DISCLAIMER: This story is almost pure OC, save for Augustine, so if you were expecting DelsinxFetch, look somewhere else. I do not own inFAMOUS, inFAMOUS 2, inFAMOUS: Second Son, Sucker Punch, or any video games related to these. I simply enjoy writing stories.

REVIEWING REVIEWS:

deathstrider777: … and you just reviewed on the chapter that says to review, leaving a review for me to review.

Yo dawg.

BongoDumbs: Awesome name. And I will pick up with the descriptions. I just don't want to go too far into them.

Guest: *looks down the page* *looks up* Done.

There were three other Conduits in the boat; the oldest by a good ten years, Nathan, had control over metal. Seeing as how we were in the loading docks, with literally tons of scrap metal lying around, I didn't think he'd feel unwelcome.

The second guy, of about twenty-ish, introduced himself as Mutt, though I later found out his name was Greg. He was a novice at this sort of thing, but he wasn't too bad with his power of brick.

The third person to step out of the ship was a girl, Beth. She had glass powers, and she had had them pretty much since birth.

Cassy told me this as they got out of the motorboat. She went to greet them, grinning like they were all old friends. Which they probably were. They laughed, probably traded stories for about 5 minutes before they remembered I was here. Kind of awkward…

Cassy finally introduced me. "This is Josh. Josh, this is Beth, Nathan, and Mutt." The latter grinned at his name. "Guys, Josh has a… problem."

"Can we get somewhere less conspicuous first?" Nathan asked, fingers twitching. "Like on a building roof?"

A murmur of assent was all he needed, and he was off, metal plates rising to follow his feet up to the roof of a nearby apartment.

Mutt shrugged, looking at me. "He's usually like that. He thinks we're all kids, so he's sorta taken us under his wing to keep us super-safe. Try not to let it cramp your style, though." He grinned, and he was off, too, running up the side of the building, bricks bulging to give him a stairway.

"And I suppose you have some sort of complaint, too?" I asked Beth.

"No," she said, shrugging amicably. She had a definite British accent, which gave her voice a lilt I found somewhat… nice. "But Nathan's right. We should definitely get to the roof. Especially since they've got a head start." She flashed me a bright grin, and took off. I couldn't see how she got up the wall, but up the wall she did get.

Cassy rolled her eyes at me. "Beth's a bit of a show-off. Mutt, too. Nathan's… Nathan's alright, I guess."

She grinned at me suddenly, a grin that worried me a little. "How are you getting up the side?" she asked, too innocently.

"Um…" I thought about it. "Probably climb. I've done plenty of climbing, so this should be a breeze."

"If you're sure you don't need a boost…" She left the offer hanging, a swirl of smoke curling around her arm.

I swallowed. "No, I'm good. I'll just be a while." She shrugged and, turning into a wraith of smoke, flitted up the building before reforming up top.

Letting out a low whistle at her obvious skill, I began the slow and arduous climb up the apartment's side. It wasn't too difficult; plenty of handholds in the brick side gave me lots of leverage, so it only took ten minutes or so.

When I got to the top, Nathan was playing 'X's and O's' in the dirt with Mutt. Beth and Cassy were arguing about something, but I didn't hear what it was. I was just a little worried about being eleven stories up with no way of getting down besides climbing, and I really didn't want to do that again.

One of them bumped into me, and I almost fell over the side of the stone railing.

"Hey!" Lurching back, I swore. "Could you not try to knock me over the side of the building? It's kind of a long way down! And unlike you fancy Conduit people, I can't exactly break-then-reform-again."

The women gave me a glare that assured me of their scathing opinion of me. But behind them, Nathan looked up from where he had been scribbling in the dirt, to look at me strangely. A grin slowly spread across his face.

"Cassy… what was it you said about Josh? And his healing thingie?"

"Yes," she said briskly. "The glass in his arms won't come out, because his skin thinks that the glass is a part of itself."

Beth spoke up. "Can I try to get it out?" This was directed more towards me than anything else, so I shrugged a consent.

Whatever she had been planning to do, though, wasn't happening. I just sat there for thirty seconds, my arm dangling in front of me like an idiot, while Beth's face grew ever more frustrated.

