Irradio (Justice)/Growth
"You know, my life used to be normal..." Karla grunted between blocking blows from her coach, who seemed intent on killing her.
Her coach huffed dismissively. "Normal? What's normal? That's a silly concept. No one is 'normal'... everyone's version of 'normal' is different. So why even bother with it at all? Who cares if you're not normal. Honey, we're all abnormal."
She thought, I used to be a regular citizen... After a moment, something niggling in a dark corner of her mind, she said, "This isn't right."
"No? Okay, then, explain what normal is." Witty comments came along with a swift pummeling of fists, as if the two went together naturally, as if the coach could do this all day long. Probably wasn't far from the truth.
"No, not that." Karla stepped back swiftly and raised her wrapped hands in a signal of surrender. Her head tilted to the side a little, as a dog would listening for his master's voice. Slowly, her body turned until she faced to the south, forestalling her coach's inquiry with a tense shake of the head. A low, rasping wheeze leaked out between clenched teeth and pinched lips, and then Karla was running for the practice room door, running all-out, crashing through the door without realizing she'd ripped it off one of the hinges. The door creaked and groaned as it swayed, off-kilter, behind her, but she had already forgotten leaving her coach behind, already forgotten the practice hall entirely; she was sprinting at full speed, banging through the front door of the hall and out onto the streets.
A brief pause, then she was running hell-bent down the street, passing pedestrians and cars alike, a blur traveling far faster than any "normal" human could. A tap on her over-sized wristwatch shucked her practice clothes, the material disintegrating even before it hit the ground. A replacement outfit of protective leathers seemed to have been underneath the practice clothes, to the untrained eye; in reality, the same material disintegrating behind her flowed into place half a moment before the other clothes fell away. (The timing had been tweaked and tweaked again; there had been a few embarrassing mishaps with the first few iterations of the nanomachines.) Karla was no longer applicable; it was time for Irradio to show up.
The niggling in her mind flashed warnings as she merged with a series of emergency vehicles, lights shining and sirens screaming, speeding down the main street of Steel Canyon. A surprised face looked out of the passenger side of one of the ambulances. Karla grinned at the newbie, saluted, and leaned forward into her run, overcoming the response vehicles in mere moments. She skidded to a stop several blocks down the road, nodding at a familiar black man in blue-and-gray spandex, leaning in to get an overview of the situation. Hostage. Possibly multiple hostages. A generic threat from the city's many gangs; this time it was the Family. Claimed some slight against their honor (their HONOR!) forced them into these drastic measures. Typical thugs, really.
The black man slapped Karla on her shoulder, then ran into the building with a small handful of other heroes. They all seemed to be the guns-blazing type, so Karla followed them, knowing her own powers would be extremely useful. As the first pack of goons practically threw themselves on the heroes, Karla siphoned energy from them, siphoned life from them, discharging it as quickly as she did, boosting herself and the other heroes in the process, using small amounts of the energy to blast her foes with beams and clouds of radiation. Several groups of Family went down and were teleported away to the Zig's hospital; they came upon the leader of this little offshoot, mouthing off about his prowess without knowing his arrest was moments away.
Karla, still on a siphon high from the previous triumphant dispatch of Family, swept into the room first and positioned herself in the middle of the group of men surrounding the leader. She let a moment pass, allowing her fellow heroes to enter the fray, feeling the stab and sting of bullets and melee weapons. Taking a deep breath and blowing it out, she pulled with all of her might on the essences around her, draining them and shooting it outward toward her comrades. Like some sort of methamphetamine rush, the heroes around her went berserk and the last group of Family, and the boss himself, went down in mere moments, while the world turned slowly black for Karla.
Karla woke up in her supergroup's medical ward, a petite woman nervously tapping a pencil on a clipboard nearby. She felt like a truck had run her over, then came back for a few more runs. She tried to say something, but all that came out was a hellacious gurgling noise, and even that little amount of effort pulled the blanket back over her eyes and she passed back out.
