Chapter 3

Once Tiff got home, she fled her mother’s worried embrace and shut herself up in her room. She decided she needed to take her mind off things, so she pulled her schoolbooks out of her backpack and started finishing her homework. It was only Tuesday, but Tiff was somewhat lazy at heart. She would gladly do the work right now to goof off and relax later.

Perhaps no ordinary teenager would escape to their room to do homework after being essentially pulled out of school for a day, but Tiff wasn’t an average teenager. She paused, laughing darkly. Oh, how her tune had changed from this morning! She didn’t know what she would give to go back to being normal, unremarkable. But from what little she understood of the System, it didn’t give out Classes and Affinities often, so when it did, it was very hard to change them. Just one more thing added to the list of things she wanted to ask about, but didn’t know how. Sighing, since nothing could be done about it for the moment, Tiff buckled in and got to work.

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“Hey, munchkin, you okay in here?”

Tiff looked up from her trigonometry textbook to see a figure standing in her doorway and smiled. Victoria VanDyne was her older sister by 3 and a half years and was a miniature version of their mom. The irony wasn’t lost to Tiff, because calling Victoria “mini” was laughable since most people looked like children standing next to her. So when she stood next to their mother and looked like the child, what then did that say about normal people? Or Tiff herself, who barely came up to her mother’s waist? Living in a family blessed with powerful builds could be troublesome at times.

“Little Sis said you were sulking.”

Tiff furrowed her brows and bristled.

“I am not sulking.”

“Okay, fine. Now you’re bristling.”

Tiff’s mouth formed into a pout.

“Haha, easy there, munch. What’s got you all bent out of shape?”

Tiff turned briefly away from her sister, who was busy leaning against the door frame, to put away her homework. She’d been done for the last hour and was mindlessly skimming pages, bored.

“Why did Amy say I’m sulking?”

“Dunno. Apparently, she came in to pester you or something, but you didn’t pay her any attention, so she left.”

Tiff cocked her head.

“When did Amy come in? Actually, when did she get home? She didn’t come with Mom when she picked me up.”

“A while back,” Victoria shrugged, stepping into the room to sit on Tiff’s bed. “It’s almost dinner. They sent me up to get you in case Amy did something to annoy you.”

“Dinner?” Tiff glanced at the clock. Has it really been 3 hours? “I don’t know if I’ll eat. I’m not hungry.”

Victoria hooked her toes around Tiff’s chair and spun her around to face her.

“Hey. What gives? Something’s up; you’re usually not this down. Maybe you aren’t bristling or sulking, but something is wrong.”

Tiff gauged her sister in her eyes, weighing her up to see how much she actually cared. She was about to brush her off, but at the last second, Tiff lowered her head and mumbled.

“Got my System today,” she sighed, barely more than a whisper.

“Ah,” Victoria gave her a sad smile and picked her up, hugging her on top of her lap. “Didn’t get what you wanted?”

“System Depression” was a real thing. People tried everything they could to give themselves or their children any possible advantage for when they Awakened, but it rarely turned out as they wanted. Mostly because the majority of humanity Awakened as normal, everyday Citizens. People who went to extreme lengths or spent fortunes on tutors and mentors to try to get a leg up, so to speak, were inevitably let down when the System did not reward them for their work.

Tiff had the opposite problem. She found the words spilling out of her mouth before she could think. Was it because she loved her older sister dearly? Or maybe because she was the closest person to Tiff who had Awakened most recently.

Most likely, in truth, because Victoria chose to remain Neutral, not trying to get into the “hero path”.

“Not really. Got something I didn’t want.”

“Oh?” Victoria quirked an eyebrow. But instead of leaning forward and demanding juicy gossip, she quickly scolded herself into a stern expression.

“Tiff,” she said firmly. “You don’t need to tell anyone anything about your Status if you don’t want to. Not now, not ever.”

“Yeah, I know,” Tiff replied easily enough. It was one of the first things they learned in IPSS. People had a right to privacy, and circumstances where they were required by law to divulge information were extremely rare. Affinity, strangely, was not one of them. It was not, in fact, illegal to be a villain. Just, mostly what a villain did and stood for. Things like involuntary telepathy, however, tended to get a bit more problematic.

