Chapter 4 - Training

Nia Riddle

In her room, pacing….

'Dammit, Dammit, DAMMIT! Why is he trying to get a girlfriend now? He never showed any interest in girls before. He just hung out with Peter and occasionally that Mary girl, but he never really got along with her when Peter wasn't there. I need to get the bitch Gwen, along with any other whores away from him. I can't kill her, Tyler might abandon me if he finds out. Maybe I should spread some rumors about him in school. Yeah, that should work, after all, they've only known each other for 2 weeks. Couples in high school break up over smaller things. Anyways, I just need to relax and not blow my cover. I can enlist the help of some of my friends to spread some plausible rumors on Tuesday. And then I can make my brother rely on me more when I stick by him as the only female around. Yes, yes, that's what I'll do.'

Finally she lays down, grabbing one of Tyler's used shirts that she stole. She insists on doing the laundry so she has easy access to his clothes. Holding the shirt to her nose, her breathing slows down, and she drifts to sleep.

________

Tyler Riddle

Tyler sits motionlessly let on his bed with the door closed.

I have already started increasing the strength of my senses, namely smell and hearing. Touch becomes very unpleasant and downright painful when increased too much. The eyes are too complex of an organ to be messing around with right now, not to mention I need to study a few sets of eyes to base my improvements off of. Besides, with the skills Matt can teach me, I don't think I'll need it too much. My brain enhancement attempts take a lot of time, but I'm sure I could get to Matt's level if I spent an entire day on it. Editing myself takes a surprisingly low amount of energy.

Right now, I'm training my hearing. It's one of the most useful enhanced senses Daredevil has and it's the only one that can remotely replace sight. It's omni-directional too, so I won't be needing eyes on the back of my head. But it's hard, like a baby learning to speak in coherent sentences hard. Mainly because everything is SO FUCKING LOUD! The TV in the neighbor's living room? LOUD! The lady walking her dog 4 stories below? LOUD! The neighbor's fucking 2 buildings away? Only one of them is loud, but damn if it isn't disgusting. My sweet, loveable sister's pacing almost drew me up against the wall. I only managed to calm down and control myself by focusing on the thumping of my own heartbeat. It's barely tolerable.

After a couple of hours of concentration, it's 12:00 a.m. I can roughly control how much I hear. Everything is still way louder than before, but I'm managing by tuning out what I don't want to hear. The maximum distance I can hear is maybe 100-150 feet depending on the surroundings. Anything more than that, and I start to lose control fast.

I've started to follow the movements of a railway worker I see around the neighborhood.  Based on how close he is to the apartment and what I know from the comics and the show, this man could very well be a bad dude. I hear him waking up for his night shift, heading to another room. This one with a soft breathing. It's clearly a child's. They just sound different from an adult's breathing, especially when sleeping. I then hear some faint rustling noises and male grunting. I shudder and my mood immediately turns grizzly.

This is the guy. This is scum, scum that needs to be eliminated, deleted, erased. I'm not going to let him off with a few bruises. I'll either kill him, or make him wish I had. I quickly put on tight, black clothing, using my Dad's doo rag to cover my face. I can still see through it, just enough to recognize objects and colors. It's best if I cover as much skin as possible. I can't be certain if other people see me, but thankfully the area we live in isn't violent or rich enough to warrant a lot of cameras, certainly not enough to track where I came from due to all the back alleys.

Once dressed, I head to the kitchen in the dark, and grab two steak knives. The lights flick on, and Matt's standing at the switches. He's in similar attire as me, much like his original, homemade uniform.

"What's with the getup Tyler?"

"I'm going out. How can you tell?"

"Skin sounds different from clothing."

"It must take a lot of skill to tell the difference."

"I have practiced since childhood. What are the knives for?"

"I don't know."

"Then why are you taking them?"

"I might need them."

"You're dodging questions Tyler."

"And you're wasting our time."

