11.5 - Speed Reader

My parents are not going to make me into another nerd. Never, never, never.

So the counselor says I’m supposed to write stuff down, to “process” and “unpack” stuff. I guess?

Fine. Here’s what they said.

They said there’s a whole family history, like a lightning bolt that stretches across history or something. Speedsters, people who can move fast, think fast, act fast, whatever. They said there’s different families, like the Gales and the Swifts. Sometimes “lightning strikes” and another kid gets powers, and sometimes it doesn’t.

They said it goes all the way back to the Library of Alexandria, whatever that was, but I guess it was a big library that got burned down a few times. And the first member of the family was a librarian there, who prayed to the gods for power to keep the library alive. I guess the gods answered by letting this nerd read so fast and memorize everything, so even if something happened to the books, they could reconstruct it all.

So now there’s like a hidden library, that contains all this lore from the ancient world, and I’m one of its guardians. Just because I can run fast, and can’t qualify for track without announcing I’m “cheating”.

What fucking bullshit!

Here’s what I want.

I want to go be awesome, and have fun, and party. I want people to respect me because I’m myself, not because I’m a nerd in charge of an invisible library. I want to listen to The Fallen State and Dirty Honey. I want to get good at guitar. I want to tell ███████████████ how I feel.

I don’t want to be “normal”. I want to be awesome. Just don’t saddle me with this family-business bullshit.

I went with a background like this for a few reasons. First, to give Kid Kool a place in the temple hunt storyline, but with drama. Second, to tip the hat to the Gales from the Menagerie and suggest a connection. Third, because I’m sort of annoyed that the Legacy always seems to be Flash-style speedsters and I want to subvert stereotypes. :smiley:
What do people think?

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  • Kiln and Mette can both find value in the “eternal library” that the speedster families are guarding - Kiln might find a record of their people still stored here, and Mette might find it useful to consult to fill in her own gaps
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