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 Mercury

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Soul
The Pony Buddy
The Pony Buddy
Soul

Posts : 42
Join date : 2011-01-09
Age : 29

Mercury Vide
PostSubject: Mercury   Mercury Icon_minitimeThu May 24, 2012 7:06 pm

Voyage Comics #1
Introducing: MERCURY


[Part 1]

You might think that getting a superpower is the beginning of an incredible adventure. That only those who are strong to begin with deserve them. But at this large Manhattan Middle School, you might be surprised at who exactly is destined for great things.

Susanne Raymond, 'Susie Ray', sits alone at her bus stop, waiting on the arrival of the public transportation she so despised. Little does she know that today, this 'Plain Jane', this wallflower of a girl will be forever changed into the most interesting person in New York.

Sue gets onto the bus and ducks in time to avoid being hit by a paper ball thrown by another student. "Lookit!" One older student announces. "It's our own resident humdrum!" At this, several people on the bus begin an uproar of laughter. Yet through this Susie just takes her seat by a friend and goes about her business, paying them no mind.

"Hey, Ariel," Susie says casually. "You still want to come and visit my mom's lab later?"

"Sure! You're mom's really nice!"

"All right, I'll walk to your place after I finish my homework and we can catch the bus to her lab."

Young Susanne is the daughter of a scientific genius. She, herself, has even inherited this keen scientific prowess. Judged cruelly for her intelligence, she hides her genius behind a veil of anonymity.

That night, the skyline fills with pitch black smoke, blocking out the very moon and casting orange embers over an entire city block. An apartment complex is on fire, the entire structure engulfed in flames. Fire Fighters and Rescue Squads are no match for this natural beast.


Suddenly, fire explodes through each window with the sound of a loud crash. The roar of the flames rattles the area as suddenly the ground begins to tremble. Then, as the very flames ravaging the building weak its structure, the entire thing collapses. "DADDY!" Cries a little girl in the crowd surrounding the event, breaking away from the hand of her mother.

The cry of that little girl rings in the ears of Susanne, the haunting memory of that night forcing her to awaken. A dream. A horrible nightmare. A forced retelling of her past.

Susie breathes heavily as she looks around the room to assure herself. Fire. It was her greatest nightmare. It'd taken her father away from her as a child. But she was thirteen now. That was eight years ago. Still it lingered in the back of her mind, a fear of flames consuming her, reducing her and everyone she loved into ash. That's right. I have to go stop by Ariel's in a few minutes. I shouldn't have taken that nap. She then gets up from the sofa and walks through the door.

Later, in front of the Wells Inc. Laboratory, Susie and Ariel step down from the bus and walk inside, Susie bumping into a rather angry looking man in a sweater as she does so. "Oh, excuse me," she says. The man doesn't respond. He merely gets onto the bus just before it leaves.

"Well, someone's steamed," Ariel jokes.

"Very," Sue responds as the two continue inside.

Sarah Raymond, Susie's mother, was practically a celebrity around these labs. She was a brilliant mind and like mother, like daughter. Susie was even smarter than her own mother had been at that age. She had a free access pass to her mother's lab. The woman had been working on developing a long-lasting clean energy source. The project was difficult though, if not impossible, and Sarah fails to bring the project to fruition yet again just as her daughter and her daughter's friend enter the lab. "Hi mom," Susie says at the window of the protective wall separating the lab itself from the testing room.

Sarah glances up and cuts the power to the machine she'd been operating, removing her goggles and protective vest as she walks into the lab. "Hi, honey. Hello, Ariel. Is there something wrong?"

"You still haven't cracked the energy source? I thought you had to find a new element or something like that for it to work," Susie remarks looking to the machine in the next room.

"Yes but synthesizing that element is proving itself to be a bit more of a challenge than we thought. That reminds me. I won't be home until late tonight. Don't mess around in the lab at home. I've been experimenting with a few more dangerous chemicals and things," Susie's mother says.

