Well, I'm sorry for the long hiatus again! What can I say? But I did promise to finish the story, and I really will. Especially now that I've actually got the Static Shock cartoon in full in my possession, I can use it for…inspiration. Or just wasting time, whichever comes first.
Oh, and for clarification: I do realize that in previous chapters I have used italics to show when Richie is consciously thinking and bold-italics for when his mind is answering him. However, in this chapter, since we're more looking over Virgil's shoulder, I needed to change the format on you. This time, the italics are a memory/flashback, and his thoughts are in quotes like speech as they were in Tim's chapter (but I promise to have let you know when it's thought and it's talking). When I go back to a chapter from Richie's perspective, I'll switch back again. Sorry for the confusion, and I realize it's a bit unprofessional, but it just kind of came out this way and it works for me so…sorry. I promise, it will always be clear what I'm doing, though. I just think that Richie's mind works a little differently than Virgil's and Tim's, so the thought processes (and therefore the representations of those processes) will be different, too.
And, as always, I don't own Static, Gear, a big house, or a fancy car. I do, however, own Tim, he-who-shall-be-named-shortly, my own beloved car, and a couple of cats. As much as anyone can "own" cats, that is. This is for fun, entertainment, and to eat up time when I'm bored, not profit. Don't sue me – I don't have any money and you can't have my cats!
Enjoy!
A blur in his peripheral vision was all the warning Static had before a blast of something knocked him to the ground. Momentarily stunned, he rolled over onto his knees, looking around in dazed confusion.
"Who…what…?"
"Static!" Gear shouted, sprinting towards his partner. Another blast rocked the sidewalk and Static could hear screams as the people gathered for the spectacle of a burning building started to panic and flee. He shook his head.
"I know I didn't get the number on that bus," Static muttered, climbing to his feet and pulling his board to him. A quick glance told him everything he needed to know. To the left were the civilians, running and shouting. To the right, Gear was airborne, trying desperately to avoid what looked like energy beams that followed his every move and reduced the surrounding structures to rubble where they struck. And straight ahead was…something incredible. Static, now standing on his board and lifting himself closer, felt his well-honed instincts and tactics melt away. He froze, staring in amazement.
On a rooftop across the street stood a young man that could have been pictured in the art of Michelangelo or the front-piece of a Bible. He had long, rich brown hair that flowed halfway down his back and warm skin the color of cappuccino. His face was long and angular with high cheekbones and a square jaw, and his body was well-muscled, which was obvious given he was shirtless and barefoot, wearing only a pair of black jeans. But the most striking thing about him was the pair of aerial, delicate, snowy wings that sprouted from his back, arched against the sunlight. All in all, he looked exactly like an angel, some kind of holy avenger or something. But the image of divine perfection was broken by the sinister expression on his face.
"And ye sinners shall burn!" he shouted in a deep, resonant voice. He lifted his right hand, palm out, and light shot from it like some kind of science fiction ray-gun, obliterating whatever it touched. As he trailed Gear, who was doing his best to get close with a Zap Cap, his face lit with an almost sadistic joy at the destruction in the wake of his power. Static shook himself back to reality. This was not a good guy. He had seen enough.
"Hey, Tinkerbell! Aren't you supposed to glow?" Static taunted, discharging a powerful blast of his electro-static energy towards the figure. Sustaining the power, he strategically placed himself between the baddie and Gear, who tried valiantly to catch his breath and get back into action.
"Thanks, bro," Gear said, winded. He was a little shaken by the speed and power of the attack, and without being able to get a shot with the Zap Cap, he felt somewhat helpless.
"Don't mention it," Static said flippantly. "It's cool…..argh!" The electrified hero had not been paying as close attention as he should have been to their foe, who had somehow blocked Static's discharge and launched one of his own, which glanced off his static force-field and knocked him off his board. Static tumbled in the air, pulled his disc back under himself with his power, and regained his lost altitude, grateful for the experience and training that made it so easy for him to recover from a fall without going splat.
