The Black Bandit
A Gunvolt fanfiction
Chapter 1: Meet and Greet
I remembered that day perfectly, the day Septima was discovered. I was eight, and the noise on the TV didn't mean much to me. I was sitting at the table (faux wood, four legs. Everyone knows what a table looks like), rolling a pencil back and forth between my hands, when inevitably the pencil rolled out of my grasp. By the way, my name is Lu. It's short for Luna, but I had one friend and three anime characters named Luna. Anyway, back to the pencil.
Reaching out to it, I tried to will it back to me. It was such a simple thing, making that globe of absolute blackness appear near my open palm. It drew in the pencil, but didn't move my long, black hair. I suddenly heard a rumbling sound, and it broke my concentration. The TV in the kitchen was wobbling off the countertop, but it stopped on the edge when I stopped powering the black sphere. Where did that energy come from? For that matter, where did it go? It was like my brain was tired, but even as I thought that, the energy came back. I decided to ask Mom about it after I replaced the TV on the counter. After all, Mom knew everything about everything...right?
It turned out I was an "adept", a person who could control a strange force called Septima. Every adept had a different septimal skill, from shooting flames to bringing back the dead. My control over gravity was called "Macrocosm." The name came to me as soon as I wondered what it was. At least it didn't come with a split personality, like some adepts got. With it, I could use energy tracked as EP (energy points) to pull in everything around me. Alternately, by touching something or shooting it with a bolt of black energy, I could make that object or person the center of the pull. I could also "push" by reversing gravity, to jump in midair, push things around, or block solid weapons like bullets. Gravity Armor is the name I gave that last effect. I learned I was doing that all the time the first time someone shot me, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
My mom explained about adepts and told me that what I had was special, but very dangerous. She forbade me from using my Septima where other people could be hurt. I agreed readily; I was young and innocent then. I spent seven years hiding what I was, going to classes with other kids that only looked just like me. I practiced using my power in secret, and steadily gained more control. The problem was, as I grew, so did my Septima, until the slightest dip in control might spawn a black hole and bring down a whole room. And one day, it did.
One of my friends, Luna II, was enrolled in the Paranormal Club at school. She caught me after class, and told me she'd been watching me practice my Septima in my garden for several days. She just wanted to know how I did it for the Club, but my fear of discovery got the better of me. Getting caught would be the death of me.
It was no secret that adepts were often carted off by the Sumeragi Group to have God knows what done to them. Some were never seen again. Some came back out as officers in Sumeragi's organization, but their septimosome, the part of their body that processed septimal energy, was taken and put in a blade called a Glaive to contain their power and make them effectively normal humans, unless Sumeragi said they could release their power. The whole process was creepy, and known to be flawed. Sometimes Glaives broke, and their adepts went wild until they were put down. This was one reason Sumeragi kept capturing new adepts, to refine their Glaive technology. But I refused to be their guinea pig.
In my shock at being discovered, my control slipped and a black hole formed in front of me. "Ah! Run!" I screamed over the groaning support beams to try and save Luna II, but she never stood a chance. She was sucked in by her long, pink-dyed hair and instantly compressed to a geometric point. I finally got my Septima under control, but I was now a murderer.
I fled the school in a random direction, bouncing teachers and emergency crews off of me. I ran until I couldn't run anymore, then pulled myself to a dark corner and collapsed. I had killed my friend in a second's lapse of control. I couldn't stay near people anymore, but I didn't have anywhere to go. It was there that I was found by QUILL.
The Quorum for Unrestricted Information, Law, and Liberty was a pro-adept, anti-Sumeragi group that was all over the media as a group of terrorists. I didn't know how much of the propaganda to believe, but Zeno, a low-level adept in QUILL, didn't seem all that bad. He was carrying a huge rifle, and he was obviously headed somewhere important, but when he saw me there, crying in an alleyway, he skidded to a stop and asked, "Hey, kid, what's wrong? Why are you skipping school?"
"I killed her. I killed her..."
"Wait, are you an adept? I've seen that look before. Geeves was just like that before joining us at QUILL."
"You'll... you'll die if my control slips even a bit. Black holes, gravity wells. Heh." My mind was slipping into a pit of guilt, and I started giggling.
"Kid? Hey, um... Luna! Stop it!" Zeno shook me by the shoulders, shaking me out of my slide to insanity.
"Huh? How do you know my name? And I prefer Lu, anyway." Kind of off-topic, but it distracted my from the guilt.
"Your nametag, Lu. Oh?" Zeno pulled out a cell phone. "Yeah, this is Zeno. I hear ya, boss man. I know the mission, but there's an adept girl here in the alley. Oh? Gotcha, boss man. I'll tell her. Zeno out." He put the phone back in his pocket. "Sorry 'bout that. The boss man, Asimov, wants me to tell you that we've got an open bunk at QUILL. You need a place to stay?" He put out his hand, an invitation to help pull me up.
"...Will it be safe?" I asked, not taking the offered hand just yet. I wiped the tears out of my deep, black eyes.
"Well, I can't promise that. It is the safest place there is for adepts like us, though. I kinda need to hit a Sumeragi warehouse, but I can tell you where we live." He rummaged around in his pocket, then re-offered his hand, this time with a slip of slightly crumpled paper in it.
"Thanks, Zeno. I'll go." This time, I took his hand, and he pulled me up.
"Looking forward to working with you, Lu! See ya!" Zeno dashed off, making up for lost (but not wasted) time.
The QUILL HQ was surprisingly well-equipped, once I got in past its dreary exterior. It looked like an old warehouse on the waterfront from the outside, but inside was all metal hallways and automatic doors. I entered unimpeded, having walked only a few blocks to get there. Nobody was at the entrance to greet me, but I saw a camera just inside the doors. I waved at the camera and called, "Hello? QUILL people? I'm Lu, here on recommendation from Zeno. Where is everyone?"
A voice sounded from a hidden speaker. "Hello, Lu. Were you followed? I'm Moniqa, the operator and mission navigator here."
"No, I don't think anyone followed me. I checked several times."
"Good. Take the hall down to the first door on the left, and we'll do introductions and orientation."
I found the door,and it slid open to a room with only two people in it. "Is this everyone? There are only three of you?"
"Four," said the blue-haired man with the awesome visor. "Gunvolt is on a separate mission from Zeno, so you'll have to meet him later. I'm Asimov, leader of the Quorum for Unrestricted Information, Law, and Liberty. The woman behind the workstation is Moniqa. I need your agreement to follow our orders, if you plan to join us. That means you get orders from Moniqa, and only I can countermand them, no matter what they are. Is that clear?" Asimov stated the last sentence with an air of military command, so I responded with the only military phrase I knew.
"Yes, sir!"
