Technotronic

B JaDErUst

Author's Notes: After two false starts I've finally got a chapter that can work ready for you. Hopefully the second chapter turns out as well as this one did so it can be continued like I originally intended. If not, then consider this a one shot.

Buddy Pine didn't know it, but he was quite possibly the most loved person on the entire planet.

On the way to the hospital, his mother in labour and his father still a devoted husband instead of an abusive drunk, something had awoken deep in the earth. It had been something that had been sleeping for some time, not so much an intelligence, but a feeling that swept through the area, focusing all attention on that speeding car with the soon to be born child inside.

The car never did make it to the hospital in time that afternoon, and Buddy William Pine was born in the front seat of his family car while his father drove. The wind was the first to greet him as his mother fainted, and his father ran into the hospital yelling for help. It tickled its way across the infant's stomach and face, greeting the crying baby with that joyful feeling. Buddy, with the inherent knowledge that becomes lost to us as we grow, recognized the wind for what it was and cried his greetings back to the world.

The wind rejoiced and the earth was joyful with it. The feeling deepened and became love. For little Buddy Pine had been born with a most terrible super power, one which inspired love in all the nature that surrounded him.

It was not all that odd a super power. The NSA recognized many super heroes and villains that had powers that inspired love in people and allowed them to control the elements. However, the love supers held over people was more of an artificial love, one caused by a mix of pheromones and hypnotism that tricked people into feeling things they ordinarily wouldn't. Such things didn't matter anyway, for Buddy's power could not affect people. The power some supers held over the elements was also not comparable to Buddy's power. While nature may have held some affection for the supers who could control it, it obeyed more on a sense of obligation rather then because of its devotion to the user. In fact, more often then not the earth was indifferent to the supers who shaped its fire and sent its wind into gales and cyclones. It was forced to obey those supers, forced by bonds even the earth itself didn't understand.

Buddy was different though. Every element, every aspect of the earth wished to obey Buddy for no other reasons then its love for him. Almost an apology for all the supers that tore the earth from its natural order, Buddy asked for nothing unnatural so the feeling blessed him with sunny summer days, wind for kites, and snow for forts without the boy ever realizing the feeling's existence.

Things were never perfect, of course, and the feeling was tried.

When Buddy was five, the apartment building he lived in caught on fire. It was arson and the fire could not go against the natural order of things and simply not burn. Only a super of a different sort could have demanded the fire stop. Buddy could only cry as he clutched his mother, while the fire desperately tried to avoid the boy it loved, hoping that something would happen to stop it from harming him. Firefighters arrived and never before had the water been able to hit with such accuracy and douse so much. Never before had a fire been so eager to go out. A young super arrived on the scene and pulled Buddy and his mother from the still burning building, making headlines and putting Buddy's bright blue eyes on the front page of the local newspaper.

The young super's name was Shadow.

Shadow had played with the little boy while the paramedics checked his mother for smoke inhalation. The first and only person for a very long time to start to realize what Buddy really was, Shadow sensed the feeling that followed him. For while his power of love did not affect people, they could still feel it, leaving many to stay away from the boy. People did not understand the feeling, did not understand how an emotion so pure could follow a boy so young. However, Shadow did understand. A similar feeling followed a sister of hers. Buddy's feeling was stronger though, and Shadow smiled, giving Buddy the toy she had bought for her sister before handing him back to his mother and vanishing into the night.

Two months later, Shadow died foiling a bank robbery.

The feelings that followed both Buddy and the little sister had been following the super at the time, and they mourned the fact that they had failed. Buddy's feeling, the one that controlled all the world could not stop the gun from firing just as it could not stop fire from burning nor the sun from entering the sky. The little sister's love, one that only affected machines did little to help either. There had been no jams, no reason for the gun to misfire and besides, the gun loved its owner as all objects become attached to the ones that care for them.

Shadow was buried on a Sunday, a funeral that Buddy did not know about and the little girl did not understand. She was only a very little girl, younger then Buddy. Only knowing that her parents were crying and her big sister would not stop sleeping, she cried too. The feeling that was Buddy's felt pity on the child and allowed the sky to cry too, gentle raindrops soaking the soft soil of the grave.

