Ch17 All Part of a Balanced Breakfast

The bus arrived and I hung up on Mikey to concentrate on what I was doing. The fact that a bus ride cost as much as a subway ticket meant I hadn’t bothered ever using one before, I hadn’t wanted to waste money on something that wasn’t food, and normally I could just walk since the distances were usually quite manageable. But, with a thousand dollars now in my possession I decided to splurge, if only for the experience of riding the public bus.

Besides, I wanted to get there faster.

It was interesting. The interior was designed to be easy to stand in when the seats were full, much like the subway on a smaller scale. Several seats were reserved for humans that needed more room, such as mutants, or caretakers with ‘children’. I got to see a ‘child’ up close for the first time when a caretaker sat in the seat in front of me. Infant humans are… unimpressive. It gazed around uncomprehendingly, made incomprehensible noises, and drooled an inordinate amount of liquid onto its surroundings. Perhaps it wasn’t truly sentient yet? If that was the case then maybe in a sense it actually was impressive. Sandra’s requirement for being a minion had been eighteen cycles, which meant that in just about three weeks this drooling larva would be a fully functioning human, if inexperienced. I myself had been alive much longer and I still needed Human.exe to get anywhere close to what could be considered a passable human.

 

The bus let me out about a block from Maggie’s, and I hurried over. If I was right then it should be just before the lunch rush. Pushing open the door the little alarm rang, and the smells of cooking food magnified. The waitress from last time approached me and I asked for a booth since I was expecting Mikey and Tim to arrive eventually. Then she asked if I wanted anything to start with.

Yes. Yes I did.

I started with a number one (tofu burger), number two (pancakes with hashbrowns), a number three (grilled cheese with fried tomato slices), and a number four (blueberry biscuits with butter and a side of fruit). My plan was to work my way down as much of the menu as possible before Mikey brought Tim over. The waitress gave me a suspicious look and asked if I had a chit, which I passed over for her to use on the machine before she gave it back to me. Apparently large orders needed to be paid in advance, which makes sense to me.

I finished the first four items and began ordering more. It was interesting to see that the cost of each dish was not in direct proportion to the resources I obtained from them. Instead the cost seemed to be in proportion to what the dish was made from, with ‘fresh fruit’ being more expensive than items like pancakes, and meat being the most expensive of all. The only two items on the menu that contained real meat (number twelve: two eggs with a choice of two bacon strips or sausage links, and number thirteen: chili and beans) were easily twice the cost of anything else on the menu. It was strange, but it made sense. Since literally everything the humans ate was either nutrient or energy rich, prices probably reflected the difficulty of obtaining the ingredients rather than the value of the finished product. Meat was self-explanatory, nothing liked being eaten, and if the rats and yellow-fur were any indication obtaining meat was likely a very risky proposition.

What really confused me was the fresh fruit. It was also meat from an organism of some kind, but unlike what I was used to it seemed… grown to be eaten? My biggest clue came from a small, green piece of organic tissue attached to a ‘strawberry’. I deconstructed it carefully and found it was a respiratory organ. From what I could tell it used a process nearly the opposite of the human respiratory cycle, so at least now I knew what filtered the air and kept it at a stable mixture.

The process would pull mass from the air and stockpile energy in an efficient way (much more efficient than it would be to use micro units to pull mass from the air), but it was slow, and didn’t provide a lot of energy. It was useful to know I guess, but not worth doing when food was so readily available. Maybe the fruit was some kind of lure in order to attract prey and allow the organism to not move? I hadn’t seen any organisms that might match such a description yet… oh well, another mystery to be solved later. I was accumulating a lot of those.

 

Mikey walked into the diner while I was eating another number twelve (bacon and eggs is delicious), and I waved at him to catch his attention. Today he was wearing a black jacket and had his long hair tied back. He looked a bit frazzled, and Tim wasn’t with him.

 

“Hey Tofu,” he greeted me.

“Hello Mikey, are you alright? And where is Tim?”

“Oh, yeah I’m fine man, it was just a later night than I’m used to. I told Tim to meet us here a bit later, wanted to talk to you about the job first. You can’t just drop bombs like that Magenta comment and leave me hanging man! Spill, what happened out there?”

 

Over the next half hour I explained what had happened after Turbo attacked the truck. Mikey ordered a burger while he listened, and when I described my fight with Magenta he pulled out his phone to find the video in question. I might need to get myself a permanent phone later, they seemed like excellent communication tools if the humans were sharing the fight footage so quickly.

 

“So. Split in half. Chased by rats. Scorpion chick. That about sum things up?” Mikey asked when I finished retelling events.

“Do scorpions have large claws and chitin exoskeletons?”

“Yeah, and well, lobsters and crabs and stuff as well I guess.”

“I’ll ask her which one next time I see her.”

“Ack! Don’t do that! I dunno about her, but the mutant kids at school always got pissed off if you asked what they were.”

“Oh.” I definitely wasn’t doing that then.

“Anyways…” Mikey fell silent, before saying, “So like, you actually do have a real power right? I’ve never heard of a mutation that lets you do all that stuff. At least, not while still letting you look normal.”

