Chapter 8

Arc 1

Random Alleyway in Sunstone City

Adam Pierce sat inside of a black armored truck with a group of 5 men. They all looked the same. Tall, athletically built, short black hair tanned skin with dark brown eyes. They all wore black tactical boots, cargo pants and black long sleeve shirts with kevlar vest and tactical helmets. Each one had a special carbine rifle equipped with an extended clip, scope, and flashlight, courtesy of the manufacturer, Miles Maverick. Pearce sat on the front seat cleaning his own Special Carbine. On his wrist, he had a black wristband with a monitor on the side of it. It was the controller mentioned by Miles earlier. Miles believed that the clones could be the future of American warfare. He believed that he could create an army and sell that army to the American government for millions and millions of dollars.

Adam waited for the right moment. Currently, The Vagos were at odds with the El Carnicero gang. They were involved in a firefight with both gangs battling for control.

"Now." Adam said as he pressed something on his wrist making the clones hop out of the truck and ran towards the battle with their guns held up. Adam smirked as he got out of the truck and held his gun up getting in position to fight.

Adam and his clones started to shoot at their targets taking out as many as they could. Adam looked around and saw another truck posing as a Taco Truck. He recognized it as the trucks that The Vagos would use to run their shipments out whether it be counterfeit cash, drugs or whatever. Adam ran to the truck while his men continued to shoot at the others left standing. Adam shot the window before reaching in to open the door. He looked in the back of the truck and smiled as he saw a shipment of weapons. Weapons that were probably worth around 1.2 million. If he brought this to Miles, he might get a good fraction of it.

He lost his smile once he heard the gunfire cease. He heard the sound of someone screaming and frowned as he heard it cease quickly. He turned his head and looked on with a frown as he saw a tall figure floating in front of the truck with its head lowered down. The figure looked up at him with glowing blue eyes.

"Shit. The Black-and-Blue Blur." Adam said as he lifted his gun and started to shoot at The Blur. The Blur then floated up into the air making Adam breathe frantically as he thought The Blur had disappeared. He exited the car and ran away from the van but The Blur landed in front of him and pushed him back-first into the van. Adam looked at The Blur in fear as he stared into The Blur's glowing blue eyes.

"I got you now you son of a bitch." The Blur turned his head to see a member of the Vagos standing from afar with a grenade launcher. He launched the grenade and The Blur caught the grenade locking eyes with a member of Vagos. The grenade exploded in The Blur's face and through the fire, he could see the Vagos smile. He smiled as he bumped his shoulder into the member in a blur sending him crashing back-first into a wall. The Blur frowned as he looked down at the Vagos until he turned to look at Adam who was screaming as his shirt and his face and various other parts of his body were on fire.

"Shit." The Blur muttered as he ran towards Adam and tried to put out the fires by running around in a cyclone taking the oxygen out of the fire. He listened as he heard the sirens coming in making him bolt up in the air.

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The Next Day - Harvey Household

Cedric laid in his bed laying on his side as he stared at the wall. He couldn't' get the image out of his head. The image of Adam was in his head. He pledged to save them all. He pledged to use his abilities to help people and help save the city. But the one time, he did decide to stand up and try to do the right thing, someone got hurt. There was a knock at his door making him turn his head to see his mother walking in.

"Hey, sweetheart. I heard you come in last night. You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine mom."

"Are you?"

"No, not really. I screwed up last night."

"I heard The Black-and-Blue Blur was spotted last night. Now is it true? I don't know. I'm looking at the one man who could confirm that. And they say the guy that they found had burns all over him."

"And that's where I screwed up. I wanted to help but the one time I did, I ended up getting someone hurt. I'm no hero."

"How did it happen?"

"I had him pinned up against the truck and then a guy from the Vagos came to shoot me with a grenade launcher. I caught the grenade and let it explode in my face because it couldn't hurt me but I didn't think about him. I guess the fire from the grenade caught him and burned him. I failed. I failed him."

"Son, you may have the abilities in the world to be perfect but you're not. No one is and no one ever will be. Everyone makes mistakes and that includes you. Stop beating yourself up. In our line of work, we all make mistakes and sometimes those mistakes hurt people. Now what you need to try to do, is make sure he doesn't go to the media."

"You got a name on the guy."

"Adam. Adam Pierce. He has a pretty extensive criminal history and when we found him, he was near a truck of stolen Maverick Industries weapons." Cedric frowned as he looked at his mom confused. Maverick Industries had never worked on weapons and now they are. When he was there the focus was on alternative energy and never weapons or at least Cedric didn't see it that way and now here they are creative weapons of destruction. And knowing Maverick Industries' capabilities, these weapons could be weapons of mass destruction. That would explain why the Vagos were fighting those men last night. They both wanted weapons. They were probably gonna sell them and make money. Millions. The weapons were probably worth millions, that would be the only explanation to explain their want for them.

"There were two gangs last night. The Vagos and some other guys. Probably members of The Monarch, we found specially marked guns with a crown on them and men with tattoos of a crown. Witnesses say there were others but those are the only two we managed to identify. Anything else you remember seeing?"

"No." He lied. He kept replaying the events of last night in his head over and over. He couldn't sleep last night because of it.

"Alright well, I got breakfast downstairs ready for you and there's a letter downstairs with your name on it. Don't forget to look for some more jobs today and run by Pop's Diner if you can. He's heard that you're back and he wants to see you. He wants his number 1 customer back."

