“Jesus Christ I’m a dork.” Tim cringes to himself as his hand wraps around a light post and he swings himself into the air and gracefully lands on top of it.

  “Drugs are extinct?” He sighs and sits, hanging his feet down and kicking at the air.

  This isn’t a bad first outing as a superhero, not at all, but there’s definitely more he can do with the rest of the night. Plenty of crime to stop, and he knows where a lot of it is concentrated.

  Well’s Park for example, on one of his and Jane’s families many stents into homelessness they ended up sleeping there often. Not that homeless people sleeping in a park is a problem, it's more all the drugs, and sometimes even weapons that get passed around there.

  Santee has active KKK rallies, maybe he should go beat up some racists? His blood simmers as he remembers some old skinhead throwing a slur at Jane last time they were there.

  Then there’s also Lakeside, there’s meth labs all around that part of town, Robert’s meth labs, those should definitely be high on his priority list.

  All these things need doing, but before he gets to it, there's another thing to consider. They likely will all have guns, and while he is definitely, probably bulletproof, other people aren’t. A bad shot or a stray bullet bouncing off a wall, or him, could kill someone, and he’s not willing to risk that.

  All that to say, before he goes and starts really cleaning up the streets, he needs a better handle on his powers, figure out what he’s truly capable of, and luckily he knows a great place to practice.

  Downtown San Diego wasn’t always a near metropolis, when Tim was little there weren’t nearly as many skyscrapers, and the trolley system, while not bad, wasn’t anywhere near as extensive as it is now. He’s thankful for the new railways now, as he sits on one of Jones Corp automated railcars, heading to another Jones Corp related area.

  The Jones Corporation are the ones who’ve renovated the city thoroughly, and with those renovations comes lots of heavy machinery, metal, and scrap. Hundreds of thousands of tons of building material all placed in an enormous, temporary scrapyard, very liftable materials, Tim’s hoping.

  It’s the perfect place to get a rough estimate of just how strong he really is, and with his powers he’ll have an easy time getting in. As he nears the junkyard he hops off the trolley and lands with a roll into a large dirt lot, littered with construction material. He spares a quick glance to a Jones Corp mech, pondering if he’s as strong as one, then leaps into the air.

  He winces as the pressure wave he causes knocks over materials and sends a dust cloud billowing in all directions, he’ll have to fix that when he’s done.

  He climbs higher and higher into the sky, much farther and faster than he intended. There’s an initial panic of being so high up, but as he passes the highest buildings in the city, it becomes thrilling.

  “I'm really a superhero.” He whispers, near the apex of his jump, and then looks out to his target.

  His vision zooms into the scrapyard, eyes flicking towards movement as big as a construction mech hauling steel beams and as small as a cockroach skittering towards an abandoned sandwich. Looking farther in, the scrapyard is devoid of people, the construction waste all already organized in huge piles. Tim smiles and angles his body towards it, then transforms into a Microraptor. He sprawls out his limbs and his four wings catch the wind, allowing Tim to glide down, landing on a junk pile.

  Tim pops as a human and rubs his hands together as he looks around. There’s so much to do, so much to try out. Testing how strong he is should probably be item one, after speed and durability its his most relevant stat and easier to test than the other two, however—

  He finds the biggest piece of reflective glass he can, and transforms into his Tyrannosaurus Rex. His feet sink into the dirt as he towers above the pane now, his breath now hot enough to fog the glass even in the summer air.

  While modern paleontology has determined the colors of a good handful of different dinosaur species, like microraptor and borealopelta, T.rex isn’t on that list, until now. He looks into the reflection, expecting browns and grays, but huffs in an excitement as instead he finds greens and blacks.

  He looks at his black stripes that go down his back, and the rings around his tail, pacing back and forth to get a good look at everything. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense to him, generally the bigger an organism gets the plainer its colors will be. It's not something most people think about, but it takes resources to make the pigments that saturate the corresponding cells, and it can get expensive if you have a whole lot of said cells. Maybe his transformations aren't accurate then? The energy that ripped Tim apart and put him back together was green, so maybe all of his forms match, easy enough to test.

  Next up, Therizinosaurus, it is his favorite after all and even if you can’t know what color it was before it went extinct, at least it’ll look awesome in this color scheme. To Tim’s delight though, and confusion, it's completely different. He’s covered in a thin layer of black and white feathers, with a bright red, scaly face. The splash of red was probably some sort of mating display, if Tim has to guess, the more vibrant the red the healthier the male. Not that there’s any other Therizinosaurus to compare with so he can confirm the idea.