After that, the girl and her parents moved away, and only Buddy's feeling remained in the town. It was about at this time that the feeling became easily sensed by other people. The earth had failed to repay the one who has saved its loved one, and it feared that one day it would fail to save the boy himself.

Coiling around the child tightly, the feeling clung to him driving more people away then ever before. The people still did not understand the feeling and so thought the five year old was too odd to allow their children to play with him. His father began to drink, unable to cope with the presence that filled their new apartment, a presence he came to fear despite the fact that it was the feeling of pure and unbiased love. Even Buddy's mother began to look at her child strangely. A mother's love is the purest sort of love most people ever see, but even that could not match the purity of the feeling that surrounded her son. It was almost as if she was loving another woman's child, and that thought disturbed the woman, despite the fact she knew Buddy was her own.

For Buddy's father, the drinking continued to get worse each year. When Buddy was twelve the problem reached its climax when his father beat his wife to death one summer night.

While Buddy had lost the memory of the young super Shadow and his rescue from the flames, Buddy had not lost the feeling of awe meeting a super brought. Like many boys his age, he became obsessed with the heroes. He bought posters and comics starring them, went to conventions, and hounded them for autographs. Much like every student at his school he secretly wished for a super power that would allow him to fight at their sides. To defeat evil, and to be respected.

Buddy had another reason as well. He thought, like all small children did, that a super's life was perfect in every way. The young supers, the sidekicks, were popular at school, got good grades, and were the best at sports. At home they would be happy with hot dinner always on the table and a father who asked about both school and super work and was proud about both.

Supers didn't come from families where the mother's face was black and blue and where the father didn't work anymore because he was too busy drinking. Sidekicks didn't get locked in their rooms without supper or pushed down the stairs while their mother screamed for their father to stop hitting their son, to stop hitting her, to stop drinking so much.

Buddy knew that if he became a super and a sidekick his life would become perfect. His father would stop drinking and get a job; his mother wouldn't cry anymore and be beautiful and happy again. Like every little boy he waited for something fantastic to happen to him, for his super power to appear and take him to a perfect world.

He didn't know it, but his super power was already there, cradling the boy as he slept, mussing his hair when he walked to school. The feeling was still there, even though Buddy didn't remember it's presence anymore. Embracing him lovingly every moment, the feeling wished to grant Buddy's wish for powers, but didn't know how to tell him. The wind in his hair whispered that if he asked it would blow apart any building. The earth beneath his feet pledged earthquakes and landslips if he said the word. Water and fire promised power too, as did every other aspect of the earth, but like all humans Buddy had forgotten the languages of the earth and no longer could hear their words.

Patiently, he waited for a time, but with no powers in sight Buddy determined to take matters into his own hands. Perhaps he was also guided by the feeling that was instilled into the machines he was also fascinated in or perhaps he saw inventing as his only means to gain the powers he craved. In any case, he created a pair of rocket boots with an ease that would bring jealousy to any grown inventor or scientist. Finally able to aid the one it loved, the feeling was guided by Buddy's hand and smoothed out the boots' design, making them perfect when they would have been a failure to anyone else.

Rejoicing with him, the feeling had followed him as he went downtown in search of Buddy's favorite super hero, Mr. Incredible. As the boy and the man sat in Mr. Incredible's car the feeling caused the machinery to hum, telling the super hero how wonderful the boy it loved was. It told him how brilliant a boy he was, how perfect a sidekick he would be, how much the boy needed this…

Mr. Incredible was just like any other person though, he did not hear the voice of the feeling. He sensed the feeling of course, everyone could sense it now, but he assumed his feeling of pure love was his own feelings for his soon to be bride. He got rid of Buddy and kept driving.

