Greetings! This is my story based on the Metroid universe. Thought it may not so look it when you read just the first chapter, it will come to reflect it's metroid-based setting. Now, before you go about reading this story I have made I would like to make one thing known. I am not the best writer ever nor will I ever attempt to claim that title, I'm prone to mistakes when I write like most people but the biggest problem I have is usually with grammar. If the wording of anything confuses anyone I'll try my hardest to reword it so it's much more understandable. Feel free to leave reviews on the story ranging anywhere from the completely positive to the more negative-sided reviews (Though, please, if you go to point out a flaw in my writing please try to make a suggestion about how it could be improved, so that maybe I can make the story much more enjoyable for you in later chapters) So, with out further delay I present you with my story,
Corruptive
Vicissitudes
Chapter 1: High
Maintenance
Slowly light from the morning sun filled the bedroom, creeping over the soft blue carpet towards its victim. On the wall opposite the window a mass of sheets and blankets covered up the bed's occupant up to his crimson-haired head. The light seemed to move faster along the floor; perhaps the thrill of the hunt was edging it on. Nearby an alarm rang out, warning of the sun's plan as it drew nearer. Only too late did the occupant hear the alarm, right as his two crimson orbs opened they were filled with morning sunlight, blinding him temporarily and causing him to tumble out of bed with a loud thud.
"Ahhh shut up…" the teen muttered while he yawned. It wasn't long before he had raised his body from the floor and turned the alarm off with the flick of a switch. Reaching into the clutter that was his desk he pulled out a tough metal comb, of course not before knocking several magazines onto the floor, and even a empty can of some off-brand soda.. Practiced movements quickly removed the knots from his waist-length crimson locks. With his hair now straightened he began to walk towards the door, not yet remembering that the only thing protecting his peach-colored body from being completely naked was a pair of blue boxer shorts.
"Oh, forgot my clothes, guess I should get them before I take a step outside and get tackled by all the women" the teen said with a chuckle, turning towards the mirror behind his door and flexing his muscles, "Oh yes, I'm too sexy for my shirt… but I'll wear one anyways" he said with a smile, reaching up to the back of his neck. At the base a small metal disk about an inch in width was implanted into his skin, his finger tips slid gently along the outer edge of the disk, twisting a fine ring that was on it's surface, after a second of twisting the ring clockwise, and then counter-clockwise he smirked and tapped the black surface in the center.
A faint white glow consumed his body briefly before disappearing to reveal a set of clothing. A pair of stiff black pants with glowing green accents around the ankles and sides sat comfortably around his hips while a pair of jet-black sneakers seemed to be a part of the pants; no matter what angle you looked at them from. Over his chest a black shirt melted into the pants, forming what appeared to be a sleek one-piece outfit. "Alright, got my clothes, hair straightened, guess it's time to go to school." He said with a smile, making haste out of his bedroom, down the hall, and out the front door.
It wasn't long before he had made it to the school's campus where several glowing walkways lead. These walkways provided those who stood on them a quick and efficient ride to their destination, one way the government had phased out vehicles from cities. In the distance he could see the flashes of chromatic light that showed the teleport systems were in the process of translocating their specified students. It wouldn't be long now; the school's teleportation grid was only online twenty minutes before class started. "Syaoran! Hey Syaoran, over here!" called a boy, quickly running up to the crimson-haired teen.
"Oh, hey Trent, didn't know you were here already" Syaoran said with a chuckle, turning to his shorter, significantly younger companion. The boy was only a freshman at the high school and had shaggy brown hair. It was an unlikely pair to be friends. But the two had been assigned as partners in a class that Trent technically wasn't even supposed to be in at his grade level, a chemistry course that only the 'brightest' seniors were supposed to take, but Trent had somehow been smart enough- or perhaps it was just dumb luck –to get a slot in the class. Syaoran had assumed that Trent would be crying for his mother after just the first day of study but was surprised at the boy's intelligence and joy for science.
"Oh yeah, I've been here for… a good hour or so" Trent said, breathing heavily from his rush to see Syaoran. The boy was almost knelt over as he breathed, a similar outfit to Syaoran's on him, but instead of being black and green it was blue with almost eerie white glowing accents. "Take your time there buddy, life's too short to waste it out of breath" he said with a chuckle, motioning for him to take a seat at the nearby bench, least he fall over.