  Ankylosaurus, black and reddish brown, Stegorous a similar color, though its sword-like tail is a much more vivid red. Tim giddily cycles through dinosaur after dinosaur, and isn’t until twentieth transformation that he remembers he should be testing other things as well.

  He shifts a few more times, trying to gauge just how fast he can change, and the only word he can settle on is, instantly. With how fast he can perceive and process information, he had figured he could see himself transform in slow motion, but he can’t see the stages of transforming at all. Speaking of processing information, his size shifting also doesn’t disorient him at all. He switches to the turkey sized Velociraptor, then to the thirty five foot tall Mamenchisaurus, just to confirm, and nods his sauropod head with the confirmation.

  Then he remembers something, and transforms back into Pteranodon, clacking his huge beak, the sound echoing hauntingly off the hunks of metal. He doesn’t just change into dinosaurs, its pterosaurs too, so what else can he become?

  Pterosaurs are, like dinosaurs, a part of a branch of reptiles called archosaurs, which also includes crocodilians. The first one of those that comes to mind is a simple dwarf caiman, Tim finds them fairly cute, and so he focuses on that and tries to transform.

  Nothing, but when he thinks about the prehistoric Sarcosuchus, then he transforms into the thirty foot long croc.

  “Interesting.” He says as he becomes human, tapping the chin of his mask.

  Finding another avenue to test, he thinks about a dinosaur still alive today, a toucan, and tries to transform, but nothing. Emu, Ostrich, Cassowary, all a no, but once he hits a Terror Bird, a much more recently extinct giant bird, then he transforms.

  “Weird.” He says to himself again. He didn’t even have a specific terror bird species in mind, honestly he didn’t know that many, but he still transformed. Plus terror birds are so much more recent than any non-avian dinosaur, what exactly is the cut off for what he can transform into, and why is it so specific anyways?

  He tests what he can, and determines that the most recent animal he can transform into are things that went extinct around ten thousand years ago. So he can’t become a Dodo or a Thylacine, but he can become a Mastodon and an Irish Elk. That also confirms it's not just archosaurs he can turn into, but plenty of other groups as well.

  After transforming into a few reptiles far older than dinosaurs, he’s about to give arthropods a shot, when he hears shouting far off in the distance, towards where the workers park their trucks and mechs.

  “Ooo, perhaps an altercation to intervene in.” Tim claps and leaps to the top of a scrap pile, making his way towards the commotion.

  He focuses on the voices as he jumps, tuning out the rest of the bangs and clangs of the yard. The shouting workers' individual scents come to him clearly, dirt, sweat, alcohol. There's something more to the sweat of some of the men though, something familiar. Your body removes a lot from your system via sweat, chemicals it itself produces, and ones you take in for instance.

  Tim lands on a portable light tower, crouching down and looking over the scene. A large man with a hard hat screams at a group of others, his face red and veins bulging. A younger guy is the target of the verbal assault, and one of the guys with the scent of drugs lingering on his skin. Tim’s vision zooms in on the man, he’s swaying back and forth, high and drunk, but the people behind him aren’t nearly as inebriated.

  Some definitely have the same scent of drugs and alcohol, but more importantly, Tim spots the outline of a gun on two of them. He even recognizes one guy, a regular customer of his sister, as if he isn’t itching for a reason for a fight already.

  He isn’t sure what they’re fighting about, and now he doesn’t particularly care. He probably should wait for an inciting incident before he leaps into action, but knowing what kind of people these druggies must be, he doesn’t want to.

  He descends from his perch, like an owl diving for a rat in the night, and lands on one of the men, bringing him into the ground.

  Before the group even have a chance to react, he’s on the next one, turning into his Compsagnathus and landing on a shoulder. Tim chirps into the man’s ear, and dodges out of the way of an oncoming slap, hopping onto the druggies other shoulder.

  “What the fuck!? Get it off!” The man shouts and tries to grab at Tim, only for Tim to transform back into human and kick the hand away.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  “You know this is all very convenient for me.” Tim declares, still perched on the guy’s shoulders, his knees buckling from the weight. “I need some action to test out my powers and just going through what I can and can’t do in my head was getting boring fast!”

  Most of the people have enough sense to run, but not all, and Tim finally bothers to count them. Eight men come at him now, each with something or other coursing through their system. As one comes up behind him and reaches for his leg. Tim brings his foot up and places it on the man’s outstretched arm, transforming back into his compy and scurrying to the man’s back. He jumps off and becomes human, his foot coming down on the guy’s popliteus, forcing him to the ground. Tim grabs his shoulders and rolls backwards with him, sending him into a fence with a kick.