"Nope," she conceded. "They're in too deep for me to even yank out of his skin."

Nathan got up, motioning for Mutt to follow. "So you've got a mutant healing thing going on, right?"

"Uhh…" As Nathan came forward, my hand slipped on the wall edge. "Ye-e-es?"

"Is this really a good idea?" I asked nervously, as Nathan and Matt hoisted me up on the lip of the wall. "And why can't I do it myself?"

"This will tell if you are a Conduit or just a really fast healer. If you go splat, then you're human. But if you blow up or something, then you're obviously a Conduit."

"You're instilling me with confidence, Mutt," I remarked dryly.

"That's my job!" he joked.

"You need to be perfectly relaxed," Nathan explained. "That way when your body reacts to the falling, you'll have the most time to react to it, and all your attention will be on the landing."

"Alright…" I said, not at all reassured.

"One…" Nathan counted.

Aw…

"Two…"

…crap…

"Three! Heave!" With that, they threw me off the building.

"AWWW CRAP!" I yelled, arms flailing as they attempted to –

CRUNCH

They peered over the side of the building.

"Is he alright?" Beth asked.

"Looks fine to me," Mutt commented. "Aside from the little bit of pooling blood…"

"Oh no…"

They leapt off the building, landing gently and quietly beside Josh's still body.

"Is he even breathing?"

As I came to, I took a massive breath of air, the world returning to definition around me.

I had managed to catch the end of a conversation. "…'s alright. He's breathing."

"No thanks to you," I grunted, pushing off from the asphalt, getting up and dusting off. The side of my head hurt, and when I pulled my hand away, it felt warm and sticky. Blood.

"Hey, look," someone – sounded like Cassy – said. "What's that on your chest?"

I looked down to see what she was talking about. "Oh. Huh. I guess I have a couple glass shards in my chest, too." They had ripped through the shirt, and they stuck out from the fabric like I had been impaled by them. Though I felt just fine.

"No," she said, sounding curious. "You didn't have those there before."

"I didn't?" I remembered back to when I had first woken up. "No… I guess not. They must have grown."

And on that last word, the shards rippled.

With a sound like a thousand feet on broken glass, the few shards on me began to drastically multiply, growing and extending around me like a hug of silicon. It felt like forever then, but looking back, it was probably only a few seconds. The shards crept around me, squeezing and piercing my skin over and over and over… only it didn't hurt. I could feel them just fine; it just didn't have any pain.

Did I mention I was scared out of my wits? But I just couldn't manage to move. Not because I couldn't, but because I had had no time to react.

As the shards covered my face, I managed to catch one last glimpse of the others' shocked faces. And then the shards impaled my eye.

Cassy and Beth were screaming, pointing at the broken-glass-statue-Josh in front of them. Frozen in a picture of bewilderment, his face – or rather, where his face had been – seemed to be looking down at his arms, as they were held out almost crossed in front of him in a palm-up, confused gesture.

Nathan, as shocked and scared as anyone else, tapped on the sculpture of glass in front of him. "…Josh?"

I inhaled deeply for the second time in as many minutes. "Ghaaahh… ow. Do not do that to me aga – what's wrong wi…" My voice sounded really gravelly, like someone had turned my vocal chords into mini-boulders. "Wha… what… what just happened to me?"

I looked down at my arms, and was immediately horrified. Because where my arms had been were now two long clumps of broken glass. The elbow bent when I told it to, but otherwise… I had no arms.

As undignified as it may have been, I figure I was entitled to a whimper or few as I tried to figure out what the hell had just happened.

"Josh!"

I snapped out of my impromptu self-examination. I suddenly realized that Nathan had probably already called my name several times. "Yeah?" I asked, worried. "What just happened? Wh… who am I? And don't gloss it over. What. The. Hell. Was. That."

Nathan visibly shuddered. "You know, it's really creepy to talk to something without a mouth."

"I don't have a mouth?" I put my arm nubs to my face, but there were no defining features. I guess I looked like a store mannequin. No nose, no eyes, no hands, just a nubby head on a nubby body with basic nubby legs

"Can't help it," I apologized. "So what happened?"

