Argall knew he was special. Why wouldn't he? His peers adored him, his teachers praised him, and everyone who spoke to him easily fell under his sway and his charm. He excelled in everything he did, be it sports, arts, or academics. He was a genius beyond all other geniuses, his friends and teachers would always say, someone who was surely destined for greatness. When he spoke, those around him listened. Why wouldn't they? He was special. He was better. He was smarter, stronger, and faster than everyone he'd ever met.
No... Argall reminded himself... not everyone, at least. He knew only one person who stronger and faster than himself.
Argall had been conscious inside his capsule as it drifted through the cosmos. He hadn't been able to move much, but his eyes caught the flickers of distant stars, the swirling daemonic vortexes of that... strange realm he briefly traversed through, and he witnessed his father's inhuman strength when they first found each other. After exiting that hellish realm, his capsule emerged over a planet of verdant, endless grasslands and immense fields of junk and scrap, Argall saw – briefly – through the a window, before his capsule began its descent through the atmospheres and eventually crashed into a mountain range, breaking through several kilometers' worth of solid rock and stone and earth.
A thousand metric tons of debris fell atop him, creating a prison that would've trapped him for a long time. He hadn't been strong then, merely an infant. His muscles hadn't fully developed. Even just breaking out of the capsule was a clear impossibility. By his calculations, Argall figured it'd take him nearly an entire year before he actually broke out and climbed his way through the ocean of debris. And then, he saw him.
Argall saw the man who would become his father, flying through solid rock as though it wasn't there, lifting up mountains with one hand and throwing them away as though they weighed nothing at all, as though such an act was as easy as flinging away a pebble. The man then ripped open the capsule that held him, tearing apart the thick adamantium plates with as much ease as one might tear apart wet paper. Argall was rather certain that, even in his most powerful physical state, he wouldn't be able to achieve the same – not without instruments to strengthen him. Even then, he doubted he'd ever be able to lift a mountain with one hand. In that moment, Argall saw power for the first time – physical power, at least, unmatched and unrivaled.
His father wasn't human. He did not smell or feel like one, and his father's presence was beyond human. Not that such a thing was bad, of course. Argall could hardly consider himself human, either, and – between the two of them – his father, at least, looked more human than Argall himself did.
He never spoke of it or mentioned it. As far as his father was concerned, Argall had been unaware of himself and his surroundings when he was an infant, and so never bothered to hide his strength from Argall as he did with every other human being, save for the woman who would become his mother. He lifted boulders the size of houses, wrestled with gargantuan beasts, and lifted massive chunks of metal out of the scrap fields. He'd witnessed his father moving at speeds his eyes could hardly follow, almost teleporting. He'd seen his father fly, soaring across the open air as though the very concept of gravity simply did not exist for him. It was only when he grew into the shape of a toddler did his father attempt to hide his inhuman powers once more. But Argall knew; he'd always known. Though, he never asked or spoke of it.
What Argall did not understand, for a very long time, was why.
Why did his father choose to hide his power? Why did his father even bother?
His father had the power to conquer the entire planet in a single hour if he simply chose to. Argall had not seen anything – any weapon or tool – that could possibly harm his father. Nothing. The weapons Argall created wouldn't even scratch his father's skin. So, why? Why did he choose to live quietly? What did he gain from keeping a humble life? With his personal power, his father could unite every city on the planet and build an interstellar civilization with the technology that was available to the people, present amidst the endless fields of scrap. Hell, if he asked, Argall would gladly support his father with his inventions; together, they'd be unstoppable. Together, they would forge an empire that spanned the breadth of the stars.
And yet, his father did not do any of that.
Instead of conquering all before him, his father simply chose to live a peaceful and humble life with his wife. He'd spend his days wandering the scrapyards, searching for anything of value, just like everyone else. When he had time to spend, he'd just sit down and... read. And these weren't even great tomes of ancient and sophisticated knowledge, no; his father sat down and spent hours just... wasting his time on novels... works of fiction. He even seemed to enjoy himself. If he wasn't reading, he'd be tending the garden, trying – and failing – his hand at painting, meditating, or cooking. When mother was home from one of her adventures, they'd spend most of their time in their bedroom, doing... things Argall would rather not think about. It was either that or they'd simply read together, or do any other mundane thing together.
His father was an enigma, one who wielded supreme power but did not make use of it. His mother was similarly gifted – for a human.
That was, until, of course, Argall understood.
His father had done it before. It was in his eyes. Argall wasn't sure how he was able to perceive such a thing, but – very briefly – he'd seen entire worlds burning in his father's eyes, trillions of souls crushed beneath his feet, lives trampled and torn apart, hundreds of planets conquered, and thousands of years of war and death and suffering. It was little more than a flash of disjointed scenes and images, but what Argall saw was more than enough to answer his questions. His father did not care for conquest, because he'd already lived that life, already seen the end of it, and he found no contentment – no peace.
His father was a conqueror, once, long ago. And he simply left that life behind.
And that made his old man a thousand times more terrifying than he already was.
Argall kept his mouth shut and listened to all his father taught him, and did his hardest to perform them. Discipline and self-control, Argall mused, were the two qualities his father always sought to instill in him. He succeeded, at least, but curtailing his... need to inflict pain and suffering, to make his enemies scream and cry, to see them bleed and writhe in anguish... was a difficult thing to achieve. Argall did not want to feel such a thing, truth be told, and following his father's lessons certainly helped drive it away from the forefront of his mind, but it was always there, laughing and screeching at the back of his head, a thirst that he didn't think would ever be quenched, no matter how hard he tried. Still, ignoring it was possible. He had to – for his mother, for his father, and, most importantly, for himself. Giving in to that desire would lead him down a dark road he'd never really walk away from.