  Two more men run at him, one launching a sloppy punch at Tim’s face, which he simply side steps, then sticks out his foot, tripping the man.

  “Womp womp, dirt for dinner.” Tim snickers as he grabs the next man’s punch mid swing, then uses the fist to smack the man three times in his own face.

  “If you unclench it'll hurt less.” Tim advises as he makes the man hit himself two more times, and goes for a third, but his hearing picks up the click of a gun’s safety flicking off.

  Tim turns, his calves tensing to leap towards the man and mush the gun like playdough, but the guy he was grappling before is too close and has a hand on him, moving to try and grab Tim. He instinctively relaxes his muscles, he can’t leap now, something about that feels like it will kill.

  The gun goes off three times, and Tim can see the bullets coming, and guess exactly where they’re going to hit, one into his own shoulder, and two into the man. Tim reacts before he knows it, shoving the man out of the way as he turns his body, outstretching his hand so that he’ll intercept all three bullets.

  He feels each bullet shred through the padding of his costume, flatten against his skin, then ricochet off into the ground, save for one. When the bullet makes contact with his hand, he wraps his fingers around and rips it out of the air, rolling it around on his thumb, then glares at the shooter.

  He stumbles back, eyes going wide, the remainder of the men running off after the display of speed. Tim rolls around the bullet some more, looks at it, then the man, then the gun.

  “Itchy trigger finger?” He asks, scratching at his thumb, “me too.” Then he flicks the bullet past the man’s head, it ricochets off a mech, then a junkpile, then into the gun itself.

  “Fuck!” The man yells as the weapon is ripped from his hand, and Tim dashes for it, snatching it from the air and crushing it to bits. “What are you?”

  “Me? I’m Prehistoric Kid! World’s first superhero.” Tim bows deeply while squishing the leftover parts of the gun into a ball. He pretends to throw it at the man and snickers as he flinches and runs away.

  A fun but brief fight, one where he didn’t get to test nearly as much as he wanted, but at least now he knows he’s bulletproof and fast enough to catch them from the air. There was something else going on too though, now that he has time to-

  A motor starting snaps his attention away from his thoughts, and senses all hone into one location, a Jones Mech starting up. He can smell the lingering scent of the crossfaded guy on the ladder and the door to the cockpit.

  As badly as he wants to fight one, Tim can’t help but take a step back as the two story tall machine comes towards him. He might be bulletproof, but this thing is capable of lifting tens of tons, at least, and who knows how hard it can punch.

  “Dude, drunk diving is not ok.” Tim quips, mostly for himself as he doubts the man can hear him over the heavy rumbling of the machine.

  Tim can hear him though, and the man yells “Monster!” As he pushes the controls and the mech stumbles forward, fist raised and coming down towards Tim.

  Luckily, it's a lot slower than a bullet, and Tim is able to dash out of the way, the arm burying itself into the ground forearm deep, sending up a plume of dirt, turning Tim’s green costume a dusty brown.

  The mech’s buried arm plows through the earth and Tim leaps backwards, clearing the breaching limb but not the wave of soil that comes up with it. The dirt slams into him, throwing him backwards and into a scrap pile.

  “Huh.” Tim says to himself lying in the trash pile, looking over to see a nest of rat pups inside some insulation. “That didn’t hurt at all.”

  Tim feels the scrap pile rumble as the mech’s hand drives into it, its giant, pronged fingers wrapping around him to yank him out. As he’s pulled he quickly grabs a rod of metal and positions it so that the scrap won’t cave in on the rat babies.

  “You’re ripping my costume dude.” Tim says in exasperation as he’s hoisted into the air, testing if he’s strong enough to force the prongs away from him to escape the grasp.

  Its grip strength exceeds Tim’s power, but apparently his skin is much tougher than the mech’s metal, his arms passing into the prongs as he presses against them. He rips his limbs through the fingers, the shredded poles of metal hitting the ground with a loud thud. Tim starts to fall, but grabs onto the mangled hand and flips himself onto the arm. He runs up it then jumps off, turns, opens his mouth, and transforms.

  His human form might not have been stronger than the mech, but his T.rex is, its jaws wrapping around the arm and the dinosaur's steak knife sized teeth sinking in. Tim twists his neck, forcing the mech’s arm behind its back, but the limb loses integrity under the massive pressure of the Tyrannosaur jaws.