The feeling tried to sooth Buddy as the boy stood fuming on the side of the road. Despite the hurt the boy felt, the feeling was incapable of experiencing anything but love to anyone. It loved Mr. Incredible anyway, but the feeling still loved Buddy more. It loved Bomb Voyage even as he attached an explosive to its most beloved child's cape. It continued to love Mr. Incredible as he snapped at Buddy, sending him home in disgrace. It loved Buddy's father despite everything he had done, loving him even though that night locked Buddy in a closet for his boy-ish crime of adoration and beat the boy's mother until she screamed and cried and died on the cold tile of the kitchen floor.

It loved Buddy the most though. Clung tightly to him as it mourned its failure to save the child's most beloved mother. Just like the bullet that had killed Shadow, the feeling had been unable to stop the fists of Buddy's father so it held onto the child a little bit tighter as the boy sobbed.

Surrounding Buddy in an aura of love so powerful, his father couldn't even bare to look at him, the man instead yelled at the boy, boxing his ears without ever looking at the boy's fiery red hair and sky blue eyes. He shoved his dead wife in a trash bag placing rocks in with her before throwing her into a river at midnight. He went home and hit his son, threatening him with death and worse things if he told.

Buddy never did.

He never told not only because he was terrified of his father, but also because if he told someone of his mother's murder it would become true. Instead, he buried himself in his father's lies to their family, convincing himself that his mother had truly run away with another man and had not been tossed into a river like an unwanted thing. If his mother had run away, there was a chance that she would come back. If she was dead…

When Buddy was fifteen he ran away from home. He brought nothing but his inventions and a little money, but the feeling, his super power, followed him. It followed him out into the Midwest, and tried to make the teen's life easier as he traveled. The rain fell less harshly when Buddy walked or slept outside and the snow fell later and melted earlier when he was around.

To every person Buddy came across the feeling tried to tell them what a wonderful boy this was. How he needed to be taken care of by human hands and treasured. Some people sort of understood the feeling, giving the boy money when he lied and said it was to help him get home or bought him lunch or gave him a place to sleep for the night. There were many more people who didn't understand the words the feeling spoke and instead ignored Buddy. One person, one who didn't understand the words at all, took Buddy aside one cold night.

The feeling tried to protect the boy, but it couldn't stop a person from being evil. It had to love the man who had hurt its beloved boy so badly, loving him even when Buddy wanted to die. With the child in the hospital, the cuts on his arm bandaged tightly and the physiatrist on call, the wind whispered to the nurses dressed in white its love for the boy. It told the women of better times, of happier times, but the women couldn't hear the voice. Instead, they wondered what had happened to the child with the adorable freckles and the fawn like blue eyes that would make him try to die.

After recovering for a short time, Buddy escaped the hospital, running just as hard as he had when he left his father. Now far away, he tried to die again this time doing it the right way. Its boy bleeding away, the voice finally stepped in, the wind screaming for help while the earth sobbed and shook. Though these voices made no noise, an old and kind man heard them and found Buddy. He brought the dying boy to the hospital, visited him as he recovered, and took him home when the child was released.

The feeling rejoiced at the old man. This was a person who would be good for its beloved boy. The man's wife was gentle and kind. They fed the boy and clothed him, doing away with his desire to die and putting him back into school. When he invented they praised him and when he won the state science fair they were just as proud as any parent.

But Buddy still wasn't happy. Late at night when there was only the feeling awake he dreamed of his mother. He dreamed of the man who had hurt him. Sitting on a swing one day, the wind gently pushing his back, he realized that the world wasn't right. The old couple had saved him. They had done away with everything bad and made him happy again. But the old couple weren't super heros. The supers he had worshipped, Mr. Incredible who had rejected him, were gone because of a lawsuit.

A lawsuit!

They were supposed to protect and save people! That's why they had powers, didn't they? They were supposed to stop men from beating their wives to death and abusing their children. They were supposed to arrest bad men before they did things to little boys that made them want to die.

For them to be stopped by a lawsuit of all things! They didn't deserve to be respected. They only deserved to die.

A new found hate now deep in his heart, Buddy cried and the feeling cried with him. Its boy was no longer a boy. Its beloved child had become an angry and bitter man.

