November 7th 12:22 PM

Dreadwire A Muramasa adept breathed between the confines of my claw and an alley wall. Just a week later… and I was already being hunted down once news of Diamante and Missy's departure hit the Abyssnet. I'd taken their security for granted. Hundreds were after my Gold and bounty now. "Name of your employer."

"Shit. Fuck!" They squealed. "He- he's a corporate guy, by the Pleasure Lanes!"

"Building?"

"Addison Reeves tower… the penthouse!" I weakened my grip on him, letting the adept breathe...

...his final breath. The Shriekstone cores in my hand burst out, blood, brain, and skull fragments painting the wall.

"Appreciated," I turned to his allies. I'd already read their memories, but the scenes today would paint a picture of why it wasn't Missy nor Diamante they had to worry about.

———

12:30 PM

Diana

Wind slapped my mask, stretching my hair as velocity increased my downfall to the impending concrete down below. I tried controlling my fall, but the slightest movement turned into wild and chaotic twists of momentum I would never control up this high.

"Uh, okay! Alright… I am looking through your suit! It's designed so that if you run electricity through it in a specific way, specific functions will activate!"

I felt a warmth down my back, and I let my lightning flow into the pattern Starlight created. My fall instantly halted as light peered down the sides of my head… wings. Wings made of solidified light that caught the air and slowed my descent, allowing me to control it.

"Oh… uh… these don't exactly help you fly! They're more cosmetic, really… but they can stabilize the self-telekinesis to increase your aerial mobility!"

Reaching into Electromagnetic Domain, I wrapped a cocoon of wavelengths around me, stemming from the suit's wings and spreading through the air like a veil that pierced it.

"Uh… turn right! Now!" Starlight yelled at me just in time. The tip of a skyscraper expanded like a spear and with a rough but instinctual usage of our synchronised minds, we flowed right past the growing building. My feet caught on it's sides, a rush of momentum slowing as I converted heat and friction into electrical power.

My mask pulsed as it snapped shut on my eyes, its ocular features highlighting and zooming into the growing mound of a human turning into a MAL, flesh bubbling and twisting. Multiple humans.

One of them spewed green flame that singed metal and spilled it down like acid, a car exploding after a few seconds of contact. Another was a multi-winged humanoid beast that grabbed an innocent and tore them into two with its talons. Crowds were screaming and the police weren't doing shit.

I was already late… I couldn't waste anymore time. Glass shattered from the building behind me as I kicked, the wings angling my descent so that I had sights on the chimeric winged MAL. With a focus on my legs I activated my newest Mutation. Energetic Release.

Thunder blasted from behind me as a thick surge of kinetic momentum shot out and struck me into the creature's beak. My hand grabbed on, fine electric claws dragging it from the throat as I used the flesh to conduit my charge into the MAL.

It's wings seized in the air, falling to the ground while I… stayed still.

I wasn't moving downwards. Below me, the citizens were all pointing and yelling up to me, cameras focusing as my appearance flashed on every screen around me in the pleasure lanes.

I was wearing a suit of white and blue, angular, beautiful and exuding power as a thick veil of electricity flowed like water around my body. Two slabs of metal extended from my back, thin and forming a sheet of holo-weaved wings that patterned and fluttered out like a bird's… and I was floating in the air. The suit left my silver eyes visible while a mask that wasn't quite cloth covered up my mouth and nose with a perfect shine, and on the side of my head were two sharp lightning bolts--two halves of a visor, Starlight detected--that framed the quicksilver flowing from my scalp.

"Oh shit, is that Silvereye!"

"Save us!"

"She's flying now?!"

"Can I get an autograph!"

Shaking my head, I turned to the main issue at hand. Eleven MAL had just awakened, and at the center of it… I saw them, felt them. The Nexus, a shaken-up, crazed-looking blonde-haired woman who cried tears of shiny black and red. Her Soulless eyes met mine, and then I felt the metal within me wean.

She was telekinetic — of course. My body slammed down into the crowd, or it would have, had Starlight not suddenly activated my lightning to steer me away from crushing anyone below me. I landed on my feet, my knees bending as my hand struck the concrete and cracked it.

