.
Then he managed to get his brain unscrambled enough to look down at himself and realized it might be time to rethink his pronouns. ‘He’ didn’t necessarily seem to fit all that well with the rather impressive rack that was, thankfully, clothed. Equally thankfully, the clothing wasn’t based off the images he (she?) had used. Instead, he (she?) was dressed in a fairly simple dark T-shirt and admittedly tight-fitting pair of jeans. The shirt was a bit punkish leaning, with some band name he didn’t recognize splashed across the front, but he (she?) could dig it.
Okay, actually, that gender thing was getting annoying already. Just as he was about to try and puzzle it out, there was a buzzing from his pocket, making him jump in surprise. A smartphone was quickly pulled out, with it thankfully having a biometric thumbprint scan set for unlock. A picture of his (her?) new form was set as the background…and there was a text message that he quicky pulled up.
=================
Congratulations! You’ve arrived!
This phone is one last parting gift to you. It can’t be lost, stolen or destroyed! It will always return to you in some fashion if anything happens to it, or if you simply will it to, and few will notice when it does. While it can make local calls, those aren’t free. You’ll need to acquire a sim card from an appropriate carrier just like anyone else. Though any sim card, or similar item from another reality, will work with it. Including ones intended for satellite phones or interstellar comm networks.
Calls aside, what it does do for free, beyond the usual smartphone things, is keep track of your new power and provide the guides you were promised on how to advance in or learn new tricks with the abilities you’ve been granted. It’s also a truly secure place to keep data or notes, being unhackable no matter who tries. Good luck! We recommend starting by looking up your location, the basic map function is also free! Though don’t assume you’ll know anything about the city you arrive in, just because you were familiar with one version…
-TPTB
=================
Well. That was certainly useful enough. Though one thing was needed before he/she checked that out. Because seriously, developing a split personality from not knowing what to refer to him or herself as was not a good way to start. So…
Eh. Fuck it.
Body looked mostly female, right? So settle on ‘she’ for internal self-reference! Though, honestly, he she didn’t feel like giving any care to what pronouns other people used. She was her and what other people did, said, or saw her as was frankly their problem. Now, how about a name. Had she been hooked up with a local identity? She quickly looked through the options on the phone and didn’t find one. Well, that would have been too easy, she supposed.
Though it did mean she could pick a name. That would be useful. Also something she might need if she had to introduce herself. Her previous one had been distinctly male, both first and middle. Something neutral like Sam maybe? Short for Samantha or Samuel? Or lean into the new choices? Eh, it didn’t have to be a permeant choice right now. So how about Alyssa?
That was a decent name. No edgy isekai bullshit of pseudo-latin or the name of a goddess or some overblown shit. Last name was easier, use something to tie back to his past. Not his own last name, it had been super boring. But he had a legitimate claim on King from one side of the family.
Yeah, Alyssa King had a decent ring to it.
Now, to actually follow that advice and check where she was.
“Fuck. Wait, no. It said not to assume anything. Still, possibly fuck.”
She was really going to need to find somewhere to get information on this reality. Because Gotham City, NJ did not inspire confidence. It was probably a good thing she was bulletproof…
Mostly, at least.
… … …
Thankfully, Alyssa hadn’t been shot as she’d used the map to find a local library. That said, she also hadn’t been particularly encouraged along the way. Now that she knew what to look for, there was plenty of evidence that this Gotham was at least some version of the fictional one she’d been quasi-familiar with. Only quasi-familiar as she both honestly hadn’t been a big fan of Batman in general, and it had been rebooted and redone so many times that even what she did know would have been suspect, at best. And that even without the warning not to make assumptions.
Still, the signs of it being a troubled city were present. She, or he at the time she supposed, had grown up not far outside St. Louis and knew more or less what to look for. The fact she was in a fairly nice-looking area of town, yet there were still subtle gang tags revealed with even a quick side eye down side streets was just one. Another was the patches of paint and replacement of concrete which showed where serious damage had been done. Add in the wariness of the general population as she moved through the streets and the picture hadn’t looked fantastic.
Her research on a public computer had only confirmed her fears…while also leaving her completely bewildered.
