So... here I am... two days later. And I'm just about coming to terms with what is going on. The delicious scrambled eggs help. And the cook who made them. Who knew that eggs are best cooked with lasers? Right now I'm sitting on a small leather sofa (couch, WHATEVER!) and I'm eating breakfast that was cooked by [yep, you guessed it] the one and only Abigail 'Fetch' Walker. She's wearing a navy tanktop and matching jeans but what is more noticeable and eye-catching is her fiery pink hair and a new addition to her normal attire; a necklace and bracelets made from neon energy. The neon jewellery kept changing colour which was a bit strange considering that when I played inFAMOUS Second Son, neon was always a pinky colour. But when I asked, she explained to me that she's developed her powers almost to their limit and that she can now control the colour of her power amongst other things which she said she'd show me later but she was too tired right now and just wanted to sit down and watch T.V.
I haven't met Delsin yet but Fetch said that he's really busy nowadays, cleaning the streets up of the DUP, and he doesn't really have time to stay at 'The House'. That's what they call this cozy three-storey mansion ... I know, it's an amazingly imaginative name right? Conduits are allowed to come here if they need a place to stay but it's only been me and Fetch since the day I woke up in that bedroom and Fetch says that she reckons I'm a Conduit because of what had happened by the Space Needle. In fact it hadn't even been near that building; apparently Delsin had used lightspeed to transport the two of us far away. But when we had touched, there was a huge explosion that flattened a whole block and Fetch said it was unlike anything she had ever seen; it was kind of like a blue and white, electrical-looking sphere, she had said. No one had been hurt in the explosion because the block had long since been abandoned but the wreckage was devastating and police (the honest kind, not DUPs) had cordoned off the entire place. The way Fetch described it was scary but what was most terrifying about it was that her description matched 'The Blast' that had happened in the first inFAMOUS game. And the result of that explosion was that Cole MacGrath obtained powers. Fetch told me that Delsin had been unaffected by the blast, he was only unconscious for a few hours, whereas I had been knocked out for over a day. But, if the two blasts were the same sort of things then at least one of us would have been affected by it, and if it wasn't Delsin, then...
"Hey, Ash, you alright?" Fetch asked me. When I first woke up and found Fetch, she asked me what my name was. For some reason I thought it would somehow be safer if I didn't tell her my real name and the first thing that came to my head was 'Ashton', which is my Dad's name. Of course, I couldn't go back on that now, even though I wanted to; it'd just be too suspicious, I guess.
"Oh... yeah" I said, "Just lost in thought, Abi." Her eyes opened wide and she turned her head slowly in my direction.
"Call me 'Abi' again, kid, and you'll find out what happens when laser-eye-surgery goes wrong." She threatened, trying to keep her face menacing but ended up smiling at me.
"Okay... Abi," I replied, also smiling, "Anyways, I left the bath running," I added, just remembering that I wanted a bath. The tub was almost full when I walked in, so I closed the tap and tested the water by putting my hand in. It was ice-cold. "What the hell?" I looked down and the bathtub and saw that the water had started to freeze over. I yanked my hand out of the water and it slowly went back to liquid. Again I put my hand back into the water and, sure enough, it started to slowly freeze over again. This time I kept my hand there until all the water turned to ice. Then I realised that my hand was now trapped inside. "Great" I sighed. Except... even though my hand was stuck in the middle of a 2-foot block of ice, it didn't feel very secure. Maybe if I could... I yanked my hand out of the bathtub and half of the ice came as well making a sound similar to glass breaking. Shards of ice littered the floor, "Fetch!" I called. I heard a burst of sound that accompanies her neon power and then a knock on the door.
"Yeah? I heard something break, is everything okay in there?" She asked
"Urmm. No" I replied uncertainly, "Come in, you need to see this" I walked over to the door and unlocked it. Fetch walked in.
"What's up?" The pink-haired girl asked. Then she noticed all the ice, "What the hell happened?"
"I just... put my hand in" I stared at my hand and saw that a white energy kept flickering across my skin every few seconds. So the blast was the same sort of thing that had happened in Empire City; I'm now a Conduit. Except I'm sure it doesn't work like that, you're meant to have like a Conduit Gene or something, which I'm sure I don't have, especially since I'm from the real world.
"Um, okay I'm not sure what to do," She said, "Lemme just phone Delsin"
So Fetch took her phone out and called Delsin Rowe. "Hi, babe," She replied to his greeting, "No you have to come back today. It's Ashton. Yeah. Mhmm hm." She kept talking to him for a bit and then giggled, "Okay, see you then!" Fetch smiled at her phone, probably thinking about Delsin. "Well, you're obviously a Conduit and Delsin said he can help you learn to control your powers. He's gonna come back in about two hours so you've got some time to kill," She smiled at me when she noticed my worried look, "Don't worry, he's really friendly" But that's not what I was worrying about. I'm a Conduit. I'm conduit?
That same thought kept racing through my head as I waited, sprawled on the sofa, for the doorbell to ring. I realised that if I didn't think about it, the white-coloured energy would disappear from my hand but if I concentrated, it would flit across my hand and forearm. It took longer than two hours. About three and a half hours after Fetch had phoned Delsin, the bell finally rang. Fetch used lightspeed to get to the door in a second and opened it to greet a guy wearing a white hoodie, leather jacket and trademark red hat. Delsin Rowe. He had an apologetic look on his face but Fetch still didn't let him into the House without an explanation.
