"We don't know how long he had been there. Suspended in the air above the Atlantic Ocean. On May twentieth, 1982, an ocean liner was crossing from Plymouth to Boston when a passenger spotted him. He was naked, his arms to his sides, his long hair blowing in the wind as he stood in the sky, nearly a hundred feet above the gently cresting waves. His skin and hair can only be described as a burnished gold. With neither body hair nor clothes to cover him, it is said, he seemed almost artificial.
After a discussion including passenger and crew, the liner detoured to get closer. It was a sunny day, and passengers crowded to the railings to get a better look. As if sharing their curiosity, the figure drew closer as well. His expression was unchanging, but witnesses at the scene reported that he appeared deeply sad.
'I thought he was going to crack his facade and cry any moment', said Grace Lands, 'But when I reached out and touched his fingertips, I was the one who burst into tears.'
'That boat trip was a final journey for me. I had cancer, and I wasn't brave enough to face it. Can't believe I'm admitting this in front of a camera, but I was going back to Boston, where I was born, to end things myself. After I met him, I changed my mind. Didn't matter anyways. I went to a doctor, and he said there was no sign I ever had the disease.'
'My brother, Andrew Hawke, was the last passenger to make any sort of contact with him, I remember. He climbed up onto the railing, and, almost falling off, he clasped the hand of the golden man. The rest of us had to grab onto him to keep him from falling. Whatever happened left him with a quiet awe. When the man with the golden skin flew away, my brother stayed silent. The rest of the way to Boston, my brother didn't say a word. When we docked, and the spell finally broke, my brother babbled his excitement to reporters like a child.'
The golden man would reappear several more times in the coming months and years. At some point, he donned clothing. At first, a sheet worn over one shoulder and pinned at either side of the waist, then more conventional clothes. In 1999, he donned the white bodysuit he still wears today. For more than a decade, we have wondered, where did our golden man get these things? Who was he in contact with?
Periodically at first, then with an increasing frequency, the golden man started to intervene in times of crisis. For events as small as a car accident, as great as natural disasters, he has arrived and used his abilities to save us. A flash of light to freeze water reinforcing a levee stressed by a hurricane. A terrorist act averted. A serial murderer caught. A volcano quelled. Miracles, it was said.
His pace increased, perhaps because he was still learning what he could do, perhaps because he was getting a greater sense of where he was needed. By the middle of the 1990s, he was traveling from crisis to crisis, flying faster than the speed of sound. In fifteen years, he has not rested.
He has been known to speak just once in thirty years. After extinguishing widespread fire in Alexandrovsk, he paused to survey the scene and be sure no blazes remained. A reporter spoke to him, and asked, 'Kto vy?' – what are you?
Shocking the world, caught on camera in a scene replayed innumerable times, he answered in a voice that sounded as though it might never have uttered a sound before. Barely audible, he told her, 'Scion'.
It became the name we used for him. Ironic, because we took a word that meant descendant, and used it to name the first of many superpowered individuals – parahumans – to appear across Earth.
Just five years after Scion's first appearance, the superheroes emerged from the cover of rumor and secrecy to show themselves to the public. Though the villains followed soon after, it was the heroes who shattered any illusions of the parahumans being divine figures. In 1989, attempting to quell a riot over a basketball game in Michigan, the superhero known to the public as Vikare stepped in, only to be clubbed over the head. He died not long after of a brain embolism. Later, he would be revealed to be Andrew Hawke.
The golden age of the parahumans was thus short lived. They were not the deific figures they had appeared to be. Parahumans were, after all, people with powers, and people are flawed at their core. Government agencies took a firmer hand, and state-"
The television flicked off, and the screen went black, cutting the documentary off mid sentence. Danny Hebert sighed and sat down on the bed, only to stand just a moment later and resume pacing.
It was five forty-five in the afternoon, and Taylor was not home yet. Worse, she had never been to the library.
Danny ran his hands through his hair, which was thinned enough at the top to be closer to baldness than not. Usually he didn't work the weekends. However he had just been called a few hours ago by the weekend secretary about a new client offering a possible job for twenty men, and they wanted to have a meeting at seven. Today.
He had originally made plans to spend the evening with Taylor, to make up for the neglect, maybe re-connect with her. But now he had to cancel. This was too big, too important. Yes, his family was important to him, and he missed spending time with his little girl. He missed the connection they used to have, before she grew up, before she became distant. But his workers also had people to worry about. This job could be important, it could let them feed their family's without having to resort to crime. Far too many of his men had been turning to the gangs lately.
So he had called the library a few hours ago to let her know about the change in plans. But she was not there. It was a bit odd, since she should have been done her running by then. He wondered, even as he knew the answer, why he hadn't gotten Taylor a cell phone. Danny didn't know what his daughter was doing, and had no easy way to get in touch with her.
