War Creative writing story #2:


Spoiler:
CAPTAIN BEACON: ORIGINS
By Morzone


"It all started when I tested a new experiment," I told the young reporter, who had just asked how my life as Captain Beacon had began. "Of course, when I started testing with wavelengths and electrons, I had no idea that it would bring me to where I am today."

I was running late. Something that actually was not an unusual occurrence, but one I had hoped to avoid this particular morning. Work was a good thirty minutes away, and in my nervousness I had forgotten to set my alarm clock the previous night. So when I rushed into my office, my secretary appeared to be in full lecture mode, not something I was happy to find.

"Tanvir Zohar!" Her stern voice blasted my eardrums. "This is ridiculous! You're late three times a week, but even I thought you'd manage to be on time for your own scheduled full scale testing day. I don't care how bad New York traffic is either, so don't even try it!"

"Sorry Ms. Revvs, really sorry," I replied, hurrying past her before she could continue her tongue lashing. Inside my lab I found my assistant and a reporter, both of whom looked relieved that I had finally shown up.

"Everything ready for the first test?" I questioned.

"Everything that I know how to do on my own, Dr. Zohar," my assistant replied, glancing nervously at the reporter as he said it. The reporter stepped up importantly, a notepad and sharp black pen in his hand.

"Dr. Zohar, may I ask for a brief description of the experiment your about to conduct?

"Sure, it's really quite simple," I said, pointing at the very complex looking machine in the center of the room. "By maximizing all possible wavelengths, I plan to create contingencies between the electron behavior pattern between neurological conjunctions and-"

"In simpler terms, if you please Dr. Zohar."

I sighed, these reporters never had any respect for the fine details of subatomic science. "basically, I plan to see the effect of electrons that are trapped in the pattern that exists inside human brains. By infinitely moving them through a man-made system of neurons, I can test on them without needing an actual human brain. I have even connected it to an android to animate any bodily reactions."

As I spoke, the reporter wrote down each word I said, and I wouldn't be lying if I said I admired his ability to write so quickly. "I think that will be enough, thank you for your time, Dr. Zohar," He said shortly. He gave a small wink to Ms. Revvs as he left, she stuck out her tongue at his receding back in reply.

"Alright, let's begin," I said, strapping a pair of specially darkened safety goggles over my eyes as my assistant did the same. I examined the machine I had put together over months of hard labor, tweaking or tightening something here and there. After I was certain it was ready, something I had been trying to be certain of for quite a while, I took three hand sized objects out of my suitcase. They were three blocks of quartz, shaped perfectly to guide light in a certain direction. I placed each prism into its allotted places, and stepped back.

"All right, turn the power on, and slowly please," I said confidently to my assistant. He turned the switch, and bright light shot through the machine. "More!" I shouted, quickly activating the prism mechanism.

As the light reached max brightness, the prisms began rotating at high speed. That is, they were turning automatically to continue the flow of light. My design as clearly working, the machine was programmed to move the prisms on its own, imitating the way a brain can move electrons through itself .
Then things started going wrong. The light was continuing to get brighter, despite already being at max power. Smoke began pouring from where the prisms span, three small blurs going too fast to be defined by shape.

"R-Run! It's going to explode!" my assistant shrieked, sprinting for the door. I could hear Ms. Revvs doing the same. I however was transfixed, I couldn't pull my gaze away from the three prisms, where the light had seemed to concentrate. Even with my dark goggles on, the light was blinding. This surely was what it was like inside our brains, light and electrons moving so fast that it was incomprehensible. Zombie like, I reached out with a gloved hand, I would grab a prism and rip it out; I would have a piece of this miracle for myself.

I grabbed on to the spinning piece of quartz as hard as I could, and at the same moment the light stopped. All three prisms sat there, no longer spinning, but shinning brighter than even the sun could ever have done. Pulling out the one I gripped, I looked at it intently. Then, as I turned to examine the other two, my hand brushed the crystal with bare skin, through the smallest of holes in my glove.