Monsters surged all around me, their focus torn between the Gold in my heart and the ample crowd of Irons and Bronzes around us. I yelled, something in the strange material of my face-mask amplifying my voice. "Everyone, take shelter now! These are MALformed, run for safety! Westbrook First Precinct, establish a perimeter and keep the MAL contained!"

A nervous voice filed from behind, a weak SIM in his heart but he was dressed in uniform. "Should we fight them?!"

"Just don't let them through!" I yelled, "I'll handle them!"

I was the only one who knew what we were up against.

The MALformed and Soul Killer, as though letting me say my thoughts out only to make them futile, laughed as they surged into movement towards the public. One monster bounced high, legs like a frog, slapping it onto a building's wall as green flame drilled into it. Another used multiple arms to gallop like a horse, large enough to toss a car towards civilians.

I reached for my lightning and burst into the car's path. Clinging on, I took apart its weight and force to convert it into electrical energy, pulling it apart. It came easier with Starlight in my mind; she processed its engineering to help dismantle it.

Then, with nothing but a rough peripheral vision, we hurled a door towards the escaping frog-like MAL. It was sliced in half and fell, while I used the other remnants of the car to unleash a barrage of shrapnel into another of those vile aliens.

That multi-handed galloping MAL charged unimpeded as metal razed it. It would barrel through me and into the crowd behind. Why the fuck weren't they running?! Stop taking pictures!

My gauntlets charged and powerful, I grabbed it by its horns as concrete and dirt shattered while my legs braced against the rushing mass of limbs. Now, people screamed and ran as danger came inches from them, but I strained against the MAL and its many limbs as I stretched my arms apart. The suit was powerful, like a new set of muscles interwoven upon me.

Electricity rippled through them, granting me newfound power as I heaved the beast up and tore its head in two. The Bronze Core exposed, a collection of energy coalesced into the angular lightning-themed 'S' on my chest to shoot out a sharp ray of blue lightning that shattered the Core.

I tossed its dying remnants into another MAL. This one was a thin and lanky creature of bones curved into blades. It was a white blur, dodging right under the carcass as wolf-like eyes glanced at me. In a blink, it tore through the bodies of some civilians — blood spraying from bodies who hadn't yet collapsed — to reach me. It battered into my chest, crumpling the breath out as I slammed back into a building.

I saw red, I felt red.

"Diana! Calm, calm girl!"

How the fuck can I? It killed people to get to me! Another MAL struck me, it's hand stretching like ropes of flesh and trying to twist my limbs off. I yanked and tore it the grasping tendrils apart, gripping that fleshy rope and using it to jerk the MAL back into that speedy bone-clawed one. When they hit each other, they changed and melted.

Soul Resonance screamed at me, my senses pouring open to witness two Cores flowing into one another like galaxies consuming one another. Bronze turned into Silver as power exploded towards me. Red-white, bone and flesh, it had the pinnacle of both organic structures. Gripping the side of a street-lamp. My strength was just enough to bend it down and command electricity through it.

Large and heavy, I battered it into the side of the speedy demon. It cut right through the metal. And all the while, I was seeing more bloodshed as the other MALs were acting up. The police were containing them, but they weren't prepared for this. Not like I was.

I charged right into the Silver MAL, its bloody claws scratched against my suit, but some metallic fibers were already closing that wound and compressing against my blood leaking out. My hand dragged onto its bony face, not an inch of humanity remaining as its flesh cords wrestled with me.

"You can do it!" Someone yelled.

"Beat the shit out of it!"

"Show that MAL whose boss Silvereye!"

"Lightning strikes twice!"

Lightning… I was it personified. My soul thrummed with a deep reverb of their aching hopes, raging with my fire… and something more profound. Electricity tangled across the MAL's limbs and scorched them off, free for me to manifest that levitation from before and pull me into the air as I reached for the torn light pole. With a heave from my mind, it slipped through the back of the monster, and I crashed down at the same time. Using its head, I pulled the beast through the pole, half-impaling and half-tearing it to expose the Core…

I burnt it down into my hands. Silver energy weaved around my limbs to reseal the damages done as I burst to the remaining seven MAL. The blonde Nexus yelled something incoherent, the ground rippling as concrete burst beneath to lift me into the air. That winged beast from before came down like a hawk, claws and talons darting in my vision to my torso.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Then a gold wire snapped into place, and four spider limbs speared into its head.

