((yup, it's (the start of) another origin story, this time for Energon X, the more-or-less lead character of my Seriously, Why Doesn't this Ever Happen? story (insert shameless self-plug here), and my most frequently used RP character.
Devious, this one's for you, after your complaint about not being able to see into my character's heads. I don't know if this is what you expected, but we'll see...))
"A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head." Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates
MA Arcs: #12285, "Small Fears", #106553, "Trollbane", #12669, "How to Survive a Robot Uprising"
((Gah... well, Explorer decided to crash and eat my next post, and I don't have any more time to write right now, so if you're waiting for the next bit (is anybody actually reading this? >.>
, sorry. I hate my work computer -_-))
"A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head." Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates
MA Arcs: #12285, "Small Fears", #106553, "Trollbane", #12669, "How to Survive a Robot Uprising"
((yes I am reading it and ive always wondered how X came to be...GIVE ME MORE!))
"You, dear sir, are a legend. "- nelly. "PIE DOESN'T HAVE TENTACLES!"
Bladewing Draconian lvl 30 KAT/SR scrapper
DarkNinjutsu lvl 50 DM/REG scrapper
Dajoji Hino lvl 50 elm/ela scrapper
Bloody Byakko lvl 20 claws/sr scrapper
((Well, this fragment is due to insomnia and, as mentioned, Explorer eating my last attempt at this post -_-
... so I have no idea how sane it's going to sound >.>)
In the present, Energon X was staring out into the bloody rays of the dying sun, a vivid glare of red making the blazing purple of his glowing eyes an odd, washed-out pink, but in his mind's eye, the light was a bit more energetic, a brilliant purplish-white.
Memory... the young Canadian stared, his face almost plastered up against the heavy safety glass, as cool purple light pulsed out of the lab. It was pouring out of a... cube, he supposed you could call it... that simply appeared to be made out of light, and in some indefinable way, seemed to be superimposed over the counter it was on, rather than actually occupying that space.
"Neat, isn't it?" came the almost bored drawl of Vern, the lab tech overseeing this watch. Eric glanced at him. He knew Vern in passing- the guy was a talented cyberneticist a few years older than himself. Must've pulled the short straw to be presiding over the off-hours in the exotic particles lab. the young clerk thought idly. "So what is it?" he asked aloud. "Hell if I know." Vern responded drily. "All the equipment can tell us is that it's 'energy'..." the word had a mocking edge to it- clearly Vern knew how broad a term that was- "and that it's solid by most definitions of the word. Oh, and that Portal Corp hauled it out of one of their Stargate widgets a while back."
Vern leaned casually on the glass, his back to the glow. "Can't stare at that crap for too long, get a headache." he explained briefly. He pulled something small and mechanical out of his pocket and fiddled with it. Eric thought it might be a piece of Benedict Tech, but the way the older worker was holding it denied him a clear view. "Yeh, they ran outta ideas a while back- now they're just sticking people in there to see what happens. Even had a couple of capes stop by to 'help'. Not sure what they expect to happen- all it's ever done is glow purple and look funny."
Abruptly, he shoved the techno-whatsis back into his pocket and glanced shrewdly at the younger man. "You want to go in there? S'a free five hundred bucks up front, no taxes- S.E.R.A.P.H. likes to keep their guineapigs happy." Vern grinned. "And o'course, you wouldn't have to work so much overtime for a little while... you should really move to a cheaper place..." Vern paused, and his grin crooked a little. "Or find a cheaper girl." he smirked. Eric just rolled his eyes at him, then looked thoughtful, his body language closing. Hmm... not like anything's going to happen, if even the capes didn't make this thing react, I'm certainly not going to. And Vern's right, bugger it... I could really use the money. Even the Steel Canyon campus has astronomical tuition fees, and I have to save if I want to be able to... The thought trailed off, and he shrugged. "Sure, why not." he said offhandedly. "No big thing, right?"