"Fools! You cannot defeat a servant of God!" jeered the winged person. He neatly pumped his wings and, as the flight feathers spread out in a beautiful, statuesque way, took to the air himself. Static found himself staring again. Something about the way the sunlight bounced off his wings resulted in a prismatic effect, as though hundreds of tiny rainbows were exploding from his being. It was uniquely beautiful.
"Impressive," Static murmured to Gear as they angled themselves into a better position for a fight. "Sure he ain't the anti-Christ after all?"
"I'm sure," Gear confirmed, eyes unfocused as he processed the information from Backpack. "I'm showing something familiar on the electromagnetic spectrum. He's a Bang Baby, all right."
"I am not!" came the ringing, furious cry from before them. He released a cannon of power towards them and struck the offending Gear, who dropped from the sky like a stone. "I am Seraph, creation of God!"
"Gear!" Static shouted as he made a wild dive for his partner. A part of his mind noted how unfair it was that he could save himself from falling, but Richie could not. In a heartbeat of wild panic, his power lashed out and grabbed onto Backpack, stilling Gear's fall in midair. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah," Gear said, and Static could hear the wheeze of pain in his voice, "but my skates are fried. Looks like you're on your own." Static set his friend down on a nearby rooftop, then turned back to the fight at hand.
"What do you want?" he demanded. Seraph laughed.
"Why, what does any true servant desire? To cleanse the world in His honor!"
"You know, most people would consider us superheroes to be good-guys. You know, people NOT to cleanse?" Static pointed out, trying to gauge his opponent's abilities and weaknesses. He heard the Shock Vox crackle to life on his hip and smiled internally. It was just like Richie to find a way to help even when he was grounded.
"Watch it, Static. He's fast." The voice that came over the Vox was tired and, if Static was any expert, probably there were some broken ribs behind the wheezing, too.
"Yeah, I noticed that, Rich. Got any other bright insights?" he muttered, gathering his powers for a fight.
"I'm working on it…"
"You are not of the immortal order. You must submit, or die!" shouted Seraph, suddenly charging forward in the air and readying a blast of power. Static clenched his fists but spoke to the communicator with not a little trepidation in his voice.
"Work faster!"
--==OOO==--
"Geez, Rich, we've seen giant boogers, about a hundred different gang-bangers gone mutant, and as many Alva creeps as he can afford, and NONE of them ever put a hole like this in my cape!" Virgil moaned, plopping down on the couch in the AGSS and looking dejectedly at the ruin that was his cape before a very near-miss.
"Not a hundred, not even close yet. And you're lucky that wasn't your head," Richie pointed out automatically as he moved to his workbench to repair his skates, a hand pressed to his bruised, but thankfully not-quite-broken ribs.
"Tell me about it. I'm going to sleep for a week, okay?"
"Go ahead. I'll wake you in a bit," Richie answered nonchalantly, turning back to his repairs.
Virgil shrugged under the blanket and closed his eyes, but he could not seem to get the images of the battle out of his mind. This dude Seraph was a top-notch baddie, he had to admit. His flying and his aim were superb, and he seemed never to get tired, although that might have been the impressive muscles. Virgil found himself wondering again how somebody like that could have stayed hidden for so long after the first Big Bang, or even after the second. The guy was pretty distinctive; you would think someone would have noticed him before. And he had given Static a real run for his money. The fight had lasted for over an hour when Seraph unexpectedly turned and flew rapidly away, for no apparent reason. The hero, exhausted, had been unable to keep up, and so had relinquished this fight as a loss. Miserably, after establishing that Richie's injuries were not too serious, Static had picked up his partner from the rooftop and brought them back to home-base to recover, and to think.
"Rich?"
"Yeah, V?"
"Why d'you think he let us go like that? I mean, he could have had me there at the end," Virgil said without opening his eyes. He knew his best friend well enough to know that Richie had stopped and was looking in his direction, even without seeing the motion.
"Well, I have a couple of hypotheses. Given the length of the fight, the environmental conditions…"
"Short version, please?" Virgil interrupted.
