III: Harken the Thunder Clouds!
"It's right here."
He takes in the room and has to admit that he's impressed. He's done as much research as he could of the place. The very little he obtained seemed insightful at the time.
Now, he thinks it didn't do the technologically advanced island much justice.
The energy transponder catches his attention. "It's beautiful," he says, smiling at it.
"Yeah. It's very shiny," Chase says excitedly. "Now, I have to tell you: I'm not sure if my father will be onboard. I know that you'd need him to sign, too, for the deal to go through."
"Oh, I wouldn't worry too much about that. I'm sure there are ways to persuade him."
The bionic hero nods. He steps back, allows him a moment to take in the prototype. Suddenly, he frowns. "By the way, I don't think I got your name."
The smirk that he's been concealing fully emerges on his lips. "How rude of me. It's—" he shoots an energy blast at him, flinging him backward, "The Incapacitator."
The bionic hero doesn't get up. He lies on the floor immobile, knocked completely out.
He laughs. He uproots the security box from the base and turns to leave.
However, a thought stops him. He glances at the kid one more time, sizing him up. It disgusts him to think that his son is frequently treated less because of the likes of him. "For being the smartest man on Earth, you sure are dumb," he says resentfully. "Sleep well, Little Davenport."
Then, he leaves the room with the main component of his plan.
– Ϟ –
With the din of the cafeteria droning in the background, Leo zeroes in on the circuit board he's working on. He's absolute he's wrecking his back hunching over this, but the delicate component is the only thing left to modify before he tests his invention again.
The conversation with his father inspired the completion of this project. He abandoned it a few months ago when they settled their fight against the bionic army under S-2's control (he still can't believe they didn't figure that there's another puppeteer behind the curtain beside Krane). He just didn't think it's necessary anymore. The island's at peace, and there's no one he really needs to defend himself against.
He grins. A pair of gloves, designed to absorb energy and release it as a photon blast. He thinks The Incapacitator will find this a hoot. He probably won't show this to his family, mostly because he doesn't think they need to know of it.
A few minutes more and he tires of the project. He unplugs the soldering iron, puts the wires and the transistor leads back into his work kit, and then carefully winds the cord of the plug.
Once he's packed everything away (the circuit board more carefully than others), he gets up and turns to head back to the quarters.
He's stopped in his tracks at the sight of Bree and Adam rushing into the cafeteria. Their eyes quickly scan the sea of surprised students until finally, they land on him. "Hey…" he says suspiciously as they dash towards him. "What's going on?"
"You gotta come with us." Bree grabs his left wrist and drags him along. "Chase was just attacked."
"What?" he says as Bree leads the three of them past the curious crowd. "You mean like attacked attacked or like students made jokes with him as the material attacked?"
"Attacked attacked!" Bree says exasperatedly. She presses onward more urgently. "Come on!"
"Ooh! What'd you have in your case, Leo?" Adam excitedly asks as they make their way through the hall.
Leo pretends not to hear him, not only because he doesn't want to tell but also because as they approach the transponder room, an ugly, dreadful feeling has begun to rise in his chest.
I will see you soon, his father said. Now he wonders how soon he had in mind.
– Ϟ –
"Chase!"
"What happened?"
Chase groans as he sits up. "I was showing the transponder to a potential buyer."
"You brought a complete stranger in here?" Donald screeches.
"I didn't. He just showed up here on his own," mutters Chase, rubbing the haze out of his eyes.
"How could he know how to get here?" Bree asks. "Besides our family and a very select number of people, no one should know how to get to the island."
"I don't know," sighs Chase. His brows furrow as he recalls what happened. "The guy blasted me with some kind of energy force."
Leo thinks his heart has stopped as the alarm in his mind rings louder. Energy force.
He can almost imagine what color.
"Where's the transponder?" Donald asks, eyeing the empty base.
"He must've taken it."
"Great. Chase, what were you thinking?" Donald barks.
"Oh, I don't know. Maybe that you made a deal without me, and I was going to make an even better one without you!" Chase fires back.
"Well, if your deal was to get knocked out and robbed, you did a bang-up job," Adam says before he and Bree pull him back to his feet.
"We need to find the guy who did this," Bree says.
"It wasn't just some guy," Chase tells his sister. "That energy blast wasn't human.
"Then what was he? Bionic? An android?" Adam gasps. "What if he's an evil Jedi from a galaxy far, far away?"
Chase casts a withering stare his way. "I think I would know if I was attacked by a Sith," he says.
"So we don't know who we're dealing with or what he's capable of," Bree says to their father, ignoring Adam.
Leo's frozen in place. He does. He knows who and what: The Incapacitator, capable of absorbing energy and wreaking havoc with it.
But he wishes he didn't.
He schools his features to remain neutral. They can't know he's scared. They can't know he's terrified of them knowing that he knows or that he's terrified of the thought that the culprit will get caught.
Most of all, he's terrified of them finding out that he's absolutely torn between wanting them to succeed and wanting his father to get away safely.
"I'll contact the authorities," Donald says. "Get in your mission suits. This guy could still be on the island. Until further notice, everyone's on high alert."
"Uh, B-Big D," he stammers, stopping his family at the door. "I'm going to help look on the other side of the island."
Donald eyes him in both annoyance and confusion. "You can't set off on your own," he says. "You don't have any bionics to fall back on if you encounter him."
"I won't confront him, I promise," Leo says. Desperate, he reasons, "We can cover more ground that way. I'll call if I find him."
Donald sighs. "Fine. Do whatever you want. Just make sure nothing happens to you," he says. Because your mother is going to kill me, Leo can almost hear him say mumble as he exits the room with his children.
Once they're gone, Leo releases the breath he's been holding. That was too close for comfort. Good thing they were too focused on the transponder to look my way, he thinks.
After forming a rough plan, he draws his phone out of his jean pocket. 1:37 PM. That means his father was on his way to the island earlier when they were speaking on the phone.
He huffs. Right. It's not like he hasn't done that before. What's more important at the moment is finding him before his family does.
If something holds them back, which is very likely since they're with Adam, he calculates that he has about 12 minutes to locate his dad first. Not that much time, especially for a guy who's got neither the bionic ability nor the superpower to move at lightning speed, but it has to do for now.
Armed with his own secret ways of tracking the gifteds, Leo exits the room with what should have been a gift for his father, hoping that the hero side won't mind him giving the supervillain a way out of their grasp one more time.
