I Swear I Belong, I'm Totally a Prodi-Woa Nice House (Prodigy Only)

Darren liked to run. He was pretty sure anyone who knew him was quite aware of that. His super hero name may have been Swordsmaster, and he was most definitely the greatest swordsmen alive, but he was also the best when it came to running. Plus, he did it a lot more than fighting with his sword or hidden daggers. Mainly because it allowed him to get from place to place and actually live his normal everyday nomadic lifestyle. Or his ‘insane, crazy, hobo life’ as Phoenix called it. Sure, the Talons apparently had some big base or something that he had a room in but Darren hadn’t been there. Or maybe he had. He wasn’t entirely sure. Everything was always a blur and things just seemed to drawl on by. It was only when he was running that he was able to think.

Which was kind of weird. He was always moving, always jittery. The entire world spun so slowly compared to him and that just made conversations and everyday life boring. It was only when he was running that he felt as if he was actually moving at a speed his mind and body could keep up with. It was only when he was running that he was able to see clearly, that he had a clear head and was able to watch the world around him zip on by seemingly staying in place while he zipped on by. It was much better than moving at a ‘normal’ speed and attempting to slow down and listen to everything everyone else was doing. Tyuki just said he was being immature and that eventually he’d have to grow up, something John and Sean both agreed with. Darren…well Darren didn’t really want to grow up.

He’d been exposed to the ‘real word’ more so than any of them had ever been. Did he have the worst life in the world or most awful background ever? No, probably not. Actually most definitely not, he at least had good things to go along with his life. But….that didn’t mean he wasn’t aware of how much better things could have been. How different everything could have turned out and it wasn’t as if he hadn’t gone over the possibilities, every scenario of every possibly situation. It was something that one did when if they tried they could make one day last a lifetime. He knew though that it wasn’t good to dwell on the past especially when there was no way you could change it. Which is why he bottled it up, he kept it to himself and made sure none of his teammates knew about his past.  He was Darren Cross, jokester extraordinaire, the Talons’ Hobo kid. The Swordsmaster; and that was all anyone ever needed to know.

It was this that had been going through his mind as he made his way across. Well, no he wasn’t exactly sure where he was or where he was going. That seemed to happen a lot and he was pretty sure if it wasn’t for the dog tags dangling around his neck no one would ever know where he was or how to get in contact with him. Something that wouldn’t exactly work very well with the life he lived. What with being on the Super Heroing team known as the Talons. Shaking his head Darren stopped mid run, the wind that was following behind him continuing going past him as he did. Yawning he ran a hand through his hair, underneath his hood as he had his super hero outfit on for some reason, and looked at the area around him.

To say he knew where he was would be a lie, and Lauren didn’t like lies. Tyuki and Phoenix liked lies even less, so he wouldn’t say he knew where he was. Meaning he was lost. Again. But, at least this time he seemed to be lost at some giant mansion place. Like really super huge. Darren was just at the entrance gate so he couldn’t see all of it but that of course just meant that the place had to be awesome and he loved to explore. Grinning the Swordsmaster cracked neck so it made the weird popping noise and after eating an energy bar took off once more with the intention of exploring the awesome house and its property. Only to go no further than about ten or twenty feet where he almost ran into someone and had to maneuver out of their way. Only to trip up on his own feet and land face first in the ground. Smooth. Real smooth.

June Young Lee the Dragon Girl being in the kitchen was not a sexist thing. She was a genuine homebody growing up, and despite having martial arts training, felt most at ease listening to the ticking of an analogue timer over the commands of an instructor. Upbeat Kpop was the preferred background music for the Korean hero.

And so today, she traded her uniform and black belt for an apron and a chef outfit. Prodigy had seen an influx of new blood recently and being a genuinely pleasant person was making treats. Trays of brownies were cooking in the oven, while she was putting fresh blueberries and strawberries on a couple of cheesecakes, and an English style meat pie was cooling on the Island table.