It did not burn me, instead the light spread up my arm like a virus. First my hand, then my arm, then across my chest I began to glow just as brightly as the crystal. Just before the light finished covering my whole body, an absurd thought came to me: "the prism is emptying its light into me!" Then I saw no more.

When I came too, the room was much darker. I was no longer glowing, neither was the crystal in my hand. Slowly getting to my feet, I found that one of the prisms in the machine had also stopped glowing. "Why would a second prism lose its light too? Did it break during the test?" I mused out loud to myself.

"No, I took it," replied a cold, metallic voice from the corner of the room. Turning quickly in surprise, I saw the large android I had created for the testing.

"I must have imagined it," I murmured, "The android couldn't have been talking."

"I disagree Doctor. You built me very well. The light has simply finished the job, I am as alive and as vocal as you are." The android said, pulling a jumble of wires out of the back of its head with its metal hand.

I stumbled backward in pure shock, bumping into a small metal cart. I grabbed the cart to steady myself, and a blinding white flash came from my hand. Turning in even greater surprise, I found the cart glowing white hot and partially melted where my hand had touched it. At this I practically fainted again, I had just shot a beam of light fro, my hand, a beam hot enough to melt metal in a second.

"Everything in the universe is made of light Doctor, your experiment has given you the power to control it. I too have been given powers by the light, but I still feel.. weak." The android said. Turning back to face him, he stood over the machine, retrieving the third and final prism. From his empty hand, a substance of pure darkness emitted, pulling the light out of the prism in his other hand.

"N-No!" I shouted, reaching toward the prism, despite being across the room. From my hand shot a beam of pure white, burning light which struck the android in his wrist. Dropping the prism he cradled his partially melted arm against his chest.

"No I need it! I am too weak, I need more power, more light! Inside me I can feel the darkness, I am darkness! I need the light to make it go away!" The android ranted, looking quite deranged. He dove at the crystal, his metal limbs screeching loudly on the floor. As he grabbed it with his hand of darkness, I covered my head ducked behind the cart. I expected an explosion of light, I expected the light to cover his artificial body just as it had covered my biotic one, I expected when I raised my head to his glowing body lying unconscious on the floor like I had done moments previously.

Yet nothing happened except the room became almost completely pitch black. The light in the prism had been sucked into the darkness produced by the android, leaving nothing left in the quartz. Then it clicked, I understood what had happened: the prisms hadn't given him power over the light like they had given me, but instead had taken the light from his living metal body, giving him power over the darkness.

"Why?! WHY?! Why am I still so dark? I need more light, yes that's it, I will take all the light in this world to make this shadow leave me!" He screamed, smashing the prism in his hands. "I will go where I can see it all, where no drop of light can be hidden from me! Then it will all be mine, MINE!" With that, he charged headfirst at the wall, smashing through it and running out if my field of vision.

Running to the hole, I looked just in time to see the android disappear into the crowds, leaving a trail of pure darkness behind him. Everything this Darkness touched seemed to wilt, even the people fell to the ground, no energy left in their bodies. I knew I had to stop him before he could steal all the light in the world. I looked carefully at my hands, I had the power of light and he had the power of the shadows; I was the sun and he was darkness.

Darkness, which felt like the best name for the android, had a good head start, so I headed after him quickly, following his trail of chaos. Every now and then I touched a person who had lost their light, and they seemed to grow again, regaining something in their soul that they had lost. This made me wonder what else I could do with my new powers. I willed the light under my feet to become solid, and suddenly I found myself walking on air! Testing it further, I found I could move the light around my body, as if it was some sort of super suit. I flew fast over the heads of the crowds, who all pointed and gasped as I went by.

I could see Darkness now: a line of pure shadow climbing a tall glass building. As I sped toward him, I realized where this was: the sight of the Twin Towers memorial, and the building Darkness was climbing was none other than the One World Trade Center: the tallest building in the western hemisphere.

"This must be what darkness meant when he said ' I will go where I can see it all, where no drop of light can be hidden from me.' Interesting." I murmured to myself as a came to a halt at the base of the 1.792 foot tower. I rose quickly past its many floors, aiming for the high roof where darkness had already reached. I tried to ignore the people gawking out of the windows as I passed.