After a minute of breathing Trent was finally able to continue his conversation, turning in his seat he faced Syaoran. "Are you excited about the trip to the Omega Research Labs too!? Oh, I can't imagine the kinds of projects they have going on there…" Trent said with a smile, as if he had spent all night thinking on the field trip instead of sleeping. "Heh, yeah, it's pretty awesome… Maybe they have radioactive spiders or something" Syaoran said with a shrug and a smirk, "Who knows, maybe one will bite you and turn you into Arachni-lad or something."
Trent laughed, "Oh come on Syaoran, that's just nonsense, there's no way a bite, even from a radioactive spider, could cause a fundamental change in someone's DNA" the boy said with a smile, speaking so precisely that it was almost scary. "Oh well, guess this world just isn't quite ready for arachni-lad just yet, huh?" Syaoran asked, the school bell ringing right as he finished his sentence. Just as the bell had finally faded from existence every student began to stand up and walk towards the main building… Some didn't go so quickly though, the air seemed heavy today, maybe it was just the fact it was more humid, or the sounds of the last teleport-system cooling off.
Within the better part of ten minutes a cluster of students had emerged from the quieted school building and approached the teleport systems. At the head of the crowd an older man walked, chatting away to the class about the marvels they would see at the Omega Research Labs (Or the O.R.L. as he would affectionately call it). Syaoran was at the rear of the group of students, yawning into his right hand. "Does he ever shut up?" he slyly asked Trent, not wanting to get in trouble right before the trip. But right as Trent was to respond… "Mr. Moeroo, need I remind you that this trip is a privilege? I have half a mind to turn this entire class around and head you back inside the building!" the professor declared, surprising Syaoran at his sudden outburst. This guy must have all the students bugged, eyes in the back of his head or something Syaoran thought, gulping before opening his mouth to respond, "N-no sir, that needn't be necessary".
"Very well, so if everyone would please form up on the telepad we can get this trip underway" He said with a large smile, standing at the base of the steps which lead up onto the large device. It was only a matter of minutes, and one short talk to Syaoran on the side, before everyone had gotten on and the pad was activated. Slowly a prickly sensation rose up Syaoran's legs the moment the switch was flipped. A familiar dim white glow formed over the bodies of the students before suddenly they had disappeared from the campus. The only common side effect from this mode of transportation was, obviously, motion sickness. It was fortunate however that after a while most people grew past this and were able to travel even after having eaten lunch.
As the world came back into view towering white walls surrounded the class. A large white room was designed for the explicit purpose of providing a place where people could arrive and disembark from without incident. Each of the four walls held no interesting mark of any kind and rose to what Syaoran could only guess was six stories, but with a curved white ceiling it was hard to guess if it was just an optical illusion or not. "Mr. Moeroo! Do you plan on standing there all day or coming on the tour with us?" Came the professor's voice, shaking him from his dreamlike state and back to the reality he had came to see. "Oh, right, sorry sir" he said with a nervous smile, making his way off the platform and noting that most of the class had already been lead out of the room.
The tour consisted of a trip through the actual research labs, the class walked along a catwalk above multiple labs where only the safe experiments and research were being undergone; much to Syaoran's dismay. Suddenly something caught his eye, the tour group had passed the door by, it was invisible unless you looked for it. "Hey, Trent, over here!" Syaoran whispered, crouching down behind the metal railing of the catwalk. Within seconds the smaller boy appeared as well, "What is it?" he asked, watching as Syaoran motioned to the door behind them, the words Restricted Access printed on it in dim red letters obvious. "No way Syaoran, I'm not going in there, do you realize how long I got grounded the last time you suggested something like this?" Trent said, already knowing where this was going… Syaoran had a history with losing the tour group and getting the two of them in trouble. "Oh come on, everything we're seeing is just kids play, don't you want to see what they're really doing around here?" Syaoran goaded, smirking at first before Trent shook his head. "I don't care, last time I wasn't allowed to do anything for a whole month, just sit in my room and study math… If you want to, go ahead, tell me about it later if you want, but I'm gone" Trent said, turning and running back towards the class before Syaoran could talk him into heading on in.
Oh well, his loss Syaoran said with a smirk, glancing around to see if anyone was near enough to see him before stealthily moving his way over to the door. Upon closer inspection it became obvious it could only be opened by a nearby keypad. He had to think for a second on this. He could wait till someone came out or went in and try to slip in with them, the door was plenty big enough to allow four large men in shoulder-to-shoulder… He could try hiding in a corner and making a dash for it, one would think getting out would be simple, right? Worse case he'd just have to find an entrance to the ventilation system and crawl his way out… He could always attempt to figure the key code out by randomly imputing numbers… but he'd only have a slim chance of guessing the right combination, even less if the same number was used more than once. A loud hissing startled Syaoran back to reality, the hydraulics in the door were coming to life, the door was opening from the other side!
