When her father got sick, they had been forced to sell a bunch of things. Even their home. What they didn't sell, though, they put up in a storage locker somewhere in Spider Street. She had never bothered to go to it and didn't even really know what was in it.
Now she stood in front of that locker, a sense of dread starting to course through her mind.
Her mother's lips had been pulled into a thin line, and the woman's hands were shaking. Despite that, though, her mom still took the three of them to the storage unit. As it opened and revealed the contents inside, nothing really caught any of their eyes. It wasn't a big locker, and it was packed to the brim with so many random items. Book shelves that held novels they'd never bother to read, clothes they've grown out of, random furniture, some of her old comics, and toys, yet despite how normal it all looked, she found her eyes drawn to something directly in the middle.
It was covered up by a large tarp, yet that wasn't enough to stop the hints of blue that came from beneath the cover. The 'thing' let out a low hum, and for a reason she couldn't explain, she almost felt tears start to well up in her eyes.
She knew instantly what it was.
Mr. Larison had told her about it once. A metal. One that could create a Super.
Max Lightning and Jack both stayed still, simply staring at the tarp. Her and her mother walked forward slowly. "Hope…" Her mother trailed off.
"You don't have to say anything, mom." She cut the woman off and shook her head. "You knew I was a Super from the very start, didn't you?"
"I never wanted things to end up like this." Her mother said, bowing her head. "Your father and I just wanted to keep you safe."
"There was nothing you could have done to stop this." Max Lightning said, shaking his head. "This was fate. The paths of hundreds of different stories bound together and formed the road of destiny that we all walk on. This destination was always on the path. A turn someone like her would make. Grab onto it, Hope Lauren. Behold your story."
She reached out and wrapped her fingers around the tarp, dragging it away. The pod rested beneath it. Forged out of a familiar silver metal. The same metal her helmet was made out of, as well as the weird hands Red Ape had and even the trident Poseidon used. The pod glowed softly, illuminating the dark locker, and she placed her hand onto it, feeling a soft vibration course through her. She felt her mother's hand go over hers, and they both stared at it. She could see her reflection in it. A wide-eyed young girl was looking back at her.
"What is this?"
"It's where your father and I first found you."
"This thing created me?" She gulped and tried to process the emotions she was feeling. "What does that make you then?"
"I'm your mother, of course." Her mother reached out and cupped her face, staring into her eyes. "From the moment this thing opened and I laid eyes on you, I became your mother. And you're your father's little girl. I knew one day that you would find out. That you'd discover the truth. Your father did as well. It's why we hid it. He had a friend. One that was able to get Super Tech. They built your glasses. We never wanted you to discover your powers. Your father knew early on what would happen."
"That I'd be a superhero."
"We just didn't want to lose you." Her mother's face broke for a moment, and the woman stepped away, turning around so she couldn't see her.
"You won't lose me, mom. I'm strong. Like crazy strong."
"Your daughter is right." She jumped when she heard Max Lightning speak up. She had forgotten that he and Mr. Larison had been standing behind them. "That pod—much is unknown about it even to the higher-ups in the Enforcers. What I can tell you though is that it's special. It takes DNA from hosts it deems worthy and then creates a brand new baby Super with them. Not just any Super though. A special one. In fact, there are only ever four of them in the entire world."
"Four?" She felt her eyes go wide. Was he implying that she was a… Her face paled, and her body shook. Her mother also seemed shocked. She felt her heart twitch, and she shook her head. "T- That can't be real. I'm not- I mean- Mr. Larison, he's joking, right—"
She went silent when she saw the man drop to his knees, his head bowed. Mr. Larison, the man she looked up to, the one she respected more than anyone else, was on the ground before her, his head low. He was bowing to her.
"Fifteen years ago, I made a promise to Full Monarch." Jack spoke softly and slowly raised his head. His eyes met hers. "Hope Lauren. You are the Lord of the Sun and the Cosmos. You are the one who will carry out Full Monarch's will. In other words, you are humanity's best hope for stopping the Emperor should he ever return."
"Whoa, whoa, you can't be serious about this, right?" She stepped back and looked towards her mom. The woman seemed as shocked as she was.
"I think you've shown more than enough to prove you can do more than just create fire." Max Lightning grunted out.
Her hand shook as she stared at Jack. Polaron's words came back in her mind for a moment. Just who was this man? How long had he known? "When you agreed to help me become a hero. Did you know what I was?" She asked softly.