Perhaps she was really pushing herself with the running, more than he had realized? Or else she might have run into trouble. She wasn't happy, he knew, and exercise was her way of working through it. It all stemmed from that bullying problem, the one he had not even known about until the hospital incident. He liked that her running made her feel better about herself, that she seemed to be doing it in a reasonable, healthy way, but what if she was starting to go overboard? He just hated that she had to do it here, in this neighborhood. Because here, a skinny girl in her mid-teens was an easy target for attack. A mugging or worse – he couldn't even articulate the worst of the possibilities in his own thoughts without feeling physically sick
There was precious little Danny could do about it. Heck, not much he could do about anything, not even the bullying. He had threatened to sue the school after his daughter had been taken to the hospital, and the school board had responded by settling, paying her hospital bills and promising they would look out for her to prevent such events from occurring in the future. It was a feeble promise made by a chronically overworked staff and it didn't do a thing to ease his worries.
His efforts to have her change schools had been stubbornly countered with rules and regulations about the maximum travel times a student was allowed to have between home and a given school. The only other school within a reasonable distance of Taylor's place of residence was Arcadia High, and it was already desperately overcrowded with more than two hundred students on a list requesting admittance. In the end, when she decided to home-school herself, it had been a relief. At least she didn't have to go back.
Countless times, he had glanced out the window, hoping to see Taylor coming in early maybe having changed her mind about hitting the library.
For the twentieth time, he felt the urge to ask his wife for help, for advice, for support. But her side of the bed was empty and it had been for some time. Daily, it seemed, he was struck by the urge to call her cell phone. He knew it was stupid – she wouldn't pick up – and if he dwelt on that for too long, he became angry at her, which just made him feel worse.
The second possibility wasn't much better, if Taylor had not run into trouble, perhaps she had lied? But what else would she be doing? Taylor wasn't social. She didn't go to parties, she wouldn't drink, she wasn't even that interested in champagne when they celebrated the New Year together. She was a sensible girl, took after her mother like that.
He glanced out the window again. Nothing.
He had tried to call other library's in the city. Perhaps she was simply going to a further one? It would be a laugh if that had been the cause of his worry. But no, nothing. He had given it another hour and called them all again, asking the librarians to pass on his message as soon as they saw her. She still was not there, even though it was almost four thirty by the time he had finished another round of calls.
Perhaps she was trying to rekindle her friendship with Emma? Or spending time with someone she had met at the library? Taylor hadn't said as much aloud, but whatever had been going on had been mean, persistent and threatening enough that Emma, Taylor's closest friend for years, had stopped spending time with her. It galled him. Taylor deserved to have friends, and not have bullies drive them away. She deserved so much more than he could provide for her.
Impotent. Danny was helpless where it counted. There was no action he could take – he had already left messages at the library's, and calling any more would only annoy them. He didn't know where exactly she ran, where she went during the day, when he was at work.
The slightest of vibrations in the house marked the escape of the warm air in the house to the cold outdoors, and there was a muffled whoosh as the kitchen door shut again. Danny Hebert felt a thrill of relief coupled with fear. If he went downstairs to find his daughter, would he find her hurting or hurt? Happy from spending time with a new friend? Depressed from an encounter with the bullies from her old school? He wished he could simply ask her what they had done to her, what horrors they had used to break her, turn her from a happy chatty kid, into this silent, brooding teen.
She had told him, in every way except articulating it aloud, that she didn't want that. She had pleaded with him, with body language and averted eye contact, unfinished sentences and things left unsaid, not to ask, not to push, not to see. He couldn't say why, exactly. Home was an escape from the bullies, he'd suspected, and if he recognized the bullying, made it a reality here, maybe she wouldn't have that relief from it. Perhaps it was shame, that his daughter didn't want him to see her like that, didn't want to be that weak in front of him. He really hoped that wasn't the case.
So he ran his fingers through his hair once more and went downstairs to give her the bad news. But he silently told himself that if she seemed upset, unhappy, then he would do his best to reschedule the meeting, to cut it short and come back here fast. The house was old, and it hadn't been a high quality building when it had been new, so the walls were thin and the structure prone to making noise at every opportunity. The stairs creaked loudly as he descended.
"Hey dad!" A chirpy happy voice pipes up from the kitchen. Relief floods though him. Taylor might be able to hide her emotions in her face, but her voice always gave it away. There was no tightness that would indicate a false mask of cheer.
"So got lots done at the library. Gotta say, the teachers at Winslow were pretty awful if I can be zooming along like this on my own."
Relief became anger. He was angry at Taylor, for making him worry, for lying about where she had been today and then not even going out of her way to let him know she was okay. He felt a smouldering resentment towards the city, for having neighborhoods and people he couldn't trust his daughter to. He hated the bullies that preyed on his daughter.