…Mikey is too perceptive sometimes.

“I mean, it’s cool man. I get that you wouldn’t wanna blab about it to everyone. I won’t tell, promise.”

“…Thank you Mikey.”

We sat in silence for a bit, just nibbling on our food. Then Mikey spoke again, “Sooooo… what is your power then?”

“Eh?”

“Come on, we’re friends, you can tell me. Or wait! Don’t tell me, let me try to guess it,” said Mikey with grin.

“Mikey I’d rather n-”

“Let’s see, you can regen.”

“Lots of C’s can-”

“You can stretch your arms.”

“That’s just a quirk of-”

“You held the knife with your tongue you said?”

“I shouldn’t have mentioned th-”

“Soooooo I’m gonna guess shapeshifter?”

…what?

 

What?

 

WHAT!?

 

Shapeshifter is an actual power humans can have? This whole time I could have just said “Shapeshifter” and no one would have questioned further? How, how….

Aggravating.

 

“Yo, earth to Tofu, you there? Did I like, actually guess it?” asked Mikey.

“…Yes.”

“Oh shit, really?”

“Yes?”

“Heh, sorry man I was just trying to tease you a bit. But a shapeshifter power! That’s really cool.”

“It is?”

“Yeah man, being able to be whatever you want sounds amazing,” then he leaned in and grinned at me again, “Is that why you’re so defensive? You’re actually an old neckbeard under there?”

“No, this is how I normally look.”

“Uh huh, sure it is.”

“Yes?”

“Methinks that thou protests too much.”

 

We talked a bit more, Mikey mostly ‘teasing’ that I was different human types, such as an ‘old man’ or ‘little girl’, but he also promised to “stay mum” about my power to others.

Not me though. I was going to leak the “fact” that I was a shapeshifter to anyone who would listen. I should have suspected there was a power that could replicate my abilities much earlier (it even had a name!). It explained why Socket hadn’t cared that much when he noticed.

Finally Mikey interrupted the teasing and looked over at the entrance to the diner.

 

“There’s Tim, about time… oh god, this again.”

 

Tim entered the diner, he was wearing blue ‘jeans’ and a shirt that had the Guardian’s emblem on it, as well as carrying a really large canvas bag that appeared to be quite heavy. We waved to direct him over to our table, and he wandered over before he dropped his bag on the floor with a thump and took a seat.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

 

“Hey guys,” said Tim.

“Hello Tim,” I replied.

“Hey Tim, you still trying then?” asked Mikey.

“Damn right I am, who knows when the next one will happen?”

“Trying what?” I asked.

“Getting a power man! Duh,” answered Tim.

“Tim’s been trying to get a power every Odd Summer since we were ten years old,” Mikey explained. “Although his methods are somewhat questionable.”

Wait, ten years old?

Recalculating;

Main growth phase of human estimated at 18-22 years.

Danger:

Age requirement to be a minion: 18 cycles years.

 

Somewhat annoying. I find out I don’t have to hide my ability, and discover I need to hide my age.

 

“Hey, the car battery thing was a fluke,” continued Tim, while he pulled out several different devices from the bag, along with what I recognized from Socket’s garage to be a ‘screwdriver’. I leaned in, interested in his process.

“And these devices will help you gain a power?” I asked.

“Or get him killed,” Mikey interjected.

“Don’t listen to this Gloomy Gus,” Tim said as he started to unscrew the casing on an unidentified device. “Statistics show that what you are doing when you trigger matters. If you’re fighting some monster you get a physical power like super strength, if you are in a stressy mental situation like being lost in the tunnels you’ll probably get a mental power. I’m trying to get a tinker power, so I’m trying to assemble as many devices as I can while Odd Summer is in effect. It’s a matter of probability.”

“Interesting.”

“Don’t encourage him Tofu,” said Mikey. “Tim, has it occured to you that powers might be completely random, and it’s just that the guy in a monster fight who gets a tinker power doesn’t live to tell about it?”

“Details, details,” said Tim, as he continued to disassemble the device and began to switch out pieces.

Mikey just rolled his eyes. After ‘hanging out’ with Tim and Mikey multiple times over the past week I was rather used to their bickering. Tim was always enthusiastic about heroes and powers, and Mikey tended to focus more on “the reality of the situation” as he put it. Despite this it seemed they were good ‘friends’.

Tim ordered a burger (after I told him I was paying since his hero information had helped me win a ‘bet’ at work) and showed me some of the devices he was working on. They were “simple things” (his words) such as a small ‘flashlight’, a ‘calculator’, and a ‘clock’. I showed him Nicole’s phone while we were on the topic of devices, and he got really excited to see someone else’s handmade work, although I had to explain that it was borrowed from a co-worker, and he couldn’t look “under the hood.” Then Tim told me that he knew a place that sold phones for cheap if I wanted one myself, and I told him I’d think about it (phones were apparently expensive, I could buy so much more food). We decided to head to the arcade after lunch, and I went to the counter to pay the rest of the bill, while Tim and Mikey packed up Tim’s devices.