Nimbly the redhead jumped backwards, balling himself up against the corner closest the door and keypad. As the door opened a pair of scientists in white lab coats walked through. "What do you think of these readings?" The first asked, he looked to be barely in his thirties, likely an intern or assistant, his hair was still short and dark. The second nodded his head and smiled, his white hair having receded long ago. "Its high-energy state certainly does make it an ideal fuel source, the problem is with it's volatile nature and our ability to contain it, not to mention it's scarcity… We should keep testing it's applications in energy production for the time being and then look at any of it's other properties. Lets just hope the military doesn't get wind of it, every bit we've found will be…" was all Syaoran was able to hear before the door had closed with him on the inside.
A new fuel source? Sounds intriguing, I might even get to see an explosion while I'm here Syaoran thought, surprised a little at how the lab inside was as dim as the catwalk had been. It appeared that the labs were much brighter and that the administration was just cheap on keeping the lights on in the halls. Quickly Syaoran made his way down the hall, hugging the wall farthest from the labs and pausing to listen for people coming his direction. Every lab he peaked in on bored him, most of the experiments seemed just as docile as the ones under the catwalk. After ten minutes of playing cat and mouse with the patrols he began to get tired of the Restricted Access labs, that was until he decided to check one last room. To his left several large windows looked out over a lab, probably designed to allow observers from a safe distance. Inside the lab he saw a group of scientists sitting around the lab at several machines. In the center was a large table with a long tube filled with a strange blue-white substance, it didn't look like anything he had ever seen before… this must be that new fuel the two had spoken of. Every minute the two machines at either end of the tube would warm up and began passing an electrical current through the tube, somehow it seemed that the receiver machine was getting more power than the transmitter sent… It must be a metal of some kind, maybe they've figured out a way to remove protons and/or neutrons from a substance to allow for the harvesting of electrons? he thought whimsically, trying to deduce what the substance was.
A loud alarm was set off at the sixth interval Syaoran witnessed, at first the teen nearly jumped out of his skin and thought he was done for. Finally he realized the alarm was from inside the lab he was looking down into. It seemed the first machine, the one that generated and then passed the charge through the tube, wouldn't shut down. This was causing the second machine to steadily receive more and more power, within the better part of seven seconds the capacitor on the second machine exploded from the strain, sending bits of metal flying every which way. A considerably large chunk came hurdling through the window right in front of Syaoran, nearly turning him into a kabob. Syaoran had fallen backwards and scrambled to the side to get out of the way of the machinery, thanking whatever god had let him move out of the way in time. With a nod and a silent prayer to the same god he withdrew a small black oval case from his right pocket and opened it. Inside was what appeared to be a miniature science lab, complete with slides, measuring devices, small vials, a collection apparatus for liquids and much, much more. With what seemed to be a practiced motion he pulled one of the vials out and moved over to the machinery, falling down onto one knee and approaching the fragment of the tube still coming from the machine. Carefully he drew the vial up and gathered a small amount of the metal, he was surprised to find it was actually a liquid and not a solid, as he had first expected. Placing a stopper in the vial he replaced it in the black kit, pocketed the kit itself, then rose to his feet. He was completely unaware to the fact his right knee had landed directly in the substance and didn't even notice the substance slip through his pants and disappear from sight entirely.
It was only a matter of minutes before he made it out; fortunately enough for him the door was locked open in the case of a clean-up emergency. He prayed the class hadn't of returned to the campus yet and made his way there with due haste. He sighed when he reached the area, they weren't here… had they forgotten him? "Mr. Moeroo! Might you be willing to tell me why you're here before us?" Called the professor's voice behind Syaoran, causing the teen to wheel around to face him. "Well, you see, I didn't want to distract the class and knew the tour was almost over so I thought I'd run and find a bathroom real quick, it was a bit of an emergency unfortunately" Syaoran said, blushing lightly and scratching his head in embarrassment.
"Unfortunate indeed… Class! Tomorrow we shall have a test on what we've seen here today… lets hope you all pass" the professor said, sneering at the mischievous student in front of him before turning and speaking to the tour guide for a short amount of time. "Good timing, you almost didn't make it… I certainly hope that little trip of yours was well worth the bad test grade you're going to get" Trent said with a smirk, looking up at Syaoran.