With deft skill, Dreadwire flipped from its body and dragged its spine out, the weakened Core remaining in the body that hit me. I stabbed my hand in and pulled it out, Ripley grabbing my arm with one of his Arachnodyne limbs so I didn't hit the ground.

"New suit?" He commented as he secured us to a wall.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" I yelled back, climbing and standing on one of his lower Arachnodyne limbs as I perched to get ample view of the massacre.

"I sense I was lured here." He said dryly, observing the scene as he immediately began sending me observations through Starlight. "You?"

"Literally dropped here. My dad… he-" I took a deeper glance into his findings, he'd listed some MALs as his targets. "You're helping?"

"You looked like you needed helping." His gauntlet charged and shot a deadly golden spear straight into the body of one MAL, a civilian dropped as flesh puddled. "Starlight's with you, right?"

"Uh, do you think we should… melt our minds?"

He looked down at the carnage, then at me. "Not now, we should leave that aspect of our powers… unaware to our watchers."

"Right…" I agreed with that, it was arguably when we were at our most powerful — his observations, regardless, suggested splitting up would be more effective. "Shit, look out!"

A car flew at us, telekinetically flung by the Nexus. I stabbed lightning into it, slowing it enough that Ripley threw me away from its path. He jumped and landed on the flying car, Arachnodyne javelins shooting into the concrete near the Nexus. The car stopped its movement in the air as the golden chords stretched, before reversing as he slingshotted the car back, still while holding onto it.

A hulking beast of armor and muscle roared and protected the Nexus. Thick scythe-like blades from its arms ripped the car in half as Ripley flipped over the MAL. His gun aimed at the Nexus before pulling its sight onto the hulking MAL. Even without being synced up, I knew his understanding. The MAL weren't truly savage right now; they were still under the control of the Nexus. Killing them would mean these MAL would hunt humans en masse.

His voice spoke to my mind. {Let me handle these two.}

I didn't bother with wasting time on a response, not as the other five MAL were terrorizing the police. Acid was flung, blood was wielded like a whip, and flesh was ripped into. It was terrible… it was everything I didn't want. Everything I grew to fear.

Control your emotions, Diana… this is more than anger.

I could feel the resonance of Souls around me, their shock, desperation and dread at the threat of these beasts. The dread of knowing thousands of them would assault us in a few years. The hope that… I could save them. Soul Resonance grabbed those feelings and fed me.

Soul Trigger… reacted to them. It wasn't just my emotions that controlled it. I felt their hearts burning for justice, for safety, for protection.

For Change.

Just a little bit, I slipped into the hope they put on me. As Silvereye.

My lightning sparked, its blue color tinging shiner as energy radiated through my being. Five MAL. Five strikes of lightning.

Starlight… you're with me?

"I am. Just figuring out how to best use your suit!"

I'll charge it to the maximum. You send Ripley everything you understand about it. Have him get his money's worth from stealing my dad's millions.

The air rose into a storm around me, the wind whipping exactly how I needed it to. My breath was cold, not freezing, but calm. Light yearned to release from my fingertips but refused to snap without my permission, and my transformed musculature ached to become grotesque, but that was a job for Lilian Rose.

Soul Trigger reacted differently this time, not just to my own thoughts, but from the hearts of others.

I was… for these people...

I had to be-

Silvereye The world shattered in my ears as I moved, a crack of thunder sounding my impending lightning. People screamed and yelled as I approached; the name both a prayer and proclamation. A need to believe in something when the worst was happening.

I grabbed whatever scrap I could. It moved with my body as a phalanx of potential energy. Knives sharpened against the cold wind around me and shot forth. Precisely. I had some of Ripley's Warp Energy and put it to good use.

One MAL, a grotesque acid-dripping man, died instantly. Another was torn as I dragged them across asphalt while a third took my electricity straight to it's Core. Every death was a relief whispering in the hearts of those around me. I took their whispers and gasps and combined them into my own full breath.

