This story was originally a chapter written for one of the books in the Captain Planet series that I'm writing. However, I am making over the chapter to make it a standalone story because this chapter doesn't appear till late in book 4, and it will be a while before I can post it. Plus, I really like the way this came out, and I don't want to force people to wait for it or to read my other series just to read this.
We never learned much about Captain Planet in the television series, so I developed this story to explain my thoughts on his origins. It is written from Captain Planet's POV, and I hope that you will enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!
I wasn't always the only one like me.
"That's odd," you may ask. Many believe that I either always existed in this form or was created by Gaia. Well, in a way, the latter is true. I wasn't always the kind of being I am now.
Originally, I wasn't much different from you, except in the color of my hair and skin. I was from a group of people from another planet. Our name translated from our language to literally mean 'The Blue People'. But the rest of my people could care less about the state of the environment. Eventually, when I was barely old enough to remember it, their polluting ways destroyed our own planet. So we were forced to move on. That was when my people found Earth. They really liked it and wanted it to be their new home, and the inhabitants of Earth, then a clean people, were more than happy to share their home with us.
But too soon, my people rebuilt their factories and started polluting their new home. I couldn't understand it. Having been born during the final years of my planet's destruction, all I knew was waste and desolation. I had never seen anything like the beauty of the Earth. I couldn't understand why they would want to destroy such beauty, which I could already see happening from just the beginnings of pollution. But the people of the Earth saw the technologies my people had developed and they wanted them for themselves. Only a handful of the Earth people saw the dangers of the pollution and wanted to keep the beautiful plants and animals of Earth rather than gain the technologies and lose the Earth's resources. So they split off and eventually became the groups known to you as Natives, Africans, Aboriginals, and Indians; what you might call the more primitive cultures. But those peoples understood the beauty of the Earth and wanted to preserve it. For choosing that life course, they were ridiculed by their friends and family members… as was I for choosing the same course.
When I was a young boy, my name was not Captain Planet. I was called Tabansi by my people, which is now an African name meaning 'One who endures'. The African people heard of my dealings with my people and gave the name that meaning because of all I suffered at the hands of my own people.
I was only seven when my people more or less kicked me out. They couldn't understand the differences in my thought processes and how I looked at things. I wandered for many weeks before I finally stumbled, weak from lack of food, onto the section of land now known as Hope Island. Only then it wasn't an island, as I'll explain in a moment. I was nearly ready to die of hunger at this point, so I found a bush with some berries and ate them. But there was one small problem. I didn't know that those berries were poisonous. Within twelve hours I was coughing and throwing up and feeling dizzy. I began to tremble from the poison running through my body. I remember thinking that I was surely going to die. My vision blurred and I collapsed onto the ground.
The next thing I remember was waking up in what appeared to be a hut of some kind. I saw a woman standing over me, pretty and unlike any of the humans that I had seen. She was tall with dark skin, shiny black hair, and starry blue eyes.
It was Gaia, as you may have already recognized. As she later explained to me, she had sensed that there was a presence on her island, and that that presence was in trouble. That was when she found me. She saw that I was sick and the crushed berries around me and realized what had happened, immediately taking me back to her hut. She treated me for the poison and I was soon much better.
Once I was completely better, Gaia allowed me to stay in her hut and she cooked me meals every day. Then one night she told me the truth. She wasn't really a person; she was a spirit, the spirit of the Earth. She had seen the terrible destruction that my people had caused to her with their pollution and greed for power and technology, but she had also seen how different I was from the others.
The pollution was affecting her; I saw that as the days progressed. I knew, because my people had telepathic abilities, that the pollution was spreading. And I could see that she seemed to grow a little weaker and a little sicker every day.
After I had been with her for a few weeks, Gaia asked me for my help. She no longer had enough power to protect herself from the strength of the pollution that my people had caused. She offered me a job protecting this planet and its beauty. As I've mentioned, I was very fond of the planet already, and I was willing to do anything to protect it. So I agreed.