Mutt swallowed, and spoke up. "Um… I think… you are a Conduit."

"I gathered," I finished sarcastically, still checking myself out. "But… you guys can't do this. Not like this all the time."

"No," they agreed.

"So what's wrong with me? Why am I not like you guys? Because neither of my parents were Conduits, so… I don't have the Conduit gene. Which means…"

My mind suddenly flashed back to yesterday. "Cassy. When you healed me, did you take all the shards out?"

"I tried," she admitted. "But there were some still in too deep for me to take care of."

"And the blue stuff in the truck?" I pressed.

"Conduit crystal," Mutt supplied. "It's what some of us are calling it. Augustine uses it to power her stuff, her troops… Fortunately for us, it's chock full of power. Every time one of us drains something from it, we learn we can do even more than before."

"Hey." Cassy spoke up again. "I just realized. When I healed you, I had forgotten to take the crystal out of you. Do you think…"

"That's gotta be it," I finished. "I don't really see any other reason…"

I was worried, and a little sad, too. This… glass thing… it looked really permanent.

"Hey." Beth must have caught my mood, somehow. "It's okay. You're one of the good guys now." She gingerly reached out a hand to take my glass shard arm ending. I jerked back, not wanting her to get cut. She grinned, then turned her hand to glass as well. Only her glass was more smooth, like she was carved out of it. Then – and only then – she held the end of my arm like a hand, obviously not trusting her normal skin to survive my new, more deadly shardskin.

Suddenly, she jerked back herself, eyes widening. "What…"

I looked down at my arm, and almost freaked out myself. A glass shard hand was just finishing forming at the end of my arm. Each finger was about two glass plates thick, and as long as a normal finger.

"Wow…" I muttered, breathless.

I was then struck by how different my body was now from my original flesh-and-blood body. I mean, you might be like, Dude, it took you this long? Hey. I was getting tossed off buildings.

And sure, this could mimic fingers, and all, but it just wasn't the same as normal skin and clothes –

I looked up sharply when I heard the others gasp. "What's wrong?"

"You… your…" Beth stuttered, finally just pointing at my arm.

"WHOA!" I yelled, as the glass shards retreated into my skin, slicing through and sealing the outside as smooth as my skin used to be.

Feeling my face with my real hands, I realized I was just fine. No… better than fine. I felt…. Alive. Lit on fire.

Suddenly my thoughts flickered to my clothing. When I had first created the shards, they had sliced through my skin and my clothes, too. I really hoped –

Good, I wasn't naked. But still… where did my clothes come from? This wasn't what I was wearing before. It was more nondescript, more 'average' than I was used to for my wardrobe. But it suited me and fit me just fine, so I was good.

There was opened-mouth silence from the group, so, rubbing my wrist, I turned to see what was so gape-faced about me, and to attempt to quell their terror – when I realized they weren't looking at me. Rather, they were looking at the very large DUP squad right behind me.

"Freeze!" A willowy, female voice called out. "Stop fighting and surrender, or continue your folly and perish."

Slowly turning around, I heard Nathan speak up. "Hey, hey! Augustine! How are you? Did you do something with your hai -"

"I didn't come here for pleasantries, boy," she sniffed at him from the roof of her concrete-encrusted truck. "I came for your latest Conduit experiment. And I must say, it's quite an improvement over your last. So just hand it over, and I'll give you a, hmm… five second getaway." Experiment!?

"And what if we don't want to? Cassy! NOW!"

Cassy grinned, and disappeared into her wraith form, billowing around the group and shielding them from the gaze of the DUPS. Simultaneously, Beth grabbed my arm, and Nathan grabbed all of us, Mutt using the brick to propel us up and away from the DUPs.

When we landed, Nathan gave a one-word answer to everyone's unspoken question: "Run!"

And so we did. But it very soon became apparent that I was the weak link. And very shortly I fell way behind the others.

A DUP truck came barreling down the street from behind, fully intending to run me over then claim it was an 'accident.' As I had no desire to be a smear of red on the ground, I ran like the wind. Only a very slow wind.

I had no desire to kill, but I really didn't like these guys.

So I decided that the only way out would be to fight them.

I stopped running and turned around.

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