ORIGINS: Starburst
By Harper Kingsley
Copyright 2011 Harper Kingsley
The story of his origin was a sadly ridiculous one, nothing that he really wanted to share with the world later on in his mock-famous life as a "hero." There were no radioactive insects, accidents with toxic waste, or alien arrivals. In fact, his beginning as a metahuman was about as boring and stupid as gaining superpowers could ever be. There weren't even any fantastically messy laboratory explosions.
He was seventeen years old, a fairly handsome, though slightly nerdy senior in high school. He could have been popular if he worked at it, but instead he liked to read books and play video games by himself--not exactly the combination that built careers in high school coolness.
He had always had a flare for the dramatic, which made the complete ingloriousness of his rise to power a bit of an embarrassment for him.
It was on a slightly windy morning when he was late for school. Without a car, and having missed the bus again, he was relegated to walking to school and cursing the fact that he didn't have a ride. At least it gave him a chance to finish reading the book he had started the night before. He figured that if he was already going to be late, he might as well be late. There was no real reason for him to hurry. It wasn't like he was going to flunk if he missed a couple of classes. His grade point average was such that he could have gotten into any college he wanted without even trying, so he could afford to slack a little. It wasn't like graduation was that far off.
He was walking down the sidewalk staring straight down at the pages of his novel, getting deep into the story, when there was a "WHOOSHING!" sound right above his head. He twitched and looked up, his mouth falling open in surprise.
It was funny that he was reading a book about good guys battling evil when it happened--funny, and maybe a bit too destined.
Butterfly Woman and her sidekick Mothman were battling the evil Dr. Scourge. The two superheroes were flying around with just their wings and spandex suits to carry the day, while the bad guy was in his floating pod of death, shooting out yellow blasts from his forward laser cannons.
Vereint had never seen a super battle up close, but he had somehow assumed that the good guys always won. This time they weren't--they were losing, and badly. It was almost pathetic, but the fact that they just wouldn't give up turned it into something a little more tragic. Anyone with a sensible brain would have realized that they were losing and backed off, but those stupid heroes just wouldn't quit, even as they got their asses royally kicked.
Dr. Scourge shot Mothman three times in the middle of his mile-wide chest, and the hero began to fall. Butterfly Woman threw herself under her sidekick, supporting his unconscious weight to bring him almost gently to the ground. She was so busy worrying about him that she didn't do anything to protect herself. Dr. Scourge hit her with a bright blast of sparks, and she went fluttering to the ground in a dead faint about three feet in front of Vereint.
I better get out of here, he thought, realizing that he was directly in the path of destruction, but his feet refused to move. The fascination of the fight held him in place, even when his common sense was yelling at him to get the fuck out of the way.
He just stood there dumbly watching as Dr. Scourge landed his pod of doom a little away from the unconscious superheroes and climbed out of it. He didn't even hurry, as though he knew he'd already won and the heroes weren't going to be getting up in time to stop him. He was just so arrogant that it was sickening, offering no respect to his victims, as though he killed superheroes everyday and was so much better than them that there was no comparison to be made.
Dr. Scourge wasn't a big man, though there was something about him that said DANGEROUS in loud, bold letters. He was sort of solidly built, with a bullet-shaped head and almost-squat body. What he lacked in height, he made up for in sheer weightlifter brutality, his muscles bulging every which way. There was something a bit freakish about how over-muscled he was, a grotesque lack of anything beautiful and graceful.
Vereint swallowed hard, fear shivering through him. He wanted to run, but he couldn't. His breath was coming in gasps, and panic thrummed along his nerves. He was so scared that all he could do was stand there frozen, his bladder squeezing so tight he couldn't even wet himself.
Mothman began to stir as Dr. Scourge unholstered his ungainly looking death ray. The hero opened his eyes to slits, blinking dimly at the light. He just had time to realize what was going to happen and open his mouth in a silent scream when Dr. Scourge shot him right through his left eye.
Though he was supposed to be a superhero and always win against the bad guys, Mothman died in a burst of vaporized blood and brain. A black, smoking hole drilled its way through his eye socket and out the back of his skull, stealing his life. He twitched a little, but when his body fell still, that was it. He never woke up again.
"Oh shit!" Vereint almost didn't recognize his own shout, then he gasped and slapped his hands over his mouth, wishing he could take it back.
