Mutation Chapter Four
Author Note:
I have received some reviews about why haven't I updated more frequently recently; well to answer this I am a college student under a large workload for the next two months! I am sorry that it is my fanfics that are to suffer but I do my best to find time to break away from the college work and escape to write my fanfics in peace.
I hope this new chapter is to your liking…
Chapter Four
Adam Evans a.k.a Rubberband Man was amazed; he had never seen such a beautiful piece of equipment. The keyboard was the latest on the market, and was ten times better than his current instrument. Reading the tag, he found out that it was the state of the art and had double the memory than the old model, which Adam used.
Looking at the price Adam saw that it was how much he expected to find the state of the art equipment priced at. Chewing his bottom lip in thought Adam knew that he could afford it but did he really want to spend that amount of money on the new keyboard when his old one worked perfectly.
He did promise Sharon a meal followed by a movie, so maybe pleasing her is more important than buying a state of the art piece of music equipment. Adam smiled, 'definitely' He thought before moving away from the keyboard displays to look at new books of music for inspiration. He was interrupted though by an explosion rocking the street and screams were heard running passed the shop.
"Now what?" Adam said out loud rushing out of the shop and transformed his clothes into his costume, before transforming into his ball shape and bounce over the crowds that ran away from where the explosion came from. 'Wonder what's causing all this chaos?' He thought, as he turned right into the other street and saw what was causing the problem.
A large humanoid blue energy creature surrounded by a corona of purple energy was in the middle of the road, cars had been turned upside down and were on fire, billboards were on fire up on the roof of the nearby buildings and everywhere were people running scared as fast as they could away from the creature. Rubberband Man jumped out of his ball form and stared at the creature in disbelief. 'Can that be another bang baby?' He thought dodging one of the large and obviously very destructive balls of energy being thrown by the creature and saw it hit a lamppost behind him and completely destroy it.
"Hey! Why not pick a fight with me!" Rubberband Man yelled and threw some nearby rubble at the creature, which bounced off the corona around the creature and crumpled into dust. "What the? Oh damn the things got a force field." Rubberband Man said, quickly transforming into his ball form to bounce out of the way as the creature unleashed a series of energy bolts powerful enough to hurt even him should he be hit.
The monster then stopped and howled in pain, looking for the source, Adam could see that something had managed to break through the force field barrier surrounding the creature and hit it. "I would like to know too! Do you realise how many hours work you have giving me!" A familiar voice called out before appearing on a rooftop before unleashing another wave of attacks at the same spot.
"Gear!" Rubberband Man called out even as he evaded another one of the creature's powerful energy bolts.
Richie was slowly and steadily replacing the new circuit boards into Backpack while absent mildly keeping an ear out for the alarm of the police scanner or Virgil coming into the headquarters.
'Half done!' Richie thought to himself, leaning back and stretched until his spine popped.
BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP! The police scanners alert tone making him jump a mile.
"Now what?" Richie muttered, getting off the chair and went over to the police scanner to see what had set it off.
"Require backup! That creature has reappeared! Send back up to the Rocket Comic Store on 24th Street!" A police officer reported.
Richie went wide eyed and went off to quickly change into Gear and made sure he carried extra water zap caps with him as they were the only things that seemed to be able to break down the creatures force field and hurt the thing.
A bit upset that he had to leave Backpack behind, Gear left the headquarters and headed off into the sky for 24th Street where the cops were trying to battle against the creature.
While flying through the sky, Gear tried to think of someway that the creature would come into existence and why each time the creature had appeared that Virgil was no where in sight. 'Could it be that somehow the creature is linked to Virgil,' he thought, 'nah Richie that's a stupid thought.'
Looking around Gear saw that he was approaching the area in where the creature was spotted last, he cursed seeing the amount of damage and panic the creature had created.
Taking a water zap cap out of Backpack as he flew closer, he could see that Rubberband Man was dodging the creature's attacks. Rubberband Man tried to attack the creature by using some nearby debris but it was turned into dust.
"What the? Oh damn the things got a force field." Rubberband Man's voice echoed off the walls of the buildings.
Gear let loose two water zap caps together, the first one hit the corona of the creature while the second one penetrated and hit the creature full force. The humanoid creature cried out in pain as the water touched its skin.
"I would like to know too! Do you realise how many hours work you have giving me!" He called out, and flew above the creature and landed on the building's rooftop on the other side while launching another attack but at a different spot.
"What is that thing and why does those water caps the only way to penetrate its force field" Rubberband Man said, bouncing up onto the same roof Gear was standing on.
"I'm not sure... but I do know that it has to be electrical somehow because the water's effects... damn! Where is Static when we need him" Gear said, taking off back into the air as the creature launched another attack at the two heroes, who split and tried to confuse the creature by attacking it from two sides at once.
The creature launched an attack out from both hands trying to hit the two heroes; one caught Adam near his foot. Most of the power missed him but luckily he was not injured due to his elastic power. 'Too close' Adam thought as he morphed shape again to dodge another oncoming attack.
Gear was doing better, but he was tiring from this battle... the first battle had taken a lot of out him and out of Backpack. 'And this time, it's stronger than last time!' Gear thought dodging another bolt from the creature, which hit a billboard destroying a third of it and setting the rest on fire. He launched another attack and did a quick mental count to see how many water caps he had left with him. 'Four...' Gear thought, realising how many he had got through.
Looking more closely at the creature, he could see that it was bigger than during his last encounter with it and its energy was brighter, stronger and strangely more menacing, 'wish I had Backpack with me! I would be able to get some sort of analyse out of this and be able to find out where it came from!' Gear thought dodging another random attack. If the creature's power was stronger as it appeared to be he hated to think what would happen if he were to get hit.