The alarms on base would sound a second later than the speedster crashing into the crowded kitchen. Darren tripped over a bag of whole wheat flour and sent some implements flying, June just barely saving the strawberry cheesecake. dirtying the Dragon Girl's good clean floor. Her training kicked in instinctively, and a dragon girl's foot wearing white Crocs was going to pin Darren in place. "Who are you?" She asked with an authoritative voice.

Danny had a plate of cookies for her off day. Accompanied by pink bunny slippers and blue bathrobe over a white shirt with pink shorts, Danny walked from the kitchen towards the living room. It took her two cookies and five minutes of television to realize she could spend her day off doing something more productive. The cookies would stay with her though. While walking through the pool area of the over sized mansion they used as their base, an alarm began to ring on Danny's phone. Intruder. On her day off? Hell no.

The sensors on her phone showed multiple breaches through the property, but they all appeared to stop near the kitchen. Danny sat her cookies down on an end table near the main entrance and took off towards the final breach. Something smelled delicious, but the time for such thoughts would need to hold off for a few minutes while this security breach sorted itself out.

Sunlight poked through a hole in the wall. Fixing that would not be cheap, but neither would anything June did in response to the invasion. "Hey! Can we not break everything in this house! That's what villain's bases are for!"

Darren wiped out. There was no other way to put it. He wasn’t even completely aware of what it was he had tripped over but that really didn’t matter. He was face first down on the floor and he didn’t exactly feel good. Sure, he hadn’t been going anywhere near his top speed but a fall from the speeds he had been going still hurt pretty badly. Which was why he barely registered it when someone’s foot was placed down on his back. Groaning the Swordsmaster moved his arms so his hands were flat by his sides and he attempted to push himself up off the ground only to not move at all. It was also at this point he heard the voice of his captor. Which was surprisingly a voice he was pretty sure he had heard before. Somewhere, probably.

“Well I mean I could totally introduce myself if you’d let me get up.” He answered the question asked by the female, because the voice sounded feminine. That was a thing right? The way people talked had a certain quality or sound to it and he wasn’t just crazy, right? Well, no okay he was most definitely crazy or had a couple screws loose but he was fairly certain he was right about this specific thing and thus there was no reason for him to have this miniature argument with himself in his head. Meaning he should probably get back to the matter at hand. Or at foot as it were. Heh, at foot and there was a foot on his back. He would totally high five himself if he were able to move right now. Instead he’d just have to settle with an imaginative high five.

It was during this mental high five that someone else decided to walk into the room, which from what he could see from his lying down position was a kitchen. This new person mentioned something about not breaking their house and that villain bases were for breaking. Something Darren absolutely agreed with. It also meant that these people were heroes with their own secret house base place! He was a hero that had a secret base house place! Or, okay so the Talons had their own base but that totally didn’t matter, it was just technicalities or something. “Hey! You girls are heroes! I’m a Hero too.” Turning his head he finally looked at who was standing on him and actually laughed “Long time no see DG, how’s the weather up there?”

As the Kpop song went into its chorus in the background, June recognizes Darren. Well, they were acquainted briefly.

"Same as always." She answered the height joke. She never did get it. June relented with her immovable foot and hauled Darren to his feet.

"Danny, This is Darren. He's fast... but he's also a bit slow. But it's not his fault. I had a cousin in Korea like that." She introduced the speedster to the less than heroically dressed Prodigy lead, without him hearing.

"Well... Darren, it's strange to see you again. This is Danny, and you're in our group's home base. Exactly what are you doing here? Are you joining?" June asked, conversing while she fixed the hole in the wall, the source of which she didn't catch. Until someone could get some cinder blocks and cement, June got the hose and sprayed water at the hole, then using her breath to freeze it into hard ice. Superpowers with utility.

Then she grabs a mop and broom for Darren, so he'd clean up the mess he made. She would accept no objections.

Looked like June caught an intruder, but this one seemed more powerful than the kids who lost their balls in the backyard. "I've met a few people who were fast, but really slow. I'm pretty sure the hole in the wall is his fault though." It indeed did look suspicious and even Ryan would be able to put that one together. It would just take him some time and he might need to ask Danny about it. "I feel like we should throw you in a jail cell for a while, but if June says cleaning is good enough, then I guess it will work. Mainly because if you don't do a good enough job you'll wish she was just stepping on you."

