Ahaha… Hey? Authors note at the end :)
Key:
"Regular speaking"
"Thinking" - Will also double as telepathic convos
"Comms or automated speech"
With a smile of satisfaction, Max finished his tinkering. He stood back and admired his work.
A red metallic suit comprised of a complex mixture of metals both sturdy and flexible. This was the secret armor he'd been blue printing, his ticket to realize a dream.
Once he'd made the breakthrough with velocity 9, he'd immediately gone into many a trial and error with the equation he found. Of course, that wasn't before he'd done his support obligations and fixed Artemis' bow.
Now fixing and tweaking said bow wasn't a hard task, not at all really. Only problem was that he wasn't too terribly well versed in what made a bow great or what he could possibly do to make it even better. With some help from Aiva and a few hours of reading, the boy made a few key adjustments that, hopefully, Artemis liked.
Now all that was left was to get the young woman to test it. But that could happen later, when she was actually at the cave at least.
"I think maybe a test run is in order!" Max said giddiness seeping from his tone.
"Perhaps that would be best left to another day? It is quite late out." The AI suggested.
Max shook his, "That's precisely why I should be going to test it. This is meant to be a secret after all, I can't very well walk out in broad daylight with this on can I?"
"As you wish, I'll begin preparations."
Just as soon as Aiva finished saying that several pieces of the armor clicked and opened. Robotic hands dropping from the ceiling above to aid in assembling the multiple pieces both correctly and securely.
As the genius had explained a week or so ago, he did end up putting the nanite suit on ice. There were just too many variables at the moment for it to be of any real use. There were major flaws he'd have to work out before putting that idea to its starting point.
He opted for a more singular suit, one that he'd made to be as slim and light as possible (A/N: Again, think Anti-Ock suit with no spider symbol or helmet from Spider-Man ps4).
Soon enough he was fully equipped, he felt sluggish but he chalked it up to the suit not running. At the moment, it was just him forcing the metal arms to move.
After the checks were done, Max told Aiva "Start boot up process."
The housing unit was simple. A ring on his chest lit up a brilliant yellow, and streamed down several transferral lines spread throughout the suit. He attached a device to both Wally's and Barry's suits to not only get more readings on the strange energy they gave off, but to contain if only a fraction of it.
Max was able to successfully capture it, lightning in a bottle some might say, and because of that he was able to power his suit through something he called a 'micro drive'. Although it wasn't microscopic, it was small enough to be implanted in his suit.
This energy, or force might be more accurate, was so potent that even the tiny bit he was able to contain was able to power seemingly everything he attached it to. And with no noticeable pollutants!
This might even be a better solution for clean energy than he theorized magic could be! He still hadn't found a way to contain magical energy that didn't involve a magical solution. That just wouldn't do in the long run.
(A/N: If you care, I'll go into a short explanation of how I imagine this little micro drive working. If you don't skip ahead to the next bold line.)
From what Max was able to learn, the energy that Wally and Barry were able to harness was entirely 4th dimensional. It's 'exhaust' so to speak however, was not. The energy itself had manifested in this dimension as pure kinetic energy in lightning form.
Once he was able to discern that, it wasn't hard to draw up some blueprints to contain it. Catching lightning in a bottle would've been a challenge, but not if you had a lightning rod. The kinetic energy that Flash and Kid Flash gave off nearly fried the poor little device Max attached to them.
After tweaking the devices, he successfully captured the elusive energy. Max almost immediately put his blueprints to work and after more than a few failures, constructed something that was able to utilize the energy.
He borrowed ideas from a standard reactor core, but made slight adjustments to accommodate using what was essentially supernatural lightning as opposed to plasma.
His design made it so that the coils inside routed the energy in a continuous loop, thus recycling itself as it gave the necessary power output to the rest of the suit. Theoretically, he had a limitless source of energy on his chest.
"Everything is looking good, sir."
Max nodded and put an earpiece in, "Great, I'll let you know when I'm outside. Please keep an eye on the readings and let me know if anything looks abnormal."
The program remained silent, but Max knew she was already on it.
Stealthily, the teen exited the lab and walked down the empty halls. The metal soles clanked with each step and he winced with each one. Why did everything sound so much louder at night?
Slowly but surely, Max made it to the front of the cave. The sky was black and so was the rest of Mt. Justice. The only thing illuminating his surroundings was the moons shine. Not a single light was in sight once he closed the doors. This was supposed to be a secret hideout after all. It wouldn't do, to have a porch light at the entrance.
"I'm out Aiva. How are the stats?"
"Excellent, nothing alarming here. Power output is normal. Everything seems to be working at maximum efficiency."
Max smiled brightly, "Wonderful! Let's go on a test drive!" Max let himself break into a brisk jog. Now that it was properly powered up, the suit moved 100x more fluid than it did prior. He didn't feel like he was wearing resistance bands, in fact he felt invigorated.
The wooded area between himself and the city made for a wonderful playground that the young man dared test himself on. He jumped, he swung, and he ran.
He'd never felt so free. Coming up to the end of the wooded area, Max could faintly see the lights of a street lamp.
The young man paused for a moment. His chest heaved trying to catch the breath he didn't know he lost. He lifted his hands up, and clenched then close. The limbs that Dr. Fate had damaged when he took his body and 'cannibalized' the nerves inside. Still he felt the same tingly prickle, but he had the full range of motion he had lost. At least while he had the suit on to complete the movement.
Perhaps he could use this design to help disabled people? He could make a variant to aid those with damaged limbs, he'd be able to help people in a whole new way!