Despite Buddy's hate, the feeling loved Buddy no less. It melted under his capable fingers, helping him create inventions that no person had ever dreamed of before Buddy. When he graduated high school, the wind let out a loud cheer as the students whooped and hollered, it was happy at Buddy's pride at being first in his class. The old couple that had taken Buddy in scrimped and saved, getting Buddy into college which he graduated in two years.

Degree in hand, Buddy immediately set his sights at the top. He would become great. He invented and made connections and sold weapons all the while with the feeling surrounding him. He began making lots of money. He sent money back to the old couple that had taken him in, buying them a house in warmer regions at his first chance.

But the old man died of a stoke and the old woman went soon after that. Holding the old woman's hand tightly as she died, Buddy begged for some miracle that would save her. The feeling had the power to raise mountains and level cities if Buddy had so commanded it. It would have covered the world in ocean or sent it spiraling into an ice age if it would have helped. Every power of nature at his disposal and not knowing it, Buddy prayed for the first time in years, but was not answered. The feeling did not have the power to stop people from dying.

The couple had no children so Buddy buried them in pure white coffins with a white marble headstone to cover their graves. The house that he had bought them he sold, but the one they had lived in for so long, the one that had become his home, he kept. That house was in the middle of the suburbs of Illinois, a block away from the place where a little girl had grown up missing an older sister she barely remembered.

Leaving the house after the funeral, Buddy walked past the girl and the feelings that followed them briefly touched. Neither noticed. Buddy too caught up in his thoughts and the girl reading as she went down the street, they passed each other by without a glance or a nod.

Buddy left and continued on with his business. The girl went to college that year and excelled.

Moving on, Buddy continued to make his weapons and sell them. He met a woman named who called herself Mirage who was beautiful and intelligent and said all the things he wanted to hear. He made her his partner. He made more money.

Testing a plane far from shore one day, Buddy discovered an island and fell in love with it instantly. It held everything the feeling was, the water and earth, fire and sky, wrapped up in a tropical paradise far from land. He bought the island from the government, moved all this staff and inventions out there and was happy for a time.

Despite his new home, Buddy wasn't finished yet. He invented more and the feeling no longer had to help him. Brilliant on his own, the feeling simply watched the man it loved so dearly as he continued to excel. At twenty three Buddy began bringing supers to his island, pitting them against his inventions and improving them as necessary. Quickly he realized that the name Buddy would no longer do, so he cast that identity aside. Letting his curly red hair grow out and spiking it up, Buddy became Syndrome. The feeling wasn't sure what to make of that.

The feeling had been around since the beginning of time. It had existed when men still lived in caves and feared the wild, treasuring them and trying to keep them safe from the dangers of their times. But as man evolved the feeling stayed the same, still loving and still treasuring. Eventually, men outgrew the feeling, no longer needing the love of the earth, and so the feeling had given in to their need and left them, going to sleep. It was only upon the birth of a blue eyed boy that the feeling had reawakened, the child's super power demanding the unconditional love the feeling brought.

However, now that child was no more. The man had tossed the child away as weak, just as Syndrome was now tossing the man aside. Only the feeling, the brilliance of the boy, and the super power remained of Buddy, everything else was now Syndrome.

It didn't matter, though. The feeling was not an intelligence so it loved Syndrome just as much as it loved Buddy. However, since Syndrome did not need the feeling like Buddy did, the feeling moved back and away. It came when needed, but it contented itself by watching Syndrome grow and excel in a way no mortal had ever done before.

Then when Syndrome was twenty-seven, everything changed.

It began with Mr. Incredible coming back into his life. The feeling remembered him, just as it remembered every person who had been important to its Buddy. Syndrome remembered the super hero too, but unlike the feeling he hated the man. Remembering how terrible it had been to be rejected by the man he'd so admired, and remembering his mother who had died because of that rejection, Syndrome brought the older man to his island. Mr. Incredible successfully defeated Syndrome's robot so he brought him back again, revealing him to his former hero when the time was right.

