Totally check out inFAMOUS: Twisted Metal by Darkwolf publications and don't forget to read Glass and Hellfire and Alice in Wonderland (formerly The Library of New-Marais) to keep up with the story.

Thanx and PEACE!
Haru

"How's Jace? Oh thank god, good news. I know. There's an extra Conduit too. Yeah. Another Empath, just like Delsin. Yeah. But I didn't know, did I?" I didn't mean to eavesdrop, I had only come upstairs to Celia's room to tell her that Alice and Zeke were here— as I was told, but when I saw that the door was not just ajar but half open and she was talking on her phone, I didn't want to interrupt her. "Yeah, give Jace a kiss for me. Heh," She stifled a giggle, a sudden burst of emotion on an otherwise expressionless, deadly face, "It was a joke, don't even think of stealing my boy, Ed. Yeah. Oh, you fat Scottie. Well… Shut up. See ya when I see ya then." She hung up and stared at her phone, puffing out a huge sigh. Pretending I had just arrived, I knocked on the doorframe. Her head snapped to me so fast, it was almost scary.

"Hey, urm Zeke and Alice have arrived." I rubbed the back of my head.

"Ah!" She cocked her head in acknowledgement, "Nice of you to tell me." She smiled and put on her jacket, zipping it up and putting her phone inside before turning back to me, "We need to train, get you used to Paper."

I was surprised that the DUP trained assassin was offering to help me, "Thanks, but I prefer using Ice."

She looked at me as if I was stupid, "Someone once told me; 'Every talent must be honed'." That's gonna be a lot of work, "You have my power now, so if you're going waste it… I'll kill you myself." She said it so indifferently that I couldn't tell if she was kidding. I found myself looking into her eyes, they were a deep hue of violet and had flecks of dark blue or indigo. Conduit eyes, I noticed, Conduits all seem to have strange eyes.

"'Kay, we'll train later then." I suggested. She nodded at me before walking out, leaving me to shut her bedroom door and follow.

Alice and Delsin were locked in conversation when we arrived in one of the larger sitting rooms where everyone had gathered. We had moved the meeting out of the kitchen; although it was large enough to accommodate us all, it didn't feel right to have such an important discussion there.

"He told me that I'd only find you if you want to talk to me." I heard Delsin say.

"Yes, that'd usually be the case, but I'm Zeke's 'bodyguard'— for want of a better word— and that comes first." Her expression stayed the same, impassive, "Under normal circumstances, I would have delayed our meeting for a more opportune moment but this couldn't be delayed any longer." Delsin leaned forward on the leather couch he was sharing with Fetch, a signal for Alice to carry on. Zeke and Kuo were sitting on the couch opposite them— with Alice, and Celia took a seat on one of the two armchairs. Realising I looked ridiculous, standing in the doorway, I sat down in the second armchair next to Celia.

"There's a lot you don't know, Delsin Rowe," Kuo broke the silence, "A lot that's happened since you finished off the last of the DUP."

"An' I suppose you're gonna tell us what we 'don't know', lady?" Fetch asked, starting to look a little exasperated already.

"Yes." Kuo simply replied as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, "And my name is Lucy Kuo."

"Okay, Luce—"

"Just 'Kuo' is fine."

Fetch nodded and another silence filled the room for a couple of seconds before Zeke broke it this time, "But first we need that Dead Drop that you found."

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the blue SD card. Alice opened a hand as if asking for me to throw it when it slipped out of my grip and flew into hers. What exactly are her powers?

Oh, I have a surprisingly broad range. I heard a voice in my head that felt like fingers prodding my brain. Alice's voice.

Did I just imagine that?

Alice gave me an eerie smile that I knew was probably her trademark expression, No. I'm a telepath.

Great! I just needed all my private thoughts to suddenly become un-private. Isn't it bad enough that my power-sources talk to me?

Oh, don't worry, I won't force my way into your mind—

How can I not worry?

I'll have trouble trying to anyway, Empaths like you and Delsin have natural psychic defenses.