Victoria blinked at her smallest sister. With Tiff in her lap, she was close enough to feel her slow and steady breathing, let alone any involuntary motion like tensing muscles or shivering. Tiff did neither of those. Her normally shy and timid little sister was comfortable around her despite the obvious size difference, something that was hard to overcome, no matter how much time they spent together. Victoria was a good judge of character and she knew when people were bluffing. Tiff wasn’t doing anything of the sort.

“Don’t let people bully you into it,” she frowned, thinking of her own time in school and some of her weaker classmates. Nobody ever tried that with her; it didn’t work when she was a foot and a half taller and usually had a hundred pounds of muscle on them.

“Ha,” Tiff snorted. “Don’t worry. I can’t be bullied.”

That was…a strange way to put it, and Victoria filed that away. She didn’t know how to bring up her sister’s odd behavior tonight gently, so she resorted to rocking back and forth as she floundered on what to do.

“Tori,” Tiff eventually muttered softly, “You have Skills, right?”

Just because a person didn’t have to tell anybody about their Status didn’t mean they couldn’t. Victoria was very much open with her family about who she was and what she wanted in her life, much to her parents’ consternation. Victoria laughed.

“Sure. I’ve got a couple.”

She lifted her hand from where it was rubbing Tiff’s back and made a complex motion in the air. Like a special effect from a video game, a small blue box, like a transparent window pane, pixelated into existence. No matter how many times she saw it, Tiff was always impressed. People could bring up their Status however they liked, and most didn’t bother learning anything more than a simple summoning: one second there was nothing, the next, a floating blue box. No transition. Victoria, as with everything in life, did hers with gusto and flair.

It was impressive for a 19-year-old, but in the grand scheme of things, fairly ordinary. She had two Skills, each devoted to her Class.

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Skill: Hand-to-Hand Specialist. Improved mastery over various forms of unarmed combat.

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Skill: Grappler. Holds are harder to escape from. Pins are more difficult to break.

​

“I’m a [Bodyguard], right?” Victoria jiggled Tiff on her lap, who continued to stare at the open screens. “These are pretty common for melee Classes. I started as a [Brawler] and got these after a few Quests. They stayed with me after I Class Upped.”

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Eventually, Victoria dismissed her screen with a wave of her hand, and it broke into a million tiny pixels that floated away. Tiff took a deep breath and came to an unspoken conclusion,

“I got a skill,” she said in an airy, lighthearted voice she hoped sounded off-handed. She felt her sister’s arm around her tighten and she closed her eyes.

“I think it’s probably really rare and really, really strong. It’s called Indomitable, and it makes me immune to stuff like fear and intimidation.”

“You got that as a skill?” Victoria gawked. “Oof, I know tons of people who’d kill for something like that. What’s the cost? Or cooldown?”

“Umm, none, pretty sure. It says it’s passive.”

“It says…,” Victoria trailed off. “Holy. Yeah. Yeah, that’s a very strong one, Tiff. Passives are rare, and they’re generally really good. I know you’re a smart cookie and you can do what you want with your Stats, but I’d recommend keeping that to yourself. Thanks for sharing with me. I won’t tell a soul.”

“Yeah, I didn’t want to tell anybody, but I need to get it off my chest. Keeping it a secret feels so…suffocating.”

“And you didn’t go to Mom or Dad?”

“No!” Tiff said a touch too quickly and loudly. “I can’t. I don’t want to tell them, not yet. And I can’t lie to them either. Honestly, that scares me more than anything.”

“Then don’t,” Victoria shrugged. “If they ask anything, just give them a non-answer. Or tell them you didn’t get anything special-“

“You don’t understand!” Tiff practically wailed. “I can’t. I can’t!”

Victoria froze in her gentle rubbing as Tiff calmed herself down. After a few steadying breaths, she took a big gulp of air.

“I also got a Quirk,” she said conversationally, too engrossed with her own thoughts to feel her sister suddenly go rigid. Victoria knew what that meant. There was a pause, a half a breath of indecision before Victoria’s gentle rubbing resumed, maybe a bit intensified. She furiously worked at her little sister’s tense shoulders and knotted back. It was much too stressed, more than any poor 16-year-old had any right to be. Tiff let out a sigh of contentment and leaned harder into her sister, oblivious to Victoria’s thoughts.

“I can’t lie anymore, Tori. Honest to goodness truth.”

“I mean, that’s…,” Victoria laughed weakly, but there was no mirth in it. She wanted to say “silly” or “stupid”, but those words died on her tongue. If it was given by the System…if it was an actual, genuine Quirk….

“I want to show you, but I don’t know how.”