Wishes were strange.

  Everyone knew that, but people didn’t really understand how strange. You could become a god, like Ken or Paragon, capable of breaking moons and planets. Or you could just know how to play the piano or learn Kung Fu. They could give you the abilities to violate the laws of physics, letting you bend them or break them to your choosing.

  They allowed almost everything.

  Generally, there were three parts to consider a person’s abilities. One was what they could do, and the second was the numerical limit of that ability. And the last one was the rules of their ability.

  My wish was boring, I was smart, all the time. I was altered physiologically and given an innately higher intelligence.

  So there was my thinking enhancement, which was what I could do. There was how much of it I could do, which could be measured by my learning speed and calculating ability. And then there were the rules that governed that, which in my case was just me being.

  I would be classified as a tinker of the mutant variant. Tinker was what I could do, and mutant was how my powers worked. Mutants could pass on their changes, and they could be made artificially as well. And while the people created in the lab of some scientist somewhere weren’t considered wishers by default, they could still apply for the same protections.

  Telekinesis was the go to example for this. You could move stuff, sure, but how much stuff? A pound? Ten

  pounds? A million? And if you could move them how long and under what conditions?

  Can you lift a building but only for thirty minutes? That could be useful, not in a fight context but you could

  probably get a job in construction for a long time.

  There was one guy who could make things stay in place relative to the earth’s orbit. The material could break

  and had a weight limit, but it would float there forever, acting like it was on the ground. As long as the stuff you put on top of the platform wouldn’t break the platform itself, he could force it to stay in place.

  That guy was loaded. He had hundreds of millions from building stairways into space and designer floating

  houses. He was also a huge part of the very first elevator into space, which was still functioning to this day.

  Though wish-tech, the term for technology that relied on supernatural aspects of a wish, was considered bad tech nowadays.

  What was the use of a big floating house if the only guy who could make it would die in fifty years? Who could repair it then?

  The point was that wishes came in various forms. And people had a tendency to utilize them in certain ways.

  I sat on a roof by an abandoned parking lot with a small screen in front of me.

  “How did you even get these?” Daniel asked me.

  “Hacked em,” I answered.

  “Isn't that illegal?”

  “Yup.”

  The kid was here because I needed him to identify his shifter friend. I'd flown around the place that they had both dined at and gained access to their security footage.

  “Won't you get in trouble with the Heroes Union for this?”

  “For hacking? No.”

  “What about the cops?”

  “They're not going to be too eager to jump a vig for hacking a coffee shop.”

  “But-”

  “I'm a vigilante, that means that as long as I don't do anything too illegal the law looks the other way. And besides, if the HU or the cops had the resources, they'd be doing this through the legal channels.”

  I took the screen over to him, which showed a picture of him eating with another person.

  “Yeah, that's him,” he affirmed. “But that seems a little unfair, that vigs can just go around breaking laws.”

  “A little,” I said with a shrug. “But its on us. If we break too many too fast for no good reasons then we become villains. And besides, this hurts no one but the bad guys and if the Union or the police want to prosecute, they’ll gain access to the evidence through the legal means.”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “Can’t they claim you tampered with it?” He asked.

  “Maybe, but they have ways of checking for that sort of thing.”

  Then he shivered.

  He had done everything I told him too. He was now a fully registered wisher.

  But I had kidnapped him before he went to bed for this and pajamas didn't keep you warm in the cold air.

  “How's the eye?” I asked

  “It's better, almost gone,” he answered.

  I nodded vaguely while I sent the footage over to Mochi.

  “But what does this do? You said he's a shifter, right? What’ll you get from all this?”

  “A lot,” I said. “Look, you remember how I said he was probably a guy because changing your gender can be weird for a shifter?”

  He nodded.

  “Well there are other things that can be weird to change as well. Height is the main one. It messes up your sense of balance. Weight distribution is another, as well as teeth.”

  “Teeth?”

  “Yup,” I nodded. “Think about how often you bite your mouth on accident, now imagine an entirely rearranged set of teeth with a differently shaped mouth and tongue. Especially while you're eating.”

  The kid felt around his gums with his tongue in a show of curiosity.

  A pang of guilt hit me.

  I was a vigilante trying to find a weapons dealer. But here I was bothering high schoolers in the middle of the night.

  “How's the Union treating you?” I asked.

  “It's alright, a little boring for now but they train me every week on my powers and how I can use them.”

  “They tell you about the upgrades?”

  He turned to me, shocked.

  “I thought that was a secret!” He said, managing to whisper and yell at the same time.

  “Maybe to the public,” I scoffed.

  Upgrades were exactly what they sounded like, upgrades. You could augment your body with tech or biomancey or something to make it more fitting with your powers.

  It was another reason as to why not too many tinkers were in the masked business. Why give yourself power armor when that guy with time manipulation or super strength could utilize it better than your frail old human body ever could?

  The basic ones gave you a ray gun proof suit. The better ones gave you other capabilities, enhanced speed and strength. Power armor like mine was also common, but flight capabilities were still hard to get. But you could get an exoskeleton that doubled or even tripled your strength, and that was just open market stuff.

  Corporations and industrial tinkers made stuff a whole lot more powerful than that.

  “You shouldn’t get anything that increases strength or speed just yet. Focus on something that can enhance your natural abilities, like a heat managing suit that can also cancel out your footsteps. On the fancier end you can even get one that cancels out the air currents around you and makes you almost undetectable.”

  “That sounds cool,” he replied.

  I moved my screen over to him one more time and he nodded at the video playing.

  “But what would I even do with that?” He asked.

  “Lots of stuff. You can join the police force, become a private merc, though that’s dangerous. You can go track wild animals in research groups.”

  I looked over the facial recognition data and nodded.

  “Looks like that’s enough information. Alright kid, ready to head back?”

  The shivering teen nodded.

  “What-” he coughed. “What are you going to do with that footage anyway?”

  “Try to match his height and teeth to known criminals in the city.”

  “Will he be one of them?”

  “Most likely,” I answered. “Wishes, in some ways, are a reflection of the wisher. You probably got bullied or felt entrapped or alone so you wished you could just disappear or something along those lines, right?”

  Daniel looked startled for a second and then nodded.

  “Now what kind of person wishes they could be someone else?”

  “Someone who doesn’t like who they are?” He asked.

  “Correct, but now add the fact that this person is used to dealing weapons and makes a living through criminal means and we can guess that they’re…?”

  “They’re a criminal?”

  “Bingo!”

  “But… that seems like you're just guessing,” he muttered.

  “I am. And if I’m wrong I start again from the top. That’s how investigations work. Besides, there are other things that’ll help me with this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the fact that his eyes certainly aren’t blue nor is hair brown. Shifters can change those pretty easily and they’re one of the most noticeable things about a person’s appearance. He’s also right handed and gay.”

  “Gay?” Daniel asked. “How do you know he’s gay?”

  “He was checking out the guys that passed by him,” I replied.

  “Yeah, but Christian was always talking about their outfits and trashing it.”

  “While he wore the same clothes everyday,” I added.

  “That doesn’t mean that he’s gay,” Daniel rebutted.

  I showed him a paused frame of Christian smiling at a man’s butt while Daniel was sipping a milkshake.

  “Oh,” Daniel said.

  “Alight, we’re heading out,” I said as I flew into the air.

  Daniel T-posed nervously. This was probably the last time I would ever see the kid, but that was fine by me. He was on a good path and he had his whole life ahead of him. I felt proud in a small way.

  Then my talons gripped him by the upper arms and took him to his home.

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