Dr. Scourge turned his way, a cruel glint in his orangish-brown eyes. "Well, what do we have here. A little boy butting in where he doesn't belong."
"Please don't hurt me," Vereint begged. "I was just... I was just..."
"You were just about to say 'Good-bye,' weren't you?" Dr. Scourge laughed gaily and almost negligently shot Vereint through the heart.
The boy fell in a tumble of blood. Time slowed down.
He could feel his life slipping out of him. The gaping ruin of his chest was a burning pain that set his every nerve afire, sending jagged bolts of agony straight into his brain even as he began to drift away.
He lay on his back staring up at the sky, feeling himself dying, and knew there was nothing else he could do. This was it, this was the end. Seventeen years was all the life he was ever going to have--never mind that he had wasted it on video games and books and daydreaming about all of the wonderful things he was going to do someday. Well, now someday was never going to come, not for him.
In the seconds that he died in, he heard Butterfly Woman shout. There was the distant sound of her scuffling battle with Dr. Scourge, her scream of grief and rage over the death of her husband and sidekick, a sound of madness and strength. She used the power of her emotion to gain the upper hand and kick the weapon out of the supervillain's grasp.
The time Dr. Scourge wasted killing a fairly innocent seventeen year old boy gave the superheroine the needed seconds to regain consciousness and call up her strength. She pounded him into the pavement with powerful blows of her fists and elbows, then brought the heels of her feet down on his stomach and face as he lay there on the ground, unable to fight her off.
She was a superhero. She fought the bad guys. In her grief over Mothman's death, and in her righteous anger, she didn't even notice Vereint lying on the sidewalk with his chest blown out, gasping his last breath. She might not have been able to save him, but maybe if she had only tried... she really would have been a superhero.
For Vereint, dying took forever, though really it was only a few seconds.
His breath came in hitching gasps and his entire body trembled with the effort of holding on, but there was nothing it could do. The light began to fade out of the corners of his eyes. Darkness flooded over everything, turning the light to shadow. He could feel himself slipping out of his skin, death metamorphosing him into something else.
As he was pulled out of his flesh, the last tendril of consciousness and burning life holding him anchored to the world unraveling a strand at a time, he felt something shift within him.
I don't want this, he thought. I don't want to die.
It was as though that single thought set off
some strange chain reaction.
He would never be able to explain it, not even to himself. Maybe he was exposed to radiation at some time in his life. Maybe his mother had been on experimental medication when she was pregnant with him. Maybe there was some strange cosmic convergence at that exact moment. Whatever it was, whatever miracle lifted him up, he didn't die. He changed.
Slipping out of his body, he was suddenly caught and jammed back into it, further than he had ever been before. Lights flared behind the cells of his eyes. Molecules pooled and bobbed past. He was suddenly larger than his own flesh, able to grasp the weight of the world in the palm of his hand. His every atom burned furiously, his mind blazing forth brighter than a million stars.
The torn flesh and bone of his chest dragged itself across the gaping wound and melded seamlessly together, leaving not even a scar behind. He blinked and sat up.
When just a second before he had been on the very brink of death, he felt better than he had ever been before. There was no pain. There was no effort in drawing breath into his lungs. He felt expanded beyond all bearing. And he had an erection that wouldn't quit.
Laying the palm of his hand on the ground, he used his arm to boost himself to his feet. Only he didn't stop with just standing. He floated on empty air about a foot off the ground, so completely weightless that it was a surprise he didn't just go up and up forever.
He looked around himself in surprise, not really sure what was happening to him. He had been dying, and now he was more alive than he had ever been. His body was so light the earth couldn't even hold him down and gravity had no affect. He felt strong enough to hold the world on his shoulders without even straining at the effort.
Butterfly Woman, busy kicking the shit out of Dr. Scourge, didn't even notice him hovering behind her. She didn't hear the WHOOSH of displaced air or feel the breeze tickle the back of her neck. All she knew was the new pain and grief of her fresh widowhood. She didn't even hear the sound of approaching police cars. Her only care was hurting Dr. Scourge as much as she possibly could. He was the only thing she saw or heard or felt.
Vereint Georges flew away from the scene of his metahuman origin without a single backward glance at the splash of red, red blood he left behind. He didn't know what had happened to him, but he knew that he wasn't a mere human anymore.
He was super.
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Keep a lookout for further Origins stories coming soon.