On the ground, Adam was using every trick he knew to keep away from the creature's powerful blasts. The creature's attacks were purely random and so, Rubberband Man had to keep on his toes ready to dodge the next wave of attacks. Knowing if one hit him it would probably really hurt.
Looking above for a brief second, he could see that Gear seemed tired and was dodging the attacks but his mind was else ware. That brief seconds loss of concentration cost Adam, the creature unleashed a powerful dual blast of energy at him. He was able to dodge the first bolt of energy but the second blast caught him full on, the force of the impact sent him flying back into a wall while the energy in the blast badly stunned him despite his bodies natural resistance to electrical assaults.
The creature advanced on the fallen music writer, Gear saw this and realising that the creature meant to finish off Adam who would probably not withstand another blast, flew in front of the creature and launched his last four water zap caps at the creature. The first bounced off the creature's force field the other three struck it full on and the creature screamed in pain is energy rippling and flickering with distortion waves. Abruptly the creature gave off a blinding flash of bluish light and when Adam and Gear could see again there was absolutely no sign of the creature. It had again vanished into thin air.
Virgil rose to his feet again finding himself in a completely different location to where he last was, 'please tell me that was a bad dream… please don't say that I'm turning into some kind of monster' He thought, closing his eyes and tried to remember what had happened before the blackout.
Virgil's clothes were a mess, they were torn and burnt in some places, he was shaky and unsure of why the blackouts kept happening to him. 'I have to get to Richie… see if he might know what's up with these blackouts' He thought, dusting himself off carefully trying not to make the tears in his clothes any bigger.
A horrible burning, twisting sensation inside… a strange fuzziness… Virgil managed to remember as he closed his eyes briefly and opened them again as he dusted his hands off and shook his hair back to the way it usually was before continuing his journey to their headquarters.
Deep down, he was worried that something bad was happening to him but Virgil refused to believe it and thought that his power might be growing but to what heights he did not want to know.
Gear shook the spots out of his vision looking around he saw the full extent of the damage created in the creature's latest appearance.
'Ooh boy…' He thought as firefighters and paramedics accompanied by the police arrived and began to go through the chaos of what was left of 24th street. The police worked on clearing the street to give better access to the firefighters and paramedics. The fires were being fought by half of the team of firefighters while the other half were helping the police clear the street.
Gear would have helped but he felt that Rubberband Man needed more attention. "Adam, you ok?" Gear asked, shaking his shoulders lightly to try and bring him out of his daze. The blast from the creature had obviously stunned him badly.
"Static? Yeah I'm cool! Onyx has gotten tougher hasn't he?" Rubberband Man said, obviously confused.
Shaking his head, Gear bent down and helped the other hero up onto his feet. "Come on, let's get back to HQ… think we'll walk, its not far" Gear said, supporting him as they headed down the street for the quickest route back to the gas station.
Virgil stumbled through the alleyway and crossed the road to their secret headquarters, the Abandoned Gas Station of Solitude. Sighing as he pushed the door open, Virgil saw signs of Richie had been here recently but had disappeared again. By the state of whatever he was working on, Virgil could tell he left in a hurry.
'I black out and something strikes in the city...' Virgil thought, walking properly into the gas station and saw that Richie was actually fixing a heavily damage Backpack. "What? What happened to you..." Virgil said, looking at the mess of his best mate's robot sidekick backpack looked like it had been hit by somekind of powerful energy blast. There was a pile of new circuit boards and a pile of burnt out circuit boards lined up by the robot. The green light blinked as in trying to reboot itself with its current systems that were online.
"Take it easy Backpack, think you're not fully repaired yet" Virgil said, and noticed a wave of pain rush through him starting at the pits of his stomach and up through his body and escape his mouth as a short gasp. 'Not again... please...' He begged but felt the same sensation as he felt back in the alley.
Taking deep breaths, Virgil tried to push the feeling down... bottling it up inside, as he would do with his powers if he let his emotions get out of control. A blue glow momentarily spread under his skin for a moment before vanishing leaving his skin its normal chocolate brown colour. Staring at his arm Virgil's eyes went wide and realised that something was not right, 'I...I'm transforming into something!' He thought and remembered hearing someone talking about an appearance of an energy creature in Dakota that went on a rampage but Gear seemly stopped it. 'Am I that creature,' Virgil thought in horror, 'am I turning into that thing.'
The pain came to the surface again with even more force as if whatever was happening inside him was fighting against his attempts to contain it. Virgil groaned in pain doubling over but continued to fight against what was happening within him with all his strength. He wouldn't give in he wouldn't let it win.
The blue glow spread under his skin and waves of electrostatic energy crackled around him for several minutes and for a moment his body started to expanded and distort. But then the distortions stopped and the glow and energy arcs faded away as Virgil won the battle.
Virgil crumpled to his knees exhausted by the battle and spent another few minutes trying to get his breath back. Stopping the change had taken so much of his strength, so much effort that he knew he probably would not be able to do it again.
"I have to get out of here. Away from Dakota," Virgil gasped realising that he and the monster inside of him were now a threat to his family and to the city that he loved.
Getting his breath back Virgil hurried out of the gas station heading for home with only one thought one goal on his mind. He had to leave Dakota; he had to leave it now while he was still human. Because if he stayed and he transformed into the creature again then everything he loved would be in danger.
And Virgil could not allow that.
Unknown and unnoticed by Virgil, Backpack had watched and recorded this whole scene as there were a few of the systems that escaped the creature's attack that fried most of its circuitry earlier. It saved the footage and kept it in an easy to locate spot ready to display it when Richie/Gear returned to finish the job he had started.
Ok, hope this will make my readers happy for a while
Like to say a big thank you to my beta-reader AndrewJamesWilliam for helping me complete this chapter.
So RR please!