Mr. Incredible went off a cliff and into a pool and Syndrome threw a bomb in after him. The former child thought that meant the last of the hero, but the feeling knew otherwise. Loving Syndrome more then it loved Mr. Incredible, the wind made his cape billow and ruffled his hair. He still hadn't remembered the ancient language that he'd known as an infant though, and ignored it.

Things got worse after that.

After recapturing Mr. Incredible and locking him and his family up, Syndrome went to destroy the robot he had unleashed on the city he'd grown up in. The feeling followed, knowing what was going on at the island and trying to warn the one it loved. Then came the disaster of the robot. Despite the fact that machines too loved Syndrome since the steel from their creation was from the earth that adored him, the artificial intelligence had overcome the love, betraying him.

Unconscious, the love at least sent the robot away to destroy other things while the feeling watched over Syndrome as it had done so many times before. Syndrome awoke and the feeling rejoiced, telling him to return to his island paradise and be happy there.

Instead he went to the Mr. Incredible's home. Too easily, he tricked the girl there into handing over the super hero's youngest child and there he waited for the Parrs to return. There he was soundly defeated, the feeling screaming in horror like it had when Buddy had tried to die. However, there was a difference this time. Back in the secluded park Buddy hadn't wanted aid so the feeling had only been able to cry out in despair.

This time, moments from death, Syndrome wanted to live.

It hadn't been able to save Shadow or Buddy's mother, it hadn't been able to stop the old woman from dying, but it could save Buddy.

A word of command, a shout of 'Obey' that would have made a mountain turn to sand and the feeling in the wind and jet made the engine stop. Its beloved would not die at the hands of its own invention.

The feeling still couldn't stop the man called Mr. Incredible though. With a toss of powerful muscles, a car and the jet collided and exploded from the impact together. The feeling in the fire couldn't go against natural order. It couldn't stop from burning Syndrome, but it was able to get him away, the wind helping propel the man as far away as possible. In a deserted park he fell, limply laying on the ground from a thousand wounds that this time had not been his doing.

Bleeding and burned, for the first time since he was an infant Syndrome sensed the feeling. He heard it crying with gentle sobs, telling him how much he was adored and how things would get better. He knew the rain that began misting down was its doing, soothing his hot wounds and making the hard ground a softer place to lie. Wrongly, Syndrome thought that the cries were from his mother, or perhaps from the old man and woman. Closing his eyes he gave up. He still wanted to live, but with those gentle sobs ringing in his ears he assumed he was dying and mentally accepted it.

But the feeling had still not abandoned Syndrome. The feeling in the gadget filled gauntlet refused to stop working, declaring his position to the team that knew their boss was in trouble. The team quickly found their broken, nearly dead boss and brought him away to a secret location. There he spent three long years suffering as the doctors pulled the burned dead skin from his bones and began putting him right.

Blinded by pain, Syndrome vanished leaving Buddy behind. Buddy who cried and sobbed for help. For Mirage to come and take his hand even though he knew she had betrayed him, for his mother who still rested on the bottom of a river bed, for the old woman who had saved him once before.

Only the feeling met his cries though, wrapping itself around him as he suffered in healing tanks and while his life teetered on the edge in surgery. Late at night when Buddy was unable to sleep from the pain and the knowledge that tomorrow would be no better, the feeling sang ancient songs for him that had no words. They were songs of feeling, of love and acceptance and healing. Trapped in nightmares of pain, Buddy heard them and was soothed.

Half a year was spent in this manner, the tanks filled with healing liquid and pain filling his days and misery his night. After that came the body suit that covered his entire body, including his face. The suit was a necessary precaution all burn victims had to go through, but Buddy hated it none the less. It was like a snow suit, itchy, hot, and impossible to move in. He had to wear it twenty four hours a day in order to keep his swelling scars down and to prevent infection. The doctors claimed it was flesh coloured, but no person could look normal in it.

