Clarissa, Aurora, Lexi, Merry, Aimi, Tak, Chase, Ronin and Kenneth were walking to the mall for lunch and to pass the time. They didn't have much to do since the school was shut down for the next few weeks due to the attack. They were all laughing and joking around on the way there.
"Did you guys see that one kid with the ostrich legs?" Lexi asks.
"Oh man that guy was so annoying." Tak replies.
"I know, that's why we left him behind." Chase says.
"Thank the almighty, his laughter gives me a migraine." Aurora replies with everyone laughing. After the laughter dies down Clarissa gets serious for a moment.
"So why do you guys want to be heroes?" Clarissa asks. Everyone stops talking for a minute to think why, and then they start answering one by one.
"I was given these powers for a reason, and if I don't use them to help others what's the point of having them." Lexi answers.
"I want to be rich, and live in a big house. I had nothing growing up and now I have a chance to be something." Kenneth answers unashamedly.
"I was just thinking, why not?" Tak answers. Everyone else gives similar answers to what Lexi and Tak said, except for Chase who refused to answer and Merry who stammered an answer that was unintelligible.
As they were walking past an alley, Chase looks over and sees a man in the alley with a sweatshirt on and the hood pulled up over his face. The man rolls up his sleeve, takes out a syringe and injects some black liquid into his arm, the liquid almost looked alive, as it was moving inside the vial. The man begins to groan and scream in pain as his body is beginning to mutate. Chase begins to walk towards the man with concern. The man soon finishes his mutating, he was large and muscular about three times his original size, veins were bulging out of his arms. Chase, out of concern, bends down to check to see if the man is all right. Suddenly, He's met with a backhand to the face that sends him soaring into the wall breaking through it into the jewelry store that was on the other side. The man breaks through the rest of the wall and walks into the jewelry store then begins taking the various jewels and jewelry. The other students begin to walk into the alley in order to check out what the commotion was.
Chase as he composes himself looks over and sees the man walking out with the jewels and out of anger morphs into his metal beast form and attacks the man. Chase punches and kicks the man repeatedly catching him by surprise. He uses his elbow and elbows the man in the face, then grabs the man's head and pulls it down towards his knee as he knees the man in the face. He then uses his tail to wrap around the guy's neck and smashes him into the ground, the man appears to be out cold. Chase in his excitement almost begins to celebrate his victory over taking down a villain. In his celebration he was distracted, the man gets up grabs Chase by his tail and whips him around to the ground several times over. The man then continually punches Chase in the face taking him out of the fight, and Chase turns back to his human form as he was knocked unconscious. That is when the others realize what is happening and jump in to rescue Chase and join the fight. Tak runs at the man and jumps on his back.
"I'll distract him, you guys attack!" Tak yells as he starts to electrocute the man, stunning him. The man was almost paralyzed by the amount of electricity coursing through him, it took all his strength to move his arm up and grab Tak and throw him into the ground, knocking him unconscious. Kenneth in anger creates a rocket launcher and aims it at the man, while Ronin creates his shadow beast and has it charge and grab the man. The shadow beast grabs the man from behind and holds him in place Ronin then shouts "SHOOT." The rocket soars through the alley and blows up, as the smoke clears the man is still alive and well, the rocket barely did anything, except anger him. Kenneth reloads the rocket launcher and aims again and fires, the man grabs the shadow beast and whips it around to the front of himself and uses it as a shield. The rocket kills the shadow beast, the man, now free, grabs Ronin and throws him at Kenneth knocking them both out.
Merry in a crazed happiness runs at the man and using her sheer strength punches the man back. She jumps up to eye level of the man and releases a fury of punches against the man pushing him back even more. the man then blindly throws a punch at her hits her knocks her to the wall only for her to get up immediately jump at the man and throw another punch. She was jumping around the man and throwing punches all over while dodging his punches with the occasional one hitting her. Lexi and Aimi turn to Aurora and Clarissa.
"We can't win this fight, we have to go get help from the heroes." Lexi says.
"Agreed, we can buy you time." Clarissa replies back.
