Immortality is BS

To make it clear: All rights to characters, setting, story and central concepts in this story remain the property of Wildbow, Worm's author, and the good people who created GURPS. This is just me playing in the sandbox. Worm can be found at parahumans dot wordpress dot com, and GURPS Fourth Edition can be bought from warehouse23 dot com.

First contact

I looked down at the knife. It was embedded to the hilt in my stomach. It felt bizarre. I was quite aware that the blade was in me but it didn't hurt. It didn't even sting.

My body had already healed around the blade and was trying to push it out. I shrugged and pulled the knife out, watching in fascination as the wound closed almost immediately. Then I glanced back at the man dressed in red and green, now whimpering on his knees. Perhaps I had been a tad too forceful dislocating his elbow. And his shoulder. And knee.

Hey, he stabbed me.

The other one had run as soon as he saw that I didn't go down when stabbed.

The girl they had been robbing had backed up against the wall. She was dressed in a business casual dress and one of her shoes was missing. I spotted it near a trash bin, picked it up and offered it to her. "Here, this might make walking easier. Are you OK?"

She grabbed the shoe in her shaking hands and bent to put it on. "Never mind me, what about you? He stabbed you!"

"Well, yes, but I got better. See?" I said and lifted up my T-shirt. I even pushed my finger through the hole in the fabric. "Would you happen to have a cell? We should probably call the cops."

She hesitated for a moment and pulled out her cell from her purse. "Shouldn't you have a mask or something?"

"Hmm? Why?"

"Well, you're a cape, aren't you?"

"A cape?"

"You know, parahuman."

"Ah, you mean superhuman. Yeah, I'm super. Well, sort of. My powers aren't much use in superhuman conflicts, I'm afraid. All I can do is survive."

"So are you with New Wave or something? They're the only group without secret identities I know."

"I don't know this New Wave. Are they a new group?"

She was silent, so I glanced at her from where I was tying up the thug.

"Where do you think you are?" she asked me. Puzzling.

"New York, of course. I just came from Chinatown and took a shortcut."

Another moment of silence. "Listen, this isn't New York. You're in Brockton Bay."

"What? Where?" It actually wouldn't be the first time one of my so-called pals had teleported me somewhere without me noticing. But I had never heard of this Brockton Bay.

"Brockton Bay. About five hours' drive from New York," she said, puzzled.

"Never heard of it. A small place then? I wonder which asshat did this time."

"I don't think Brockton is that small a place that you wouldn't have heard about it. We're in the news way too often for that. Comes with being the city with the highest cape concentration in the United States."

This was getting weirder and weirder. I was beginning to suspect Raquel had shunted me into another Earth. A bit extreme, perhaps, but he had done worse things when drunk.

"So the supers of this world go running around dressed in capes and masks?"

"Not supers. Capes. Parahumans. Yes, they have secret identities. And what do you mean of this world?" The lady began to sound frustrated.

"Well, I'm beginning to think that one of my acquaintances has played a prank on me and shunted me into alternate Earth or another dimension or something else."

She stood there staring me for a while. Then she grabbed the cell from my hand and stuffed it back to her purse. "Yeah, let's not call the cops. Just leave the thug there and come with me." She turned and walked towards the parking lot visible outside the alley mouth.

She took me to her car, shoved me inside, went to the driver's side and sat down before taking a deep breath. "I'll take you to my cousin. She'll know what the fuck to do with you. I hope."

She drove us to a two-story house in the suburbs. On the way she introduced herself as Rachel Stafford. She told me about Brockton Bay as we drove through the city and about the news. I asked questions and she answered.

"Endbringers?"

"Yeah. Behemoth was the first, crawled out of the ground. Destroys cities and kills a lot of capes. Then came Leviathan out of the sea. He sunk Kyushu and Newfoundland. Last but definitely not least is Simurgh. She dropped from space. Telekinetic and apparently telepathic, messes with peoples heads on a massive scale. Turns them into walking time bombs. Scary as hell," she said.

"Damn. So your capes began to appear in the late eighties, right? After that golden man, Zion?"

"Yeah, Scion, es-cee, was the first," she said.

"Huh. We started gaining powers back in the forties. Some think that it was the Second World War and the crazy things both sides did to win. Secret experiments in supersoldiering, the occult, all that nuclear stuff. Whatever it was the first ones were seen in public in mid-forties and since then the supers have become more and more common. There's almost a hundred million of us on the planet these days. Most of us don't go traipsing around in spandex anymore."

"Heh. Wait till you see my cousin's costume. Here we are," she said turning to a driveway.

We got out of the car and walked to the front door. She rang the bell and soon a blonde with a heart-shaped face and full lips opened the door. There wasn't much family resemblance to the redhead next to me. Both were beautiful, though.

"Rachel! What a pleasant surprise! And you brought a date!" She turned inside and shouted: "Kids! Neil! It's Rachel, and she brought a man!"

I could see she was drawing way too much amusement about my presence.

"Sarah! He's not my… Whatever! I came for help, you ass!" Rachel pushed past Sarah, storming in. The antics told me that they were quite close. It reminded me of my father and uncle.

Sarah gestured me inside and I complied. Their house was homey. Just the right mix of chaos and order required to make a home. Neil had obviously just climbed up from the double sofa and was standing next to it. Next to him were two teens, a blonde girl and a sandy-haired younger boy. Both rushed over to hug Rachel as she got to the living room with us.