"Yes." Mr. Larison's eyes didn't meet hers. "I had no idea who you were until I saw your fire in the fight with Red Ape. I knew then and there that Full Monarch's fire had somehow found its way in you."
She felt a painful twitch in her chest. He had seemed annoyed with her in the past when she first met him. Then, out of the blue, he switched and decided he wanted to be a hero. Was that all because she was a Lord? Had her efforts truly meant nothing. Her thoughts stopped when her mother spoke up.
"If you knew, why did you let my daughter be a hero?" Jane stared at Mr. Larison. It wasn't a hostile look, not yet anyway—more of one wanting to understand his reasoning. "Why didn't you tell the Enforcers? Why didn't you get her the help she needed?"
"She decided to be a hero all on her own." Jack stood back up and wobbled slightly. "I had nothing to do with it. As for why I didn't get the Enforcers involved... Let's just say they might not take it so well."
Her mother didn't look too happy with the answer. She stopped the woman from saying more by grabbing her wrist. She turned to look back at Mr. Larison. "I can trust you, right?"
Jack glanced down at his hand for a moment. "I'd like to think so."
She really didn't like that answer. She looked back up at her mom. "You didn't know that I had Full Monarch's powers?"
"I had no clue!"
"It's a closely guarded secret, even among the high-ranking members in the Hero Branch." Max Lightning cut in. "I've had my eye on you for a while. The day Full Monarch died was the day you were born."
"Wait, if Poseidon is a Lord as well, does that mean she was also born from a Pod!"
"Not exactly." Max Lightning trailed off.
"I knew I had powers. But this... How do I even wrap my head around it? Full Monarch's powers are... It just doesn't make sense."
Her mom squeezed down on her hand. Max Lightning cleared his throat and stepped forward. "I have something else that concerns you, Lord of the Sun." The wind began to twirl and twist in the palm of his hand, and he held it up. "With your permission, I'd like to show you something."
"What is it?" She frowned and held onto her mother tighter.
"It won't hurt you. I swear it." The man said softly. "Within my palm, I currently hold the Paths that lead to the past. To put it more specifically, I hold the paths of Full Monarch. The previous Lord of the Sun, the one before you. I'd like for you to bear witness to that."
She shot a look towards Mr. Larison, and the man nodded. "It's okay, kid. You can trust him. This is important and something you need to see. It'll help you."
She nodded her head slowly. "Okay then. I'm ready, Max Lightning."
"Now, hang on." Jane Lauren, mother of Hope, folded her arms. "I never agreed to any of this."
"Mom-"
"Don't 'Mom' me! We still haven't even discussed you being a hero yet!"
"This is super important, though!"
"I know, but still. I don't want you getting hurt in a fight with a villain. I don't want my child dying before her father." She winced at her mother's words and looked away. "I just wish you told me sooner." Jane gripped her shoulder tightly. "Whatever you're going to show her, please allow me to see it as well."
"You're going to let me be a hero!" She asked, shocked.
"I didn't say that. I just want to see whatever this 'important' thing is." Jane said, shaking her head. "I know I can't control you or stop you, but I'm still your mother. Whatever you have to go through, I want to be there. I don't want to worry about you like I do with your father."
"If you wish to come along, then that is fine with me." Max Lightning stated. "I planned on taking Battery along, but you can come in his place. Are you okay with that Battery? I can only take two others besides myself."
Jack gave a half-wave and turned his back. "Sure. I got better things to do than watch a couple of idiots talking about the good old days. I didn't want to go see 'that' time again anyway." He began to walk away, not looking at them.
She watched her mentor leave and frowned softly. "He looked kind of sad. You're not going to show me anything good, are you, sir?"
"Sorry, but I'm going to show you the truth." Max Lightning replied firmly.
"So, who's Battery, exactly?" Her mom whispered. "I thought he was Mr. Larison?"
"That's Mr. Larison's hero name." She explained. "Oh yeah, my name is Cinder; pretty cool, right? Picked it all by myself."
"That sounds goofy." Jane pinched her daughters' cheeks when the girl puffed them out in annoyance.
"Get ready. It's finished." Max Lightning announced. The orb of wind in his hand rapidly grew and expanded suddenly. It seemed to form out of his hand, like a ball, taking on a silver color, and in a flash, it covered the three of them. Then, in a silver glow, it vanished, leaving the storage locker empty.