Gotham City existed and there was a Bat themed vigilante, certainly. There even had been a Robin, though there wasn’t one now. Instead, there was a Batgirl, which he didn’t remember enough about DC to say was how it should be or not. Yet, for all that there were shades of familiarity, there were differences too. Such as Catwoman seeming to have been replaced by White Tiger, who was more vigilante than thief. An archer of female appearance going by Hawkeye was also in the city doing vigilante work, but the colors of her costume seemed to resemble those he vaguely remembered of Artemis from Young Justice.
Investigating that had really dropped her down the rabbit hole, for the ‘changes’ in Gotham were a drop in the bucket to what she’d found elsewhere.
‘Hawkeye’ had been a legacy name…passed down by an original who’d been a member of a Hero Team called the Avengers. A team which included Iron Man and Black Widow…but also a distinctly-female Ghost Spider, Wonder Woman, a Blue Lantern, and Cheetah. General searches farther afield had turned up no Metropolis City or Superman, but had turned up Jump City with a Young Avengers team keeping the peace from a tower shaped like a Giant A. Just to make matters worse, while the Avengers and Shield existed…so too did the Justice League, the World Heroes Association, and the Parahuman Response Team.
That last of which had freaked her out enough to search Endbringers…and get even more confused by the results that had turned up. They existed all right, but there were far more of them than there should have been and most of them weren’t nearly as cataclysmic as the ones from Worm. They ranged from freaking Godzilla, who was apparently real and occasionally had to be dealt with, to…Solomon Grundy. That last was apparently low on the Endbringer power scale, though still quite a bit more dangerous than the Solomon Grundy she remembered from DC.
From what she’d been able to determine, Endbringers here were considered a natural and old phenomenon. A sort of natural disaster that was summoned into existence and very much could be killed. Not permanently. Apparently killing them only banished them, while they formed either when summoned by cultists or naturally when nature got out of whack in the wrong ways. A quick overview had left Alyssa feeling like they worked more like Primals from Final Fantasy XIV than Endbringers. Though they thankfully lacked a tempering effect like those had.
Magic was openly known about but rare. Just another oddity on top of oddities.
Cybernetics were common, with some parts of the world having leaned into them hard enough that Neo Tokyo resembled something out of Cyberpunk 2077. Including, as it happened, having a company named Arasaka that was international, but thankfully didn’t have its own aircraft carriers and enormous private military. Not to mention that the net she was using was just the shallow end, something far more like the Net from Cyberpunk or Ghost in the Shell very much did exist. Something which made her very glad she’d chosen Motoko’s skillset in the end.
In short, the entire world was an amalgamation of every Superhero setting she could remember off hand, and quite a few that hadn’t had Superpowers at all. With a large number of active heroes and villains she didn’t recognize, or recognized as being on the wrong side compared to what she’d known. Don’t make assumptions, indeed.
Ugh.
Glancing at the clock in the public computer’s system tray, Alyssa grimaced as she realized she’d been here for hours. She’d arrived right at noon, and it was now four in the afternoon. Which meant she needed to stop freaking out over what she did or didn’t know and look after far more practical concerns. Little things like acquiring a place to sleep and more than one change of clothes. Though the latter was something she could probably take care of with her creation ability, if she didn’t mind a few dozen fumbled attempts since she’d never made clothes before.
Right. Money first.
She’d had a plan for that from the moment she first selected Momo’s power, and it would do for her immediate needs. Time to find a quiet spot to create a few things, then a pawn shop that would exchange tacky-looking gold jewelry for cash…
… … …
Thankfully, pawn shops were exactly the sort of place that stayed open late. Equally thankfully, there weren’t any particular bullshit restrictions on the creation ability she’d inherited from Momo’s template. Creating gold had been easy, since it was a single uniform element. Alloying it to get the mix of gold, copper and silver she’d looked up as the norm for 18k jewelry had taken a fair bit longer. Then getting it to come out as acceptably professional-looking jewelry had taken a bit more time on top of the other two steps.
She’d thankfully had enough common sense to make very small amounts of the gold, so she could just pocket the failures of her alloy attempts. She’d also made simple iron models of the jewelry before making them out of gold, discarding the iron scraps in a dumpster after crushing them with her new strength. After making a few bits of less ostentatious jewelry for herself to sell the lie that she was just ditching old bits she no longer felt suited her, she’d headed out to the first of three separate Pawn shops she’d marked down.
