The night was not going as Asher had planned. Yes, he had in fact planned on getting kidnapped so that he could figure out the kidnapping ring and be the one to get all the credit for saving the day.

  However, he had not planned on getting kidnapped by some random pair of crooks presuming he was a rich kid because of where he was walking around town in designer clothes.

  If he could reach one of his gadgets, he could escape this situation, but being bound and gagged stopped him from reaching anything useful or activating the vocal commands of the few items he had made those for.

  If he had just a little bit more wiggle room, he could draw his multi-tool from his belt and show these fools the error of their ways and why they should be afraid of doing business in Asher’s town.

  “Make sure to check him for any valuables we can sell separately.” The leader of the duo said, looking at Asher with malicious glee. “You seem confident that Mommy and Daddy are going to save you, but it’ll be too late for all the finery you pride yourself on.” He said, blowing a cloud of smoke into Asher’s face and causing the young man to cough violently, trying to clear his lungs.

  Asher couldn’t help but wilt as all the carefully planned devices he made for the night were slowly being stripped away from him.

  Do they realize how difficult it was to put a miniature shield generator in a jacket? What if they break it?

  And just because every spy movie ever has ?multi-tool watches that can do everything doesn’t mean his sonic taser watch can deal with this kind of rough handling!

  Asher paused his mental anguish as an idea crossed his mind: if he could get one of those yahoos near the belt, he could take at least one of them out.

  “Don’t take my belt!” Asher said in his best attempt at despair at the idea of someone’s going to take his precious belt.

  His acting skills could use some work.

  But it works out just fine as the smoker grabs the belt anyway, proving that maybe Asher succeeded. The smoker is stupid, or ?he really wants the belt. After all, it’s a pretty nice belt, all things considered.

  “What do we have here?” He asked, tugging on the belt, quickly unclasping it.

  “A trap, dude.” Asher cackled. “Lightning!” he shouted, hoping that the command word works properly.

  A spark of electricity flies off into the night. Between it being incredibly difficult to aim with just your hips and the jerking around, the blast missed.

  Before Asher could do anything else, a fist collided with his jaw, sending him sprawling to the ground.

  “Damn brat. What genius dick did your mother suck to get you something like that?” He says, stomping on Asher’s chest, knocking the air out of him in a single motion.

  Asher wheezed in response, trying to get enough air to breathe.

  “Fuck you.” He rasped out, watching as all the tech he had invented was taken away from him.

  Once fully bound and gagged, Asher is tossed into the backseat of their car. They don’t even bother securing him, letting him roll around freely if he wished.

  “Even if he’s a nobody and we can’t ransom the kid, we can sell the tech on him and make a pretty penny,” Smoker said, putting the car into drive and beginning to drive away.

  “If he’s not worth shit, shouldn’t we just drop him off and sell the tech?” Passenger asked, fiddling with Asher’s watch, trying to see if he could get it to activate.

  “Nah, I said, even if he’s not worth shit. But he probably is considering the tech he has.”

  Asher tuned out their discussion as he tried to figure out what ?he could do to tilt the situation in his favor.

  There’s still the kinetic pulse wave in his left shoe, but that would be really hard to use.

  With his feet bound, he’d get caught in the own backlash of the attack, though if it exploded their car that would make it pretty easy for him to escape.

  Minus the exploding the car centered on him.

  “Mrmf!” Asher exclaimed, trying to convince them to stop and let him go.

  “Quiet kid, we don’t want to get caught by wandering eyes, and I promise you things will be a lot easier if you don’t make others notice you.” Smoker said, his hand resting on the center console.

  It was dirty, but Asher didn’t see anything dangerous about the console. It looked like an ordinary center console for a car.

  “Uh, boss, the console is closed. He can’t see it, and we can’t use it.” Passenger said, shirking away from the boss.

  Grumbling smoker folds back the console revealing something that is obviously super made.

  Different from Asher’s tech. All of Asher’s gear was clean and simple. The way it’s built was standardized. Asher’s not a genius, just a prodigy who can reproduce the most rudimentary of super tech.

  This was just a maze of wires and scrap parts all jumbled together.

  It is undeniably super tech, though, made by a proper genius, not some kind of reality warper.

  “This little baby will make sure that nobody is going to want to mess with us,” he says confidently, patting the device and getting some very nerve-wracking hisses from it.

  “Boss!”

  The car slammed to a stop, sending Asher flying forward, slamming the center console shut, leaving his only hope that he hadn’t accidentally triggered the device to release whatever it’s supposed to do.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Looking around, Asher saw the reason they stopped. It was a simple red light.

  Why these bastards were willing to kidnap people in the middle of the night but aren’t willing to speed past a red light is beyond him, but he guessed that meant they are less likely to get in a crash.

  Looking around, Asher caught a hint of movement between buildings before a blur seemed to careen towards the top of the streetlights.

  It’s hard to make out, but after a bit of squinting, Asher slowly made out what’s going on.

  Asher’s eyes widened as he saw the shadowy figure perched on top of a streetlight. He tried to make a sound to alert the captors that something was wrong.

  The shaded figure jumps from the light, arcing through the air and passing through the car before stopping half inside it, half out.

  “It’ll be okay. I’ve got this,” he said to Asher before grabbing both of his captors and yanking them forward so they slammed into the center console. “Damn, I thought that was going to trigger the airbags.” The dark figure says before turning and giving Asher a wave. “As soon as I’m sure these two are out, I’ll get you free. It’ll all be okay,” he said in a reassuring tone.

  With a fluid motion, his savior opened the door, dragging both captors out and restraining them with what looked to be zip ties?