Jack stared down at the body of Polaron once he made his way over to where the monster's corpse was. His eyes shone with dozens of emotions, but after a moment, the man crouched down and took off the black jacket he wore, gently putting it over the villain's body. A light filled the alleyway they stood in, and seconds later, a car door slammed shut as Nick Ale walked forward. "I came as soon as I could." The dark-skinned man, for once, had a somber tone.
Jack lifted the body of Polaron, gripping both halves. "We're going to take him where the other monsters were buried during the war. I hope you're free 'cause we have two graves to dig."
"Two?"
"One for him and one for Mars King. 'Course nobody knows when it comes to Mars King. The man ain't exactly dead. He's become one with Sky, but still. Figured they deserve a proper gravestone at least."
"What about this one?" Nick poked at Ears, who was flat on his back, unconscious, resting in the back of the truck Nick had driven up in. "He was right where you said he would be." Golden chains wrapped around the villain's body, ensuring he wouldn't be going anywhere even after he was up.
"We'll drop him off at the nearest Hero Branch Station. They can take all the credit if they want. I don't care." He gently lifted the body of Polaron up and placed him in the back of the truck next to Ears. When that was done, Jack finally allowed himself to collapse. He dropped flat on his butt; his back pressed to the back of the truck as he slumped down. Nick was quick to get his supplies ready.
"How are you holding up?'
"I feel like hell," Jack muttered.
Nick pulled out a vial of blue liquid. "'I'm running dangerously low on Blue's medication. With Doctor Blue being dead, I can't make anymore of this stuff. You shouldn't push yourself this hard ever again. Next time I doubt I'll have enough to save you." The man poured it into Jack's mouth and pulled out one of his scanners, bringing it up to Jack's heart. It read off several numbers, and Nick finally let out a sigh. "Nine."
"Nine? I thought it was two last time. You're saying I have nine years left to live instead of two-"
"Nine months." The dark-skinned man pulled away and put his device away. "You have less than a year now. Use that light again, and it'll drop to six. Not six months, six weeks. That shit burned through all your energy. Before, when your body was damaged, you'd just heal it with your powers; however, the shard within you, the blade the Victorian stabbed into your heart all that time ago, damages you more than you can heal. Honestly, I'd say stop being a Super."
"I wish it were that easy."
"It is," Nick said sternly.
"If only-"
Nick balled his hand into a fist, squeezing the vial. "Full Monarch died to save you. That man gave up his life so you could live a few more years, and now you're throwing it all away. And for what-"
"For the future." Jack wiped at his mouth and slowly stood up. "I'm doing it for the future. He would understand."
"Would he?" Nick asked softly.
"It's not like I could get it fixed." The man shrugged. "Only someone as strong as Paragon could fix the damages; however, the shard could go off if it thought my heart would be healed. Only if the Victorian gave me permission to be healed would it work. That would require her understanding who I was, though. And if she finds out who I really am, good chance she would just take my head off on the spot."
"You could ask Avalon for help. He was your old friend, right?" Nick questioned.
"Nah. Avalon's just as likely to backstab me. He gave my sword to Green Wolf after all." He rolled his shoulders and got into the truck. "It doesn't matter. In the end, I'll die. I'm fine with that. I don't need nine months anyway. I'm close. So close to getting her to that level. Who knows. My death could be the thing that fixes it all. Maybe that's how I'll wipe my back clean of all my sins. That's how I'll truly defeat the Emperor."
"What a sad way to view your life." Nick climbed into the truck and started it up. "Is that truly the ending the last person saved by Full Monarch deserves?"
"It isn't if I deserve it or not." Jack looked out the window, staring at his reflection as the car hit the road. "We all have a time to go. My story is soon to come to an end. That's okay though. It wasn't a good story in the first place. The great thing about even a bad book is that it eventually ends one way or another. It's my turn now. I want to reach the end of my story. I want this bad book to end."
***
Meanwhile, Hope, Jane, and Max Lightning found everything bending and twisting around them. A mass of color and sounds that swirled together and then suddenly broke apart. Hope gripped onto her mother, stopping the woman from stumbling as they suddenly appeared in an empty void.
