7 1.7

Day Four.

It's a Thursday. 22 March 1989. I never cared to check before.

I feel like I was run over by a small car. Bad, but not awful. I have a goose-egg on the side of my face from where I face-planted on concrete and while my left hand doesn't seem to be broken, it is certainly swelling. Apparently the wool mask was good for something: it kept the blood out of my eyes at the critical moments. Probably didn't notice the rest because I was running on adrenaline at the time.

Lazing in bed until late morning helps the lesser aches and pains in my ribs and shoulder.

Going to a small clinic I get my hand seen to, put into a cast. Which is really going to put a crimp into any trips out in costume… unless I find a nice set of leather gloves. Which I do immediately afterwards. Can't be too careful.

Still, I made the newspapers again with my antics… seems the two seriously injured guys are still kicking and I got some kudos for helping with the fire.

The trip to the bank was a lengthy and boring experience and involved no obvious bank robbers… are my thoughts appearing in bubbles on a page? Was I too obvious and spoilt the plot lines? Am I a fourth wall breaking character?

This is giving me a headache.

At least my money was still where it was supposed to be. I guess Dad really didn't care for what amounted to his own pocket change. At the bare minimum, it should be enough to get the ball rolling on my own little business.

Once I get as far away from this continent as possible. At least in the US I have a few potentially friendly people I can network with on a regional level. Mostly it is because they are people I know I can trust. Out here I know I have only Fleur-de-lis as potential backup in a serious event. I really don't trust any minor league human baseline character to able to help if I'm being overpowered.

God, I'm still thinking of them as characters… like NPCs in a video game. I'm messed up. They are living, breathing (in most cases) people. And I am really out of my depth. I've jumped into this gig with just raw power and nothing else. I'm Superman without growing up in Kansas. I'm Batman without martial arts training. I'm a complete idiot.

I'd blame the hormones, but I think it's simply that I'm just an impulsive kid. As much as I like to think I'm mature, that is as always a question of time and experience. Reincarnation really likes to give sucker-punches you just never see coming.

I guess that close call with death and very nearly undeath has gotten me into an introspective mood.

Cheer up!

Time to fossick through old junk for treasure that is pretending to be garbage.

I guess back to the phone book for me…

A systematic search is probably the best way to go about it. I assumed. The following hours of mild bemusement and fruitless searching was not what I expected. Sure some of the knickknacks were cool, I mean seeing fifty year old postcards of Wonder Woman is interesting as it is historical reality here.

It isn't until I visit the last, of course, that anything interesting appeared. It wasn't magic, but instead a hunk of red kryptonite. Because yes, apparently I am that unlucky. The glassy, red glowing rock was so damn obvious. Someone had polished it into a rounded, ovoid shape and treated it like a glow in the dark trinket.

Just what I need, the kryptonite of temporary randomness. Heck, Superman probably doesn't even know he has a weakness yet. Let alone several. And this stuff, like all kryptonite is prone to being toxic to humans after a lengthy term of exposure.

On the other hand, I can't just leave it there. And I'm deathly afraid of being involved in a Zod type of incident. I mean I'm baseline human, physically. Not even peak. It wouldn't take an effort for a kryptonian to kill me, let alone powerhouses like Darkseid or Doomsday without my shields. They'd be able to just ignore any regular tricks with metal I use too.

It costs all of five Francs. I asked where it came from, but the owner had no clue. It was mixed in with a geological mineral collection.

Sealed into a little lead block with a lot of effort and magnetic field warping I guess I have a new pendant? Plated in nickel steel, to avoid those nasty health problems. It's just common sense.

So yay? I guess. I got an anti-Superman weapon before Lex Luthor.

This is not something I feel proud of.