"Bad test grade? Who, me? Why would I get a bad grade when I got my little PDA right here" Syaoran said, patting Trent on the head lightly and chuckling. "Ooh, I don't care if I do get an F on a test, I actually got a sample from the lab" he said, glancing at the professor before drawing the kit from his pocket and opening it to let Trent see. The only substance in there was the blue liquid-metal substance. "I'm not entirely sure what it is, but it conducts electricity… actually it magnifies it quite a bit, so I have to think it's some sort of metal… but get this, it's a liquid at room temperature, just like mercury" Syaoran said, putting the kit away before getting shaken by Trent. "Syaoran, are you listening to me!? You just stole a valuable piece of research from Omega labs! Do you realize the kind of trouble you can get in if they catch you?" the boy whispered, there were rumors of people disappearing because they simply knew too much about the research going on… What if they were true?
"Oh don't get your panties in a knot, there was an overload in a machine and that caused an explosion, I only liberated this sample from the debris which landed near me. No harm no foul, finder's keeper's" Syaoran said with a smile, turning and walking towards the teleporters as the class began moving in that direction. Trent sighed and smacked himself on the forehead lightly, "He's going to be in jail before he graduates" he muttered, climbing the stairs up onto the teleporter system and standing next to Syaoran. "Alright everybody, line up, line up. It's time to get back to school, it's almost time for your next class" the professor called, turning towards the console at the front of the surface and pressing some buttons on it to select the school as their destination. He then reached and pressed a slightly larger, white button with the word Engage written on it in blue letters. The usual whirr of the generators beneath their feet occurred and then died down, but they didn't budge a single nanometer. "Well… this can't be good" the professor said, looking over to one of the mechanics as if to ask what the problem was. "Try it again, sometimes the generators are stubborn and simply won't provide enough power to start the process" the mechanic called, walking towards the platform.
Listening to the advice the professor pushed the button again. The whirr of the generators picked up again but instead of teleporting as expected they were instead greeted by a pained yell as Syaoran fell down onto his knees. His arms clutched his stomach, it felt as if his entire body was literally being ripped apart atom by atom. "Syaoran… What's the problem?" the professor asked with a sigh, muttering under his breath at how the teen was trying his patience. "Don't know… my chest hurts… I'll be fine…" he muttered, slowly forcing himself up onto both feet despite the few who were around him telling him to stay still. "No… no… I'll be fine until we… get to sch… the nurse" he said, shrugging his classmates off. Suddenly a call came from the side of the platform, "All right, I just reset the system and cycled the coolant to make sure the generators weren't overheating… try it again" the mechanic called, giving the professor a thumbs-up.
It seemed the professor paid little heed of Syaoran's words and was standing at the front when the mechanic began to talk again. "Alright, one more shot" he said with a sigh, pressing the button. As the professor engaged the system Syaoran gripped his sides more, looking as if he was going to fall over at any moment. "Dammed machine, work already!" the professor said, impatiently pressing the engage button one, two, a total of three more times. With each press of the button Syaoran gritted his teeth in pain more, eventually falling down onto his right knee with his classmates beside him to make sure he was okay. Slowly his body began to tingle and grow numb, a light-blue glow forming over his body in a similar fashion to how the teleporter normally would. "Everybody… get away… I… it's trying to translocate me… it's seems unstable, get away before it pulls you in too!" he yelled through clenched teeth and between pained gasps for air. His chest expanded as he sucked in the largest breath he could, "Get away, everybody!" he shouted, his entire body becoming consumed with the blue-white glow. He had never heard of something like this happening… It felt like he had cotton in his throat from yelling, He forced himself to swallow before moving his arms away from his stomach and striking out at the classmates who remained at his side, hitting them wherever he could to get them to move away. Suddenly his body quaked as electricity flowed through it, his back arched and his head leaned back as he looked skyward. Electricity crackled out of his eyes, from the tips of his fingers. Continuous bolts flowed from the floor below him into his chest. Suddenly the teen vanished, quickly followed by an ear-popping boom that originated from where he had been, knocking down everyone in it's path before impacting with the walls without a hint of damage…
Oh yeah, me again! I hope you enjoyed the first chapter, and I can't wait to read any reviews you may place. For those of you who did like this I already have two more chapters ready to be posted and am currently working on the fourth as well (Though, I won't be posting the next chapter for a couple days... give me enough time to finish Chapter 4 at least)
Quick fun-fact about the title of the story. The title was recommended to me by a close friend and it intrigued me, a quick peak into a dictionary revealed that the word 'Vicissitude' was simply (for lack of a better comparison) a synonym to the word 'Change'. So for those who had no idea what the title means here's a quick translation. 'Corruptive Changes'
And with that I'm off!