It took him only an instant to reach a complete stop.  He let himself settle down into his real body once more.

So I suppose this is the thing he had to do first? Which apparently is going to take until near midnight, judging by the speeds involved here.

He’d wondered sometimes if his ability to fly was meant for travel on an interstellar level.

…that makes some sense. Especially with the side effect of essentially going comatose until you reach your destination, at the highest speeds.

But what was your trigger event? Could it be construed such that some alien entity would go “oh, we can solve this by letting him travel to the stars”?

What if he kept accelerating?  His breaker power would let him weather the void of space, his ability to see would be that much more powerful if there was no atmosphere to occlude his vision over miles… even the boredom of traveling for years was nothing if his conscious mind shifted into a rest state.

Exactly!

Not that he’d ever test it.

Might be a bit risky. You never know how far you’ll need to travel before you hit something that lets you pull out of that state.

He’d absorbed light, heat and ambient radiation while he flew, and he felt restored.  Even the mildest wear and tear had been tended to, his body restored to peak condition.

Something for Legend and Purity to relate over.

His mind was another matter, his emotions.  It was like waking up in a warm bed, the man he loved beside him, only to experience a sinking feeling as he came to dread the coming day.

Ouch.

What exactly is it you’re here to do?

He drifted closer to the oil rig, and settled down on a fence, using a touch of his flight ability to stay balanced.

Oil rig, huh? Interesting.

In every direction, as far as the eye could see, there was only water.

We’re a long way away from Brockton Bay now and even now dry spots are but a myth.

There were other benefits too.  He was better at registering and processing light waves, regardless of which state he was in.  He could see with perfect clarity up until the point that an obstactle intervened or the atmosphere occluded his vision.

This is the exact opposite of a nearly impossible crack theory that came to mind a few paragraphs ago. That to protect Legend against his own lasers, he turned blind.

Incidentally, lasers and blindness are a bad combination. Just ask the League of Super Redundant Heroes.

If an opponent attacked and struck him, he instinctively transitioned into his energy form for a split second.  In that state, he absorbed energy of a variety of kinds, including the kinetic energy that was transferred with a punch or with a bullet.  His opponents were forced to whittle him down, each attack only a fraction as effective as it might otherwise be.

So his toughness is a side effect of the flight power’s Required Secondary Power. Are the lasers tied in like this too?

Even then, a share of that small amount of damage was healed a second later as he used the absorbed energy to mend his body.  Conversely, his enemies could try to hit him with enough speed and force that even a hundredth of a second of contact was sufficient to take him out of the fight.

Interesting. So many small attacks won’t harm him in the long run, but you can still one-shot him.

Leviathan and Behemoth had managed to land blows of that magnitude.

But still not strong enough to kill, apparently, and the Simurgh is left out, whether that’s because he hasn’t fought her enough times for this to happen at some point or (more likely the intended implication) she’s not strong enough. Which says a hell of a lot about how tough Legend is.

Siberian has as well.  He set his jaw and increased his speed a notch.

Oof, yeah, touchy subject.

He traveled over the Atlantic Ocean, moving so fast that the water appeared to be one flat plane.

Damn. Are we going all the way across to Europe in this scene?

His thoughts became a blur, and he was forced to focus on his destination, letting all other thoughts and doubts fall by the wayside. 

I’m guessing the UK. London, maybe. Arthur is a very English name.

It was refreshing, in a way, cleansing himself of the responsibilities and the thousands of problems he was forced to handle as the leader of the Protectorate.  Still, it always scared him just a little.

I can’t blame him for being a bit disturbed at letting go of his mind, temporarily or otherwise. Even if he’s been doing it for 20 years.

Maybe Kid Win was being optimistic.

Legend turned and opened a window, then let himself float through.

Who needs doors?

He took a second to get his bearings, to inform himself of which direction was up, down, north, east, south and west, then he took off.

I like how he needs to keep track of up and down among these. Does he feel any gravity on his body while he’s flying?

Powers were classified into categories, and the ‘breaker’ classification was used to mark those powers which were limited to one’s own body and their immediate vicinity.

Are you telling me that your flight is a result of you breaking gravity?

Though it had initially been used to cover individuals who could make themselves stronger, denser, larger or change the materials they were made of, it was slowly expanding to include others.  There was a theory that was gaining traction, suggesting that the breaker classification was one of the most common powersets, if not always the most pronounced. 

I suppose there are a lot of powers that could be described that way.

Innumerable people with powers had also adapted innate defenses that kept their own powers from harming themselves.  Pyrokinetics tended to be resistant to flame. There were automatic shutoffs, biological and mental, for various other powers.  Even beyond that, there were other adaptations that were so subtle as to be almost undetectable.  His weren’t.

So… is he talking about something about the way his flight works that keeps it from hurting him? Or maybe it’s something about light?

…I should probably just let him continue.

Legend’s flight powers let him accelerate to a speed that exceeded sound and continue accelerating, to no hard limit.

Not even the speed of light?

…oh yeah, I suppose the speed of light is technically a soft limit, even if it’s hard in the sense that you can’t surpass it. It has to do with the energy needed to accelerate approaching infinity.

The soft limit was that he had breaker powers that kept the acceleration from tearing him to shreds, altering his body into something else entirely as he gained speed.

…huh. That’s a weird and pretty cool way to do it.

The drawback to this was that his brain also shut down on a cognitive level as the transformation occurred.  He had never let himself go so fast that he lost the ability to consciously control his movements. 

He’s probably going to need to do that at some point. Possibly by the end of this Interlude.

Question is, though, can he then be slowed down enough to regain control without tearing down half a city?

“Hero said the same thing, and I think we’ll both agree that he was wrong.”

Niice.

That seemed to give Kid Win pause.

Yes, Kid, your role model was a human being, one who seems to have gone through a lot of the same struggles you’re going through right now.

“Think about it.”

“Okay,” Kid Win replied.  “Not that I’m not majorly grateful that you’re giving me the pep talk, but you said you were in a bit of a hurry and I think we’re done here.”

Kid seems to downplay things a bit, but he still sneaks in an acknowledgement here of the fact that this meant a lot to him.

So, what have you been doing on the ‘puter all this time? Something about compiling and uploading data… updates to the system about the status of the Nine, perhaps? Though I’m not sure why Legend would need to sit/stand around here waiting for the upload in that case.

Kid Win frowned, his expression changing fractionally as he stared down at the keyboard in front of him.  He seemed to come to terms with the idea, because he moved on. “Anyways, I think it’s working for me.  I’m getting the feeling that I do have a specialization, but it’s more of an approach than a particular field.

Sure, that’s possible. After Leet, I don’t think there are a ton of rules for what can or can’t be a tinker specialization.

Equipment with multiple settings and uses, modular weapons, gear that’s adaptable to different situations, I guess?”

That’s a really good specialization! Versatility is very important as a cape, and your specialization may be making your gear versatile? That’s very, very useful.

Man, if Armsmaster and Kid worked together, they could make some really crazy stuff. 

“That’s fantastic.  The fact that you’ve struggled and then found your strengths the hard way could be an asset.”

“An asset?”

“If you wind up leading the Wards or a team in the Protectorate, it means you’ll be better equipped to help out teammates who are having their own problems.”

That’s true! Also, I like how Legend says this with a tone that indicates it’s well within the realm of possibility, no big deal.

And hey, the Wards’ leadership is at least partially based on seniority, right? I think Kid is at most third in line to the leader position.

“I’d be horrible in a leadership position.”

Perhaps now.