A breath that stoked the flames within me. That unleashed a spark of something greater. A spark of light from off that flame.

And I let that light reach those around me.

"Oh shirt, I felt that."

The final two MAL were the deadliest, both of them Silver and terrifying. One was a spider-like creature hugging the walls and dragging out civilians from the confines of skyscrapers. With thunder in my steps, I shot into the air as lightning veiled a piece of shrapnel floating between my hands.

Like a hot cleaver, it seared through flesh and dropped the screaming man. I reached for the Shardware in his limbs, grabbing him by the hem of his shirt and pulling him back into the building while my body blocked the inky-black proboscis that tore from the many mouths of the spider MAL. One pierced my arm, but I let the taste of my blood send a flow of Warp Energy into it.

It greedily sucked from me, unaware a flaming poison was licking its head by doing so. Once enough was stolen, I shattered the inky spikes like they were glass and grabbed it by the throat. Reaching a resonance with its Core, I shook its power with flame.

More than flame. The light burned bright, the fire sparking, roiling and toiling until it made an audible crack in my heart. Triggering a change.

Lightning launched it away and down to the ground, broken pieces of the building's scaffolding snaking through its limbs as Dreadwire dodged a hammering blow from the hulking MAL and speared an Arachne through the spider's core.

Two MALs remained. I let Dreadwire fight the hulking bodyguard of the Nexus while I turned to the last one. It floated in the air, wind whipped around its body as a storm unto itself, powerful enough to pick cars up and throw them around like a child would a toy. It was a mass of eyes and feathers. When its focus turned to me, a dark wind tunneled down and sent debris and… human bodies down to me.

Still living bodies. Starlight freed my arms from electricity while I focused on catching them, not worried about downright tossing them to the ground as long as they weren't dead.

The MAL's crimson eyes only darkened as I approached, the Warlock-creature raising a thick wind so dense it was difficult to see in. I could feel the hearts of humans being picked up and tossed around, their calls for me silenced but powerful.

I had to protect them. Despite my Warp Energy reaching its limits, I braved the storm and rescued the thrown civilians, pulling them out by their clothes and Shardware until a pile of gasping but alive citizens lay behind me.

Then, almost like the Silver had planned it, it surged the winds into the nearby fires caused by a previous MAL and sucked them into the tornado spinning around it. The firestorm lifted the air from my lungs and left many people choking into unconsciousness — their dreams of life left as unfinished gasps in my direction.

Reach into their hope… I lifted my arms up, feeling the electricity run through the gauntlets of my suit to form a holo-shield that provided momentary safeguard from the blistering heat. Fire was all I could see… but it wasn't all I could feel.

I was more than just fire. I was a spark of hope. I was a storm that purged corruption.

Gold Adapters could have two tendencies… I'd never put much thought into what my second would be. Yet, right now… I knew what it was.

I was Diana, maybe not the most cheerful lady to those around me. I could be downright rude to them, a downer, but even as Diana… I always felt the expectations they put on me. Living up to them wasn't easy, but I had a motivation to be the woman they believed in—someone who saw others in pain and took to helping them, like how Yvette had helped me.

I was Diana Jones under the memory of my adoptive father. I loved shooting and being out in nature, to embrace the freedom of being a human. To experience life beyond just purpose, but with freedom, came choice. And I'd always been very determined in my choices. Being free was to live with the effects of your choices.

I was Diana Ulrich to the police, Westbrook, and Brian Ulrich. I was a Gold Adapter, a wielder of power, and people were afraid of power. For too long, they saw it perverted by those who thought themselves better, who only held power for the sake of gathering more.

And right now, I was Silvereye. I was all of them combined. I was the damned Gold Adapter who would make her choice today to save people! To let them live and continue on as humans just trying to make it out of a shitty day. To let them, for once, put their hopes into someone and have it not be a lie! I was not a liar anymore! I was-

Lightning incarnate. I was the storm of change.

I am she who conducts the hope of those who are forgotten, into their rightful justice.

I am Silvereye. I am Diana. I am the beginning of a new hope.

