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Adam

Started by Gremlin, March 11, 2009, 11:55:33 PM

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Gremlin

It was cold and wet and no light came through, but that didn't matter to him. His eyes adjusted to the pitch black and the bizarre blue-green of the heat of the stone slowly overtook his vision. His bare feet stepped on rocks that would've lacerated the skin of a normal person as he slowly made his way through the tunnel. He would've flown through it, but he thought the stalactites are too beautiful to destroy.

The occassional flap of a bat's wings echoed through the cave. It came from much further within; that he could tell without powers. He wasn't sure how many there were, or how many he'd woken up with his presence. He liked bats. They were frightening, but beautiful. A phenomenal specimen of natural evolution, the only flying mammals.

He smirked. The only mammals with functioning wings, rather.

The cold blues and greens of the rock were slowly overtaken by a swath of warm yellow on the ceiling as he pushed further in. At first there were only a few flecks above him, but at the ceiling pushed further up they grew more and more clustered until the arching stone was twenty feet above him, and looking up he saw nothing but sleeping and crawling bats. He could hear their chittering and hissing, and the occasional fluttering as one or two, alerted and distressed by his presence, tried to contain the adrenaline coursing through its veins. But they needn't fear him. He wasn't here for them.

Looking down, he could see the footprints in the accumulated guano on the cave floor. They were closely spaced and heavy on the toes, so he was walking very slowly and carefully. Probably scared of waking the bats. Adam grinned. He could use that.

Adam rose silently into the air and hovered across the floor. He may be invulnerable, but bat crap still stunk, and he would hate walking through it barefoot. The cave continued to grow, but past the main cluster of bats the stalactites became more prolific, and the creatures nestled between them became fewer and fewer until they vanished almost entirely from sight. The footsteps beneath him grew further apart as well--once he got clear of the bats he had broken into a jog. Soon, he'd be sprinting. But there was more than enough room now to go just as fast.

Adam soared between the spikes of the cave, feeling the simultaneous freedom of flight and the claustrophobia of the cavern. It was an interesting sensation...but he didn't have time to dwell on it.

"Hello," he said calmly as he approached the man beneath him. He turn around, gasped, and began to sprint through the stalagmites until Adam reached down, grabbed him by his collar, and lifted him up to look at his face.

He was young, white, blond. His body was a mix of orange and red in Adam's thermal vision. On top of his costume was an intricate web of metal, glass, circuitry and pipes. He didn't wear a mask, but he did have a visor over his eyes, no doubt some kind of heads-up-display. He was sweating profusely as he squirmed in Adam's grip.

"I didn't do nothing, man, I swear!" he cried. The bats further down began to flutter more in response to the noise, and the man got even more red. "I just..."

"Just what? Came after me? Thought you could beat me?" He smirked. "Who gave you that suit, boy? Built in your garage, maybe? Thought you could play with the big boys with it?" He let the boy fall an inch through his fingers. He screamed, and the sound of bats waking began to echo through the cave. The kid was shaking now. He clutched his sides with his arms.

"No, man, he just...he..."

"Who."

"I dunno, man!"

Adam dropped him. He screamed again until Adam swooped down and grabbed him five feet later, just as the swarm of bats burst through from the chamber before, streaking towards the entrance. The boy was screaming uncontrollably now. Adam didn't notice that the boy's hands were moving until he'd already pressed the two buttons on the side of his belt.

In an instant, the suit around the kid exploded in a brilliant burst of white flame. The sphere of energy ballooned outward, vaporizing him and the bats. The stalactites and stalagmites flew down the corridors either way. The shockwave threw them and thousands of bats suddenly turned into rubbery corpses hundreds of feet deeper into the cave. Tons of stone and rubble collapsed inward in the cavern, covering Adam with boulders and debris.

He frowned. Self-destruct. Damn fool probably didn't even know what it was.

As soon as it started it was done. He zipped upward, crashing through stone, soaring higher until he exploded onto the surface. He wiped the pebbles and dust from his hair and eyes as the reds and blues of his thermal vision faded. He looked around--the sunset in the distance made the smog over the city a couple miles to the north disgustingly prominent.

Someone had just tried to kill him, it seemed.

Sucks for them.







First draft, written in about an hour. Feedback would be great. :thumbup: