Mutation
Chapter Two
Having finished cleaning up the rubble, Virgil thought that it would be best if he headed home for a shower and something to eat. Richie, however, felt that he needed to do a quick patrol himself even though Virgil had already carried out a morning patrol.
"That's fine bro! I'll call you on the shock vox when I'm on the way back here" Virgil said, dusting himself off a little.
"Sure, you could use a shower!" Richie said as he changed into his superhero costume and saw Virgil disappear into a cloud of dust.
Coughing slightly Virgil tried to use his powers to clear the dust away but no power came to his hand. "Odd..." Virgil coughed even as he frowned puzzled by why his power wouldn't come.
"You ok V?" Richie called through the dust.
"Yeah..." Virgil said and tried to clear the dust again, this time the power came to his hand and he was able to clear away the dust by creating an energy whirlwind.
Virgil appeared through the dust, his chocolate coloured skin more of a grey-brown because of the dust.
Richie was busy making sure his skates were done up correctly. Looking up, he grinned and tried hold back the laughter as he saw Virgil completely covered in grey dust but lost the battle and doubled over with laughter on the couch. Which promptly earned him an irritated glare from Virgil.
Virgil just shrugged and as he walked by, he zapped Richie gently making his friend jump and give a slight yelp before leaving the gas station and walked off towards the quickest way home.
Richie had to pat his hair down as it had stood on end after Virgil had zapped him lightly before leaving their headquarters. Can't he take a joke, he thought in irritation as he finally got his hair to stop standing on end as the charge of electrostatic energy faded from his body, putting his helmet on he activated his link with backpack and ran a quick diagnostic on all his gadgets.
Then satisfied that everything was working as it should he skated out of the headquarters and made sure that it was secure before he activated his jet blades and took to the air. Flying over the city more on automatic pilot than anything else he ordered backpack to scan the city for any signs of trouble be it of the conventional criminal or metahuman kind, or even if it was as simple as a cat getting stuck up a tree. While backpack scanned the city he went over the equations for last nights experiment in his head trying to understand why it had suddenly blown up in his face.
Hearing the familiar sound of Richie's jet blades Virgil looked up in time to see Gear flying away across the skyline of Dakota City. Have a good patrol Rich, he thought before looking back at the street again.
Checking the road was clear he crossed quickly and headed into the ally that he had long ago discovered cut his journey time between the gas station and home in half. The sooner he got home the sooner he could have a nice hot shower.
As he walked down the alleyway Virgil suddenly began to feel a little strange, like he was suddenly dizzy. Virgil came to a dead stop and steadied himself against the wall. Once the momentary spell of dizziness passed he started walking again. That'll teach me to have more for breakfast, he thought.
He had barely taken a few steps when a sudden sharp pain erupted deep within his chest. Virgil gasped from the surprise of it; coming to a dead stop again doubled over clutching his sides as the pain spread outwards from his chest. He dropped to his knees barely holding back the scream. Wh…what's happening to me, he thought as the pain spread and got worse and worse with every wave. A strange fuzziness enveloped his thoughts as the pain spread until his whole body felt like it was on fire. And then his world went black.
Flying at a leisurely pace Gear was soon over the park though he was only partly concentrating on where he was going. The bulk of his attention was focused of unravelling the formula for the compound he had created last night as he searched for the illusive answer as to why it had exploded.
All thoughts of the formula abruptly disappeared from his mind as backpacks sensors reported that some kind of coherent energy mass was in the centre of town and causing absolute havoc.
I wonder what that is, Gear thought as he changed course from his normal patrol route. Increasing speed to maximum he hurried for the centre of the city.
Arriving at the scene Gear paused in the air to assess the situation. A creature that appeared to be made of pure energy was steadily trashing down town with strange but obviously powerful blasts of energy. The creature was human shaped but it was entirely made of some blue energy. A pulsing corona of purplish blue light seemed to hug the creature's body. He couldn't see identifiable features, as every detail of the creature was blurred and indistinct.
Pulling out a zap cap he threw it at the ground beside the creature as a warning. "Hey! Want to fight me instead?" Gear said, hovering just above the road.
The creature ignored the exploding zap cap but rounded on him and fired bolts of energy that looked like a mixture of a lightning bolt and an ion bolt from both hands at him. Gear dodged the blasts of energy easily enough.
Taking a water zap cap from its slot he threw it hard at the creature. The zap cap hit the energy corona surrounding the creature and just bounced off to explode on the other side of the street. Damned things got its own force field. How lovely for me, Gear thought to himself sarcastically even as he threw another zap cap at the creature.
The zap cap hit a different part of the creature and again bounced off the corona/force field thing surrounding it but with slightly less force. The field flickered slightly small energy particles breaking away. The creature snarled at him and launched another attack.
Gear dodged the bolt of energy fired at him by the creature but the bolt came much closer to him this time. The creatures aim was improving. Even as he dodged the bolt of energy he had backpack scan the creature. Backpack reported that the force field around the creature had lost ten percent of its strength. Taking more zap caps from his belt pouch he threw them at the creature. Three zap caps struck the creature. Two bounced off its force field to exploded on the other side of the street the third broke through the field surrounding the creature and discharged its content of water straight onto the creatures skin.
There was a harsh electrical crack and the creature howled in pain reeling back as its energy flickered and rippled with strange distortion waves.
In pain and enraged the creature fired bolt after bolt at Gear. Gear dodged most of them but one bolt scored a glancing blow on backpack eliciting a spray of sparks and molten metal from the robot. A damage report flashed onto Gear's helmet visor and Gear swore. The glancing blow had caused serious damage to backpack. The outer shell was breached three processors and part of backpacks memory had been wrecked. Systems in backpack were failing left, right and centre. He was going to have some serious repair work to do.
Whirling towards the creature again Gear threw another zap cap - it was the last water one that he had since he didn't carry many. The zap cap struck the creature in the middle of its body and exploded and the creature screamed in pain. Yet something else happened this time besides the electrical crack and distortions in the creatures mass. Its energy seemed to splutter and flicker like a television going on the blink. The creatures regained its stability but it definitely seemed weakened.
The creature sent another energy bolt at him but it was noticeably weaker than any of the previous blasts had been. Gear started to dodge but he wasn't quiet quick enough the edge of the bolt caught one of his skates and damaged the vectoring mechanism of the jet knocking him tumbling out of control.
By the time Gear regained his stability and looked around he found that the creature had vanished without a trace. Where the hell did it go, he thought ordering backpack to scan the area for any sign of the creature. Backpack did not respond all systems were now off line. Oh terrific, Gear thought.
Virgil came to find that he was lying in a pile of rubbish in a completely different location to where he could last remember being. Getting up onto his knees he looked around to find that he was in an alleyway on the other side of town from where he had last been. How on earth did I get here, he thought, well at least that pain whatever it was has stopped.
Using the wall as a brace he got back to his feet and tried his best to ignore the exhaustion that was pulling at him. He hadn't felt this tired in months not since his last all night battle with the metabreed. He felt almost like he felt when he'd expended a heck of a lot of power on something. Yet aside from this mornings patrol and cleaning the gas station he hadn't used his powers at all. Certainly not enough to make him tired.
He looked down at himself to see his clothes were dirtier than they had been when he'd left the gas station and scuffed and he noticed a few small tears in the fabric here and there. He almost looked like he'd been in a fight but as far as he knew he hadn't. He shrugged off his confusion.
"Home...Shower...Sleep" Virgil muttered to himself.
Moving as quickly as he could despite his strange feeling of exhaustion Virgil made his way across the city heading for home. He just hoped that dad and Sharon weren't there.
