He headed upstairs to make a pot of coffee, even though he didn’t feel that he really needed it, and to check that his dads were still sleeping. He paused in the foyer, listening to the creaks of the house. Everything was still and dark.
They weren’t exactly morning people, either.
Ten minutes later, he returned to his converted basement, coffee mug in hand. The basement was divided into two rooms—the first housed his bed, a sofa, a bookshelf overflowing with old sketchbooks and comics, and a small TV with an assortment of video games. The second room he considered his art studio, even though calling it that made it seem much cooler than it really was. Mostly it was just an easel, a cheap plywood desk, and a floor covered in drop cloths splattered with years-old paint.
Everything he needed was already in the bottom drawer of the desk. He sat down in the rolling office chair and began arranging his supplies.
Rubbing alcohol and cotton balls. Bandages. The jar of tattoo ink he’d purchased from an incense-filled shop on the edges of the Henbane District, where it had been shelved between a potted money tree and a hookah pipe.
He laid his right arm across the desk, palm up, and used his opposite fingers to measure how long he would make the cylinder. Three inches, maybe four, midway between his wrist and elbow. At one end he would include a scope symbol, for targeting. Clean, simple, effective.
It was all in the intention, anyway. He had gotten the zipper to work, so this one should be easy. He had been extremely intentional with the zipper, making sure that he had sketched out the exact armored suit he wanted, down to every tiny detail, never allowing his focus to waver as he inked the tattoo into his skin.
Intention. He’d learned at a young age that it mattered far more than anything else where his ability was concerned. Not skill. Not execution. Intention.
If the zipper could hide away an entire armored bodysuit, then surely this cylinder could produce a steady stream of percussive energy beams.
Easy.
Adrian dipped a cotton ball in the rubbing alcohol and cleansed the skin over his forearm. After it had dried, he drew the symbol with a blue ink pen. It was a slower process than the first tattoos had been, having to sketch it out with his nondominant hand this time; but once he was finished, it still looked precisely how he wanted it to.
He had been so nervous that first time, that first tattoo. His brain had constantly supplied him with any number of practical warnings about needle-transmitted diseases, not to mention the pain that he knew would come with self-tattooing. Despite all the wounds and injuries that came as a result of being a Renegade, he still wasn’t on board for pain when it was, strictly speaking, unnecessary.
But he’d worked up the courage, first testing out his tattooing skills on the skin of a grapefruit before working up the nerve to do it on himself.
The flame had been first. Though it was small, it had taken more than an hour to complete.
Next had been the springs on the soles of his feet, and those had hurt. But he gritted his teeth and bore it, and the first time he’d launched himself two stories into the air, he knew it had been worthwhile.
It wasn’t until after the success of the springs that he’d had the idea for the Sentinel. It was inspired by a fictional character he’d created when he was eleven, back when he’d had the dream of someday drawing comics for a living, which at the time was somehow more interesting to him than being a Renegade. He’d completed three full issues of a comic that he titled Rebel Z, one he’d never shown to anyone else. In the story, twenty-six homeless street kids were kidnapped and forced to become science experiments for a madman. The first twenty-five all died as a result of the experiments, but the last boy, known only as Z, became a superhero newly imbued with a number of awe-inspiring superpowers. In the second issue, he obtained an armored suit. In the third issue, he started calling himself the Sentinel, and he became a vigilante set on destroying the madman and anyone who had helped him take advantage of so many innocent kids.
After that, Adrian got bored with the story and stopped making the comics. He never did get to watch Z exact his revenge, but he did find himself thinking about the character again and again, even as the years passed. A vigilante with a mission, an alter ego, and unstoppable power. A superhero in every sense of the word.
When he’d had the idea for the zipper tattoo, the temptation had been impossible to resist. He hadn’t considered straying from the Renegades’ codes at the time. If anything, he’d been excited to tell his dads and his friends about the Sentinel, once he knew it worked. He had intended to reveal himself after the parade.