"Well, my guess is he either got tired or it had something to do with the sun." That got Virgil's attention and he opened his eyes and squinted curiously across the room.
"The sun?"
"Something about the prismatic quality of his wings makes me think that he might actually use them to draw in solar energy, the way solar panels do, except in his case he either uses the energy himself or focuses it out through his hands," Richie said, a slightly distracted look on his face as he silently did the mental gymnastics that would support the logic of his theory. "The math works, anyway," he said, face clearing as he shrugged.
"So that's why he ran? Because it got late?" Virgil asked, gesturing to the encroaching darkness outside through their boarded-up windows.
"Could be."
They fell silent again for a few minutes, Richie working on un-melting his skates and restoring them to working order, Virgil enjoying the quiet and the lack of anybody trying to kill him for five minutes. Then another idea struck and he spoke again.
"What do you think about all that stuff he said? I mean about being a 'servant of God' and everything?" Virgil asked, propping himself up on his elbows.
"You mean besides the usual Bang-Baby-gone-crazy stuff?" Richie stopped and considered for a moment. "Well, he's either wacko, or it's an act. Those are usually the options when you're dealing with something like that. Unless…"
"What?"
"Well, he didn't seem completely insane, the God complex aside. But he really seemed like he meant what he was saying," Richie speculated.
"Yes? And?" Virgil had to restrain himself from zapping his best friend into completing a single thought all at once.
"Well, it's possible that all that stuff started as an act but he now believes it. You know, believing his own hype. Which is even more dangerous because it means that he was at one point stable but is becoming less-so now. And therefore he's even more unpredictable."
"Which is bad," Virgil nodded.
"Very."
"Typical." Virgil sighed and closed his eyes.
Silence fell again and Richie went back to work.
"Hey Rich?"
"I thought you were sleeping." This time, it was clear that Richie's patience was wearing thin, but he should have been used to the leaps and bounds of Virgil's thinking by now.
"Do you think Seraph is the one responsible for what happened at the coffee shop and the bookstore before that?" Virgil asked, sitting upright now.
"No…I don't think so," Richie hedged. "It just seems too different. The coffee shop and the bookstore were both really subtle attacks, even though there was fire involved. And I'd say that subtlety is not Seraph's strong-suit. Besides, if Seraph could do to people what was done at the bookstore, why wouldn't he use that ability on you? That was some serious power, to immobilize and blind people on the street, and if Seraph could do it, I'm sure he would have used it to 'cleanse' you. He just doesn't seem like a 'fair fight' type of guy to me. But he didn't, so logically, I don't think he can. It doesn't make sense otherwise, V."
"So you're telling me we're dealing with two different Bang Babies with wildly different powers and we don't know anything about them AND we might not be able to beat either of them?" Virgil said, flailing on the couch.
"Um…basically, yeah," Richie said absently, testing his skates which now appeared to work again.
"Rich?"
"Yes?"
"Sometimes I really hate you."
"I know, Virg."
--==OOO==--
The next day at school, Virgil tried not to think too hard about the fact that he had two new enemies to worry about. When his classes failed to keep his attention, he found his mind wandering idly to the discussion he had had with Richie before the attack. He could have kicked himself for managing to so thoroughly ignore the obvious stress his best friend had been suffering.
"I'm supposed to be his partner and friend, and I couldn't even see that something was really wrong, and why? Because I was scared? Is that it? Of Richie being gay?" Guiltily, Virgil had to admit to himself that Richie's sexuality was exactly why he had been ignoring him.
Virgil wished things were simple again, the way they had been before the first Big Bang, before puberty even. He remembered the scrawny blond kid who had come to school one day in second grade, fidgeting with his glasses and not daring to look at anyone. He had shied away from people, teachers and students alike, and had spent the first half of the year wrapped in his own little world in the back row. Then, sometime during January, everything had changed…
It was a Friday afternoon when seven-year-old Virgil Hawkings rounded the school building at recess. He had been involved in a snow-ball fight and had been teased about having bad aim, so he left, remembering his father's advice to walk away rather than use violence to solve problems. As he headed back towards the school's doors, he heard what sounded like crying. Peeking over a snowdrift, he saw Richie sitting in the snow, head bent into the crook of his arm.