Susie and Ariel manage to get into the entire discussion of how this project is expected to work before eventually being booted from the lab and sent home. As Ariel steps down from the bus in her own side of the neighborhood, Susie waves from the window. Not long after getting home, Susie finds herself preparing for bed. Meanwhile, outside, a man in a trenchcoat and skii mask steps up to the front of the house with a crowbar in hand. He enters through the basement, kicking the door open and creating a racket that Susie can't hear over the sound of the shower.

However, Susie hears something downstairs the minute sheturns the shower off and steps out, wrapping herself in a towel. After putting on night clothes, she wanders downstairs. "Mom?" The noises she hears from downstairs, she suddenly realizes are coming from the basement lab. "Mom, you're home early aren't you?" Suddenly she hears the clash of a shattering glass item and remembers what her mother'd said about dangerous chemicals being downstairs. "Mom!" She then races down into the lab where the vandal suddenly hears her cries for her mother.

No no no! She wasn't supposed to be here yet! He then hides behind one of the lab tables as she enters, discovering the broken beakers, flasks, and test tubes all around the room. She finds pages of her mother's notes were torn up and equipment had been destroyed. "Oh my stars," Susie says to herself in shock, grabbing a filter mask from the shelf and beginning to put it on before suddenly noticing what looks like a coat tail to a trenchcoat.

Slowly, she grabs the fire extinguisher from the wall and raises it over her head as she approaches whatever may be wearing the coat that this coat tail was attached to. As soon as she's close, she steps on glass, crushing it beneath her slipper and alerting the vandal to her neared presence. He then jumps directly into the las resort and springs up, surprising her then swinging his crowbar at her which she manages to just barely block with the fire estinguisher. "Who are you?! What are you doing here?! Why did you destroy my mom's lab?!" She then manages to hit him over the head with the extinguisher which causes him to stagger back.

The vandal collects himself by grabbing hold of one of the lab tables. He then sees two flasks of chemicals and suddenly throws them at her but she ducks, in turn, giving him a chance to get the fire extinguisher away from her. But when he does, she accidentally throws it up and it hits the lights above, creating a rain of sparks.

The sparks fall over the entirety of the lab and cause several of the chemicals on the floor to ignite. The more chemicals catch the fire, the worse it gets. A heavy smokescreen fills the room and the lungs of the two. But the vandal takes the opportunity to escape through the basement door. Meanwhile, Susie uses the fire extinguisher to break open the lock down switch casing and pulls the lever before getting out, sealing off the room and rushing upstairs, coughing all the while. Her very next move is to pick up the phone and call 911. "I need help! *cough cough* there was a break *cough* a break-in. He got away and a fire broke out. *cough cough cough*"

After giving her address and completing the call, Susie gets out of the house. The lab's lockdown would hold the fire, the fire fighters would put it out. Once out of the house, Susie curls herself up on the sidewalk and waits for the emergency vehicles to pull up. She was shaken to say the least. Images of her father flashed through her mind as she rocker herself.

Young Susie Ray sits there and cries to herself, the haunting memory of her father being killed in an apartment fire playing through her mind on a loop. But little did she know that this tragic experience would reap its benefits. Benefits in the form of incredible power. Thus is the first stage in a set-up to the beginnings of a long venture. From this one young girl... into a hero.

[Part 2]


Several days after the incident at home, Susie sits at lunch with Ariel, clearly distracted. She stares off into space as her chatty friend talks for the entire lunch period. "Hey. HEY. Sue, you okay? You've been out of it all week. That... thing that happened. Are you sure you shouldn't get to a hospital?"

Susanne snaps out of it only after hearing her name. "H-huh? What? Oh. I'll be fine. I just feel... really hot."

Ariel then helps Susie up. "Come on, we're getting you to the nurse."

Before they ever make it there, Susie suddenly gets far too hot. Ariel touches her hand to her forehead again and she quickly removes that hand, shaking it as if she'd just touched a stove top. "Geez, Sue, you're... you're really hot. Like... an oven."