Empaths? That's what we're called? Not the most imaginative name… but it works.

Yes, I'll explain later. What I'm more interested in right now is why your mind has residual dimension-shifting energy. CRAP! I squeezed my eyes shut and forced Alice out of my mind, pushing at those finger that were invading my head. When I opened my eyes, I saw the white-haired Conduit looking at me in what seemed to be surprise. It was hard to tell with that statue-like face of hers. Zeke pulled out a tablet from Alice's backpack and switched it on, before sticking in the SD card that she gave him. There was a few seconds of white noise before I heard a voice. Kessler. I'll never forget the way he spoke, as if his very words dripped venom and honey, impossibly cruel yet impossibly elegant:

Dead Drop #40
Subjects 1 to 20 of the 'Blessed' experiment are all deceased. But it isn't a complete loss. We've uncovered valuable data. It seems that exposing them to Ray Field radiation is unproductive. Splicing their DNA with that of Conduits has also had no effect. Combining both methods, however, has proved to give positive results but the subjects' bodies disintegrate within the hour. Subject 140— Esther Munroe— from the previous Kessler's experiments, may be the key to the puzzle. I have created a synthetic version of 140's blood and transfused it with that of Subject 20— Opal Amador— whose DNA I have previously spliced with the correct bases and I have exposed her to high levels of Ray Field radiation. The results are promising, 20 has demonstrated tactile-telekinesis: the power to utilize a personal force field of telekinetic energy. The 'blue-blood' effect, however, has proved troublesome. 20 has developed photophobia and use of her powers burns her bodily-chemical energy at a rapid pace. She needs to be sustained constantly.

Asma D'Alia and David Cross would be strategically wise choices for further test subjects, and are necessary for progress.

We must ensure that Delsin Rowe defeats Brooke Augustine. The DUP are no longer of any use to us. Augustine's special operations team may pose a danger to our plans and must be terminated. Victor Tate and his GOLIATH can swiftly take the place of the DUP and, unlike Augustine, I am sure he will not fail us. The cyborg body is nearly complete and is awaiting the host, Kaden MacGrath. Our plan is falling into place bit by bit.

End of recording.
I sat silently, in shock. They've been turning humans into Conduits? Why…? This man is seriously-

"Okay, a few questions," Delsin interrupted my thoughts, "One: What the fuck is he talking about? Two," He counted them off on his fingers, "what is he sayin', he 'must ensure' that I beat Augustine? Three: Who's Kaden MacGrath?" Not bothering to stop for anyone to answer, Delsin carried on his interrogation, "Four: Who's Victor Tate and Goliath? and five… What the fuck is going on?"

"This might take a while to explain," Celia warned.

"And even longer to sink in properly." Zeke added.

"Spare me the bullshit and just answer my questions." Delsin's agitation was understandable if a little unreasonable.

"To understand this, you must understand the entire story." Alice stated, cryptically, "Take a deep breath and brace yourselves." She opened up her rucksack and emptied the entire contents— books upon books upon books— onto the floor and used her telekinesis to arrange them around the room, all of them open to the middle page and forming a perfect circle. Tendrils of white light snaked out of the various novels and drew a complex, eight-sided star in the air. The room darkened while the spectral light burned brighter, tracing intricate runes between the gaps of the star. Alice's eyes were closed and when she opened her mouth to exhale, a stream of silvery-blue vapour poured out. It fell slowly to the ground and hung to the carpet like dry-ice fog, swirling around our feet. Gross. The temperature of the room suddenly dropped, not that it affected me, me being a Cryo and all.

Many people believe it started with The Blast. I could hear Alice's voice resonate through the room, though she didn't even move her mouth and, suddenly, the scene changed. Alice was no longer in sight but the rest of us were standing in the middle of a dark street, the books and white runes still surrounding us. The real beginning for Conduits started in the Victorian Era. A group calling themselves The First Sons were established by a man named Kessler. Delsin growled at the mentioning of his name. Lucifer Kessler was the first of four conduits to take that name and was probably the only one that didn't treat it as a mantle. He poisoned the drinking water of the population of London which caused dormant Conduit's powers to awaken. Conduits were treated as people with a disease but an assassin named Dianne Quincetta eventually managed to end the panic. I saw a hooded, indigo-clad woman run past Celia and vault over a fence that blocked the middle of the road. Two men dropped from the derelict buildings and both pulled out a pair of vicious looking rapiers. Delsin raised a hand to shoot one of the men, Don't bother, this has already happened and can never be changed. They cannot see us nor affect us, nor can we affect them.