  The arm snaps off, sending shards of metal spraying into the ground and splintering on Tim’s scaly hide. He throws the arm to the ground and then jumps, turning human and landing on the back of the mech, digging his fingers into the metal plating. The mech rotates back and forth, trying to launch Tim off, but he gives a fake yawn as he barely has to try to stay latched, and casually climbs to the top of the cockpit.

  “Time to be a bug on the windshield.” Tim claps his hands and rubs them together, deciding to get back to testing what he can and can’t transform into.

  Tim’s mind cycles through the enormous creepy crawlies he knows from the Carboniferous era, and he settles on the Meganeura, an arm sized, dragonfly-like animal. Same as anything else he transforms, but unlike his other forms, something is instantly wrong.

  New, unimaginable colors he’s never seen before assault his three hundred and sixty degree vision as he perceives the polarization of light. He goes deaf, or something close to it, unable to hear but still being able to pick up the vibrations of sound. It’s worse than in the museum when the alarm was blaring in his head, it's too much, too alien, overwhelming.

  He feels gravity take him, falling, foreign limbs on his back beating and catching him in the air. Something huge comes at him in slow motion, but he’s still too overstimulated, and it makes contact with him. This time it does hurt, his exoskeleton buckling from the impact and his wings crumbling. It's the single worst pain he’s ever experienced, and it adds to the cacophony of new he’s already experiencing.

  He’s going to go insane, it's like he’s the protagonist in a Lovecraftian novel, colors not from this world, sensations not from this world, until he hits the ground and snaps back into human. He scratches at his back as he gasps for air and nearly throws up, saliva building in his mouth to prepare for the bile that doesn’t quite come.

  He grabs his shoulder blades, feeling for the ruined limbs that are no longer there, when he feels pressure building behind him. He grits his teeth as a fire builds in his stomach and twists his torso as he transforms. Mechanical fist meets six feet of claw, and the claw wins as it cleaves through the metal like butter, bisecting the arm down the middle. Tim’s Therizinosaurus swipes at the machine's leg, carving titanic gashes into it. The metal groans as it collapses under its own weight, the mech begins to fall forward, until Tim thrusts his claws into the windshield, forcing it onto its back.

  Claw piercing though industrial strength glass is replaced with a hand gripping the hole, and Tim stands on the mechanical corpse. He pulls his mask back down over his mouth and adjusts it, then looks to the cowering man inside.

  “I am very annoyed right now.” Tim kneels down and traces his finger around one of the holes, “you should-”

  Tim stops and tilts his head, hearing police sirens wail in the distance. They’re far off still and he’ll have more than enough time to get away, but he doesn’t want to risk things getting complicated.

  He knocks on the ruined windshield and points at the shivering man, ordering “Stay put.” Then leaps away.

  Exiting the junkyard and size shifting as he leaps across roofs and street lamps, Tim turns mid air with an “oh shit” and grabs the edge of the building he nearly soars over, doubling back as he remembers something.

  He lands back in the lot he started at, and begins to stack and organize everything that his jump had toppled over. As he balances bags of concrete on a single hand, he starts to analyze his big fight.

  He feels like he definitely leveled up with all he learned, but something is still eating at him about it. Not in a negative way, he feels great about the whole experience, it just feels like he has pieces to a puzzle and he hasn’t found their place yet.

  As he finishes stacking a pile of steel under a flood lamp, he looks to one of the many fluttering moths vying for a spot, and something clicks. His hand flicks out and snatches the moth from the air before it even knows what’s happening. Tim brings it closer to his face and watches it struggle in between his fingers before relaxing shockingly fast. He releases it and watches it crawl round his hand then up onto his pointer finger.

  It isn’t harmed at all, not even a speck of dust from its wings disturbed. Tim wraps his fingers around it again, perfectly gentle. He uses his finger to touch the tip of its miniscule leg, giving it a handshake and a “how do you do?” Before gently petting its head and running his finger along an antennae.

  Still holding the moth he walks over to the fence surrounding the small plot, and places his hand on it. He flexes his fingers, and they bend the metal, then he does it to a different spot, but this time makes the conscious decision to use his pre-super powers strength, and nothing.

  He releases the moth once more and flutters around his head before heading back to the artificial lights, competing with others to get closer and closer.

  His powers make it so, somehow, he knows exactly how not to kill, or even permanently hurt something alive. No, know isn’t the right word, it’s more passive than that, It’s more like a guiding force.

  Tim smiles. As complicated as his powers apparently are, it feels like they’re meant for this, meant for him, and there’s the rest of the night to put them to good use.