VELOCITY

Part One: A New Era

"We now have arrived at the scene, there seems to be survivors." A reporter says as the camera turns and zooms in on two individuals coming out of the rubble. These two were the first and greatest heroes to ever live, little do you all know those two are actually my brother and I and this is the story of how it all lead up to this moment. This story starts about a couple of months ago and it all started a little like this. *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* The piercing sound of my alarm fills the room, it wakes me up in an unpleasant way. "Morning already, what time is it?" I ask only to be disappointed that it's later than I expected. I shot up from my bed in distress and quickly started getting ready, I grabbed my suit that I prepared the night before which I don't usually do but today is a really special day. "I have to get downstairs or they will begin without me." I grab an apple and quickly rush out the door towards the elevator, once I got there I clicked sub-level five, the lowest floor. "I bet anything that Jacob and Reed are staring at the elevator with disappointment on their faces," I say to myself. Once I got to the floor, the doors opened to reveal the two faces I guessed I was going to see. "Morning" they both say with a happy tone, I was a little confused by how unusually happy they sounded until they explained why. "Usually we would be furious but today is too important to be distracted by your carelessness, and Matt isn't even here yet either." My brother Jacob says as he hands me my safety glasses. "Matt called in saying that he would be in a little later; he had something he needed to get before he got here and didn't want to stall us more than you would." We consider Reed like our father figure, we met him at our school when he was our 8th grade teacher, Jacob and I were in the same grade even though  he was two years younger than I was, he was exceptionally smart at the time even before we met Reed. Reed had noticed my brother and me sitting at a table alone on our first day of school. After the school day had ended, he noticed that we looked quite sad, so he decided to talk to us. He sat us both down and introduced himself, we started to have a genuine conversation, I mean as genuine as my brother and I could have gotten when we were little. He then asked us about our parents which kind of made us both quiet. He lightened the mood by letting us eat with him during our lunch break and we had a great time. He said he would be right back and left to go to the front office and he asked the front office about us and our parents. They told him the story about them and he was shocked by the news. We never knew what happened to them but for some reason we didn't show any interest, he decided that he would spend every minute he could with Jacob and I to teach us about math and science to keep us entertained. He asked us what we thought about his proposal and we took a couple minutes to think about it but ultimately said yes. Having him as a teacher for mathematics and science lead us down our path to becoming who we are today, and made us love him like our father. We spent years and years building up our intelligence and were able to create Ortega Industries, a worldwide company that created and supported inventions. "Alright, let's get to our positions and get started," I say, we all get to our normal stations and begin starting up the procedure. Reed turns on the power and the machines outer and middle rings begin to start up. I begin starting up the machine and it starts to begin, Jacob gets the camera ready to begin test number 1 of the start up procedure. "Ready?" I ask them, they both reply with a thumbs up. Once I heard them say that I started the machine up and it began spinning the outer ring faster with the middle ring spinning faster in the opposite direction. The machines purpose is to turn on our device which we call "the Absorbing Device" or the AD for short. This version of the AD is a device which allows the user to absorb the elemental matter within an element, it then begins to generate this absorbed element within the suit that we had created for the AD. When I say generate, I basically mean that the suit would copy the element and begin producing more of said element. Before we get into the good part you must know of how this came to be, it all started when both Jacob and I had nothing to do after we finished our other projects that we sold. We both are world renowned inventors with many degrees and awards but we have trouble coming up with mind blowing inventions. One day, we were bored out of minds in the lab when we saw on the news a fire had appeared in an office building. We started to talk about it and the idea of stopping these things came into mind. I then brought up that we were basically talking about becoming superheroes, we both thought that it was completely absurd but we started to think of ways that we could possibly make it work. We then finally, after many failed ideas, came up with the AD and decided on a suit design that would make us also look flashy and match it. After a couple of months of blood, sweat, and tears we had finally finished the AD and the suit but needed a way to power it on. Hooking them up to a power source could work but the AD needs to be powered on before being placed into the suit. Placing the AD is highly dangerous with