Origins.

I've had a bit of free time to myself lately, so I felt like attempting an origins story for my main toon, Elektrolysis. It's from the POV of a very young girl, so it was an interesting exercise, in the very least. Please tell me what you think - I apologize for it being such a talking heads piece, though.


“Just once more time, Annie. Try one more time.”

“But daddy,” I said, my arms sagging, “I’m tired. Can we do something else?” I ran over to the big oak tree in the corner of the yard. “Help me climb this like you did yesterday! That was fun!”

He smiled, walked to me, dropped to his knees, put his hand to my shoulder. He knew I liked it when he did that. “Sweetie, you know this is important to me. You’re my daughter, and where I come from, people start getting their special powers at your age.”

I frowned at him. “But I don’t want special powers. I don’t want to be special.”

He laughed. “Why? You don’t want to fight crime like your dad? We could be a team – Energon and…well, I’d let you choose your own name.”

I looked into his stony eyes, then at the ground. “People with powers don’t have any fun.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Daddy said. He lifted his other hand, and I saw little blue sparks come from it. He touched my head, and I felt my hair standing up. I giggled, ‘cause it tickled. “Having superpowers can be fun too.”

“Daddy…”

“Anna, just one more time. That’s all I ask. One more time.” He pointed towards Mommy, who stood smiling on the porch. “If you do it, Mommy will get you a piece of your birthday cake as a reward.” He said the last part louder so she would hear.

“Oh, I don’t know about that, John.” She grinned and folded her arms. “I think you both ate enough yesterday.”

“Come on, Lydia! We’ll just give her the piece with the ‘1’ on it. I’ll let you have the ‘0’ – that’s be the biggest piece.”

The phone rang inside the house. Mommy thumbed her nose at Daddy and said, “Fine. I’ll go answer that, you two keep right on ‘training.’” She disappeared into the house.

Dad looked back at me and kept his hand on my shoulder while standing up. “Well? Wanna try again?” He twisted a strand of my ginger hair around his finger.

“Okay.”

He took ten steps back. “Alright, Anna, remember: concentrate on putting all the energy in your hands. They should feel tingly.”

I didn’t feel like I had any energy in my body, and my hands didn’t feel tingly. “Okay.”

“Good girl. Now, put both your hands up, and aim your palms at me.” He showed me how to do it, and I followed. “Good, now…”

“John.” Mommy was standing in the door with the phone in her hand. She wasn’t smiling anymore. “It’s her.”

Daddy’s hands dropped to his sides, and his smile went away. “Don’t tell me…” He looked over at me. “Hang on Anna, Daddy will be right back. Keep practicing, okay?”

He strode quickly towards Mommie, snatched the phone from her hand. She looked scared.

“Hello…yes, I know…” He looked at me, and his voice dropped. I could still hear him anyway. “Yes, I’m quite aware of your interest in my daughter…Look, I’m sure the Protectors are a respected group of heroes, but…I remember how you helped us when she was born, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable giving her up to you. I want to train her myself…”

My tummy started to hurt. I ran up to Mommy and Daddy, but Daddy glared at me and mouthed “Stop.” He looked angry, and I felt tears rushing against my eyes.

”Look, I have to go. Yeah, I know damned well that you’re ‘very disappointed.’ Please don’t call me again about this. Goodbye.” He looked up at the sky, and I didn’t know what to do.

Then he looked back down at me, and he was smiling again. “It’s alright Annie. This isn’t your fault.” I still wanted to cry. He walked up to me and took my took my hand. “One more try, okay? We’ll get your cake afterwards, no matter what.” He looked up at Mommy. Her face hadn’t changed.

“Alright.”

He started walking into the yard, his back towards me. “Hey Lydia, mind getting me some Tylenol? I’ve got the first headache I’ve had in years, and it’s one of the bigger ones I’ve …”

I lifted my hands, and aimed my palms at Daddy like he told me to before. Only this time, I felt something hot inside me. I thought about putting all the heat in my hands. It worked, and they began to burn – it started to hurt. “Daddy,” I cried out, afraid, “Look!”

He turned his head. Blue light burst from my hands, and before I could do anything, a streak of electricity shot out towards his body and hit him in that back. The force sent him flying ten feet and he landed on his chest.

“Daddy!”
”John!”

Mommy and I ran up to him. I had hurt him! Maybe I had killed him! What would we do? I began to cry. Mommy turned him onto is back and put her fingers to his neck.

But then he stood up slowly. “Don’t worry about me,” he said, coughing. “I’ve taken much worse than that when working the streets. Just you try and take a Malta rocket to the torso.” He smiled, staggered forward. “Still, I would have never expected little Anna to be able to fire a blast so…powerful on her first try.”

“Daddy!” I sobbed, wrapping my arms around him. “I thought you were dead! I thought I had killed you!”

“I’m alright Anna,” he groaned. He looked at my Mom and said, “Lydia, could you get me that aspirin?”

“Yeah, okay John. Are you…are you sure alright?”

“Yeah…I’m…fine…” Suddenly he crashed to the ground.

“Daddy!!”

Mommy gasped and ran back to the house. I saw her punch three numbers into the phone.

“Daddy, what’s happening?” I hugged him tight. “Get up! Get up Daddy!”