Underlying it all was frustration with himself. Danny Hebert was the one person he could control in all of this, and Danny Hebert had failed to do anything that mattered. He hadn't gotten answers, hadn't stopped the bullies, hadn't protected his daughter. Worst of all was the idea that this might have happened before, with him simply being at work and unable to supervise her self-learning.
He stopped himself from walking into the kitchen, from shouting at her and demanding answers, even if it was what he wanted, more than anything. Where had she been, what had she been doing? Was she even studying? He knew that by confronting her and getting angry at her, he would do more harm than good, would threaten to sever any bond of trust they had forged between them.
Danny's father had been a powerful, heavyset man, and Danny hadn't gotten any of those genes. Danny had been a nerd when the term was still young in popular culture, stick thin, awkward, short sighted, glasses, bad fashion sense. What he had inherited was his father's famous temper. It was quick to rise and startling in its intensity.
Unlike his father, Danny had only ever hit someone in anger twice, both times when he was much younger. That said, just like his father, he could and would go off on tirades that would leave people shaking. Danny had long viewed the moment he'd started to see himself as a man, an adult, to be the point in time where he had sworn to himself that he wouldn't ever lose his temper with his family. He wouldn't pass that on to his child the way his father had to him.
He had never broken that oath with Taylor, and knowing that was what kept him self contained, but wanting to punch something. While he'd never gotten angry at her, never screamed at her, he knew Taylor had seen him angry. Once, he had been at work, talking to a mayor's aide. The man had told Danny that the revival projects for the Docks were being cancelled and that, contrary to promises, there were to be layoffs rather than new jobs for the already beleaguered Dockworkers.
Taylor had been spending the morning in his office on the promise that they would go out for the afternoon, and had been in a position to see him fly off the handle in the worst way with the man. Four years ago, he had lost his temper with Annette for the first time, breaking his oath to himself. That had been the last time he had seen her. Taylor hadn't been there to see him shouting at her mother, but he was fairly certain she'd heard some of it. It shamed him.
The third and last time that he had lost his temper where Taylor had been in a position to know had been when she had been hospitalized following the incident in January. He'd screamed at the school's principal, who had deserved it, and at Taylor's then-Biology teacher, who probably hadn't. It had been bad enough that a nurse had threatened to call for a police officer, and Danny, barely mollified, had stomped from the hallway to the hospital room to find his daughter more or less conscious and wide eyed in reaction.
Danny harbored a deep fear that the reason Taylor hadn't offered any details on the bullying was out of fear he would, in blind rage, do something about it. It made him feel sick, the notion that he might have contributed something to his daughter's self imposed isolation in how she was dealing with her problems.
It took Danny a long moment to calm down, helped by telling himself over and over that Taylor was okay, that she was home, that she was safe. It was something of a blessing that, as the anger faded, he felt drained. He stepped into the kitchen and watched as his daughter blinked at him, confused. "Dad?"
"Sorry, had to take a moment to collect my thoughts. I have some bad news honey. There's a new client who wants to meet with me, to talk about getting twenty guys hired for a few months. This is big, it could make a huge impact for some of them. But I have to go soon, as the meeting is at seven, and I don't know how long it will be. I'm really sorry, and I promise we can spend time together tomorrow instead. Rain-check?"
She looks blank, but only a little disappointed. It hurts, that she might be used to this by now. Danny decides to push a bit, to see if he can't get anything from her.
"I tried to call the library's, leaving messages for you, but they said that you weren't there?"
Her voice turns cautious, less cheerful. "Oh." She folds her arms around herself, defensive. "Maybe they just didn't notice me?"
He ignores the obvious lie. Taylor still won't trust him, so he'll just have to be patient. "It's ok Taylor, I just was concerned that you might have been attacked while running. Besides, it doesn't really matter as long as you ace those year end tests right?" Danny forces out a laugh.
"I guess I'll have to get you some pepper spray or something, to make me be less of a worry-wart."
"Dad..." Her voice softens, "It's fine. We can go on our little excursion tomorrow night. I don't mind, really."
It's hard to decipher that one, but Danny decides that it means forgiveness, unspoken understanding, and a truce. He grabs his keys, pulls on a jacket, kisses Taylor on the top of her head, and heads out. Time to go.
Also, yes, a huge amount of this is lifted from the original Danny Interlude, but not much has changed yet from the original timeline.
I did try my best to go though it all and modify the bits that no longer fit. It's a bit of a cop-out for a chapter, but surprisingly more work to modify existing stuff than I thought. Had to go through it line by line basically. To make up for this, there will be a second interlude, an original one, before I go on to the next series of chapters.
I think I'll do that with most of em. So for example, when the 2nd run of chapters is done, you'll get a modified Vicky one, and then another original.
Questions, comments, complaints? Review! :D