"Ok, just be careful. We will be back with help as soon as possible." Lexi replies. She then, with Aimi, runs out of the alley to find help. Clarissa looks back only to see Merry being slammed into the alley wall repeatedly and then dropped, she hits the ground limp and unresponsive. Clarissa and Aurora look at each other and nod before attacking. Clarissa pulls crystals from the ground and traps the man pinning him in place. Aurora turns into air and creates a tornado around the man pulling out all the air, trying to suffocate him. The man is only angered more and eventually breaks through the crystals and runs right at Clarissa. Clarissa, initially, started throwing crystals at the man but they barely made him flinch. He eventually made it to Clarissa, and in a desperate attempt to protect herself she created a crystal wall in front herself, but it was a futile attempt as he punched right through the wall hitting her and knocking her out as she flew through the air into the wall knocking her unconscious. Aurora just stayed in her air form flowing around the man trying to distract him. Aurora was only a mere annoyance to the man as he turns the corner out of the alley. He only made it a few feet down the street before Jackhammer drops down in front of him and punches him across the face. When Jackhammer punched him, he locked back the jackhammer fist and released it when his hand made contact with the man's face creating a more powerful punch and knocking him out in one punch. Jackhammer looked at the police telling them to take the man into custody. He then directs the medics to the students so they can be tended to. As he walks down the alley he notices the syringe and picks it up and sees a few drops of the unknown substance that appears almost to be alive. He looks at it and confusion and pockets it to be examined later. he looks through the alley and sees the devastation wrought by the fight. Aurora walks up to him and thanks him for coming in time to rescue them.
"Thank you sir, I don't know what I'd do if he got away." Aurora says.
"Don't worry about it, it's my job." Jackhammer says kindly, but a little distracted. "Go with your friends, they will need you. Keep in mind you're going to be questioned very severely since you broke the moral regulation code and use your powers without permission." Aurora thanked him and walked away and got in the ambulance with her friends.
Chase wakes up the next day, a few top ten heroes are around the bed, Fusion(10), Instinct (9), Concuss(4) and Armed(5) with Jackhammer standing by with the Chief of Police and Rampt(8) sitting next to his bed with Pinpoint behind him.
"What's with the crowd?" Chase asks.
"Chase, you need to tell us what happened." Concuss asks, her face was serious and showed no signs of compassion.
"First of all who are you to tell me what to do? second of all I don't have to answer to you." Chase answers.
Rampt looks at Chase and just sternly says, "Chase, Now!" Chase looks down and takes a deep breath and begins to talk.
"All of us were walking to the mall to have some fun and eat some lunch. I saw a guy in an alley inject himself with something so I looked over to have a closer look. He then began to mutate and was screaming out in pain and I walked over to help the man, he then transformed fully into this enormous super powered person and then began to beat me up and rob the jewelry store I did my best to stop him before being knocked out. That's it."
"Thank you." Armed says and walks out with everyone except Pinpoint, Rampt and the Chief of Police.
"Half of the top 10 were here why is that? And where is Neon?" Chase asks.
"They brought in two to investigate the others are just here for their children or pupils. And we don't need to bother with the rest of the uppers." (Upper refers to the top five of the top 10. Lower would mean the lower half of the top 10.)
"We need to discuss you and your friends breaking the Moral Regulation Code." The Chief of Police says. "You children used your powers without permission and that is a serious crime."
"What are you talking about? We were trying to stop a crime and we were defending ourselves!" Chase yells trying to defend himself.
"First of all you attacked first, the others can have a case of self-defense and defending you but you initiated the attack. Second of all you guys did a lot more damage in trying to stop him..." The Chief of Police says but was interrupted.
"We didn't cause that damage, and even if we did that damage had to be done in order to stop him. An Ace would do the same amount of damage to stop them that we did." Chase says interrupting.
"No we wouldn't, Jackhammer took him out in one hit without any damage you guys caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage and luckily you're not being charged jackhammers paying for it out of pocket." Pinpoint says putting Chase in his place. "The difference between you and I is that we have experience and we know what we're doing you were a child there you just were doing whatever willy-nilly impulse came to mind."