Suddenly Susie sneezes. The sneeze had power behind it. But not only did it have force. It had heat. Sue opens her eyes to find the wall in front of her is ridden with scorch marks. "Where did that come from?!" Ariel yelps, hopping back out of fright. "Did you just sneeze fire?"

"What? Ariel, don't be ridiculous, let's just... get me... to the nurse," Susie protests before suddenly passing out.

"Susie!"

Susie awakens in her bed. Her mother sat there in the room with her. "Oh, thank god, you're awake. You had me so worried. The break-in and the fire last week... now this."

"I'm sorry, mom. I didn't want to tell you about this because I didn't want you to be."

"I understand."

Some two days later, Susie had gotten better. She was up and about but the heat... she still felt it though she was getting used to it. The hospital hadn't been able to tell them anything that her own mother hadn't already figured out on her own. Every test, every scan, every examination proved her to be perfectly healthy. Some of the the things that'd gotten into her system were causing her a short term illness but that'd go away soon enough.

Throughout the course of the next few days, Susie begins to feel exceptional. But something else changes. She begins to feel heat frequently instead of in flashes. There was more. She felt... stronger. At one point she'd been angry at a school bully. She punched a locker and it dented yet she felt next to nothing. Then, the proof finally came about. She'd been in the bathroom one afternoon at school and she stood in the mirror, her head practically spinning. Then she looks down to her hands. They were red... red and giving off steam. She tried then to cool them off, running water over them but the water only evaporated against her skin. "What?"

Her face soon turned red as well. It was like having a sunburn and no sting. She then turns and rushes from the bathroom. She then runs from the building and gets herself outside into the back lot where she was hoping to cool off in the cold winter air. Still nothing. What in the world is happening to me?

Back home hours later into the day, Susie sneaks down into what remains of the lab. She then sets the lab to lockdown and takes a breath. She'd hidden it all day through use of a hooded jacket and gloves but now she'd shed those and found herself alone in that one place that may very well have changed her life. She then closes her eyes and takes a breath. "Please... let me be wrong."

Susie focuses entirely on her hands, extended out in front of her. All of the heat in her body leaves... it all channels into her hands and is all too suddenly released... released in flame.

She opens her eyes and sees. She sees what she'd prayed would be impossible. She hoped that it wasn't true. But it was. Her hands were on fire... and she didn't feel a thing.

A week later, Susie returns to school, having feigned illness to get out of it, saying that the substances in her system were still making her a bit dizzy. But the minute she came across Ariel she turned to try and walk in the opposite direction before being notice. "Sue! Hey, get back here!" Ariel exclaims, catching up to her friend in the hall. "Sue, where the heck have you been?"

"I've been out- Ariel, I've been learning. Something... something happened to me. I was just trying to take some time to get my mind straight. I'm better now," Sue insists.

"You're not even hot anymore. Still...you don't look better at all. You sure you should be here?"

"Thank you for worrying about me, Ariel, but I'm fine."

On the news over the course of a week, it was said that an unusual string of robberies had taken place. The criminal merely threw anyone out of the way that challenged him and shrugged off bullets like his skin was made up of steel. He would then proceed to melt the vaults clean open and make off with a relatively small sum of money. Susie had seen the reports...and she feared the worst when she heard them. But she fears for more reasons than that. This...this thing inside of her. This power. She was afraid of herself. That was always the hardest form of fear to fight.

And yet...the fear suddenly leaves. It isn't random, nor is it particularly predictable. It came to her in a dream what she should do. She'd fallen asleep one night...the nightmare. She was having it again. But just before the moment where the building explodes, she, as a little girl, sees something on fire suddenly enter the building through the window. That very something then soars from the window just as the building implodes and topples, landing just in front of her. It was her older self, holding their father. "DADDY!" Young Susie exclaims, hugging the dream incarnation of her father.

The older Susie smiles warmly. But she wasn't done. Her father suddenly turns to her and places his hands on her shoulders. "You did good, kid. Keep it up."