The woman, whom I assumed was Dianne, kept her head low and smiled as she pulled out her own weapon; a dark obsidian blade that had a distinct Chinese look to it but didn't look exactly like a katana.

The two men approached her carefully, swords raised while hers remained casually hanging in her grip. One man— one that was slightly shorter— lunged for her chest. She swung her blade and met his swiftly, her movements faster than the blink of an eye, before ducking under another swipe of his weapon and then jumping out of the way of an attack from the other man, an attack that she shouldn't have even seen. Catching another slash with a casual parry, she darted behind both men, her body dissolving into a black liquid before rematerializing and with a single, deathly blow, decapitating the two of them. Their bodies remained standing while their heads rolled on the ground and the severing wound spurted a little blood before they collapsed into the dirt. Dianne twirled the sword through the air, no one but us to listen to her blade sing, before sheathing it.

Dianne Geneve Quincetta was one of the first ever Prime Conduits, and ever since then, the First Sons have been trying to harness our powers. After the death of Lucifer Kessler, the First Sons went into hiding for a couple hundred years until the first World War. That's when another leader of the First Sons emerged and took on the name Kessler.

The scene shifted again. Now we were in the middle of a war. Barbed wire was tangled all over the battlefield and bodies lay strewn on the dirt. The smell of rotting carrion almost made me vomit there and then but I managed to swallow the bile and gagged a bit before deciding to breath through my mouth. Not that it helped much. I could hear gunshots coming from my right and left but nothing hurt us. A man in a white hood jumped out of a trench to the far right and sprinted— full-pelt— for the other side. I could just about make out the bullets whizzing past his body yet he carried on running. When he had breached no-man's land he clenched a fist and smoky fire curled around his forearm. With a yell he snapped both hands towards the trenches facing him and a fiery tornado ripped through the air. The heat blurred my vision and by the time the fire had subsided, the gunshots had silenced.

This second Kessler won the war for the Allies but the First Sons made a deal with the League of Nations as soon as they were established.

The scene melted away into one where Kessler was shaking hands with a lean, old man.

The First Sons would deny any credit and would do everything in their power to make the world believe that the victory had belonged to the Allies, with no outside help. In return, The First Sons were allowed to create a new organisation, one that they have now embedded into the U.S.

We were now in a dark hall. Hundreds of men and women in lab coats were bustling around all of the place. When I looked closer I realised that they were constructing some sort of weapons. Looking down on them from an observation booth was the same man in the hood and a handful of black clad soldiers wearing gas masks. Unlike the Kessler from the inFAMOUS games, this one was only wearing a plain white cloak with a hood. No robot limbs or metal armour. His eyes constantly pulsed blue light but other than that he barely resembled the original Kessler that I knew. This one even had long black hair that trailed down his chest.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA for short. Don't be fooled, DARPA may insist that they are an agency that works for the U.S. but in reality, the First Sons control them.

The scene changed again. Now we were standing next to a huge metal statue. Empire City.

Cole MacGrath was given powers through a process many call The Blast. An explosion was created by a device called The Ray Sphere. The radiation from said device drains the neuroelectric energy from humans without the Conduit-gene and channels the energy into nearby Conduits. In essence, the closer you are to the centre, the stronger you become. And Cole was in the exact centre of the Blast. He gained electrokinetic powers and, to this date, is one of the strongest Conduits to walk the Earth. But then the Beast came.