For a year, Buddy spent his every moment trapped in that suit, hating it and himself with every breath. He feared for the day when the suit would come off. Up until now, whenever the doctors removed the suit to change it or inspect his burns he closed his eyes tightly, refusing to see what he had become. The feeling whispered its view of things to Buddy at night. It told him how glad it was for him to be alive and how beautiful he would be no matter what happened to his face or skin.

Two years of physical therapy followed the suit's removal and lifesaving surgeries were replaced with ones that removed the worst of the scars and made Buddy's face look like his own again. Looking into a mirror for the first time in three and a half years, Buddy looked at the face of the stranger. His face had been repaired to the point where it looked almost exactly the same. The freckles were still there, as was his defined jaw line and dimples, but it was no longer his face. His face had been burned away in an explosion no matter how hard the feeling had tried to stop itself from harming him.

The feeling apologized to him, begging forgiveness, but Buddy was becoming himself again and could no longer hear the voice.

On Buddy's thirty-second birthday, just over five years after the disaster, Syndrome returned to his island base. It had been deserted, his inventions cruelly taken from their places and locked away in a NSA lab where they never would be celebrated for the genius they were.

Instead of despairing, Syndrome went to work. The NSA had seized his assets and frozen bank accounts, but for every account they found there had been two they hadn't. With this money, repairs came quickly. He remade connections, selling his inventions again to buyers who were glad to have the brilliant scientist back. Staff filled his halls and corridors. Things were different this time though. Syndrome hired accountants and lawyers who didn't care that they were working for a known villain and had them set his company up so that it would not fall apart so easily again. He brought more services to the island making it less like a fortress and more like its own country or a resort. He corrupted politicians that created laws making things easier for villains and harder for heroes.

Then, in a final slap in the face against Mr. Incredible and all the other supers who believed in justice, the American system and all that crap, he corrupted the American president and bought himself a pardon on the man's last day in office.

The nation went into an uproar. A super villain who had killed a dozen people on his attack against Metroville and had lured many more supers to his island to die had been pardoned? Syndrome was evil! He was everything that good, god-fearing men and women fought against every day! He was dead! To think that such a creature could be forgiven even if he had still been alive…

While the nation believed Syndrome still to be dead, the NSA quickly realized otherwise. They attempted to find other charges the man could be brought up on, the presidential pardon being irreversible, but found nothing. Safe on his island, Syndrome laughed, mocking the supers as once again they were stopped by stupid laws. If they had been truly super they would have arrested him anyway.

With Syndrome happy and safe, the feeling was happy as well. On the island there was no end to the sunny, warm days of summer and the feeling fought against the monsoons of winter, bringing gentler rain to the island to please its beloved.

A year later, his position secure and his company growing again, Syndrome realized the one thing he was missing. On the island, surrounded by loyal staff and paradise, he still had no one to talk to. He missed Mirage. He needed Mirage. So he went looking for her.

While he had never forgiven the silver haired woman for her betrayal, Syndrome decided that it had to be done. Pushing aside his hatred and memories of pain, he focused on the good times he and Mirage had while the feeling encouraged him. Shifting through records that were six years old, Syndrome finally found her and went to her home, hoping to beg her back.

What he found made him wish he had never started the journey in the first place.

In a large suburban home he found her kissing her husband –Mirage married!- while bouncing her two year old son on her knee. Spying on her, he found she'd left her old life behind her, settling down with a successful man and starting a family.

That the man had a passing resemblance to Mr. Incredible hadn't helped matters though.

That the son had been named Robert Jack had helped even less.

Furious, yet unable to hate her, Syndrome left without ever letting Mirage know he had been there. The feeling accompanied him the long lonely way back to the island, soothing him and reassuring him the entire journey.

Alone on his balcony, the wind caressing his face and hair, Buddy stared up at the stars and sighed. "Now what?" he asked the sky.

The feeling which would have brought any one of those stars down from the sky at his command, didn't know how to reply to its beloved. Instead, it danced and sang about him, whispering its love and waiting for the time when Buddy or Syndrome would recognize it for what it was and make them both happy.