This first one called for the most caution, as it was within the financial district itself. Which she’d discovered was quite near where she’d landed. It was as legitimate as such an establishment ever got in a place like Gotham, so she’d kept her story simple and the amount she sold there small. She was a college student (it helped greatly that her new appearance looked to be in her early 20s) looking for a bit of extra cash from selling a few trinkets that ‘daddy’ had bought her when she was younger.
Since the pieces she’d offered up were virtually perfect 18k gold, but exactly the sort of thing a spoiled little rich girl might have been gifted on special occasions, the broker had eaten the story up. The fact he was staring at her tits half the time had probably helped, and was a moderately uncomfortable new reality, but one that she’d already started adjusting to from looks on the street.
She was fairly sure he hadn’t even cheated her much. She’d checked the date and gold prices at the library, 2017 and roughly $1,200 an ounce for 18 karat gold respectively. She’d only sold 3.74 ounces in the form of a necklace, bracelet and two rings and had walked out with $2,200 in cash after only light negotiation. He’d even agreed to give it to her in a variety of bills, though only because she’d offered to knock $40 off what she’d originally managed to get him to agree to.
Her next stop had been a big box store, where she’d acquired a few minor accessories for her needs. Yes, she could have created the wallet, messenger bag, hoodie, and handful of other sundry items. No, she couldn’t have figured them out in a reasonable timeframe. Between making the jewelry and the first pawn shop, it was pushing 5:30 by the time she’d hit the big box store.
Not wanting to get found out just yet, she’d used a bit more of her new cash to grab a bus pass that would last all month, then headed for the second pawn shop she’d gotten a location of. She’d munched a meal bar she’d bought at the store on the way, trying to ignore the stares she was getting even with the hoodie now partially concealing her figure. The downside of making herself naturally gorgeous, she supposed, but she didn’t regret it. If she was going to have tits at all, she was going to have spectacular tits, thanks.
Thankfully, she’d arrived in Gotham’s summer, so the sun was still up when she arrived at her destination a half an hour later. This time, she knew she was going to have to put on a better performance. Thankfully, she’d been at least a half decent actor before and was a much better one now, with all of Motoko’s undercover skills shoved in her head. The hoodie and jeans combo, along with redoing her hair from the glorious wave it had started as into something more casual, had changed her general vibe.
With a slump, posture change, and sardonic grin added, she looked like someone that might visit Broke Bart’s Pawn Shop. She stepped into the shop with the tinkling of a bell, and made it a point to stroll laconically. No, he hadn’t know there was a way to do that in his past life. But Motoko had known a rather shocking number of ways to simply walk. Each one giving a slightly different impression to the people watching you.
She hovered, hands in her hoodie, while waiting for the broker to finish with someone. She noted with amusement that he had an eye on her, likely not appreciating the hidden hands. Still, she was going for a certain relatively harmless persona here. When he finished up and the other customer left, she made it a point to casually withdraw her hands, leaving them in plain sight so he’d untense. Sliding up to the counter with an urchin’s grin on her face had him looking at her warily.
“’Sup, man? Have I got a deal for you! Promise, you’ll love it. Probably the story behind it too, since it’s a funny one.”
She let the grin shift to a smirk as she lifted her messenger bag and opened it in a way that would let him see it was mostly filled with random, harmless bits and bobs. What looked like a textbook, a sketchpad that she’d deliberately torn the cover of. A cheap makeup kit. Nothing out of place but a velvet bag that, when she took it out and opened it, tipped to pour out a bunch of gawdy pieces of gold. She’d deliberately mixed some of her less perfect attempts in with some better ones, making the array of jewelry a variety of karats, styles, and qualities.
The man, Bart presumably, looked suspiciously between her and the jewelry, and she forced her smirk to widen.
“Nope, they didn’t ‘fall off a truck into my bag,’ these are totally legit. Told you it was a funny story. Mostly about how fucking stupid rich girls are.”
Looking at least mildly interested, even as he took the hint she was selling and pulled out the kit and scales to test everything with an efficiency that spoke of long practice.
“So, I’m an art student at Gotham U, right? Well, turns out that the rich girls that make up the popular cliques have a shit idea what all their precious little trinkets are worth. I was looking to make some scratch, since supplies aren’t cheap, when I realized that some of them were bitching about money being tight too. Daddy cutting off the credit cards after a shopping spree or some stupid shit.”
Bart snorted, even as he began sorting and cataloging the jewelry. She could see him untense though as he processed the line she was feeding him. The stuff wasn’t stolen, it was just scammed.