A giant humanoid monster of rock and fire rose from the ground. Hell itself, incarnate. The Beast. There was no one else in sight except a bald man hovering in the air, face to face with the Beast. Cole. The clouds were pitch black and the sky had turned an unhealthy orange colour. Cole raised both hands and faced his strongest enemy, defiant in the face of doom. Before I had a chance to register that the clouds had joined together into a swirling mass, the entire sky lit up with electricity. Lightning coursed through the heavens and surged down like an army of angels to meet the Beast.

It was over before I knew it. Delsin let out a low whistle as the monster crumbled to the ground. Cole dropped from the sky and landed cleanly, unsettling the dust. He smirked to himself and started to walk away.

Cole underestimated his enemy.

Glowing ashes and fire swirled around each other in a tornado and clumped together to form a giant humanoid. Cole stayed with his back to the monster, but the look on his face, the emotion of utter disappointment and helplessness— he knew exactly what was happening. With a glance over his shoulder, he took one last look at the Beast… before running as fast as he could in the opposite direction.

Cole ran away with his family and didn't look back. But it was futile, the Beast destroyed everything in the end. Cole lost his wife and his children. So, in the hope of changing the past, he used his strongest and most dangerous power. Time travel. He travelled to the time before the Blast, and it took a giant toll on his body and power, he ended up having to replace most of his body with robotic parts, there was no way he could travel back in his state. He donned the name Kessler and seized control of the First Sons— they believed his intentions were solely based on their beliefs, to find a way to weaponize Conduits for their own means— but Kessler's only intentions was to nurture his past self in any way necessary in order to stop the Beast before he destroyed mankind.

Cole, Zeke and Kuo travelled to New-Marais to find Dr. Sebastian Wolfe who had created a device called the RFI which takes away Conduit powers and could stop the Beast. Long story short, Cole succeeded but the catch was that he had to sacrifice all Conduits.

The scene shifted to three people with their backs to us. The Beast was looming over us and everything was bathed in a hellish shade of red. The bald head of the person in the middle suggested that he was Cole and the short blue hair of the woman next to him suggested that she was Kuo. But who was the woman behind them both, the one with white hair? Alice?

Cole didn't mind sacrificing his own life, but that of his entire species? That was going too far. But I presented an alternative option.

Cole turned to the white-haired woman— Alice— and nodded. She pulled out a giant book that looked like it had to be hundreds of years old, the pages looked as if they could disintegrate any second and it was bound with wrinkled leather. The title was faint but I could make out the words 'A Story of Blood and Bone'. Alice placed the book, open, on the ground and raised her arms to the sky. White tendrils snaked out of the pages and spiralled around her body. Cole pumped electrical energy into the RFI in his hands. Tears were streaming down Kuo's face as the two of them sent twin beams of great white light high into the atmosphere. The light was blinding and when it faded… we were back in the House.

I saved the dormant Conduits. But all active Conduits, save for Kuo and some that were too far from the RFI, perished. Cole died. Well, at least his body did. As you all know, 'Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another.' Well there was so much pent-up energy stored in Cole's body that it had to go somewhere. Hidden in that energy was a sliver of Cole's conscience. And it all went into the most compatible person within proximity. His nephew. Kaden MacGrath was bestowed with all of the power of his uncle and it awoke his own Conduit powers too. But then this 'new' Kessler arrived. He called himself the 'Second'. By all technicalities, he's the fourth but The Fourth Kessler doesn't have the same ring to it now does it? This 'Kessler' seized control of the First Sons, as his so-called predecessor did, but his intentions were just as the First Sons wanted. He hunted down Kaden and trapped him in stasis, harvesting his power for his experiments to convert humans into Conduits.

Now there's roughly two hundred rogue Converted and they hide out in place called the Flea, like Gotham, heh, but Kessler also managed to succeed and created a group of five hundred 'Blessed'— puppet-soldiers with powers that would prove a challenge to most Conduits… the perfect army.

In all honesty, I think I'm just pumping too much information into your brains, you need a break to process it all.