The words haunted him a little as he shook off the memory. No big thing... hah. I wonder how things would be different if... he thought, then cut himself off angrily. That wasn't a good line of thought to be following, and it was a waste of time besides. Unless he wanted to start harassing the Portal Corp guys to start finding a dimension where things had turned out differently, there was no way to know, and he gloomily suspected that it would turn out to be one of the ruined worlds that looked like a flooded version of Boomtown anyways.
He flopped down and turned on the radio, blinking a little as the arcing lines of electrical energy awoke, tracing orderly pathways that he could see through the plastic housing if he concentrated a little. It was always worst when he first switched things on- he could tune it out after a moment or two, but right now, the apartment was alive with the faint wash of electricity and radio waves as the two interacted to become sound. Then he noticed that he had left the dial on the police band, and he frowned, then sighed and started towards the unobtrusive closet he hung his costume in. Pretty quickly, he was going to hear something that would put him back on-duty. It never failed, there was always some small thing that he just couldn't overlook.
It came fairly quickly, as he was pulling on his armoured boots. Most people didn't realize how hard it was to get a boot with no 'give' on until they tried, but he slipped in with the ease of long practice. "... Hellions and Skulls, energy blasts everywhere, worst I've ever seen..." the radio was babbling, the officer reporting apparently too worried to even use the proper codes. Energon X sighed and slipped his cape on. King's Row was always rough, but lately, the Hellions and the Skulls had absolutely been at one another's throats, far beyond their usual territorial rivalries. The blaster faded from view and the window slid open for an instant.
A very short time later (Pocket D made a wonderful shortcut, to the point that Energon X was sure he'd heard DJ Zero muttering about installing a tollbooth), Energon X was hovering above the burning warehouse. A shattering explosion made him wince, drowning him in memory momentarily as it roared into the past-haunted twilight.
Memory... well... in reality, there was little memory of what happened after he'd passed through the shielding into the room holding the cube. Just blinding pain and a flash. When he awoke, he was half-trapped under the burning remains of the S.E.R.A.P.H. lab, and voices were coming his way. Vern's excited shout could be heard. "He's this way! And... he's... oh, [censored]. Get back! Get back!" his voice rose to a scream as rubble tumbled down from his scrabbling retreat into the slight depression that was all that remained of the lab building. Eric tried to call out, to beg for help, but all that emerged was a wisp of purplish energy, strangely bright before his eyes, without a single sound. Abruptly, there was sound... a lot of it, an echoing *BOOOOOOOOM* that ricocheted around what was left of the complex. Along with the noise, there was a blinding flash that left Eric blinking, and he found himself floating above the abruptly-deeper crater. He tried again to speak, to call out, before whatever energies were sustaining him gave out and he simply collapsed, plummeting into the crater that was slowly filling with water from broken water mains.
Energon X angrily shook the memory off. There seems to just be something in the air tonight- a time of memory, somehow he thought to himself, then shrugged. City Hall actually preferred that high-powered heroes not get involved in the troubles in the Row; it was all too easy for 'arrests' to turn into a bloodbath, as heroes accustomed to battling power-armoured Rikti with plasma cannons, superstrong, acid-spitting, practically invulnerable Greater Devoured, and giant, ultra-heavily-armed Malta robots turned their abilities on the comparatively helpless gangbangers, sometimes without remembering to pull their punches... and there was always the spectre of Sunburst and a second Siren's Call explosion. As a result, high level heroes were quietly discouraged from tangling with the minor punks. Too many deaths, too much risk... but every once in a while, things happened that you couldn't ignore, no matter how small.
Memory... Eric was turning the strange, mask-like voder over and over in his hands, the occasional spark of energy jumping from them, although the mask seemed unperturbed by them. It carried its own faint tracers of energy, dimly visible to Eric through the metal, somehow. After a while, he shrugged and slid it on, avoiding the mirror in his private hospital room. Apparently, S.E.R.A.P.H. gave its workers very comprehensive medical benefits, but he still didn't want to see the shattered ruin that was his face now, his lower jaw entirely gone and a fiery purple void replacing his lower face up to the bridge of his nose. The voder settled into place, then gave a nerve-rattling squeal.