"Then what about those amputated limbs? How would they get them to move? I'd need some sort of neural interface, one that could track and interpret the signals the brain sends when you wanna move. But how would it transport those signals? Use a wire like a vein? By Bluetooth? There could be serious input lag if I did it that way. I'd need to analyze the human nervous system more, and perhaps consult someone more educated than me…" He muttered almost incoherently to himself
"..." Aiva listened silently and patiently waiting for her opportunity to go over the readings she received while he was jumping through the forest.
At the sound of a horn ahead, Max was broken out of his thoughts. At just the edges of his vision what he saw made his eyes go wide in terror.
Without a second thought, he burst into action. The dirt kicking itself up at the brutal force he applied to propel himself.
An elderly man, homeless by the looks of it, carelessly crossing the street. Not even five feet away from the man a large pickup truck ready to make him a grill guard.
All of the excitement and happiness he felt prior, completely diminished. "I-I won't make it!" For all the enhancements this suit gave him, it still didn't make Max super. The young man reached out almost pleadingly, "Don't die! Don't die and I can help you, I swear!"
His suit sparked. A malfunction, at this time?!
"Mr. West-!" Aiva spoke in alarm
In just the half a second it took for Max to plead with any higher power to save this man and Aiva to try and issue a warning, Max seemingly disappeared from his spot in between the trees. A gust of wind following suit.
The sounds of squealing tires and a loud crash behind him startled the young man, "Behind?!" His head flew over his shoulders only to find the truck from before smashed into the stoplight.
Then the sickening scent of alcohol burned his nose and a rough shove sent him to his armored butt.
"What ta hell ya punk! You trying to shtart somshing? You one of them super shit heads? I ain't scared of yous!" It was the homeless man that was a moment away from being roadkill.
"N-No! No sir, I-...!" Max looked down at his suit. Stray sparks flying from the circuits. He looked over his shoulder again to see the truck driver fling his door open and immediately begin to shout at having run his truck into a stop light.
Pieces began to connect for the genius and he stood back up. There was only one solution to what had just happened. Well one solid solution at least.
"Uh, paramedics will be here if you need treatment sir. Bye!"
He turned and in an, unintentional, burst of speed disappeared back into the woods towards Mt. Justice. His vision tunneled and the woods began to become a muddled mess of darkness.
This… This! This was-!
Abruptly things seemed to return to normal and Max began to recall one of the laws of physics. An object in motion would stay in motion until acted on by an opposing force. His opposing force being the dirt.
Max tumbled at high speeds, until he eventually collided with a tree bringing him to a complete halt. "Argh!" He cried out, luckily his suit took the brunt of the damage though not without consequence.
The boy rolled over to his back and stared at the moon. His suit was a bit mangled. Panels curling at the edges, circuits sparking having fried themselves, and paint scratched and dinged due to his tumble.
But despite all that an ear to ear smile split his face. "Heh! Hahahaha! That was incredible! Fantastic! I can't even-! Hahaha!"
He expected there to be some side effects of using this 'speed force' as it were to power his suit. But this? He never could have expected this.
"Mr. West. It might be a good time to head back now, I believe you'd like to see the readings for yourself."
"I'll start making my way back. We've got some things to re-work Aiva." He said happily.
"Certainly, Mr. West."
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
The next morning Max was in a daze. His mind just couldn't focus on anything other than flashing back to his experience the night before.
"What do you think is wrong with him?" Robin whispered to Wally.
The older West observed the way his brother ate mindlessly and then smirked, "I'll bet he bookmarked himself a new favorite 'video', if you know what I mean."
Robin's nose scrunched in disgust, "Dude… Ew-."
"Shut up 'Wal-man' not everyone is the horn dog you are." Artemis, clad in her casual clothes rolled her eyes and held an expression similar to Robins.
"Oh come on! He's at just the right age to be curious about that stuff! And if you think he hasn't already looked at that kinda stuff you could not be farther from the truth."
Now let it be known, Max was indeed a growing young man with many, many curiosities. A woman's body was certainly one of them. As a naturally curious boy, he'd wanted to know everything there was to know about a girl's physiology the moment he learned they differed from boys.
That curiosity was driven by knowledge, NOT perversion. HOWEVER, he did find himself appreciating the feminine form more as time went on. And for purely research purposes, may or may not have visited a few risqué websites. For research!
Artemis huffed and blushed thinking back to the other day, "W-Well he did ask me to take off my shirt, even if it was for a sound reason. I could tell he was peeking over every now and then…"
Be that as it may, that was not why he was so out of it.
Max had a breakthrough last night, and it would change not only his life but the world. With this, he would change the very landscape of heroism as they knew it.
For better, or for worse.
Finito!
WOWOWOW. No excuses here friends. Took way too long to get a chapter that may as well be a diary entry lol. So, I humbly apologize for that.
Anyways, it's been a disgustingly long time since I started this and there's been little to know progress and I really want to change that. I think I've been getting too caught up trying to make chapters lengthy and that totally kills my motivation to write. I feel like I'm giving myself a chore and it suddenly doesn't become fun anymore. SO, I'm ganna stop doing that and write until I feel like the stopping point is fair. Some chapters may be long, some may be short like this one. Hopefully I can get chapters out with some semblance of consistency that way.
Addressing previous chapters: I re-read this quite a bit actually and while I definitely feel like I've gone a bit over the top in creating something of a pity party, I stand by the creative path I wanted to follow. I only regret not writing this from a first person perspective rather than a third. I feel like that mistake what creates a lot of the corny tension and melodrama (Not exactly sure if I'm using that right).
I may edit the chapters, or I may not. Right now my current goal is to at least get to where I wanted to write to begin with.
I don't want to tell you to expect anything from me, but I do want you to know I'm trying over here! So, I hope this was able to entertain you for a brief moment!
Thanks for reading!