"We saw the recordings you were celebrating because you thought you took down a villain and it was that fatal mistake that almost cussed you and your friends their lives." The Chief of Police says. Chase at that moment knew he could not rebuttal that argument and he was wishing he would just disappear. "You guys caused many businesses to lose a lot of money in repairing walls, the city has to repair the alleyway, and that jewelry store has to replace hundreds of thousands of dollars in merchandise because you guys scattered it across the city and destroyed a lot of those necklaces and bracelets and brooches." Chief of Police adds. "I talked it over with the parents and mentors of everyone we agreed not to press charges each punishment will be carried out individually by the parent or mentor. But this is only warning this if this happens again then you guys will be arrested and put in jail."
"Will we have credit for assisting and taking down the criminal?" Chase asks.
"No, first of all you guys got your butts handed to you. You did basically nothing to assist, second of all even if you did something we can't let the public know that you broke the Moral Regulation Code and got away with it, that would only encourage more vigilantism which we don't need." The Chief answers. He then walks out of the room.
Rampt who has been quiet the whole time finally speaks. "I understand you're trying to do right and you wanted to stop a crime, but I'm disappointed in you, Chase you know better, I've trained you better than that."
"I don't understand what the big deal is I mean we fought criminals before, like when they attacked the campus." Chase replies.
"That was a different circumstance, one it was on school grounds we can control the flow of information, and you are allowed to use your power on school grounds. Another reason is you were literally under attack you're defending yourself that criminal had no interest in you guys he just wanted to get the jewelry and get out you attacked him and then it created a bigger problem. you also had the whole world watching and if someone thinks that you can use your powers and get away with it they think they'll be able to and that will increase vigilantism. And your actions reflect us as heroes and that was an embarrassment, now we have to go forward and apologize and correct the situation. Now rest up your arms and hands you know what's coming next, you're walking The Crucible." Rampt says this before leaving the room with Pinpoint. He lets the rest of the kids in.
Pinpoint looks back at the kids and says. "Kids I'll be punishing you too for what you did, you embarrassed me and now the punishment will come for that."
"Where Aio and Dark Void?" Clarissa asks Pinpoint, with Aurora by her.
"They are still training with Neon and Jake up in the mountains, and they don't need to be disbursed by this."
"Did you go to punishment too?" Tak asks Chase.
"Yeah, he's going to make me do a Crucible." Chase's answers.
"What's that?" Tak asks.
"The Crucible is when my master makes me walk on my fingertips while doing a handstand and walk for however long he feels and he smacks me every time I get out of form sometimes you'll even make me go over rocks or in water, I won't even mention the coals." Chase answers.
"Ouch that's gotta hurt." Clarissa says. "I really don't want to see what Pinpoint has in mind for us." The rest of the group sighs with her and the thought of the coming pain.
The adults are outside the room talking about the investigation into the robbery.
"So it was confirmed that the man did inject the serum into his arm." Armed says. "I knew that there had to be some outside force when the man changed back into his natural form and had no aura."
"Yes and in examining the few drops of the black liquid shows that they're remnants of Aura in there. it seems like there is a temporary aura serum that's going to circulation that gives people tainted abilities." Concuss explains.
"What Aura type was it?" The Chief asks.
"It was a physical type, I originally thought it was a physical type and not a transformation physical because when I knocked him out he didn't change but when he changed back into his natural form I grew suspicious so I had him checked out at the Hero HQ. And upon examination of him we realized he did not have an aura ability so we checked out the serum that was found on scene we found it had remnants of the physical or a type. This is a scary time, and we need to get to the bottom of this." Jackhammer answers.
"If there's a serum out there that gives regular people temporary tainted powers we are in trouble and we need to find the source and end it." Rampt replies.
"Armed and I will take care of the investigation, the rest you are too close to this because either your children or pupils were involved in the attack. Armed was not around and I do not have a pupil so we are more objective in this situation. Now go be with your children or pupil and help them heal." Concussion says as she takes command.
Lexi was next to the door listening to the conversation, she used her nullifying field to make sure that Instinct was not able to sense her presence. When she hears footsteps she rushes over to her group of friends waiting for the right time to tell them what was found out.
"I need to tell you guys something later when we're alone." Lexi says while everyone else enters to make sure they all heal well and quickly.
Next Time, Chapter 19 The Stained Investigation...