Breakfast

You get home, get dressed, go clothes shopping (at one of those donation-based thrift stores - you're not rich), go home, have dinner, shower, brush, set your alarm, and go to bed.

You dream of jewelry ringed in gold light, zooming through your town, an odd ritual… and wake up at the dining room table, set for two, the taste of your toothpaste in your mouth, your mother just sitting down. You look at the meal… eggs, toast, jam, and orange juice.

Your mother blinks, “Oh, you're back. Your guest is certainly interesting.”

You consider that a minute, “So he filled you in on the deal?”

“More or less…” Mom… Mark… takes a moment to smell the eggs, “...he lives while you sleep, trains you in hero-hood…” she takes a bite of the eggs, “...and is apparently a good cook.”

You take a bite of the eggs yourself, and agree, noticing you're wearing a titanium and sapphire watch on your other wrist as well now, “Seems so.”

You do the ‘phone’ mime with your hand, putting it to your head, “So what's with the new bling?”

“Toolkit for me,” the voice in your head answers, “it's not a training set, so there's no space spent nor power consumed for physical controls, storage, power acquisition, or the mechanisms to walk the user's own power through the motions. It's ‘apply power, get result’ for several channels, tuned to me.”

“So what does it do?” You press.

“Several things,” he answers easily, “Healing for injury and disease, a full body hardshell for a disguise, light bending for invisibility, a mass mapper…”

You interrupt, “A ‘mass mapper’?”

“Yes. Bending light around one's self to become invisible also has the effect that light no longer reaches one's eyes.” He pauses a moment, and continues, “So one needs another method to navigate. Thus, I included a unit that calculates out the positions and shapes of nearby objects by way of their effects on a series of force sensors spread throughout the device, calculates about what I should be seeing, and feeds that information back to your eyes.”

You frown, “That sounds complicated.”

“I put a wooden coin inside the unit to handle that aspect, yes,” the ring agrees, “and it's only good for a few score yards. But it beats being blind. Bonus: I can also tune it to see through objects, or get an overlay map of the area.”

You consider that as you eat, “how much is a score?”

“Oh. Sorry, old word…” the ring chuckles, “...it means twenty. It's usually going to be good for somewhere between about a hundred twenty to a hundred eighty feet, depending mostly on how detailed the area is.”

“So…” you take a guess, “...the math gets harder the more objects there are?”

“More or less, yeah,” he confirms.

You take a look at the new watch… which is also showing the time… “so this is the hero kit you make for yourself.”

“Well… I'll also use it to go dancing, but… pretty much,” the dragon responds, “when you get in over your head, let me take over, this will let me bail you out.”

You consider that as you finish your legs and switch to the toast, “Not if?”

“Everyone on both sides of the business gets in over their heads occasionally,” your body guest pauses, “it's part of the real reason for the ‘no kill’ rules.” He falls into lecture mode, not waiting for you to ask, “okay, so… everyone knows heroes don't kill the villains, despite the frequent jailbreaks. If Ultrama'am just killed Lucy Lexor, she'd never make another death ray, right?”

“One would think,” you agree.

“Turns out it's not that simple,” the ring chuckles, "villains don't band together very well… until there's a threat sufficient to get them to put aside their mutual distrust. If a hero breaks the code, and it's not obviously an understandable one-off scenario, the villains think, ‘this one is out for blood’ and - because nobody wants to be the next ‘victim’ - they band together and proactively hunt that particular hero, setting aside the villain's code for the hunt. The end result of Ultrama'am executing Lucy Lexor would be a dead Ultrama'am.”

You nod slowly, “...and why not the reverse? Why the villain's code?”

The ring chuckles, “Same basic reason. If a villain breaks the code and kills a hero, the other heroes stop worrying about being all noble and go for the kill as well. If Lucy Lexor ever kills Ultrama'am, Lucy will soon follow.” he takes a breath, “Now, both sides understand that accidents happen - when an ‘Invulnerable’,” yes, you can hear the quotes, “hero or villain gets too tired to continue, and doesn't either surrender or retreat… yes, they're going to die from a hit, and their opponent isn't going to have much warning. That's forgivable. Keep in mind, though… the more often it happens, the less likely it's an accident. People will believe it once.” He takes a breath, “as for surrender… it means survival. A villain will drop a defeated hero in a ‘death trap’ that a six year old could figure out and then walk away, drop them in a tu-tu and drop them off in Times Square, put them in makeup and tie them down in front of a news station, or otherwise do something silly and let them go. Likewise, a hero will take a villain to the police: The scoundrel will stand trial, be sentenced to some length of time in prison, and escape once the press dies down. If they're not out within a year, some hero will visit asking why, and likely sponsor them on a work release as a hero. A powered villain will basically never serve a full sentence.”

You consider that, “So… what's the point of the whole charade?"