Shade: Unbound

Finn had parted ways with the girl when the police noticed them. He had slipped away around a corner and covered himself with his power before walking back home.

It was the next day at school now, and the normality of it all threw him off. For whatever reason, his instincts were primed to fight again, or to have to hide from another crazed gunslinger, but no one paid him any mind.

The first few hours passed like any other, but that started to change around lunch time. As he sat in the cafeteria, he scrolled through his feed and saw the notification from Aegis Corp come in. For security reasons, it wouldn’t show the icon unless he clicked on it, but he was eager to find out what it would tell him. He was interrupted, though.

“You okay?”

Finn turned to see a lanky, freckled boy looking at him with apparent concern. He nodded and said, “I’m fine, Jack.”

“Are you? You look super tired. You stay up late to scroll the feed or something?” Jack asked, putting a hand on Finn’s shoulder.

That made him flinch, which Jack took notice of. “You’re hurt,” the boy said, taking a seat opposite Finn.

“I’m fine,” Finn stressed.

“Come on, don’t give me that, Finn,” he leaned forward. “Remember that time we went camping, and you thought you were being sneaky with your secret candy stash? My parents might not have noticed, but I knew about it even before you took the first bite. Just like I know something's changed with you now.”

Should he tell Jack? Telling anyone about his secret identity was risky, but it was arguably riskier to not tell anyone and keep going on missions all by himself, doubly so if trouble kept finding him despite his efforts. His pool of potential candidates to reveal himself to was small anyway. And he had already ruled out one of them, so Jack really was the best option.

Yet he kept quiet, not wanting to volunteer his greatest secret. While hero work was dangerous, he didn't want to expose Jack to said danger by revealing himself. He would ultimately have to complete his goal alone, anyway.

“I'd say you took up a sport, but there's no reason to hide that from me. Did you get into a fight?” Jack held his hand up before Finn could answer. “No, you're not the type to throw down without a very good reason. That means one of two things. Either someone gave you a reason, or you had an accident.”

Finn tried to school his features into something unreadable, but it was an exercise in futility.

“Not an accident, got it. And since I was with you yesterday at school, it must have happened after. You should've just been at home the entire… Finn, are you involved with a gang?”

Why did everyone think that? Was it something about his demeanor?

“Or did you just have a run-in with them?” Jack continued. “Maybe a few members saw you, shook you down for all your money? It's possible, but the odds of that are low in this part of the district. Where were you yesterday?”

The silence spoke volumes, pieces of the puzzle were slowly falling into place. Jack leaned back in his seat, a mix of astonishment and excitement dancing in his eyes.

“You ran into trouble, didn't you?" Jack's voice was barely above a whisper, as if afraid of shattering the fragile revelation. "Not just any trouble... something bigger, something dangerous. Finn, were you at that burning building last night?”

“Do I look burned?” He’d seen it from a distance, though. It had slipped his mind after all the ensuing chaos yesterday.

Jack’s eyes widened. “Did you meet Mistral?”

“No, it was nothing. Just forget about it,” Finn said. It was a good thing Jack had no idea about—

“Do you have powers?”

Finn's breath caught.

“HOLY SH—”

Finn clamped a hand over Jack's mouth, soon enough that his outburst only resulted in a few head turns from the people at other tables.

“Quiet,” Finn urged.

Jack calmed down somewhat, then continued in a whisper. “But you have powers now. Wait, what did you even get? Please tell me you’re a mobility type.”

Finn sighed. The cat was out of the bag, might as well answer. “I’m not. My power isn’t anything crazy. I just change the colors of objects near me. And of myself. I used it for camouflage last night.”

Jack, who had been sitting with his hands in his hair as he processed this information, paused. “Last night? When did you manifest?”

“Yesterday.”

“You went on patrol on your first day? How did you join the district team so fast? How… no. You did not.”

Again, silence turned out to be the most telling response Finn could give.

Jack laughed in disbelief while shaking his head. “I guess Aegis is better than going out completely blind. How many missions did you get in yesterday?”

“I was on my second when the third happened all of a sudden.”

“How? Did you walk in on a burglary or something?”