The thin shriek died away after a moment, and he blinked, the low purple light his eyes always gave off now flickering off and on briefly. Eventually, a faint hope prompted him to try "Uh... testing? Hell..o?!?" He barely managed to keep from jumping up and... he glanced down, realizing that he wasn't coming down, and rolled his eyes. "I'm really going to need to learn to control that..." he muttered, more for the joy of hearing himself able to speak once more after the agonizing weeks of being nearly unable to communicate. His voice was... odd... and a bit tinny, and emotional nuance wasn't entirely there, but it was still miles better than nothing, and the Vern, when he had delivered it, had assured him that it would 'learn', allowing a broader range of expression in time.
After that, things moved surprisingly quickly. Shortly after his discharge from the hospital, he was approached by Rebbeca Brinell. He was still working with S.E.R.A.P.H. at that point- apparently, his little explosion had sparked some ideas, and there was a lot of exciteable talk about Nobels as they poked and prodded him. All he'd really gathered from the technobabble soaring back and forth over his head was that he had had a 'latent metagene' that kicked in when he got close to the cube. Anyways, Rebecca pointed out that, given his need to periodically discharge energy before it discharged itself for him, in an unpleasantly spectacular fashion (thankfully, they'd found that out before he blew up the hospital), perhaps he should join the legions of 'capes' that occupied Paragon City, and do some good with his powers. At the time, it had seemed like a very small thing- he was reluctant to go out in public after being maimed so badly, and it wasn't as if he had anything else to do... "Yeah, sure, no big." he had responded.
Back in the present, Energon X simply smashed through a partially-blocked hole in the roof, hovering down. He'd been to this warehouse before, years ago, and in almost exactly the same situation, although before, it had been Trolls and Skulls, fighting over Superadine. A hard blue radiance surrounded him, like the halo of a supremely pissed-off angel, and his cape billowed like a live thing in the thermal updrafts. "Don't you think the Row has enough troubles without you idiots tearing it apart?" he asked softly as the assembled gang bangers stared up at him. One of them with more presence of mind than the others raised his cheap Saturday night special and squeezed off a few shots. Energon X grunted slightly as his body armour absorbed the low-calibre bullets, but didn't display any other reaction... well, other than the brief beam of hard blue light that skewered the shooter briefly, leaving him sprawled, gasping, on the floor for a moment, until the teleport tracer Energon X had tagged him with pulled him to the Zig.
The blaster continued to stare down at the upturned faces, his brows lowered. Shee... these look like kids. he thought with some irritation. Most of them looked like they were barely out of highschool, if even that, and he laughed shortly at himself, wondering when he'd become old. Still, kids or no, they're off to the Zig. Too many powers with too little restraint. I'm surprised how many Bone Daddies and Damned there are here. he thought.
Darkness swirled around him, and flames likewise, but he brushed them aside with a wash of brilliant energy, and then went to work. After all, given everything he had seen, everything he had done, this was only... a small thing.
((... wow. That came out a little longer than planned >.>
So, that's it. What do you all think?
Oh... and for those wondering how Vern survived... remember the shielding that Eric/Energon X passed through to get to the room holding the Energon cube? It held long enough for Vern to live through the initial blast, although he wasn't in the best of shape afterwards.))
"A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head." Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates
MA Arcs: #12285, "Small Fears", #106553, "Trollbane", #12669, "How to Survive a Robot Uprising"
Woot! More story! Good stuff so far, now go write more. 
Scrappers: Because no plan survives first contact with the enemy intact.
I've started to read this several times only to be frustrated by the purple letters--they are extremely difficult for me to make out against the blue background of the COH message boards.
Is there a reason you chose them? Yellow would have been a better color as it works well against blue.
I'm interested in finishing this story, but the purple really irritates and separates me.
