I do not own Static Shock!
And here's my idea on how Richie became Gear.
On with the story!
Richard Osgood Foley, Rich, Rick, or Richie to his friends, flopped over and looked at the ceiling in his room.
Something had been bothering him since the fight with Francis.
Something Francis had said.
He had called Richie 'weaker' because he hadn't emerged with all the other power players from the Big Bang.
Well that just sucked.
Ha had taken out Talon (okay, on a fluke) and then Kangorr and then Shiv, too. He had even duped Ebon!
But all it took was Francis snarking that Gear was a sidekick to throw him to the side. Even getting to rope the Bang Baby had been a brief victory- he hadn't made the Zap Traps to withstand fire.
Yet. Those modifications would come later.
But why was he a Bang Baby? Was it because he had been around Virgil- that Virgil hadn't bothered washing his clothes and he got a whiff?
Or was it something else?
Madelyn Spaulding, for example. She was not someone to have been at the Docks.
What was it about the Big Bang?
Richie slouched over to his computer, and turned it on. In and out of the public and police reports, he found what he was looking for. The weather from that night and the next day, the explosion, and some common scientific knowledge.
Wind moved from a lake towards land.
The explosion had released a gas.
Those exposed to the gas in the concentrated area either changed or died.
Richie's brain exploded with the possible scenarios. Hypothetical, of course. He didn't have the chemical composition, so he couldn't prove anything, but Murphy's Law and Occam's Razor and just plain logic and gut feeling steered him to a new theory.
One that was terrifying.
What if the Bang Gas was still in the air? That meant everyone was breathing in trace amounts, and those that had potential- whatever it was that triggered from the exposure to the gas to be a Bang Baby instead of dead- then again, maybe because there was enough of the gas to trigger, but not enough to kill- or maybe, like with Phenylalanine, and Phenylketonurics, trace amounts were fatal only if in great amounts.
Richie begged his brain to slow down. He felt like he had left steam powered or electric trains behind and had traded up for a train that ran on magnets. There was a train like that in Asia, wasn't there?
Pull the emergency stop line; focus on the issue at hand. His unconscious thoughts went to his new subject, while his conscious attention went back to the Bang Baby gas problem.
If that was true, everyone in the city was affected, not just the gang members.
Who could he tell? Static?
They had no proof, they just had conjecture. And if Static wound up being wrong about this, who would take him seriously ever again? Taking this public could irreparably damage his super hero image!
Well, if he wound up being wrong about this. After all, according to Francis, Gear was a the stage manager, and Sparky was the face that sold the theater tickets.
Virgil cracked the door open.
"I saw your Dad turning the corner and thought I'd drop by. Are you still feeling bad about what Hotstreak said?"
Richie made himself look Virgil in the face.
"Well, I have been thinking. I'm more than your mega mechanic. But there's also this idea I came up with concerning the Bang Baby gas. What if it's still in the air?"
Virgil blinked at him.
"Are you arguing with my idea that you didn't get this from my clothes?"
"Well, maybe it is from your clothes. I was just at the hospital, and a lot of Bang Babies end up there either for finding a cure or because they have to be treated there instead of in jail. Maybe I picked up a more concentrated dose while there. Or the gas is in the air, and if you mutate, you mutate. At least it isn't severe enough to kill someone now."
Virgil scratched his head.
"You know, I think there was a Doctor Todd in the street news lately about Alva considering setting up a cure. Or at least, I know his son would be a reason, except he's being pretty hush hush about it. Think we can drop him a line?"
"Sure. Let's just not hold our breaths."
Little did they know, in a few more months, Doctor Todd would come across their letter and think of a way to test the cure.
….
A/N: This has been floating around my head since someone pointed out that Virgil's idea is totally bogus. As it was, Richie did say, 'it's a good a theory as we got right now'. Plus, Richie has been inventing since the Slipstream episode. Also, add in the fact that Talon said he only hung out at school, comic shops, or the gas station. All of the time with Virgil. And if Francis smoked lavender traces of Bang Baby gas, then spending all that time with Virgil….
Well, my brain came up with that itself. The story is three pages and eight hundred words!