"Hey, are you okay?" Virgil asked, sitting down beside him. Richie looked up in alarm and made a move to bolt from the spot, but seemed to decide against it and settled back down into the snow.
"Yeah, sure, I'm fine."
"No, you're not. What's wrong? Did somebody make fun of you?" Virgil asked kindly.
"No…no," Richie said, pushing his glasses up and shivering. "I just don't want to go home after school today."
"What do you mean?" Richie looked around like he wished he had said nothing, but he spoke on anyway.
"My dad is going to be mad at me again, and I don't want him to be…mad," he said.
"Why would he be mad?" Virgil asked, concern starting to grow in the boy's mind. It was only the week before they had had an assembly about domestic violence against kids and Virgil suddenly remembered how still and silent Richie had been all day after that, even more than usual. His young brain put two and two together, and came up with five.
"I ripped my coat, see?" the blond boy said, holding up a sleeve. Indeed, there was a long cut in the fabric from the elbow to the wrist.
"How'd that happen?" Virgil asked, impressed by the size of the tear.
"I was trying to get away from the big boys and I ran into the fence."
"Oh." Virgil had his own trouble with the older boys in the school, especially those with siblings in gangs. Suddenly he had an inspiration, something that could help someone who obviously needed it.
"Hey, Richie? How about this? What if you come over to my house after school and we'll get my mom to fix your coat? She's great at that sort of thing, and if we ask her really nicely, she might help us out! And then you won't get in trouble!"
"You-you mean it?" Richie asked, incredulously. Unbeknownst to Virgil, it was the first time anyone had ever extended that much friendship to blond boy. His face flushed and he broke into a wide grin at Virgil's friendly smile. "Okay. And maybe you'll even show me your comic books, like you were telling everybody about yesterday? I've only ever seen a couple of them, but I really like them and…"
"You like comic books?" Virgil cried, delighted. Richie nodded and smiled eagerly.
"That's it, Richie, we're friends for life!" he declared, holding out a hand. Richie slapped it cautiously, a little fear behind his eyes but hope written in every line of his face. When they went back into the school building for afternoon classes together, both felt uniquely better without quite knowing why. And when Richie followed Virgil home and learned what the Hawkins family was like, he thought he had accidentally walked into heaven itself. That evening had passed so quickly they ended up having an impromptu sleep-over just so they could keep talking and laughing. Camaraderie came to them as easily as breathing, and in the space of a single night, they went from strangers to best friends.
"Friends for life," Virgil found himself remembering fondly. His prediction had come true: from that night on, as the trust between them grew and their commonalities and experiences drew them closer, they were inseparable for the next ten years. It was something that went way beyond being "best friends." The two of them fit together like puzzle pieces, completing the empty parts of each other. Even now, as Static and Gear, they still backed each other up and balanced each other's abilities. There was a "rightness" about their friendship that nothing either had ever known could equal, an ease in each other's company that went beyond the comfort of old friends.
"Until lately," Virgil thought ruefully to himself. "Then Richie came out to me and it got weird. It had never been weird before, but then it was. It took him being honest with me about his brain to make things right again." Considering, Virgil tried to pin down exactly why the weirdness had come into the picture.
"I guess it's kind of my fault. I mean, Richie didn't actually change anything; he didn't treat me any differently, and it's not like it's something I couldn't have noticed if I'd been paying attention anyway. But…I got weird. I didn't know how to cope. I felt like I didn't know who Richie was anymore but the truth is…the truth is…" Virgil felt a tremble go through his emotions, like when you hit the TV to make it work.
"The truth is that it made me wonder who I am. Not him. I always know Rich. It was myself I was afraid of, and who I am in relation to Richie. But I'm still me, and he's still him. And that's all that should matter. That's all I'm going to let matter." He nodded to himself, satisfied and at ease with himself, at least in theory, for the moment.
The rest of history class was a total wash-out.