A ray of icy breath caressed the room, blowing Danny's robe and drastically causing her to shiver. "That is not a permanent fix. This house is expensive we can't just-ugh." Danny looked down to see the dust all over her robe. And, her slippers! "Clean this up! We're going to talk about this!" Danny turned to walk out of the room and back to her cookies before she realized a few things still remained veiled. "I'm Danny, and this is Prodigy you just burst into. We'll interview in the training room. I wanna see if that new virtual simulator is any good."

Fast but slow? Well obviously Darren was fast. He was the fastest boy alive! Could run circles around everyone, well actually anyone could probably run circles around other people but that wasn’t the point! The point was…wait hole? Taking his hood off, as he was finally able to stand up, Darren turned around and looked at the hole that was in the wall of the kitchen that the three of them were in. Completely ignoring everything that everyone was saying as he sized it up. The hole was way too big to have been his fault but it probably wasn’t a good thing that he couldn’t remember how he ended up in the kitchen let alone inside the mansion in the first place. Maybe he fell further than he thought. Or he spaced out when he was running and that was how he tripped and fell.

While he was examining the hole it was sprayed with water and then frozen solid by the tall Asian girl known as Dragon Girl. Which made Darren blink, because he was unaware that this was one of her powers. Actually, he really didn’t know all that much about her anyway so anything she could do that didn’t scream ‘dragon’ to him was going to be a little weird but cool. “Woa- that was so co-“ He was stopped mid sentence as a broom and mop was shoved into his chest. While the other girl, the one that was in a bath robe? Actually this was the first time Darren actually had the chance to look at her. She was wearing a bathrobe, and wow…she had really pretty eyes. Like they were-no! Bad Darren. Focus. Something about cleaning? They wanted him to pick up his mess? “Clean. Right. I can do that.”

He nodded in response to Danny, or Queen Bathrobe as he would forever call her from now on. “Nice to meet you Queen Bathrobe, the name’s Darren. Darren Cross, Darren Swordsmaster Cross, The Swordsmaster. It’s all cool Queen Bathrobe.” See? He replied before taking off and quickly speeding around the room sweeping things up, cleaning here and there making sure everything was nice and spotless and mopped up or swept up and then dumped in a trash can he found outside. The fact that it was about a half a mile away didn’t really matter. What did matter was that after about two minutes or so he came to a stop in the room next to the kitchen and sat down in a chair eating a cookie that he found. Speedsters needed energy. “You said something about a simulator? Can I try? Oooo, does it have a zombie mode? Or fantasy mode? I wana take on a troll or giant alligator.”

Well, it seemed speedsters and cleaning implements went well together. June's smile returned to her face when she saw her precious kitchen once again clean. "We should definitely have him be a regular cleaner on base." June remarked, already having plans for Darren.

She assembles a plate of snacks for the simulator trial, mostly for Danny and herself. Darren would have to earn his share of the pie. They take a few minutes to walk to the training wing. Along the way June would see one of the rooms opened, and saw an archery range set up. The targets were riddled with bullseye shots, but the bow was strewn on the table and a towel and bottle were left on the floor. This unheroic sloppiness displeased June greatly. She takes a detour and shows early signs of mom-itis, leaving the food with Danny. She enters the archery room, collects the arrows, puts the bow away and baskets the towel for laundry later. "...Hmph. Some people need to learn to clean up after themselves. This isn't a house with maids."

June would catch up to them. They should totally get started without her.

Danny recovered her plate of cookies. Unlike the rest of her attire, they remained entirely in place and clean. She reached down to her pocket and pulled out her Prodigy communicator. "AD, start the simulation program." A voice complied with a robotic English voice confirmed the request, but suggested caution. "Got it. I'll take it easy on the new recruit."

Danny stepped back into the kitchen during the cleaning frenzy between the OCDragon and the Speedfreak. Hey, those are good nicknames. "We do have a cleaning service June. You just can't see it unless you're cleaning a mirror." The kitchen looked clean enough. "Well, you aren't going to prison, so that's good, but we have a test for you, Miley Cyrus. Follow me." Before parting, Danny procured some milk and then motioned for Darren to follow her.