"W-what?" Susie questions, confused by his words.

"I know you better than you know yourself, kiddo. This is you now. You should accept that."

"Dad...I can't. Fire is too dangerous. It's uncontrollable...it's...it's what killed you."

Her father then tilts her head back up so that her eyes meet his. "Sue, I'm a fire fighter. You think I'm not afraid of fire? Every call we got, I was always as frightened as anyone else would be. But I knew the risk I was taking. This is your calling. You're afraid of fire? Good. Then learn to control your fear. Don't let it control you." Susie stares up at the face of the father she'd not seen in eight years and, even in her sleep, she smiles.

Meanwhile, in the lower lab room of Sarah Raymond at the Wells Inc. Building, the scientist continues her work on the perfect clean energy source, unaware of what this experiment is going to create.

Sarah turns the valve and an arc of electricity strikes the synthetic element on the table, hoping to use the man-made metal as a sort of conduit. However, the metal suddenly beings to react very abnormally. Readings being to fluctuate and Sarah tries to maintain the machine but the valves all suddenly begin to burst. "Oh no." In a split second decision, Sarah abandons the project and runs for the exit, the resulting explosion kicking her through the door. It'd been a small blast but it was one with power.

What Sarah witnesses next is beyond even her expertise. The metal become amorphous, turning to liquid and slinking from the room before suddenly absorbing a part of the machine, thus allowing it to transform itself into something with an actual form. This small...thing then proceeds to absorb every piece of machinery in the room, succeeding in growing larger by the second. It turns to a very awestruck Sarah and uses what it'd just 'eaten' to create eyes for itself and the two stare at one another. Yet the instant Sarah blinks, this creature screeches at it, the sound being loud and indescribable. That very instance frightens Sarah away and when she returns with others...it's gone.

[Part 3]

It was never publicized what'd happened that night. Wells Inc didn't want an investigation on their hands. But it made most of the employees into nervous wrecks. Productivity had declined. But that was hardly the primary issue. Over the course of the next few weeks, entire cars turned up missing. Appliances were taken. Electronics Stores had been broken into, all of the products taken with no witness sure how to describe what they'd seen. Meanwhile, there were still a criminal on the loose, melting his way into bank vaults.

But all of this would end soon enough. For the world did not yet know but at this very point in time, a legend was beginning to take form...

Susie had been standing on a rooftop. She'd practiced this many times...now she could put it to use. She wears a white Tee and Sweat pants while taking a deep breath. This may have been her last trial run. She then pulls, over her head, a mask. "Okay," she tells herself. "I've been working on it. Now...now to put it to use." There was something about leaping from a three story roof that bothered her...

She then remembers back to her dream. Control Your Fear. Taking a few steps back, Susie suddenly gets an idea to make a better challenge out of this and removes her mask, walking back inside. She soon finds herself on the roof of a nearby apartment complex over a full dozen stories tall deeper into the city. Standing at the edge, she looks over and sees the people down below. Then, praying this would work, she takes a breath and falls forward. People below see her falling and a number of people begin to scream and point. Susie then allows her mind to clear itself before suddenly focusing in on what she was doing. six stories down, she bursts into flames, her outfit burning to ash in second. Bringing her arms to her side, Susie concentrates. Until she proved to be making more significant progress, the concentration was key.

Fire trails out from her hands and lower body and she corrects her fall all too closely to the ground, pulling herself up and looking over her shoulder to find that she was succeeding. She could hover before...but now she could fly! She soon lands on another rooftop, the very adrenaline of that moment still causing a race in her heart. She then looks down. The suit beneath her sweats and tee was in full tact. "I've got to remember to thank mom for the fireproof material," Susie says to herself. She'd been smart to weave a fireproof fabric into a suit she could freely wear around beneath her regular clothes. The added fire pattern she'd added was a symbol. Was she still afraid? Most definitely. But now she was the one in charge, not her fear. She then laughs aloud as she then fires off like a rocket straight up.