I'm sorry, I wish I could easily read it, but as it is, I can't read it at all where the text changes color.
Heh... VGhost, this particular story is done.
And dd, sorry about the colour; it was, indeed, chosen for a specific reason- Energon X' 'signature' colour is purple, since both things he was named after (Energon from Transformers and Energy X from Freedom Force) are that colour. Also, his ingame text is that colour 
Erm... you could try switching to the CoV background colour, maybe? Failing that, there's always the old highlight-hidden-text trick :/ It's too late for me to edit it in the first post anyways- the edit time has expired 
"A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head." Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates
MA Arcs: #12285, "Small Fears", #106553, "Trollbane", #12669, "How to Survive a Robot Uprising"
I'll give it a try--I'd really like to finish reading it.
Odd, because I don't have any trouble reading the purple-on-blue on my monitors at work or home. Perhaps you need to adjust your monitor settings? I hope that helps.
I personally enjoy the the font colors he uses for certain characters. Kinda reminds me of Death in the Discworld novels. You always know when he's talking and some characters just need distinguishing font. Especially if they have a distinctive voice.
Scrappers: Because no plan survives first contact with the enemy intact.
[ QUOTE ]
Heh... VGhost, this particular story is done.
[/ QUOTE ]
Bah! Go write another story than! Hurry, before I get bored waiting have to get my lazy self in gear and write one of my own. Now go!
Scrappers: Because no plan survives first contact with the enemy intact.
*grin*
Sorry, V- I am working on another project, but it's got nothing to do with Co* and I'm not going to be posting it here. It's likely to be at least a couple of months before I come back to Co* stories- I have a few things I want to finish elsewhere first.
"A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head." Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates
MA Arcs: #12285, "Small Fears", #106553, "Trollbane", #12669, "How to Survive a Robot Uprising"
By any chance you have more storys like this, this makes 2rd i read the 1st being "Seriously, why doesn't this ever happen?"
and i would like to read more if you have past works some where on the forums 
Going to miss the fun and nice people here at CoH. Feel free to add me on PS3/XBox360
PS3X360: OmniNogard
Currently playing: Mass Effect 3(PS3) Minecraft(X360) Skyrim(X360).
The only other extended bit of Co* fiction that I've done is the Diary of a Henchman, which is... uhm, not a story like this
It is moderately amusing, however.
"A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head." Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates
MA Arcs: #12285, "Small Fears", #106553, "Trollbane", #12669, "How to Survive a Robot Uprising"
Ghosts. We've all got a few. For most of us, they're small things, touching our lives only lightly- a missed opportunity that might have made us turn out differently, a childhood sweetheart unpursued, a journey passed up for lack of finances or time... but for some, those little turnings lead to something far greater.
Energon X rested tiredly on a convenient building ledge. It had been a long day. Founders' Falls was radiant in the late evening light, the setting sun turning the canals into a riot of ruby and gold, a million liquid jewels dancing in the light breeze. Even the War Walls were touched by ruddy fire, their normal blue radiance tinged with crimson. The blaster sighed, slipping off the targetting monocle he always wore and scrubbed at his eyes with lightly armoured knuckles, feeling as always the warning tingle of conflicting energies he got whenever two parts of his body got too close together.
A glint in the wrong place, and the faintest hint of motion, was the only warning he had. A sniper bullet tore a chunk out of the cornice where he had been sitting an instant before. Fumbling his targetting monocle back into place as he clawed for altitude, he locked onto the source- yet another Council sniper. He darted around a building, breaking the sniper's line-of-sight, and shot forwards, flying hard. Red energy snapped into existence around his hands, echoing the setting sun, and he popped out behind the luckless spacenazi with a driving right that launched him into the air with a sharp *crack*, to land with a splash in the canal.
Surfacing smoothly, the Council sniper went to draw his gun... to find it in the hand of Energon X. Growling an epithet in Italian... or maybe whatever language the Nictus spoke, it was so guttural it was hard to tell... he went for a backup piece, shouting "Council Triumpha*blub*" as the borrowed rifle hit him squarely on the head, driving him underwater. This was followed with a scintillating beam of energy that destroyed his weapon and sent him on his way to the Zig.