"Fine, but when we get back, you're telling me everything. And leave the knives, you're going to cut yourself."

He's right. I have no idea how to use knives in a fight, or even fight for that matter. Leaving the knives in the block, I head out the door with Matt. 

15 minutes later, we found our target at the shipping yard for the railway. Me and Matt gifted him his ass on a silver platter. I did the least amount of work. Damn can that blind dude move

Matt gave his warnings, while I focused on smearing his manhood on the gravel and "educating" him on how to be a better dad to his daughter. Matt can't take care of a little girl and neither can anybody else I know. and foster care, in Harlem, in the Marvelverse is not something I want to subject her to. She'll have to be with him until I can figure out an alternative. He'll be out of work for a few days due to surgery, but he can get back to work eventually, doing a more stationary job.

________

Back at the apartment

"Hey Matt. I never thought that a blind man could move like that."

"Stop trying to buy time. Sit down and talk. What was with today and before the meeting, 2 weeks back? How can you hear so well?" 

"It's complicated, and I don't understand everything."

"Tell me what you can."

"How do I put this so you understand? Ok, just bare with me. 2 weeks back, the day before the meeting, the old Tyler got his throat slashed in a mugging gone wrong. The old me came along onto his dying body. I was sort of turning into dust at the time and I figured I was screwed, so I went to see how he was doing and maybe call for help or something. But the moment I touched him, I blacked out.m, encountering what was left of the old Tyler in a sort of black space. Then it becomes a little fuzzy, but the next thing I know, I wake up in the old Tyler's body. The neck gash was healed, and I fused with the old Tyler's memories."

"So you're what, some eldritch entity taking over a young boy's body!?"

"NO, calm down, and quiet. Nia is sleeping. No, the old me was a normal human boy, 16-years-old, a boy genius, but still just a boy. I built a device, a sort of transporter to escape from my old Multiverse to this one."

"Why do you keep saying 'the old me' and ' the old Tyler' ?"

"My mind and consciousness mainly consists of the boy genius, myself. However everything else has fused with what remained of Tyler's soul. I contain his memories, thoughts, feelings, hopes, and dreams." 

"And your abilities?"

"They seem to be an after effect of my travel between Multiverses, same with me turning to dust when I arrived. I can absorb and recreate things based on how much mass or energy they contain as well as their worth and rarity as materials or tools in reference to myself.  It sort of 'feeds' me and serves as a replacement for food. I can recreate things and materials that I've absorbed before using the energy I get from absorption. Similarly, I can edit or make alterations to things using a much smaller amount of energy. This is how I enhanced my senses, namely hearing. I wanted to get training from you, because your senses and abilities are almost overpowered, yet they are all within the scope of human capabilities. I need strength to provide Nia and I a safe life."

"That gets me to my biggest question. How do you know so much? Where are you getting all this knowledge?"

Now this is a little tricky. I can't just tell him that him and his entire world, nay universe, was just made as a series of comic books. I'll just have to try and satisfy his curiosity while getting out of it all. Lying won't get me anywhere around him.

"Short answer: I can't tell you. Long answer is that I don't know things. I know a lot of what's possible and what's so likely that it's certain. I know what this world is like, not what is happening, what happened before, and sure as hell not what will happen. I can nearly make educated guesses."

"Huh. Well you're a hard one to read, always were, even for me. But thank you for sharing with me. Are you going to tell Peter and Nia?"

"Yeah, I have no clue how. I'm more than happy to take suggestions."

"I'm not the best person to say this, but I hear that honesty is the best policy." Matt starts getting up. "Wash up and get some rest. I'll take care of the dirty clothes.  No need to tip Nia off before you're ready to tell her."

"Hey Matt, about that training I was gonna ask you for…"

"2 hours a night, every night. We'll start with echolocation."

With that, we parted ways in the living room and I went to my room. A quick 4 minute cold shower to clean off and I'm out cold on the bed. So tired, that my hearing didn't phase me a bit.