Mole
TokyoPewPew
Antlers
Aksiram
Captain Uni
JFK
AuthorialTheory
MaeB
Stryder BC
Arc 2: + Power Outage +
STATIC SHOCK
Episode 1.2: - Circuit Failure -
“ Yo, yo, yo, what’s hanging, Dakota CITY?! Welcome back to Dakota Midnight Central live. It’s your boy, DJ Rubberband, keeping you wonderful people company with the freshest tracks and beats. Today, we’ve got a very special guest folks. You may have become acquainted with his magnetic personality over the last few months. He’s the defender of Dakota City, the Kilowatt Kid, Lightning Junior. May I introduce STATIC! What’s up, my man?”
“ Rocking a new costume, I see. What happened to the good old white, black and blue?”
“ Well, yellow’s the new lightning in town, you see. One thing’s for sure. It makes laundry easier.”
“ I bet. Now, we heard about your scuffle on the street with the leader of the Wild Pack yesterday. Down near Washington Avenue? ”
“ Yeah. I've been trying to help Dakota PD stop the feud that's been happening between the Wild Pack and the Blood Syndicate. Let's just say both gangs got really peeved 'bout me intereferin' with their right to kill one another.”
" You didn't get hurt too bad, did you?"
" Hurt? Please, Rubber. Nothing can touch me."
Why was it always the windows?
Dark spots danced in Virgil’s eyes, brushing shards of glass off his jacket. Several oranges rolled aimlessly on the ground beside him, some relatively unharmed by his landing whilst others were squashed underneath his weight. Standing up with a grumble, he ignored the faint scent of sweet. Ending up in a greengrocer’s wouldn’t have been his first choice but at least the fruit made the landing softer. The crash had scrambled his mind, jumbled it up until he could no longer tell what day it was anymore. He readjusted his googles and stared through the open broken window.
What was he doing here in the first place anyway? The answer soon came to him in the form of a tip jar jiterring relentlessly before toppling off the side of a counter. Then, the ceiling above him began to shift. He first confused the rumbling for an earthquake and then, corrected himself. Dakota City hadn't seen an earthquake in over fifty years. The entire world was shaking up and down that he couldn't make sense of where was up and where was down.
BOOM.
Oh, right.
BOOM.
Him.
BOOM
The source of the shaking arrived around the corner, leaving cratered footprints in the concrete with every step they made. It sounded as if a Tyranosaurus Rex with diabetes was taking a tour of the city. He wasn’t sure if there was a word in the dictionary to describe how big the man’s feet were. Huge? Ginormous? Colossal? His knees were slightly bent, as if he was preparing to take flight at any moment. It would have been comical, if it wasn’t for the fact that there were remnants of dried blood stuck on his heels. His corn-rowed hair was hidden underneath a red cloth bandanna. Underneath the man’s shades, a thick cigar was stuck in his mouth as he stared at Virgil as if he was nothing more than a bug to be crushed.
“ Ya must be a crazy interferin’ with ma businezz, Kilowatt boy." Kangor drawled his words lazily in a thick Jamaican accent. “ Washington Avenue is ma territory and everyone knows what happens if you get in an animal’s territory.”
“ Some business you’re running, Tim!” Virgil flicked off several squashed fruit peels off his shoulder and winced at the bruises beginning to form on his backside. He raised his hands in front of him in a placating manner. " Look, we don't have to fight. We can settle this like civilised -"
Kangor leapt towards him mid-speech, one leg raised outwards to kick him. You didn’t expect a man with such abnormally sized feet to be so nimble. Virgil rolled out of the way just in time to avoid becoming a human pancake.
" Da name is Kangor." The Bang Baby criminal wrenched his foot free from the ruined shelf. “ Now, step out before you get stepped on.”
“ Step out?” His fists glowed with lightning “ We’ve only just begun this dance, Kangor.”
Kangor skipped out of the way to avoid getting drenched in a gout of electricity. It was almost infuriating how deceptively quick the Jamaican was, dancing around him in a slow yet efficient manner. The din of his stomps filled his ear, not enough to distract him from dodging a elephant-sized foot. The back wall of the small store was pulverized into smithereens, courtesy of Kangor's twenty-inch long boots.
“ Dance? I doubt a little boy like you can handle my style.”
“ Style?” Virgil gave a wild grin as he backed himself against a rack of ripening bananas. “You’ve got as much style as your choice in footwear.” He pointed towards Kangor's steel-tipped loafers that looked like it'd been cobbled together from scrap metal from a junkyard. He was honestly surprised that the guy's toes weren't bursting out of them. Virgil ducked underneath a wide kick, fist loaded with lightning. There! He caught Kangor in the gut, delivering a stinging payload of electricity that seized his muscles up. The Bang Baby’s face contorted in pain for a moment, teeth gritted in annoyance before shoving Virgil back with his left foot. Virgil wheezed, his back slamming into a shelf of homemade jam jars that rattled upon impact. He’d just hit him with enough volts to knock out a man. It looked like the Bang Gas changed him on the inside as well as on the outside. Kangor's confident gait had been broken now, stopping every once in a while to catch his breath as he eyed Virgil with a scowl. He'd made him angry now, instead of irritated. Kangor wouldn't be pulling his kicks anymore. Furthermore, he was awfully tired of playing cockroach. They'd been roughing it with one another for over fifteen minutes and Kangor wasn't showing any sign of slowing down.