it having the capability of detonating and blowing up 3 blocks, so we came up with the machine to carefully charge up the AD to the requested amount of energy and carefully place it within the suit. That seems like enough science talk for now so let's get back to the good part of the story. Once the rings started moving faster it had started to generate power for the AD and began powering it on, once it got to the correct amount it had stopped spinning and stopped producing power. The claws had then proceeded to pick up the AD with complete delicacy and had placed it inside the suit in the middle of the chest. The suit's design which matched the AD started to light up with power letting us know that it was successful. It seems to be lighting up too bright and it only got brighter and brighter and jolts of electricity had started to hit the floor creating sparks. "Jacob, kill the power, the monitors aren't responding" I shout to him. He pulls down the lever killing the main power to the machine and it turns it off but the suit is still showing signs of  electricity. "Jacob, Reed get behind the shield." I say as I get underneath a table. We all prepare for the whole thing to blow only to wait a couple of seconds to hear the noises die down, luckily nothing had happened. While we were relieved to still be alive we all hear the elevator doors open and Matt walk out with coffee and donuts. As he appeared from the elevator the suit had fallen off the machine and landed on the ground and the light showing that it had power had died down to a dim light. "Dammit Nate, I told you to lock the elevator." Reed yells at me, "no you didn't" I had replied back as Jacob had nodded his head to back me up. "Well I guess i'm just a little shaken up from what just happened, and Matt, come give me one of those donuts, we might be here for a little longer now." Jacob and I go to lift up the suit to see if there was any damage that needed to be repaired by Matt. Matt is our engineer and dealt with most of the builds and repairs for our projects. He is our best friend but like Reed we consider him as family too, we met him a couple of years ago while me and Jacob just got out of college. Matt had been in our class but he was older than us by five years, we never really knew him until the day where Reed thought having a party at our place would be a good idea, it wasn't, but the only good part about the party was us meeting Matt. Jacob and I chatted with him about all sorts of things until the party was over, he was a nice guy, so we decided to get to know him by hanging out with him more. We had made the right choice that day because now he brings us our coffee. Jacob started to lift the suit up until the lights became brighter and shocked him which made him jump and drop it. "Hey, what are you doing?" I ask, "what do you mean? The thing shocked me." He replies, I go to investigate the suit and to see what could have been the cause of the. I put my finger near the center of the AD and a mere jolt of electricity can be seen touching my finger acting like a tesla coil, this proves to all of us that the machine was successful. We all stand there with excitement as we were able to successfully power it on. "We now know it works, but as you can see, it's still not enough for the suit to function properly." I say to all of them, "I know what you mean and now we can just inject power into it with no drawbacks but it's still very dangerous with the risk with it still able to fail," Jacob replies. I came up with the idea of us taking this to our hangar on the outside of the city where we use to travel to different places we needed to go. We all decided to go, on the condition of eating first. "Urghh." My stomach rumbled. While they were stuffing themselves with donuts, the elevator had opened up again and my girlfriend, Karley, had appeared coming out. "Hey babe, what are you doing down here?" I ask but in the back of my head i'm thinking why I keep forgetting to lock that elevator. "I wanted to come check on all of you to see how the progress was," she says to us. Karley and I met during my first year at college, she was inspired to become a lawyer which she is now. Her and I ran into each other in the library when I went in to look for a book about how to take care of a dog when she saw me and said, "You need help?" I looked at her and asked "oh, do you work here?" She laughed a little after I had said that making me feel a bit embarrassed. "No I don't, I just noticed that you were reading a book on how to take care of a dog." She explained, "Well, my brother and I have been wanting to get a dog for awhile now but neither of us know how to take care of one. And I came into the library to study when I thought I could have gotten a book to help me out." She smiled at me, making me have this weird feeling in my stomach, I never really felt anything like that before in my life. "Well once you do get a dog you could call me, I've been a dog lover every since I was little." She said as she gets a piece of paper from her folder and begins to write her number on it, she hands me it and starts to walk away with a wave. "Oh, I didn't catch your name, my name is Nathan but everyone calls me Nate." I tell her, "My name is Karley," she replies as she walked out the door until she peeks her head back and says. "And by the way, you don't just have to call me when you get a dog, you could call