The blaster sighed, the previous mood of peace jarred badly by the attempt on his life. You'd think I'd be used to that, by now... he thought sourly. Glancing around, he faded from view. A few minutes later, some blocks away, a window slid noiselessly open for a second, then closed again.
When Energon X faded back into sight, safely ensconsced in his own apartment, he was unbuckling his cape, Energon X no longer. Shedding the light body armour he normally wore, he became plain Eric Alexander, who his neighbours knew as 'that nice boy who was so badly injured', the late-twentysomething of uncertain provenance who haunted the complex at odd hours. His vocoder synthesized a sigh as he slid a pair of old jeans onto his lean, almost skinny, frame, carelessly tossing a worn sweatshirt on over top as he rummaged around in the fridge. But even here, in this most mundane of activities, the ghosts of memory stirred.
His fingertips brushed a mostly-empty plate- a lone slice of cake and a lot of crumbs occupied it. A tendril of memory shifted in the back of his mind, and he slumped a little, rubbing his forehead ruefully. He jerked his hand away as not-quite-static snapped, stinging him, and grumbled "You'd think that five years of that kind of thing happening would break me of old habits..." And speaking of old habits... was nice of Eileen to bake me a cake. Guess some big-sister traits are hard to lose, even if I don't really eat anymore, and don't have any tastebuds anyways.
Memory... eighteen, just out of school, and looking for a spot to live. Then, a chance call from his older sister, just catching up. His nephew, little Danny, had just turned three. And, casually (it seemed), a mention of the incredible opportunities in Paragon- the danger, the excitement, and the ineffable feeling of... something in the air, the 'next big thing'.
And, with that, a spontaneous decision; to travel across the continent, from the mist-shrouded mountain rainforests of Canada's West Coast to the gleaming towers of the jewel of Rhode Island, Paragon City.
Eric shook off the memory, surfacing from his reverie. Glancing at the piece of cake for a moment, he shrugged. Then again, maybe Eileen has a point with that... the techs at S.E.R.A.P.H. did say that there's a chance that I'd convert further into energy if I didn't 'eat' to maintain a certain level of mass. He slid the voder off his face, wincing a little as it came unstuck, the edges of the hole in his face still raw and sore even now. He dangled the instrument in front of his face for a moment, giving it a jaundiced look. To him, what appeared to be (at least from the outside) an inert lump of metal with some vents or grilles to most everyone else was a latticework of subtle forces, dancing a silent whirl. Guess I should be thankful it's not more pronounced- the tech guys at D.A.T.A. did a good job with keeping the energy output minimal, so I didn't get half-blinded every time I spoke.
He set the voder aside and tossed back the cake, swallowing reflexively even though it had been rendered down to random subatomic particles before it even reached his throat, and picked up the voder again, glancing at it before strapping it back on.
Memory... Arrival in Paragon had been surprisingly painless- Eileen Alexander, Energon X' older sister, had cheerfully bullied her complex manager into opening up a reserved apartment for her brother, and S.E.R.A.P.H. had snapped him up... as a clerk, admittedly, but still, he was 'in'. Oh, sure, it could be dangerous... S.E.R.A.P.H. had the 'name' labs, and tended to attract the big, sexy, and highly explosive research, and even clerical work could get... interesting... at times. But it wasn't a big deal... just a small thing.
Just a small thing... he thought with a brief flare of energy which was what passed for an amused snort from him, these days. He gingerly slid the voder back on, shifting it a little to get it properly back in place, and leaned against the wall, staring sightlessly out the kitchen window, starkly illuminated in red by the dying rays of the sun, but seeing only the past.
"A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head." Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates
MA Arcs: #12285, "Small Fears", #106553, "Trollbane", #12669, "How to Survive a Robot Uprising"