“Sort of, but not really. I was collecting evidence on some crime scene in an abandoned building for an anonymous client when I heard this drifting noise outside. So I went to check it out, and it was four armed guys hopping out of a van. The leader had a gun.”

Jack was listening intently with a slack jaw, so Finn continued. “The other guys all have knives, but then this girl comes walking by at that exact moment. The timing of it was actually ridiculous. Then one of them storms up to her and drags her into an alley.”

“So did you save her?” Jack asked, eyes wide and eager.

Finn nodded and recounted the rest of the story, with Jack on the edge of his seat until the very end.

“Shade?” he said after Finn was done.

“Shade,” Finn confirmed.

“I like the name, it works. But I wish I could have brainstormed it with you,” Jack buried his face in his hands.

“Since when have you ever been good with names?”

“Since always.”

“Sure.”

“And you haven’t told your mom?’

“Obviously not.”

“Right, because of your… father,” Jack finished hesitantly.

“...Yeah.”

The two fell silent for a while before Jack changed the topic. “Why didn’t you just tell me right away? You know you can trust me with this kind of thing. We could be like a team.”

“It’s not safe.”

Thankfully, his friend didn’t push the matter any further. “What about your credits? Did you get any recruitment offers?”

Finn looked at his Aegis app. “No offers; I got a rating. And 300 credits for that info gathering mission on the Venin.”

“300?! That’s enough to buy a whole new computer and then some…” his friend trailed off.

Then Jack asked Finn to show his profile, and he did so.

Name: Shade

Missions completed: 3

Ability: N/A

Combat capabilities:

Hand-to-hand combat: Novice

Weapon proficiency: None

Power control: N/A

Tactical awareness: Novice

Strategic planning: Intermediate

Client recommendations: Shade is best suited for missions that require reconnaissance and intelligence gathering, where combat is not the primary objective. Further training is recommended to improve combat capabilities and power control.

Additional notes: Shade has demonstrated a good understanding of the basics of combat, but lacks experience and specialized training. Currently, he is unable to utilize any offensive powers or weapons, but shows potential for improvement.

Estimated threat level: F+

“But,” Jack began, “how do they know this? I get that the people who requested the mission would approve of your ability to gather intel, but who could have seen you fight those Venin members if they all got arrested.”

Finn shrugged. “Has to be the police. I’m inexperienced, but I’m not naive enough to assume the police don't use Aegis as a way to collect and spread intel about independents. Especially when they’re not officially allowed to build a file on them. And I got the impression the cop didn’t like me. I assume he interrogated the Venin thugs and passed along a note to the client. Or maybe the police was the client who put out that mission. Who knows.”

Jack bobbed his head to the side. “I guess, but isn’t the report awfully positive if it came from someone you think doesn’t like you?”

“Ha. It doesn’t have to be him specifically. It was probably a colleague.”

“Could be, but have you thought about why those guys were there in the first place?”

“What do you mean?”

“The Venin thugs. Think about it. They came racing to an abandoned building after sunset with an important package and immediately sent someone to neutralize a potential witness. And then their leader got on the phone while waiting outside the van. And he didn’t want to let the cargo out of his sight? What were they doing there if not delivering it?”

“The guy did say something about a drop-off, but no one else was there.”

“Weren’t they? Or did they just choose not to show themselves when they saw an unknown vigilante deal with the Venin and secure the witness?”

Finn sat back, considering that. “So what are you saying? This unknown person was observing from the shadows and passed along data about me?”

“Not sure, I was just putting it out there. It’s possible they were just late and never showed up, but these kinds of exchanges tend to happen fast. Thugs don’t tend to stray too far from their territory. Especially not for long.”

“Then you think someone else was involved?”

Jack nodded. “It's possible. And if they were, they might have been the one who gave the positive report to Aegis. Maybe they're interested in recruiting you, or maybe they just wanted to see what you were capable of.”

Finn stared at his food tray, lost in thought. “It's definitely worth looking into. If we get more information on this package, we should be able to find out who they were waiting for.”

Jack grinned. “That's the spirit. I have a feeling we're just scratching the surface of what's really going on here.”