He had to finish this quick and fast, before Kangor made the decision to finish it for him.
Think, Virgil, think. He's tougher than you, bigger than you and moves like a rabbit. You'd have to soak up enough energy to power a football stadium to bring him down and even then, you'd most likely fry his heart. What do you know about him, Virgil? He needs solid ground to stand on to kick off, unless he can suddenly break the laws of physics."
Kangor continued to sail forth in the air, swearing as he landed inside a crate of peaches.
That's it. He can't control his momentum. All of his mass is centered on the bottom of his feet. All you have to do is find the perfect target for him to stomp on....
Where to lure him to? The harbor? Too far away, and he didn't want to be in charge of making sure Kangor didn't drown from asphyxiation. He needed Kangor to land in something that could trap him; like taffy or bubblegum or -
A small brush was all that was needed to slam Virgil into the concrete floor. Concrete. There was a block of new construction projects along Washington Avenue, gentrification project if the papers had it correct. Kangor would have nearly crushed his head like a grape if he hadn't aim a bolt directly into his eyes. As Kangor reared back in pain, Virgil struck back with a kick that made Kangor stumble backwards. He leaned his back against the shelf, steadying himself as Kangor charged towards him. At the last minute, his right arm snapped out, radiating electrical energy, and a volley of jam jars flung itself into the Bang Baby's face. Kangor yelled out in surprise and spat jam out of his mouth, Virgil taking advantage of the situation to summon a nearby man-hole towards him. Virgil grabbed onto both sides of the manhole, legs squirming in the air as he pulled himself up onto the levitating cast-iron disc.
“ That all you got, Kangor?" He taunted from on top his surfboard. " You know, if you aren't interested in the supervillain gangster career, I heard they're looking for a Bigfoot impersonator on National Geographic!"
Kangor jam-smeared glare looked upwards towards Virgil without saying anything. One thing he hadn't considered was how exactly he was going to make Kangor keep up with him. Besides, how fast he could run with those overgrown feet? Kangor remained silent, taking off his charred shades and dropping them to the ground. Then, he jumped.
" HOLY - " Virgil didn't have to time to finish his words as a man-sized blur sent him spinning uncontrollably in the air. Did Kangor just fly towards him? He regained control of his board, breathing in shock, as Kangor fell back down, landing on top of a semi track and compacting the front of the hood. No, he friggin jumped. Virgil sucked in a breath as Kangor bent his knees, coiling up like a spring. He wisely took it as his call to book it, burning ozone towards the construction site faster than he ever surfed in his entire career.
By the time they'd made it to the construction area, Virgil's heart was still pumping. Every leap that Kangor made was punctuated by the rushing of wind behind him followed by a brief graze of his hair, his pants, his jacket. Hell, he nearly got close to Kangor touching his hand if he wasn't making a left turn. The workers wisely began to flee the scene, dropping whatever they had on hand, and ran away from the ongoing brawl between the two super-powered youngsters. Virgil halted the motion of his surfboard and looked around for a nearby concrete mixer. A scream alerted him to the sight of a worker jumping out of a concrete mixer and tossing his hard hat away. The rotating drum poured down a river of wet concrete down into a hollow shaft.
" I've a had it with your games, KILOWATT KID!" A kick to the back knocked him off his surfboard, sending him rolling near the edge of the rapidly filling shaft. He reached out his hands to pull the manhole back to him, only for Kangor to stomp it dead in its tracks with his foot. " Nice place. Ya saved me da convenience of finding a grave for you."
" Look, forget Bigfoot. Maybe, you should try out for my high school's athletics team?"
Kangor growled and then, leaped in the air in a flying kick towards him.“ You ain’t gonna be saying no more words when I squash you into da ground -”
Virgil then side-stepped at the last moment, Kangor's attack only hitting empty space where we once stood. Unable to change his trajectory mid-fall, Kangor fell with a splat into the pool of wet cement. Virgil crouched down, resting his elbows onto his knees. The cool and confident gangster was wading about in the muck like a toddler learning for the first time how to swim, screaming for him to help.
“ I've got this sinking feeling that you'll be more willing to cooperate now..."
So, how’s the life of being a teenage superhero?”
“ Well, it’s probably one of the worst jobs ever. No pay, you can’t use it for your CV and no insurance either. ”
“ There’s gotta be ups as well as downs, man. Something tells me you ain’t no Mother Teresa.”
“ Well, some of the shops down in Upper Hemingway do give personal discounts to me while I’m on the scene.”
“ I’d bet. You got any special person in your life yet, Static? With a magnetic personality like yours and all the fame you’ve been cumulating.…..”
“ I know what you’re trying to do, Rubber. Stop teasin’ me like that. It ain’t gonna work.”
“ “ Chillax, bro. I was just playing with ya. So, one of our listeners asked this question that I think has been on everyone mind for quite a while.”
“ Shoot.”
“ Is Black Lightning your Dad?”
"...."
" Yo, Stat-man. I'm kinda getting mixed signals here, judging by the lack of words. You gonna answer it or -"
" No."
" Right. Now, was that so hard - "
" Speaking of which, I've got a event to attend at Freeman's right now. Sorry, Rubber. Can't keep me away from playing basketball with the folks."
" Come on, man. You don't have to - Mike, turn off the goddamn mic. Wait! Come back here, man! I was just - "