"I'll try mom." He lightly chuckled. She smiled as she leaned down and kissed him on the forehead before walking out. He got up to his feet and walked to his closet to grab his outfit for the day.

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Minutes Later

Cedric walked down the stairs in his black jeans with black boots and red v-neck. Almost immediately, he smelled the fumes as he walked down the stairs. Food. His mother knew the one key to his heart, the one thing he needed. She even fixed his plate leaving it on the kitchen table with a yellow envelope. He picked up with a confused frown looking at it front and back. He tried to see if he could use his x-ray vision to look through it and see what it was but something was blocking him from being able to use his abilities. He opened it finding a letter with an address written down.

"Meet me." He read. His frown intensified as he read it once more. Someone wanted to meet him. Someone went through all this trouble to find his address and send him a letter requesting to meet. He didn't know if he should feel flattered or threatened that they would go to great lengths just to meet him. He put the letter down and then looked over to his plate.

"Whoever this is will have to wait. I gotta eat first." Cedric said as he picked up his plate and walked to the couch. He smiled as he was able to do the one thing his mother would NEVER allow him to do unless she was there.

"Now let's see what's on TV." He picked up the remote and turned the TV on. He started flipping through the channel before eventually finding a channel where they showed cartoons and began digging in.

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Minutes Later

Cedric looked around scanning his surroundings making sure it wasn't a trap. He may have been bulletproof but his enemies didn't know that and if they found out that he was, they could expose him or try to hurt him using other methods. Methods that probably couldn't hurt him physically but emotionally and mentally.

Surprisingly the person who wanted to meet him gave him the location to a graveyard. He never met anybody in a graveyard and never wanted to. Whoever wanted to meet him was probably a psycho or worse.

"I bet this is probably the weirdest place you've ever met anyone." Cedric almost immediately recognized the voice and exhaled as he turned his head to see his father cleaned up with an all-black suit.

"Of course, it would be you. You always had a thing for the theatrics it seems."

"I do."

"So why are we here?"

"I wanted to show you something and give you something." Koya said as he started to walk with Cedric following close behind him. Cedric walked through the graveyard looking at the various tombstones until they stopped making him look at the one they stopped in front of. It was his. There was a wave of emotion that hit him. It was something about seeing a tombstone with his name on it that made him a tad bit upset.

"Why are we looking at this?"

"To motivate you. I've been watching over you for a few weeks now. You've been pretty busy trying to save everyone but you've also been holding back. With the threats that are coming here, they put you at a higher chance of danger. They have a chance of making sure that this happens." He said pointing at the tombstone.

"When I gave you that suit, I gave it to you in hopes that you would become a hero. That you would use your powers to do good and in-time strengthen your abilities, the more you use them, the more powerful they come and you'll need to be at your full capacity to fight the threat that is on the way."

"And you couldn't have invited me to a coffee shop to tell me to step it up?"

"Nah, that would've been boring." Cedric shook his head as he closed his eyes and sighed.

"And this is for you." Koya said as he handed Cedric a folded up piece of paper. Cedric looked at Koya suspiciously as he took the paper and opened it up. He read it and his eyes went wide-eyed as he read it.

"You didn't tell me you had another alias. And that the alias is a millionaire."

"I established that identity years ago. I replicated a piece of Ryonian tech and sold it for millions. I used those millions to build that cabin and build a forest around it. That document claims that you are my son and I need you to sign it. You sign it so we don't have to do a DNA test."

"Why do I need to sign this?"

"If I can legally claim you as my heir then my will can take place. I didn't do right by you and your mom alive but this will can be a way that I can make sure I do right by you and her in death."

"You can also come home. She knows you're alive. I can see that look in her eyes when she talks about you. She still loves you. And you love her."

"And that love is the reason that you're here. It's the reason that I keep away. If someone from my past attempts to hurt me, they go after her. And what if I can't stop that?"

"Then I can."

"You can if you use your powers more and strengthen them but you don't wanna do that because if you did, you'd already do so." Cedric rolled his eyes as he grabbed the pen from his father's suit pocket and leaned down on the tomb to sign on the surface and handed it back to his father. He then quickly pounded his fist on the tombstone cracking it in half.

"I had to do that."

"It's alright. Now I'm kinda famished, what about that restaurant Pop's?"

"Man, what do you know about Pop's?" Cedric joked around with his father.

"Why do you think you like it so much? It's genetics, your pop's got good taste."

"I don't think that's how genetics work." Cedric chuckled as they walked away from the cracked tombstone joking with each other.

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Maverick Industries

Miles Maverick stood inside of a state of the art advanced lab in a secret extension of his office. Miles stood in front of a chamber filled with fluid as the body of Adam Pierce floated around inside. Adam had suffered several third-degree burns, certain limbs were separated from his body. Part of Miles felt bad for his friend and wished that he was never in the pain he was in. But the other part of Miles, The Monarch, felt nothing. He felt that Adam deserved the pain he felt for failing him.

"Codex, what's the status on the project?" Miles said as he turned and walked towards his computer to look at the screen.

"15 percent complete sir. The DNA sample provided seems foreign. I'm having trouble replicating."

"Well try harder. The DNA comes from this wannabe god flying around and stealing my shine."

"I vow that on this day that I will prove to everyone that Miles Maverick is the most powerful in the world today. And that this fake god is not stronger than me." Miles said, turning back to look at the floating Adam with a frown on his face. His eyes focused on the 8 point star that was on the glass of the chamber. He smirked as he let out a chuckle while staring at the symbol.