The mist cleared from the room and the floating runes retreated back into the books. The room's lighting returned to normal and Alice exhaled as if she had been holding her breath the entire time. She opened her eyes and looked at each of us in turn to see how we would respond. Delsin, Fetch and Celia looked as if they were having a hard time digesting all the info. I guess I knew half of it but it still surprised me. This 'Dianne Quincetta' sounds intriguing, the other two Kesslers wouldn't leave my mind anytime soon and the fact that DARPA was controlled by the First Sons was already making me a little paranoid. Kessler has an army of 'Blessed'... yeah, can I go back to my own world now?

Your own world? Alice flashed me a smile that said: 'Caught you red-handed'.

I meant London, England… where there's a lot less drama.

Last I heard, a small faction of minor Conduits had started a riot in the streets of London… doesn't that count as 'drama'? She gave me a sarcastic smirk-and-wink. Yeah… I don't like inFAMOUS anymore.

Infamous, what?

Jesus, woman! Stay out of my head. I pushed as hard as I could at the fingers searching my brain and saw Alice flinch. Did I just hurt you? The fact that she didn't reply probably meant that she couldn't hear my thoughts.

"I understand that you've obtained a Blast Core." Kuo broke the silence.

"Yeah," Fetch, "Lemme go get it." She got up and her body flashed neon before it flickered out and she stumbled forwards. Delsin was up in a, literal, flash and caught her before she fell. Slowly putting her down on the couch, he whispered something into her ear that I couldn't quite catch. Is she okay? I let Alice in for a few seconds while Delsin smoke-dashed to where Fetch had stashed the Blast Core.

It's her choice to share that information, not mine… Okay Mrs. Moody. I quickly established my mental barriers again. She's just sad that I got 'one up' on her— wait, am I using that phrase right? It's not something we use much in England…

Delsin was back with the Blast Core and offered it to Alice. She shook her head.

"It would be strategically efficient if you and Ash use it. Blast Core's enhance your powers, but me and Kuo are already at maximum strength. And Celia doesn't 'believe' in taking short-cuts, she wants to earn her powers."

"Okay… Well I for one am not going to say no to more powers." He stood next to me, "So what do we do?"

"Ash takes one side, you take the other, and absorb it." We took one side each, "Normal Blast Cores are only efficient if absorbed by a single Conduit, but this one's not your usual power-up." She pointed at it, "See those green cracks? It's super-charged, more concentrated. In fact, if a single Conduit tries to absorb it, they'd probably blow up. Or something," Well, I don't wanna blow up… or something, "Ash, for you it'll upgrade your Ice powers, since that's your primary power. But I'm not sure what it'll do for you, Delsin, since none of your powers are your own."

"Well, from what I gather, it's still worth a shot." Delsin looked at Alice for confirmation. She nodded.

"On three?" I asked.

"One," Well, he's not wasting any time saying 'yes', that's for sure.

"Two,"

"Three!" I expected it to be a little more painful than absorbing water or paper, since I had seen what they did to Cole when he absorbed them in inFAMOUS 2, but what I got was a lot worse. And I mean a LOT. Green and purple beams of light shot out from the Core and twisted around us. The pain was indescribable. In fact it was the exact same pain I felt when I absorbed Celia's powers.

The world went black before I felt my legs give way.

Yeah… so that's the end of the chapter. Ash's powers are gonna be a little boring but Delsin's gonna get some neat stuff in the next chapter.

You guys asked for Sasha… so she's gonna be in the next chapter, which I'll be posting as soon as possible. Don't forget to drop a review at the bottom, tell me what you guys think. Sorry I've been so lazy, I've been co-writing Infamous: Twisted Metal with DarkWolf Publications (have I mentioned how awesome it is?). Edward has already been introduced into it and we've completed the chapter where Ash is cameoed and it should be updated soon.

I'm also writing 'InFamous Assassins: Truth of Sons and Daughters' which is really, really cool and I'm so, so, so surprised that there have barely been any reviews on that fic.

Don't forget to look out for Santa, kids. I hear he's a Conduit. How else can someone so fat come down your chimney and leave presents for every kid in the world in one night? Mind-blowing shit here.

Merry Christmas
Haru