A few months ago, Danny recovered a top secret Artificial Reality Simulator from the base of Monsieur Monster, the most notorious villain who tried to overcome the barriers of cyberspace to steal all of the money supply running through MMOs. After he killed the avatar Danny created to foil his plan, Danny merely found out where his base was and delivered justice with her fists. Now, she has a virtual reality simulator.

"I've never used this thing before, but from what I can tell, you put this on-" Danny would provide a pair of lens to go around his eyes and a harness with gloves for his hands connecting to the lens. "And then you get in that-" A giant hamster ball allowed the user to run in any direction and never run out of physical space to move. "If there's any questions about this you can ask me or the Prodigy AI, AD."

"Uh, Ms. Tamamoa, I do not think it is wise to use this device without first testing it." The English gentleman voice protested politely.

"We are testing it, AD." A flip of a switch shut AD's voice off. "If you have any questions, you can ask me."

To say he was quite saddened when the bodiless British voice disappeared would be an understatement. The Talons’ base didn’t have a bodiless British AI. They used to have a team member whose codename was A.I. but Darren was pretty sure that wasn’t entirely the same thing. That guy had a body and hair and fancy weapons, this ‘AD’ didn’t have any of that as far as Darren was aware. If he wasn’t afraid of breaking the windows in the building and everything else inside it when he took off he would have taken off as fast or near as fast as he could run to search the entire building for the source of the noise to confirm or disprove his thoughts. But he didn’t for that reason. A well as the fact that he was pretty sure Queen Bathrobe would have Squirtle, because that was DG’s new name, beat him up.

Due to his musings and spacing out he had no idea what it was Queen Bathrobe said but when she handed him some gloves and fancy goggles he shrugged and put the goggles on first, hood going on up over his head. The gloves however were a tad bit more difficult as he had to make them bigger and wear them so that they went over his gauntlets. After a couple seconds of fumbling around with them he walked into the giant rolling hamster ball like thing only to scratch the side of his head in confusion. “So, are you sure this thing will be able to…keep up? No, not keep up but withstand my? I can run pretty fast…Also how do I know it started?” Unless it had already started and he just hadn’t been made aware of it yet. That would totally be meta. Or something like that.

June eventually rejoins Danny in the control room. She plops down into the biggest chair and brings up the touch screen menu. She helps herself to the steamed pork bun on the snack plate. "Okay let's see the scenarios we have available."

June scrolled along with Danny, asking her for her preference. June of course was always the soft approach, and wanted to go easy on Darren. She set the difficulty to 1, something that grade school kids playing laser tag could survive.

Simulation Tutorial <---
Basic Combat Scenario
Advanced Combat Scenario
Emergency Rescue
Social Interaction
Exploration
Kpop Music Videos
GirlALIVE! Concerts
Video Games
Documentaries
Other

Current Difficulty = 1 (out of 10)

"You break it, you buy it hotshot. This thing wasn't cheap. Probably." Danny felt herself jump a few inches in the air as June plopped down on the chair. "Okay, so we're starting you out on level 1 of the simulation." She scrolled down each of the option, looking at advanced combat option and deciding to go to a different one. "You're going to do Emergency Rescue. We can stick with level 1." She looked through the other options displayed. "I wonder what 'Other' is?"

Inside of the simulation a large building with slanted metal beams formed up. Tyuki Gold appeared at the bottom waving to Darren. "Welcome Monsieur Monster. You are really cool and only misunderstood by women, but not me-oh no!" A large gorilla appeared out of her ground and grabbed Tyuki, throwing her over his shoulder before climbing to the top of the building. "I'm being kidnapped!" When looking at the building from the side, it looked to be spacious enough, but the beams were only eighteen inches in length, making balance a little more difficult to deal with.

