(One more noob for the thread! I'm better with a wacom than a keyboard, but I got bored and already drew a Dart tonight.
)
Jack Harris was not the first man to bear the name of the Crimson Dart. No, Jack was a legacy hero - a legacy originated by his grandfather, carried on by his own father after his death, and eventually, for all the wrong reasons, Jack picked up the torch himself. It had only taken him three and a half years, but he finally felt like he had earned the name. Deserved it. Made it his own. The city had decided it long before he himself had, and part of him felt that
that was the way it should always be.
It felt right, somehow, that the hero should be the last man to ever call himself a hero. To do otherwise struck him as arrogant.
As he regarded himself in the mirror, Jack reflected on how much had changed since his father's disappearance during the Rikti invasion. Back then, Jack was... less. He was shorter, skinny enough for his older sister to affectionately dub him 'beanpole', blind as a bat without his glasses and usually half-obscured by a desk and a pile of books. A child prodigy turned adult super-genius with enough doctorates to wallpaper his den.
Then dad disappeared, and Jack created his serum. Soon after that, the changes began.
They weren't the changes he'd engineered it for, and he'd never been able to explain why. He'd wanted to duplicate his father's abilities in absorbing and redirecting energy, not turn himself into a near-invulnerable, inhumanly-strong behemoth - but that's just what he had done. He was close to seven and a half feet tall, now, with the muscular frame to carry it. He couldn't get flu shots or inoculations anymore because the needles broke against his skin. His eyesight and hearing were keen, now, sharper than he'd ever imagined possible. Near as he could figure, the serum hadn't done anything but trigger whatever chemical reaction he'd needed to activate the powers he'd always had. Nothing about him had gone according to plan. Nothing.
When Jack realized his feet weren't touching the floor, one corner of his mouth twitched upwards into a small smile.
Alright, he silently admitted,
I do like the flying.
Jack tugged on his gloves and moved out towards the living room, on foot, distracted from the news on the television by his own thoughts. When he'd gotten to Paragon, he'd been brooding, fierce, angry, determined to bring the fight to whoever had taken his predecessor and then bring him home to his family. The leads had taken him all over the city, from the Freakshow and the Family, all the way up to the Fifth Column and the mysterious Malta group... until he'd come to
them.
The Council's rise to power came long after he'd come to the city, but they'd had knowledge the Column hadn't. Or, if the Column had, they were worlds better at keeping it quiet. It was hard to tell which was the case. Jack's gut said the latter, but maybe it was just his strange resentment for the usurpers. At any rate, he'd gotten a whiff of the information, and with a little help from his partner in crime(-fighting), taken it.
The dimension-hopping search that followed had taken months out of his and Su-Lin's lives in Paragon City, but ended in success. Sort of. His father was found and brought home, but his time away had changed him. Reintegration with Earth's society - with his family - proved impossible. In the end, he returned to his
new home, a whole dimension away.
Without realizing it, Jack clenched his fists. He'd thrown his life away for that man, irrevocably changed himself at the genetic level and spent
three years searching for him, and what did he do? Abandoned his mother, his sister, and him.
Again.
Part of him hated his father. The rational part of him understood, but most of him hated him for it. The rest was angry at himself for presuming it was something that he could fix. The unmitigated arrogance it had taken to play God and martyr himself that way... his life was drifting now. He'd had a purpose - Find Dad - and now, it was gone. What was he supposed to do?
He was snapped out of his reverie by a distant sound that, to him, sounded as clear as day. Air raid sirens. He snapped his gaze to the television and saw a live feed of Atlas Park - murky green skies, blurry grey shapes drifting through the clouds, and panic in the streets.
Jack was out the door and airborne in the blink of an eye, not realizing that he'd just answered his question. He was distracted by the sight of a black, red and gold blur keeping pace with him on the streets below.
A lot had changed since he'd lost his father. Having a partner was probably the least of them, but it was also the one thing he wouldn't want to take back.
I'm glad people still like them, though!