Gaia then used her magic to give me my powers of wind, water, fire, and earth, as well as super-strength, the ability to fly, and what I was lacking in heart. As she fed me these powers, it turned me into the superhero you know me as today, Captain Planet, and with the powers came this new outfit. As soon as she was finished, she collapsed, too weak to stand. I laid her up to rest and started reading the few books she had at the time, filling my head with the knowledge contained in them. I have never forgotten a word those books held. I could recite them from memory if I had to.
When she awoke, I asked her what had happened and she explained that her body wasn't used to using so much magic at one time. Then she got up, though a bit unsteadily, and started me on my training that I would need to learn to use my powers.
Within two years, I was in full control of my powers, but I needed to rest often to recharge my abilities. Then one day, I sensed presences approaching the island. It was my people. They had destroyed the area they had once inhabited, making it a desert, and they were looking for a new home. And they were coming to Gaia's home, which was, at that time, connected to the mainland by a land bridge. After all that Gaia had done for me, I couldn't let that happen to her home. So, at ten years of age, I used my powers in defense of the planet for the first time. I drove my people back, and then, with Gaia's permission, of course, knowing it would harm her for a short while, I destroyed the land bridge connecting her home to the mainland. At that time, it seemed like the newly created island was the only place where hope existed, thus giving Hope Island its name.
Many years passed, during which time I defended the planet from the worst attacks of pollution. During that time, I discovered that prolonged contact with pollution weakened me; to use a phrase you are familiar with now, pollution was, in a sense, my kryptonite. It weakened me severely, so that I would have to go back and recharge. I learned to be careful. I couldn't let myself have to do that because I knew if that happened, Gaia could die.
Even at that time, eco-villains who hated my work abounded. They were so greedy they were willing to sacrifice the health of the planet to satisfy that greed. But Gaia had, in a sense, become my mother. Even when my own birth mother turned against me after I destroyed my family's factory to save Gaia and the entire planet, I knew that I had someone that would always be there for me and support me. And that was Gaia.
Eventually, my people's love of and greed for technology led them to attempt nuclear reactions. It was successful, resulting in the first nuclear power, but they didn't know how to properly dispose of the wastes, and they piled up in their 'town center'. After only a few months, all of my people were dead. I was called upon to clean up the wastes left behind by my people's attempts at nuclear power. But their secrets had been shared with the humans who followed in their footsteps, and they, over the course of the next few hundred years, 'perfected' everything my people had done wrong. The secrets of my people were contained in the library at Alexandria. When it burned down, all those secrets were lost. But as time went on, people rediscovered those secrets, and pollution became a major problem once more. And eco-villains still existed who cared about only one thing, themselves. They were willing, just like my people had been, to destroy the planet if it meant they got everything they wanted. So I continued my work.
As time passed, I found that, to be totally successful on my missions, I had to be in an almost constant recharge state, mostly because I couldn't fully recharge from the elements anymore, because even on Hope Island we suffer from a little outreaching pollution. That happened about 20 years ago. After about five years, Gaia decided to create the Planeteers and created rings with special powers. When their powers combined, it would call me out of my recharge state and bring me back to the real world.
I had discovered during my lifetime that I was more or less immortal. When I had lived for about 3,000 years without dying, Gaia confirmed my suspicions. The only way I could die was exposure to large amounts of pollution for a prolonged period of time. As time went on, I found that that helped me in my quest to try to get rid of pollution once and for all and to restore Earth to the way it once was, before my people arrived here. My people were greedy and stupid, and I'm glad I'm not like they were.
Because things happened the way they did, I now have the privilege of working with the Planeteers, five very special youths whose zeal for the planet reminds me of myself when I was their age. And I have Gaia, who in my mind is the best thing that ever happened to me. She saved my life and gave me the chance to try to atone for my people's destruction, and to keep her safe the same way she did for me when I was young. Gaia and the Planeteers are the best family I could ever ask for, and I'm truly grateful to them for everything they've done for me. Even though I've been through a lot in my lifetime and I'm not exactly leading a "normal" life, if I had to go back and do it all over again, I wouldn't change a single thing about my life.
Always remember… The power is yours!
I'm still going to repost this story in a slightly different format in my CP series featuring my character, Jennica, because it's essential in a certain chapter to ensuring the future stories, which are going to be fifty times better than the first story in the series! Thanks for reading, and PLEASE leave a review on your way out!