He couldn't fail himself.
Not when he could be so much better than what he could be if he didn't try.
And now, Argall found himself in the midst of strangers, the greatest and lowliest Scrappers the city of Alka could gather on such short notice. His father sat beside him, reading some other novel. At the moment, they weren't really doing anything just yet, waiting for the clock to tick on for another hour, before they actually begun discussing plans and strategies for the coming war. There were hundreds of them were, but that was only a third of the total number of Scrappers in Alka. More Scrappers were coming, Argall figured, and everyone had to be here, because there wasn't enough time to explain everything twice.
By their very profession, Scrappers were usually not present in the city at all; instead, like his mother, they were off on distant and exciting adventures in the seemingly endless scrapyards that covered much of the planet, fighting monsters and discovering priceless treasures and artifacts from the Age of Ancients, a time when – as his teachers taught him – humanity had an empire that spanned the stars, a golden age of science and technology, an age of peace, plenty, and prosperity. But then the Age of Black Iron came and brought ruin. The books and teachers spoke little of that era, simply because there wasn't much known about it; though, from what little Argall understood, it had been a time of great social upheaval, of world-eating wars, and thousands of other calamitous things happening all at once.
The artifacts from such times could often be found in the scrapyards, though they were usually malfunctioning, non-functional, or broken up into so many pieces that it'd take a genius among geniuses to put them back together into some form of working capacity. Argall could, but he found such a thing to be incredibly dull. Nothing compared to the wonder and excitement of creating something entirely new, something no one had ever seen before, like his Storage Cube. Argall seriously doubted anyone here would understand how it worked, except – perhaps – for his father, but that was already a given. His father had knowledge and experience with technologies that didn't even exist on this planet.
There were... so many questions Argall wanted to ask him, but... if his father did not wish to speak of it – and, in fact, actively hid it – then Argall wouldn't ask. But damn if he didn't want to know just what his father was and how he was able to do what he was able to do.
Shrugging, Argall opened up the holographic panel of his Storage Cube, one that contained a detailed list of everything he stored inside it, neatly categorized into finished, unfinished, weapons, armor, utility, chemicals, and materials. All in all, there had to be, at least, two metric tons' worth of things within the cube, itself weighing only half a kilogram, practically weightless in his hands – most things were weightless to him, even if he wasn't nearly as strong as his father.
Aside from the Powered Exoskeletal Armor he was currently building for his mother, Argall's most interesting project had to be the Star Gate, a means of immediate transportation between two points in space, regardless of distance. It was... more difficult than he expected, the science and the concepts behind it simply didn't exist yet – or, if it did, then Argall hadn't been able to find anything about it. As such, he had to build and formulate just about everything from scratch. The inspiration behind it was, honestly, his mother. He wanted her to be able to get home quickly, instead of traversing thousands and thousands of kilometers of open steppes just to get from one place to another, which was dangerous, given her advanced age (honestly, how was a human able to move as fast as her, without Rejuvenants, at the age of 50?), despite her great skill and prowess, and the Thunder Stick in her arsenal.
Still, it was proving to be rather... difficult to work on, but Argall was getting there. Another week and he was quite certain he'd be able to construct a working prototype. But, with the war looming on the horizon, this little project of his would have to wait.
Another interesting thing, one that took inspiration from his father, was a neural implant that, in theory, would grant him nigh-absolute control over the position of every molecule that constituted his body, relative to everything else. His hope was that such a device would grant him a manner of unpowered flight, similar to his father's mode of flight – something he'd analyzed again and again and again for several years now, based entirely on his memories. Argall's conclusion was that his father could, somehow, control the position of every atom that constituted his form. Argall wasn't sure if he could replicate such a complex ability, especially since individual atoms were near-impossible to work with – given his current understanding of science and technology – but molecules were within reach, which really shouldn't be too much of a difference.
Once again, actually getting it to work was the difficult part. Like the Star Gate, however, it wasn't impossible, though it'd probably take more time – probably a whole month if he was being pragmatic.
For the war itself, however, Argall designed several weapons – or, at least, made numerous schematics for them. He had a single Weapon of Mass Destruction planned, though he never quite started it; it'd been little more than a passing fancy, one day, when his teacher taught them about nuclear weapons. What he'd designed from it was a nuclear weapon with an extremely low-yield explosion, but with a radiation fallout that would be a hundred thousand times worse, capable of inflicting extreme cellular damage. It wasn't even difficult to build, honestly; with the knowledge to do so, anyone could venture out to the scrapyards and build one within a single day. Hopefully, it'd be of great use against the Rangda. He'll have to bring it up later.
"Argall?" His eyes snapped to the right, where the familiar voice originated. Argall's eyes widened briefly as he spotted a classmate of his, Larissa, a beautiful girl of red hair, green eyes, and pale skin, who was also definitely attracted to him, since he'd be an idiot not to notice it. Unlike everyone else in their class, however, there was something special about her – a radiance that no one else seemed to see. She could also move things with her mind, apparently, if she tried hard enough. But she wasn't a fighter. What was she doing here?
"
"Larissa." Argall said back, watching her take a seat beside him. Faintly, he heard his father's chuckle. "What brings you here?"