  Part of Asher grimaced at the sight of such an inelegant choice of tool.

  Of the two of them, Asher was the one who ended up captured and restrained, and this other rookie vigilante saved Asher. He couldn't judge that harshly.

  Next was Asher’s turn. While carried out like his former captors, at least he was gently carried out of the car.

  “Let me get these off of you.” The man said, touching his handcuffs, making them fall to the ground with a clatter before repeating that process with all of his other bonds.

  Despite his best attempts to the contrary, the sunglasses and simple black cloth mask cover his face to where Asher can’t make out any details.

  “You okay?” The man asked stepping away and grabbing a phone out of the pocket of one of the criminals.

  “Who are you?” Asher asked expectantly. If this is another new vigilante, maybe the two of them could be partners.

  “I—” He said, sounding perplexed at the idea of a name yet.

  “Is there any way I can thank you properly?” Asher asked, already switching gears, trying to come up with a way for this to go perfectly.

  “Do you need any help getting home?” The super asked, deciding to nip that line of questioning in the bud.

  “No, I can handle it.” Asher said, trying to sound confident. “I was planning on letting them take me to their hideout so I can bust the whole operation,” he said, trying to gauge the other man’s reaction.

  “Well, I’m going to get going before the police show up. I’m glad you’re okay,” he said before running off.

  Asher paused for a moment, wanting to chase after the man but wanting to reclaim all of his gear and the genius tech the kidnappers had as well.

  Snatching his watch from the car, he punched in a few commands; a small drone released, chasing after the still unnamed phaser.

  That done, he quickly put on the rest of his gear before taking the genius-made tech out of the car and slipping it all into a backpack he found in the back.

  The gizmo in the center console wasn’t the only thing they had, and nobody was here to watch him, so what’s the problem with taking it?

  Once everything was secure, Asher walked to the nearest store before taking a seat, waiting for his Uber to arrive.

  Unfortunately, there aren’t that many drivers that late into the night so it took a while, but it arrived taking Asher back to his house where ?sneaking in and not alerting his parents about what he’s done becomes the most prevalent task on his docket.

  Silently scaling the wall, he tapped the window, letting it fold in on itself so he could slip in without a sound.

  Setting the backpack of ill-gotten gains in a storage box, he moved to his laptop quickly, bringing up the feed of the scouting drone to see what that man was doing.

  Unlike Asher, he seemed either unaware or unwilling to be specifically going after the kidnapping ring.

  The man doesn’t visit any of the hotspots that Asher predicted were going to be future targets.

  He canvassed the area, stopping any crime he saw. Like an angel of death, daring anyone who sees him to continue doing whatever they were doing.

  The image would be so much more productive if he weren’t wearing that ensemble, though. While not without its charm, the mundane clothes for super activity look had fallen out of style for all but the most visceral brawlers.

  Hell, even the homemade super suit look would serve him better in his goal of stopping crime.

  The man didn’t even have a super name for crying out loud!

  An idea struck him, and Asher checked his bank accounts, both the personal one and the one for his company.

  It would be tight, but it would be possible to put together a care package for the man. It wouldn’t take too long either. Besides phasing, it doesn’t seem like he has any other super abilities.

  With the idea beginning to formulate, Asher settled back down in his seat, scrolling through various feeds, trying to catch other angles of his savior.

  Asher could feel that this man was going to be the face of vigilantes in the city. He had it all. If it could be properly harnessed.

  As he ran down the road, a sinking realization came to the forefront of Asher’s mind.

  Mostly, this man has navigated the city by bounding across rooftops and pretending as if the world was his jungle gym to play with, but now he’s running down the main thoroughfare.

  What would a phaser have to do just running on the main street?

  With a snap, the realization clicked into focus, sending Asher internally scrambling for a solution.

  “Don’t do what I think you’re going to please.” Asher begged, hoping that he had more time as he watched the drone feed, praying that this man wouldn’t drop to where Asher couldn’t track him.

  While he’s done that a few times while stopping some minor crime, he hadn’t stayed in the underground network for very long? Could be a phobia of being underground?

  “Dumbass!” Asher yelped, grabbing one of his better drones, one capable of thermal tracking before sending it out the window aiming to meet up with the small drone and take over tracking the ghost man.

  Thankfully, the new drone made excellent time soaring across the city and linking up with the others to expand Asher’s view.

  Every time the phaser interacted with criminals, it’s a little different. Sometimes his plan was efficient and worked well, and sometimes it seemed almost experimental?

  The night of heroics seemed to have come to an end though, because at around three in the morning the phaser stopped bouncing through rooftops or sprinting around fighting crime. He began leisurely walking around town.

  That is ?one benefit of such an abysmal costume. You could go straight back to being a civilian and have none the wiser about what you are doing.

  He even removed the cloth mask, revealing the bottom part of his face, but unless Asher wanted to risk his drones being detected, there’s no chance of using that to figure out who this is.

  Was he going home, or does he by chance have a super base because wouldn’t that be sweet? Operating both his vigilante existence and his budding business out of his parents' garage isn’t exactly the glamorous life Asher had imagined when starting his tech start-up.

  While Asher would prefer being in the field if he could work in an actual base with his own space, he could begrudgingly admit that he would do some more behind the scenes work to support the main super.

  At least until he? had a proper set of power armor built.

  As the phaser entered the clock tower and Asher elected mournfully to call back both of his drones. Neither was doing that great on power, so he’d have to wait for the chance to see the secret identity of that man.

  Asher was hopeful that the two of them could work together. He just needed to convince the phaser.

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