He coughed again. “Anna…please….I’m alright…go to…Mommie…” I looked into his eyes again, but they had changed It seemed like they were being swallowed into his sockets. I saw the bones in his cheeks pressing against his skin. “Please…”

But I wouldn’t move. I held him tightly and cried and cried cried. There was a screech, and vans were in the driveway. They were gray, and had no license plates. Men in blue uniforms and sunglasses poured out of the back. “You’ll be coming with us now, Anna,” one sneared.

Mommy screamed; she had seen what was happening. I clutched to Daddy. “NO! I’m staying here!”

They walked towards me anyway. I sobbed harder than I ever had before. Suddenly the feeling was in my body again. I felt hot, I felt angry. “Stay…away from me…” I whispered, blue light shooting out of my body. “STAY AWAY FROM DADDY!”

I screamed as blue electricity exploded from my body. All of the bad men were blown back into the vans. The oak tree erupted into fire. I felt like I could have gone on that way forever, but all of a sudden a white light flooded into my eyes, and all I wanted to do was go to sleep…


“Will she be alright?”
“How the hell should we know? I usually use my powers on people twice her size.”
”Quiet, Malaise. She should be fine. I’d be more worried about what the Countess might try next.”

I opened my eyes. “Where…where am I?”

I saw a lady in green, with hair the same color as mine. “You’re in the hospital, Anna. You’re safe.” I felt like I knew every word before she said them. I didn’t know her or the man in purple, but somehow, I felt like I could trust them.

I looked around the white room, at the bed, at my arms. They were covered in bandages, and I couldn’t see any skin. I looked around the room and realized that someone was missing. “Where’s Daddy?” I saw Mommy in her lab clothes, bowing her head. “Where is he?!”

Silence. “You put him in a coma, kid.”

“Malaise!” The woman in green glared at the man. He grimaced; I could see in his eyes that she was doing something to punish him. “I’m sorry for my assistant, Anna. He’s a bit lacking for tact. He didn’t mean to say that you…”

“I don’t care!” I was crying again now. “Where’s Daddy? What’s a coma? Who are you are, and why are you here?!”

”Sweetie,” said Mommy, “Daddy’s right here.” She pulled back a curtain. “And a coma means that…well…that Daddy won’t be waking up for a long time. We don’t…we don’t know when he will.”

“If he will,” said Malaise under his breath.

The woman in green sighed. “He’s right. And to answer your last question: my name is Sister Psyche.”

She looked at me out of the corner of her eyes. “You want to ask me what happened, don’t you?” She was right. How did she know when I hadn’t asked?

”I probed the minds of the Crey agents who attacked your home. They didn’t know much, but they did know that you are….a special type of mutant. Apparently, when you were born,” she nodded to Mommy, “Crey was hired to investigate you. It’s not every day that a human woman and an interdimensional being have a child.”
“They must have known that you were different, but failed to say anything to your parents. We think they somehow placed some kind of inhibitor in your system.”

“Inhibitor?”

“Yes, something that….kept your powers from coming to the surface. When your father disagreed with the Countess over your fate today, they must have switched off that inhibitor.”

“But I don’t understand! Why does that matter? What’s happening to me?”

“Anna, your power isn’t firing energy and electricity, like your father. You’re an energy...”

“…parasite.” It was the man again.

“Malaise has a way with words. When you touched your father, you absorbed his energy into your being. In his case, as his powers are directly integrated into his metabolism, you absorbed his powers, too.”

”From what we can tell, as long as contact is kept to a minimum, the energy you absorb seeps out of your system, and the victim regains it with no consequences to either of you. In your father’s case, however…” She looked at his body. “We don’t know what will happen. The transfer seems permanent.”

I didn’t know what to say. I was confused and scared. “Daddy…”

Everyone stared at the floor.

Mommy spoke softly, “Anna, I know this is all very sudden and frightening, but we’re going to have to teach you how to control your new powers. So you won’t have to always wear those.” She looked at the bandages covering my hands.

“I suppose I can do that,” grunted Malaise. “Doesn’t sound like her powers are much different than my own. Training her in kinetics should give me something to do while I’m sitting on my hands in Independence Port.”

“Crey…” I said. “Crey did this to me? They knew this would happen the whole time?”

”We think so, yes,” said Psyche.

“Then…they’ll pay. When I become a hero, like Daddy was, I’ll make them pay.”

Malaise finally smiled. “Now that’s what I like to hear.”

Psyche looked at Mommie, “Can you or your colleagues do anything to help her, Doctor Hutchinson?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” she answered. “We might be able to come up with something that will help her channel her focus her powers. I’ll see what I can do about contacting John’s home dimension, too.”

“Sounds good. Can I trust you to handle things from here, Malaise?”

“Yeah. So, do you have a superhero name for yourself yet, kid?

His words reminded me of Daddy. I felt like crying, but didn’t because I wanted to be strong. “No…”

“Hm. Well, Electricity and energy transfer, eh? Think I’ll call you Elektrolysis. Think it fits, Psyche?”

She was silent.

I sounded the word on my tongue. “E-lek-trol-y-sis. I…like it. Okay.”

“Alright, then,” he said, “then your training will start tomorrow. You’ll be in control of your powers before you know it.”

“You’re a little young now,” said Psyche, smiling. “But I foresee that you will be a powerful heroine within a few years. I look forward to the time I’ll see you on the streets…Elektrolysis.”

She looked at Daddy. We both knew, somehow, that he was proud of me.