"And we might not get any further than that if I get blown up next time I'm on a mission," Finn commented. “Which is why we're going to train today.”

“After you get some more sleep,” Jack chuckled.

********

The aforementioned slumber ended up taking place on his living room couch once he got home from school, and his mother woke him up right before dinner time.

He jumped when he felt her hand on his arm, startling her.

She leaned closer, her wavy red hair falling over her shoulders. “Are you having nightmares again, Finn?”

He rubbed his eyes and got up, realizing that he still had his coat and backpack on. “No, Mom. I was just a bit on edge.”

“From what?”

“Midterms?”

She raised her eyebrow. "Finneas Waylon Allister. Do not lie to me, young man."

He took a deep breath, trying to come up with a convincing lie. "It's nothing, Mom. I just had a… weird dream." Wow. Very compelling.

“And it’s not a nightmare,” his mother's blue-gray eyes softened. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Finn shook his head. “No, it's alright. I think I just need to get some fresh air.”

“Once you've eaten dinner, you can do that.”

Finn didn't waste any time after finishing his inescapable meal and texted Jack to meet up at a place where they could train, which turned out to be an abandoned warehouse.

They decided the goal would be to discover as many uses for his power as possible, and then master the most useful ones as quickly as possible.

They started by testing his camouflaging, and it turned out that, when he wasn't in low light conditions, it wasn't great. He could only maintain his power for a short time when he focused only on himself. If he tried to maintain his power on other objects, he was able to hold for longer, but he couldn't manage more than a few colors each.

But they found the trick to crossing the line between simple camouflage and something approaching true invisibility was to manipulate the colors of both the surroundings and himself. And if that wasn’t hard enough, Finn would have to account for the multiple angles he might be seen from, as well.

They also tested his ability for potentially combat situations, and after Finn explained his last fight to Jack in more detail, they came to the conclusion that his tactics would largely revolve around misdirection by messing with the perception of his opponents.

Unfortunately, Finn was unable to change the color of other people, nor could he directly affect the clothes they were wearing. So he couldn't simply black out someone's eyes and end them. In order to accomplish that, he needed to blacken another material, and then cover their vision with it, as he had done with the water bottle.

They even tried steam and different forms of smoke, but Finn still didn't have enough control over his power to shift the color of such diffuse materials. When he tried to color the air itself, he couldn't even see his power begin to show. It just wouldn't take.

By the end of the session, they had come up with a few techniques.

The first was color shifting, which involved Finn running around while changing colors rapidly to create a sort of strobe effect, which disoriented the opponent. He wasn't confident that it would stop someone from putting a bullet in his head, but it would work if he ever needed to play distraction.

The second was to partially camouflage his weapons to trick his opponent into thinking it was shorter than it truly was. Though he had only begun practicing this one and definitely wasn't ready to use it in combat. And not just because the moving camouflage on an object was hard to do. He also sucked with weapons. Even a stick was proving difficult.

The last technique was creating illusions, of sorts. He would change the colors of objects in the surroundings to display images that didn't exist. For example, he could create a fake hole on a wall and make people try to run into it. Or when he was really advanced, he should be able to create moving images to create illusory clones of himself in the environment and make his opponents chase those, at least on walls. But he wasn't advanced at all. So he was stuck with just turning street lamps red for now.

But he knew it would be possible one day, and that was why he kept practicing until it was near midnight.

As they left the warehouse, they discussed Finn's investment plans, and Jack seemed to think he didn't need both the grappling hook and the adhesive boots, and instead tried to get him to purchase a set of armor for less credits to bolster his defenses so he could take a hit if something went wrong out there.

Which was a valid point, but Finn felt he needed to invest in his mobility because of his role. Defenses would only be relevant if he ended up in a combat situation. And his fighting style would involve a lot of running around.

In the end, they agreed that he would have more practice sessions before he went on another mission, and then only do non combat ones until he had saved some more.

Over the next week, they researched potential progression paths he could take in the future while also training together. All these obstacle courses and agility exercises were getting on his nerves, but he endured them.

Now that he'd made some real strides with his power, he was ready for another mission.