After a few hours of practice, flying around the city and undoubtedly attracting attention galore, Susie sees a massive explosion. That area...there was a gas station there...emphasis on was. She then flies in that direction, landing on a rooftop on the opposite side of the street. "What on Earth?!"

There, Mercury sees it, the giant man of liquid metal, leaving the gas station. It walks down the street and suddenly takes note of the girl's heat signature. Susie flies out in front of the large...Golem and hovers in front of it. "I'm just going to go on hunch and say there's no person in there."

The giant metal man stops and analyzes the girl. It then opens its mouth and emits a much more unpleasant variation of the same horrible and indescribably shriek. The sounds of metal clashing, alarms blaring, loud computer frequencies. There were no words to fully capture what composed this creature's voice. "I'll take that as confirmation then!" Susie says, holding her ears in trying, to no avail, to drown it out. She then raises one hand and suddenly shoots an outward stream of fire at the face of this monstrosity, bringing it to back away as it reforms its face. "How did it-?"

The creature suddenly solidifies its forearm into a rock-like substance and swings at the girl. Susie manages, just barely, to fly out of harm's way but then winds up struck out of the air by its backhand of metal. Having landed on a car, she picks herself up and rubs her head. "Enhanced Durability. That'll come in handy for-" She looks up and quickly rockets away from the vehicle as the creature stomps down on it.

"Don't think I'm quite that durable. So it can be liquid metal, rock, steel, what else?"

Susie then realizes something and turns, flying off into the city, looking over her shoulder to make sure that the monster was following her. Of course it was. She was a threat in its eyes. Some animals attack threats and this was no different. A few blocks over, Susie makes her way to a construction site and lands on a girder. "Everyone, you have to leave! There's something on its way here and it isn't happy!" The second the creature rounds the corner, every worker on-site turns tail and runs.

The monster takes one step onto the site and suddenly feels a shift. The ground was shifting beneath it. It couldn't hold on level without falling into the structure. But that was simply corrected. It suddenly alters its composition once more, adapting a new sand composition that Susie acknowledges. "That's it," she confirms to herself. As the giant sand menace suddenly reaches for Susie, she allows it to grab her. For a moment all is quiet. Suddenly the monster's hand begins to tremble and Susie erupts from within, shards of glass falling to the ground below. "Thought so." She then proceeds to fly around it in circles, fire trailing around her.

There, in a moment's time, the prodigal young Susanne makes a hero of herself, turning the deadly elemental to glass before the eyes of various onlookers. Then, when she is done, she loops around and punches through it, shattering the creature to nothingness.

As Susie hovers over the construction site, she suddenly realizes that she'd had an audience. A moment of silence ensues. Susie then turns around in the air and hears as several members of that crowd below begin to clap and cheer, whooping and having a celebration. She then rights herself and rockets off in a blaze of triumph. The headlines the next day stating everything from 'Mysterious Fire Goddess Saves City' to 'Who is the Fire-Girl?'

Susie sits home that evening and writes into a journal. ...I finally have a name. Names featuring Sun or Solar are a little cliche by now. I figure I'll be more original. Mercury. The closest planet to the sun...yeah, that'll work...

[Epilogue]

Late that night, a man in a long trench coat arrives at the construction site and when someone confronts him, he merely picks them up and throws them through a row of portable toilets. Analyzing the exact area that the young heroine had defeated that colossus, he finds what he was looking for. There amid the sand was a sort of a circuit board or chip. He then picks it up. "A plan as simple as, 'blow up the enemy' just couldn't work, could it?" He says but the lights on the chip suddenly flicker on and that same sound, a much more faint version of it though, emits from it. "And then it went and caused all of this trouble...they just don't make scientists like they used to," says this mysterious man before pocketing the chip and walk away.

~End~

Wrap-Up Question: Feedback included but where do you think I should take the story of Mercury next? (Keep in mind that this is a 13-year-old girl)
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