"This is my husband Neil, and those are our kids Crystal and Eric," Sarah introduced. I shook hands with Neil. Did I mention yet that the man was a giant? Easily seven feet tall and a body that would have needed eight-hour days at the gym if he wasn't so obviously a super… parahuman. I'm a bit over six feet tall myself and I felt small next to him.

I shook hands with the kids too. "Hi, I'm Eric. And you must be Crystal," I said as I shook the boy's hand. I turned to the girl and shook her hand too. "That makes you Eric. Nice to meet you, namesake of mine."

The teens looked a bit stunned for a while, then turned to look at each other. "No way. Rachel brought over a guy with a sense of humor? The end days are here!"

We all laughed. Eric (the boy) turned to look at me and asked: "Is your name really Eric?"

I nodded. "Yeah. Eric Sloane. A funny 'coincidence', don't you think?" I actually used air quotes for that.

Eric laughed at that and turned to Rachel. "Sorry, Rachel, but you're way too old for me."

I snickered a little. "Ahh. But yeah, I think Rachel here wanted you to meet me. She seemed to think you could help."

Rachel eyed the kids. "Sarah, I think the kids should go upstairs."

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, like they wouldn't eavesdrop after that. Especially if they're sup… capes too. Keeping things from normal teens is hard enough."

Sarah shrugged and seemed to agree. We all took seats (Neil took two) and Rachel opened the discussion. "Sarah, I don't remember the details, but Haywire's work was banned, right? And travel between worlds is sort of no-no?"

"Yes. The power to breach the wall between worlds is so rare that it's practically nonexistent. And the few that exist are either recruited or subject to enforced research. Not officially, of course, but since travel between worlds was declared illegal after the Madison incident we haven't seen or heard of any capes with the power. Not that there were many to begin with."

Neil glanced at me. "He's from an alternate, isn't he?"

"Yeah. Either alternate Earth or a completely different dimension, or even different multiverse. If it was Raquel any of those is possible. I myself can't travel between realities. I rarely travel at all. My only power is not dying," I clarified.

"What do you think we can do, Rachel? Why didn't you go to Carol?" Sarah asked.

"You know why. Our relationship isn't on the best of terms right now."

"Right. Carol's allergy to anything fun. What did you mean 'not dying'?" Sarah asked, turning to face me.

I was about to answer when Rachel did it for me. Sort of.

"I saw him get stabbed, the wound heal over the blade, him pulling the knife out, and the wound closing again. This took less than ten seconds."

"You saw?" Neil asked.

"Uhh… I was sort of almost mugged. Don't worry, Eric stopped them, and they were only ABB thugs anyway."

"You were in that Chinese place again, weren't you?"

"I can't help it! They have the best buffet in the city!"

"Rachel, it's deep in the ABB territory. We non-Asians never go there alone," Neil chastened her.

I decided to rescue Rachel. "Back to the subject of powers. My insane regeneration is only a part of it. I'm literally immortal. I don't even need to eat, drink, breathe or sleep. There's this joker who has tried all kinds of things to off me. Most of the time with my permission. The first time was an honest accident, but he got fascinated when I came back after taking a dip in concentrated sulfuric acid. I mean, wouldn't you be? There was literally nothing left of me that time. It took me less than twenty seconds to rematerialize next to the tank. I'd show you but it can get pretty gruesome and I don't want to ruin these lovely sofas. But that's my only power, at least for now. Well, I'm also immune to all psionics."

"At least for now? Do you mean that you might get more powers?" Crystal asked.

"Yeah, it's not that uncommon where I come from. People who actually use and flex their powers tend to gain more of them. From that, I'm guessing that's not true around here?"
Sarah looked at Neil. "No, not generally. There are second triggers, but they are extremely rare, and happen under extraordinary duress, not after practicing your powers."

"Huh. But from what I understand the powers used in my world and yours are pretty similar. How we gain them and when they first appeared to seem to be the major differences."

"You mean you don't have to trigger?" Eric asked eyes wide.

"Trigger?" I asked.

"Yeah, that's how we gain powers. The crappiest day of your life, like something life-threatening or like insane mental duress," Eric explained. "Easier for us second- and third-gens, though."

"Nope, nothing like that. I mean, sure, some folks might gain powers like that, I suppose, but these days powers are mostly inherited. The kind of powers inherited rarely make sense. My father's power was flight and my mom was a technopath. And I'm an immortal regenerator. No sense whatsoever. Some gain powers through exposure to funny things like exotic radiation or eldritch horrors, others meet aliens or something. There's not just one way to gain powers. Most of the time it just sort of happens."

"Your world is weird, man," Eric said.

"Yes, yes it is. Yours is a pretty grim place, though. I'd go even so far as to say crappy. I mean you have Endbringers and huge villain versus heroes fights and all that crap. Sure, we have villains too but mostly supers play with each other. Getting normals involved is a rather big no. It makes heroes come after you and villains want nothing to do with the offender. Usually."

"Fascinating," Sarah said, looking rather disinterested. She was the only one. "But I suppose Rachel brought you here so that I could convince my sister Carol to figure out how to help you?"

I shrugged. "I suppose so. I can't read thoughts. Which is lucky, I hear that power is rather crappier than it sounds like."

"You have telep-"

"Eric, not now. I'll give Carol a call and see if she'd meet you tomorrow. Are you going to stay at Rachel's tonight?"

"I've got no plans. Rachel?"

Rachel seemed to think for a moment. "Sure, why not. I have a relatively comfy sofa bed available."

We said our goodbyes and left.

I didn't sleep on the sofa that night.