I shot up past the edge of the roof, looking around quickly for where darkness was, yet I couldn't see him anywhere. Then a strong, cold metal fist collided with the top of my head, throwing me down on the cement floor. Rolling quickly to the side, I was able to avoid a second hit from darkness, who had clearly just jumped off the spire in the center of the roof.

"I realized that it's impossible. My power of darkness destroys light, I can't take it in." Darkness told me, icy cold in his voice as he glared down at me with his metallic eyes. "Your power of light destroys darkness. I've seen a world where my darkness is not feared, where light is what is evil. You are what stands in my way, I will create my world of darkness."

"Over my cold, dead body; robot," I snarled at him. Placing my palms flat against the floor, I shot myself into the air with two quick blasts of light. Darkness, who could not fly, ripped large chunks of stone from the floor and threw them at the spot where I floated. I waited for them to get close to me, then blasted them to bits with another beam of light. This however, was a mistake, as from right behind the stones came darkness, who had jumped up using them as cover. He grabbed me around the neck, and threw me hard into the metal spire. I crumpled to the ground, bleeding from the head.

"I thought light would be harder to kill, but it turns out that light cannot hope fight the power of darkness!" darkness jeered.

"The light will never fade. Not now, not ever." I retorted, struggling to my feet. Once I was steady, I began shooting beam after beam at darkness. Faster and faster I blasted him, the light streaking my eyes as I looked into it. I blasted him until I couldn't tell the difference between floor and sky, all was the blinding white light shooting out of my hands.

When the light faded I looked up, only to find Darkness standing there, completely unharmed. From his hand came that horrible darkness, only this time it wasn't formless vapor; the shadow had formed into a vortex, sucking in all light around it.

"There's no light in this universe that can escape a black hole, the pinnacle of all darkness." Darkness stated, a twisted smile curling his metal lips.
In a panic, I let loose several more blasts of light, each one getting sucked into his vortex when it came close. Taking a deep breath I forced myself to calm down. Clearly this wasn't working, I needed a plan. As I tried to think, Darkness took a step closer, his vortex doubling in size as he did it. I could feel its pull, even from a good eight yards away. His vortex would pull in light no matter where it was.

"No matter where it is.. wait! That's it!" I realized what would work, and Darkness would help me do it. I aimed my hand, not at Darkness himself, but instead high above his head, and shot a single, powerful blast of light into the air.

"Why you can't be that weak already, the man who shines for all to see would put up a better fight than that," he said, ignoring the blast as it flew past, too far away to be immediately caught by the vortex's pull. As he mocked me, I watched the beam fly high, then arc back toward Darkness as the vortex took effect. It hit him squarely in the back of the head, smashing him into the ground and making him release his vortex.

I ran at him, my fist clenched ready to strike. I put every ounce of energy I had into that fist, and it began to shine. Not like by blasts did, but brighter, brighter than even the prisms had when they took in the light. And I brought that fist straight into the face of the android before me, a shout ripping itself from my mouth as I did so:

"I am the man who shines brighter than the darkness! For everyone the see! I am Captain Beacon!" Darkness' synthetic head exploded in a flash of light, throwing his body back several yards.

I stood there, the light from my still clenched fist fading, breathing deeply. The headless metal body twitched and sparked, but did not stand back up. I walked over and stood over my destroyed enemy. It was interesting to watch him die, instead of losing the life within him, he seemed to brighten, as if losing the darkness inside him instead.

"H-heh... Captain... Bacon..." the body managed in a static filled voice, as the last of the darkness faded and he became nothing, but the metal shell of what he once was. It was true, I had just given myself the name of a superhero. Therefore I must take up the responsibility of my powers. I had the power to control the light, and through it, the responsibility to protect the world from the darkness. It was a great responsibility, but I felt that with my new powers, I could do it. I would set out to become a beacon of light to guide the world away from darkness. My days as a Superhero had begun.