Instantly she was reminded of the void that she saw between realms. When she had been in the Bad Timers hidden base, Green Wolf had somehow cut through space itself to shove his way in. That had caused the entire realm to crumble and shatter, allowing her to see the empty void that was outside of it. That was the same thing that she saw now.
It was pure white all around them. An endless sea of nothing. Then something began to shimmer. All around them, so tiny only her enhanced eyes could barely make them out, trillions upon trillions of strings were taking shape. The lines twisted around each other and formed a path beneath them, turning into a massive road. More of them began to appear, forming and weaving together, becoming a sky and a field.
It was like paint being placed on an empty canvas or playing a video game and watching the world render around you.
"In the beginning, there were four." Max Lightning spoke softly as the threads vanished out of her sight, and she found herself standing on what looked almost like a field of sand. The sky above was black yet glimmered with hundreds of stars. "They stood at the top of the food chain. The first ever four Lords. They're power dwarfed all of humanity, allowing them to be hailed as gods."
That was when she saw them. In the distance, four beings stood across the field of sand. They were shaded and hard to fully make out. One was of tendrils that squirmed around, another one seemed to have the upper body of a lady, at least they had breasts, but instead of legs, they jutted out of what looked almost like a giant rose flower. The third one was made up of jagged lines that crackled with lightning, and they stood on the air. Then there was the final one. Standing above the other three, it stood tall—so tall it dwarfed even mountains. It was a giant of a Super, and every inch of them was coated in layers of thick blue fire.
Even just glimpsing a false image of them was enough to make her heart beat faster. Her blood was flowing, and her ears began to ring.
Max Lightning began to speak up once more. "The four Lords, however, despite all the power that they held, would soon discover that they were not the ones who truly stood above all. Planet Earth would find itself meeting a disaster above all others. A great evil that trumps all. One in which we have dubbed it the Shadow."
All four of the figures stared up at the night sky above. It was filled with trillions of glowing lights. Stars. At least she thought they were stars up to the point where they blinked. They were in fact not stars. They were eyeballs. Millions, possibly even billions of eyes, as something became to come toward the planet.
The ground began to shake, and her mother stumbled, but she caught the woman quickly. "W- What's happening?" Her voice squeaked out. "What is that thing." Though she already knew. The legends have spoken of the Shadow. The first villain. The one who started it all.
The four figures all acted. The mass of tendrils squirmed, and an entire ocean worth of water was suddenly birthed out of them. The woman who came from the flower snapped, and the air was filled with billions of red birds that all looked like Destiny, only hundreds of times bigger. The jagged lines began to spin, and the air crackled with lightning. And Giant forged from blue fire simply raised their hand and drew a sword that sliced the tops of mountains off.
"The four Lords would do battle with the Shadow. A battle that would change the world as we know it and force it onto a new path of destiny." Max Lightning explained. Everything flashed, and in a great burst of light, the world that she saw shattered and exploded as the lines that formed everything came undone. "The four Lords died that day, but they wielded the power of the first ever Supers. A power so great it forced itself back into creation." From the shattered void, she saw four more things. Metal orbs, each like the one that had created her, all glowing with a bright blue energy as the paths created the world around them and the orbs fell to the planet below. "The power of the four Lords would live on, passed down through generations in a never-ending cycle of rebirth and death!" Max Lightning called out. "Their energy was so great in fact that humanity itself was changed and twisted. The instant those Pods touched the ground, somewhere out there the first ever Super was born. A new species had found itself being created on our planet. The race of Super. Born from the death of the Lords and the Shadow! Even years later, our planet is still seeing the effects of this change! One that shook even the Cosmos. What I am about to show you is the story of a group of Lords that previously existed before even I was born. This is the story that was created thanks to the power that flows through our blood, Hope Lauren."
Once again, she felt her eyes sting as the Paths finished loading into the world around her. This time it was a field of flowers, and unlike in the last world, the sky wasn't so dark that it made seeing impossible. Instantly, she could tell they were in danger. Her ears felt like they were about to burst as screams filled the air, followed shortly by the sounds of gunfire and explosions. All around her, she stared with wide eyes as men in old red and blue soldier uniforms fought to the death.
"What? Where did you take us?" She asked, standing protectively in front of her mother.
"I told you I was going to show you the story of Full Monarch." Max Lightning stated. He held his arms out, and for the first time since she saw him, he smiled. "Welcome to nearly one hundred years in the past!"