Tendency has been uncovered… Spark Tendency.

Spark Tendency: Your Warp Energy has an amplifying quality, allowing it to impose stronger effects through your Mutations without a loss of control.

Oh… woah. Yeah, uh, that's kinda not all it is. Turns out when you have two tendencies… they uh…

I felt my internal heart of Energy swirl between two forms, one was a radiant star of no heat but endless golden light that empowered every breath I took with thundering might, the second form was the familiar golden flame that sought to burn and devastate me for the need of more power.

And yet, there was an inbetween… a moment where that lesser light sparked through the infernal fire. And became more.

Fire and Spark Tendency are reacting… Lightning Tendency can be formed.

And a flare of golden light cracked through my heart, and manifested into my hands. The heat around me suffocated as Warp Energy snapped into it, each particle spawning a chain reaction as the warmth converted into the form befitting the Tendency, the holo-shield fizzled into a spray of lightning that sunk through the storm and chained a web of sparks between me and the MAL with Energetic Release.

"I'll show you what a storm is." Lightning rained out of my body like the clouds were weeping tears of joy, thunder snipping and zapping into every feather of the MAL and charring them into ash… all as my Gold sank into its eye, taking over that crimson with my own golden virtue.

Its crimson-riddled Silver was little to me, pulled apart like molten metal as the Silver warmth slipped and melted into my flesh.

Until all that was left was ashes.

I stood tall, I stood proud, I stood as what the people needed right now.

As for Ripley, he was the darkness to my light. A veritable beast as he dismantled flesh and bone down to its most vulnerable, digging through the toughened layers of the MAL until the hulking beast was stripped of everything that made it powerful.

Tendons, joints, muscles, skin, capsules and everything that held it together had fallen apart, unraveled by Dreadwire as one final yank of his golden threads spilled its ribcage apart for just a moment. A grenade tossed in as it healed, and the explosion signaled death for all who heard it.

The dead MAL was the last of its kind, already melting away as the Nexus gripped her head in pain.

Ripley raised his wrist-mounted cannon to her, before turning his gaze to me. "Are you taking her in alive, or should I end this-"

He was flung into the air along with tons of concrete as a red flower burst from the Nexus' eye. I was going to chase after him, but it hit me that I didn't know how to fly, just levitate and nudge myself in one direction. But as dust cleared and concrete rained down as huge chunks… they suddenly pulled back up.

Golden wires yanked them into his grip, each claw tip dragging clumps of stone that tightened under his precise manipulation of Livewire while he descended. A stone pillar formed in his grip. The aching and tired Nexus dragged her breath into another scream, but a sudden Arachne javelin into her stomach faltered it.

Then the stone pillar crashed into her, a spray of blood all the evidence needed to know of the outcome. Dreadwire stood, unharmed, as ash and dust cleared…

Amidst the crowding civilians and eager photos, his sight only looked at one thing. Me.

A slip of Livewire pulled the SIM out from the Nexus, uncaring as a thunderous cheer bellowed from the depths of the onlooking citizens. People had died this afternoon... less than ten, but… more than there should have been. Yet, to this shattered city, ten lives were nothing when it had been them who survived.

Even the police looked at Dreadwire with begrudging respect, and at me with reverence. With the criminals or those who had an unfondness for the police, I imagined it was the opposite.

"Holy fuck! They killed the MALs!"

"SIL!-VER!-EYE!"

"DREAD!-WI!-RE!"

This wasn't going to just make headlines… this would be all that any of New California would talk about for weeks. Dreadwire extended a hand to me, one I was unsure if I should take, but the people's applause told me that for some strange reason…

They really wanted me to take it.

"You think they're a thing?"

"It would make… a lot of sense?"

"Oh, like forbidden love?"

Now was the time I really hated having superhuman hearing. Sighing, I took his hand as his unmoving gaze focused on me. "We have to talk."

"We do." I dropped the words out of my mouth. Founders, we had a lot to talk about.

Unsteadily, I wrapped my arm around his shoulder as he fastened me to him, and then, with his Arachne shooting into the air, lifted us both away from a cheering crowd.

I could feel the tabloid articles burning into my eyes right now.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.