The second time, she didn't hurt nearly as bad. She could easily believe the truck had only run her over once. Not wanting to tempt unconsciousness again, she cleared her throat. The little woman came pattering over quickly, her eyes huge and her hands fluttering like tiny birds as she reached out to Karla. A warmth slowly worked its way through Karla's body, relief coming swiftly on its heels, leaving behind only an ache deep in her bones. She knew from experience - horrible, repeated experience - that that would only go away with time.
After a slow drink of very cold water, she whispered, "Thanks, Lil. How long was I out?" The small woman, Lil, held up four fingers. "Four hours? Huh... not as bad as--" Karla stopped because the woman was shaking her head emphatically. The four fingers wiggled hard. "Four days...? Oh, for the love of..."
Lil turned her back, moving to a cupboard as Karla got out of the hospital bed and fumbled for her wristwatch. Setting the nanomachines to create a comfy pair of sweats and a tee-shirt, she patted Lil on the shoulder. "Thanks, really, Lil." She accepted the hot bowl that the small woman placed in her hands, and commanded the nanos to fabricate a spoon. Slurping surprisingly delicious egg drop soup as she left the med bay, Karla went to find the black man from the Family bust. He was, of course, in the building's communication room, watching fifteen screens at once, some of the newscasts not even in English.
"Mike, how goes it?" She settled into an empty spot on the row of seats beside him.
He didn't even take his eyes from the screens. "Good. Good to see you're up again. That was a long one, Karla. Longer than any of your others."
"Yeah, I know. Surprised myself. Must have overextended my pull on that last group. Gotta say, though, it was extremely satisfying seeing all of you taking out those Family goons like a bunch of monkeys on speed. Not sure it was worth four days, but it's always hilarious watching the effects of my powers."
"I sure felt like a monkey on speed. That was more power and haste than you've ever dumped on us before. Probably explains the four day lapse." There was a pause as Mike examined one of the screens closely, then shook his head, as if dismissing an idea. "Oh. The City Rep wants to talk to you. Something about an increase in Security Level. Papers to sign and pictures to be taken, licenses to be applied for, that kind of thing." Mike glanced away from the screens for just a moment to show Karla an amused expression to match the amusement in his voice. He'd been through it all; he had obtained Paragon City's highest Security Level years ago.
"God, again?" Karla groaned. "Man, I was just comatose for four days. Can't they wait? Anyway, that's not why I'm here. How'd everything go? I mean, after I became dead weight in there." The last of the egg drop soup devoured, Karla slid the bowl onto the side table and tapped a button, summoning a mechanical drone that picked the bowl up and trundled away.
"Two hostages accounted for. No others that we could tell, and the Family guys who talked inside the Zig all said there were only two. Fairly minimal structural damage. Luckily most of us along weren't the guns and yahoo types; mostly melee, so I think only your energy bombs did anything." His voice was amused again.
Karla socked him in the shoulder, which probably hurt her more than it hurt him, and stood up. "I guess I'll see to those stupid Security Level forms. I should probably head down to the practice hall afterward, apologize to Maggie, see what I broke on my way out."
"You should tell Maggie to install nano doors. See ya 'round." Mike's huge hand lifted in a distracted wave as his eyes flicked between the screens in front of him.
Karla shook her head as she told her nanos to implement Irradio's hero suit. Time to put aside the dull ache, the ever-present little niggling in the corner of her mind (Mike jokingly referred to it as her "Spidey Sense", but she refused to even acknowledge that one). Time to do a lot of writing and smiling and nodding for the city's cubicle drones and the reporters that inevitably show up for scenes like these.
This is the story of Irradio achieving Security Level 32 and finding out how to manipulate her powers to create the effects of Fulcrum Shift.
Also appearing in this story are two of my other characters, Little White Light (Lil) and Earthstrike (Mike). Lil exists on the Virtue server and Mike exists on the Liberty server. Creative liberties have been taken to pull them into the same supergroup.