"Sorry I'm late, babe," he said, "I got caught up in traffic"
"Since when does traffic bother you?" She replied, a sceptical look on her face.
"Since that traffic is the last of the DUP's armoured cars," He smirked, "oh and I got you these." He bought his hand out from behind his body and revealed a large bouquet of red roses and tulips.
"Aww thanks!" Fetch took the flowers and let Delsin in, "You know that's gonna be your entrance fee from now on." The both smiled at each other and exchanged a short kiss. Delsin pulled away and looked at Fetch's 'jewellery'
"That's cool," He said, smirking again, "but this," he gathered a ball of pinkish neon energy and threw it at her. A second later, a massive necklace, ten rings, and a tiara were added to the neon accessories, "would be cooler." She looked down at the new addition and took off the tiara to inspect it.
"Not really my style, and I don't like pink anymore, blue neon looks way neater."
"Babe, unless you haven't noticed, your hair is pink" He placed an arm around her waist. Again they kissed, this time it lasted a little longer.
"Urrh, Guys! Get a room!" I shouted at them, worried that they were just gonna start making out in the doorway. They pulled apart and Delsin faced me.
"So, you must be Ashton."
"Just Ash," I replied
"Ash." He said, "Dude, so you're a Conduit?"
"Yeah"
"What can you do?"
"I'm not sure... urrmm..."
"He touched the water in the bath and it froze," Fetch said for me, "so he must have some sort of ice-power." My face flushed when I realised how lame that sounds, how in the world is turning a bit of water into ice going to impress the guy who can summon angels, turn invisible, explode his body and bring it back together?
"Don't worry, kid," He smirked his trademark smirk, almost as if he knew what I was thinking, "As soon as we get you some Core-Relays, you're gonna go a lot further than freezing bathwater"
The first Core-Relay wasn't that far away, it only took us about ten minutes to get there. Delsin had managed to find the Relay and hide the machine inside a bin (dumpster then, happy?) in the corner of some dirty alleyway. I have no idea why he hid it there when he could have bought it to the House instead. Delsin opened the lid of the dumpster to reveal a glowing machine with blue sparks floating around it.
"Go ahead." Delsin motioned towards it.
"What am I meant to do?" I asked. Delsin sighed.
"Just touch it and try to draw energy from it." So I placed both my hands on the Core-Relay, expecting to not feel anything, but I felt as if the sparks were alive and I could hear voices.
May we? The voices sounded quiet and almost childish.
"Whoa! Delsin did you hear that?"
"Hear what?" Delsin looked at me confused. So only I heard it then
May we? Oh well, he did want me to 'draw energy' from it, so why not?
"Yes" I replied out loud, Delsin gave me another funny look.
"Dude, who are you talking to?" The voices listened and the sparks started floating around me. They came closer to me and stuck onto my skin, glowing and causing me to start levitating a few inches from the ground. Then I felt them go inside me and I felt so powerful. It was as if nothing could stop me. Then I fell back to the ground and the sparks had disappeared. The Core-Relay stopped glowing. I had done it!
"Alright, Ash," Delsin slapped me on the back, "Lets see what you can do!" Delsin turned into a smoke cloud and disappeared up a vent. The smoke was blown to the top of a building and materialized back into him. He leaned over the edge so he could see me, "You coming, or what?" he shouted.
"How am I meant to get up there?" I shouted back.
"Almost every Conduit has a sort of 'Travel' Power," Delsin replied, "Be imaginative... and try to keep up!" He turned into smoke again and flitted to the next building. Be imaginative. Fuck imagination... I remembered some Ice-Conduits from inFAMOUS 2. They were really piss-taking to kill because they'd make ice pillars shoot up from under them to shoot themselves really high up into the air. If I was anything like them then I should be able to do that. So I tried directing the white energy towards the ground. The energy stayed on my hand, but frost started to form on the concrete. That was cool but wasn't the effect that I wanted. So instead I tried jumping. A triangular pillar of ice shot me high up into the air - almost as high as some of the buildings around me.
"WHOAAAA!" I yelled out. "OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT" Now I was falling down, fast. I braced for impact, wondering why the fuck I needed to die like this. But when I hit the ground, I hardly felt anything. It was as if I had just jumped normally. I had even landed on my feet and I was a few feet from where I had first jumped. I turned around and saw the metre-high pillar of ice behind me. "Now this will work."
Travelling in style.
The pillars shot me up quite far and I travelled really fast, able to keep up with Delsin with relative ease, even though he had the help of air vents. So I felt quite smug that only two days into inFAMOUS, I can keep up with a powerhouse like Delsin Rowe. I almost crashed into a building when I found that I could actually rebound off vertical surfaces by creating more ice pillars to launch me off them. So now I can keep up this 'Ice Travel' (lame name -_-) without even touching the ground. But soon I realised that jumping like it was a bit awkward: I couldn't manoeuvre mid-air; I had to wait to reach another surface to jump off. So when Delsin took a tight turn into an alleyway, I had to wait to land, jump back and then carry on. But it was still pretty badass and I just loved the wind whipping in my face.
After about five minutes, Delsin stopped at the top of a particularly tall building within sight of the Space Needle. I overdid the jump and went straight over the building. I was about to just wait until I fell back to the ground when a massive golden hand plucked me out of the air and dumped me on the building roof. I turned to see who the giant hand belonged to and was greeted by a huge armour-clad angel the size of a house
"Do not fear!" A regal, almost echoing voice boomed, "For you have been saved by He Who Dwells!"