A barrel fell towards Darren, bursting into flames and causing a large section of the pixeled ground to turn into a blackhole. "This looks kinda easy." Danny's voice would sound in Darren's ear. "I'm going to raise the difficulty." Danny took the grid up to 3 to see just what would happen. The next barrel to hit the ground burst into a much larger and more violent explosion and spawned goblins with pitchforks that charged Darren while breathing fire.

Three levels of metal platforms rested between the massive gorilla and Darren.

Darren wasn’t entirely sure what was going on. First he was just standing in some giant hamster ball in a room that was inside of a giant mansion that also doubled as a base for some Hero team he had never heard of; and the next second he was standing in the middle of a weird white house with random items thrown about and a zombie old lady sitting in a wheel chair. The scenery change wouldn’t stop there though as he now stood at the base of a giant slanted metal building with a person standing at the bottom of it waiving at him. A person the sword wilding hero actually knew. “Tyuki?” He asked waving back at her only to blink in surprise when a giant gorilla came out of nowhere and picked her up, bringing her to the top of the building.

“Tyuki getting kidnapped? Huh, guess this game is pretty realistic.” He said out loud as the barrel fell near him exploding and turning the pixel floor into a big black hole of nothingness. Except not a real black hole in the sense that he and everything else in the vicinity were not being dragged into it unable to ever escape. “Right, turn up the heat!” of course as soon as he said that the second barrel fell releasing a group of goblins with pitchforks that breathed fire. He did say he wanted a fantasy element, and it seemed he was going to get it. Hand darting to his side the Swordsmaster unsheathed his weapon of choice and darted forwards the simulated world seemingly slowing down just as the real world would when Darren was on the move.

In no time at all, or so it seemed to the kid in the hood the goblins had been dispatched and dealt with and he had even been able to knock a barrel into the original black hole. Making sure that no other goblins had been summoned. With the ‘easy’ obstacle out of the way the boy blunder turned and looked up at the building that was in front of him. He wasn’t sure how this simulator worked but he was pretty sure he could just parkor his way up to the top; and so he did. Rushing forwards he leaped up to the first level, flung himself up to the second, dodged a barrel and used his forward momentum to spring off another barrel before landing on the third and final landing. Facing the gorilla and Tyuki. “Alright you big, stupid, hairy, monkey! Let her go!” He called pointing his sword at the thing. “Hey, Tyuki. This is totally the time where you fly away by the way.”

June watched intently as Darren ran the course. of course, June had not yet tried the machine, lacking strong interest until someone else actually showed how the simulator was run.

"This looks like it could be very fun!" June watched intently. Until the explosions and goblins showed up. Darren proved capable of dodging and moving up the building. Concerned, June continues.

"..or very dangerous. Do we know what happens to him if he actually gets hit in the Simulator?" June looked at the difficulty slide, tempted to lower it.

"Oh Monsieur, you are my ERROR 404 DIALOGUE NOT FOUND! Will you hold hands with me." Tyuki held her hands to her chest as she swooned over Darren. "I am swooning!"

"RAAAWWWWWRRRRRRR!" Kong beat his chest and picked up another barrel, slamming it down into the ground, bursting into a flame so explosive it burst twice. Mainly because during Darren's ascend, Danny pushed it up to six.

"I doubt 6 will be that tough." The knob could go to ten, but right now the device looked good enough. Then June brought up a good questions. "That's a good question. We should put it at seven." The knob went up one point.

Kong's barrel exploded so violently the second explosion it created made a third explosion! Made of fire breathing goblins! "YOU WILL DIE PUNY HUMAN! EVEN THOUGH YOU ARE REALLY COOL AND SECRETLY I THROW BARRELS AT YOU JUST TO MASK MY OWN INSECURITIES MONSIEUR MONSTER!" Kong would jump into the air as his arms became snake heads sprouting into several different hydra heads. Each severed head would sprout another. And explode!

"Did Michael Bay direct this guy's life or something?" The effects of the games looked really good. Danny tried to look over to the giant hamster ball to see if any beads of sweat dripped from Darren's forehead. An innocent enough observation, however the more Darren delved into the game world and the higher Danny and June set the simulation, the deeper Darren would get engrossed in the reality of the world until he would lose himself entirely to the game world.