“So I played along, fed them a line how I knew a place I could get them cash for whatever old pretties they had, so long as the gold was real. Now, I had to sort a lot of shit that I could tell was just plated, you know? But one thing having an eye for art is good for is telling shit like that apart. I managed to talk the little idiots into selling all this for a few hundred bucks, but it’s virtually all 18 karat or close. So…”
She widened her grin conspiratorially, and Barto outright grinned back, shaking his head.
“That is a clever way to make money, girl. You could make it in my business. Of course, that means you know I’m going to try and screw you too.”
Alyssa let out a genuine laugh at the honesty, then spread her arms.
“Of course! Surprised you at least admitted it. Still, I’m not an idiot either. I weighed all of that myself, and used a cheap kit to check it was all real too. Only had two misses for shit I didn’t catch that was plated. So…let’s talk cash, hmmm?”
With that, the negotiations were off. Bart, despite clearly being hella shady compared to the guy in the finical distract downtown, actually kept his eyes above her neckline. He also haggled a hell of a lot better and dirtier too, though there again Motoko’s street smarts came in clutch again. He’d tried to lowball her and she’d called him out, but then tracked sideways to getting a few things besides cash.
This was Gotham, so there were at least a few self-defense weapons in the shop. Actually, there were outright weapons, of the lethal flavor, too. But she both didn’t really need those and didn’t want to risk him pushing for an ID. A decent taser joined the haggling, as did a decidedly not non-lethal butterfly knife with which she did a few tricks he’d actually known in his original world. Some better-looking but merely gold-plated jewelry she could use to model better stuff, an easy sell for Bart as she shrugged it off with a claim that she was going to sell it back to ‘the idiots.’
In the end, she’d only gotten him to fork over 25 percent of the value of the gold in actual cash, but had grabbed another 5 percent in stuff. Some directly useful, others just things she knew she’d be able to use as a guide to replicate stuff with her creation ability. Even a couple of bits of glitchy electronics she was certain Motoko’s knowledge would let her fix. Technically, creation could make that stuff too, but not without a heck of a lot more practice.
She’d also, however, sold 14.47 ounces this time. Which means that, even with a rate half as good as she’d gotten before, Bart had slid her $4,300 in pure cash. He hadn’t even blinked at her wanting it that way, likely far more used to dealing with questionable characters that didn’t want any sort of money trail.
Still, there was also one other possible reason he might have liked her taking cash…so she’d made a point to quickly dart into an alley a block away and taken flight up to the roof. She’d already figured out the flight thing to get down from the roof she’d started out on, but it was just as amazing for the short hop up as it had been down. She promised herself for a second time that day that she’d get out of the city soon to try it out properly.
For now…she considered the time, where the sun was in the sky, and the distance to the third shop she’d noted. Shaking her head, she decided what she had was good enough for now. Even with what she’d spent already, she still had over six grand split between an under-shirt traveling wallet she’d grabbed at the big box store and her new bag. That was more than enough to do her for a few days. Probably even a few weeks, given her creation powers. Time to head to a slightly less shady part of town and find a hotel that would take cash with no ID.
... ... ... ... ...
A/N 1: Gotham! So, the choice of where the character landed came down to three things. 1) I needed somewhere properly a bit 'grim' for that writing 'xp grind' I mentioned at the start. The whole point of this fic is to figure out how to write that sort of thing. 2) Have you figured out yet that I enjoy tackling things most people won't? Gotham has this weird thing where, even in fanfiction, no one ever wants to try and actually fix it. It's like Hutt Space in Star Wars. It's got enough metaphysical weight in the REAL world that people seem to instinctively shy away from doing anything but keep the status quo. Boo to that! 3) I may or may not currently be playing Gotham Knights, so the city was on my mind...not using that hellscape version of it though!
A/N 2: Funny thing, Alyssa tackled the pronoun things so fast because I was having trouble with the writing :-p. It was SUPER awkward to not have it defined, given the third person, limited omniscience writing style I use. So I had 'her' sort it out fast.
A/N 3: Yeah, yeah 'make gold and convert it to money' is a common trope. I know. It's common because it WORKS and it's hard as heck to trace. So, obviously I used it. There are other ways to do the same thing, but they honestly take more explanation and effort, so...easy route. Alyssa will do other things for stable money later on.