me if you ever want to get a-" she's about to say until I cut her off. "Bite to eat, sorry I tend to do that" I say nervously. "That's fine, It's kind of cute. And that was what I was going to say." That day seems to be taken straight out of a romance movie but it was the beginning of our life together. After that day we had gone on many dates, and once our school years ended we were already together for more than three years, Jacob and I finally got a dog and named it silver. karley and silvers bond was unbreakable which was to be expected from the dog lover. Now we're a happy couple with jobs living with one another, but enough with the soppy love story let's get back to the real juicy stuff. "We made progress all right, but we still need a few more things for it to be completely finished." I reply back, "Well ok, I saw you sleeping still when I had gone to work but I also forgot about today and didn't wake you up." She says with a sad tone, "that's all right. We were about to go to the hangar to finish the test so if you want to come watch from a safe distance you could come." I ask her, "I would but I still have stuff to do today, I just wanted to stop by to see if you guys did it. Once you guys come back I'll probably be done with the stuff I've been doing, so i'll see you till then." She says as she gives me a kiss and begins walking towards the elevator. "See you all later," Matt and them yell bye as the doors close but as they do I look to their direction to see Reed looking at me with a disappointed look on his face and he says. "So you still didn't lock the elevator?" I shiver every time Reed speaks with that face on. "Yeah, sorry it won't happen again. Now how about I get a donut." I head to the table to finally eat my donut until I notice there are none left, Jacob and Matt had eaten mine as well. After I finished yelling at them for eating my food we went to the garage of the building to pack our van that we would use to send shipments of parts to different facilities we own. Once we finished packing the equipment and the suit into the van we all got in and drove off. An hour later we had arrived, we quickly began setting up the monitored generators that we would use to finish the starting up procedure. Once we finished setting them all up along with the podium for the suit to be set up on we all had finally realized the thunder clouds that were right above us. "Guys, we can't do the procedure when it's raining, it's too risky," Reed announced. We all knew he was right, which meant that we would have to do it another time. Jacob and I began starting to clean up until Matt looked to the sky and said, "How about we use the lightning to power it up." Jacob and Reed started to think he was joking which I thought too but I began to think about it. "Wait, Matt's right, that's not a bad idea," I said. It had gotten quiet, their faces seemed a little surprised that I agreed with him. "We could make a sturdy, lightning rod that would redirect the lightning to the suit and we would use that instead of the electricity from the generators," I explained. "I hear what you're saying but that's too much power just to turn it on, it could seriously blow it up with a wider perimeter than what it was before," Jacob replied. "I know, but it's not going to be used to power it on. We all made a critical misunderstanding when we thought the AD still needed to be powered up, but instead it was already on and only needs more matter from and element to turn on completely. The AD had already absorbed matter from the electricity that the machine was producing but it still needs more to have enough to copy it and produce more and completely finish." I say almost completely out of breath. All of them looked at me with blank faces as they try to process what I just said. Finally, they understood and left, "Hey Nate, I know we're both really smart and all but this seems to be a lot to process. Do you really think it's safe for the AD to absorb such a high amount of energy?" Jacob asks, "We both designed the thing, we made sure that it could absorb any element and have no limits to how much it could absorb." I reply, "I know, I guess I'm just scared because you said that it could now absorb which means..." He's about to say until I cut him off and say. "That I have to be inside it and manually do it. I will be alright, just worry about this lightning rod so it doesn't mess up the suit." He looks at me and smiles with relief putting his trust within me. They all get hard to work, quickly trying to build that lightning rod so we could finish this today. This lightning boost we are going to have is going to be a hundred times better than regular electricity. It would also go with the suits main function, which is the speed ability. When Jacob and I were kids and dreamt about being superheroes, we both had different abilities we would have wanted. Mine was super speed, just thinking that I could be running faster than sound is just extraordinary. Jacobs is to have super strength, he always struggle at lifting a lot of things, he still does when I ask him to get me something in the lab, so I think super strength is much needed for him. We implemented the functions in our suits to give us the ability we wanted. My suit has a lot of the things needed for this to work in the leg area and Jacob's is in the arm area. We did all of that while we built the suit, and it was difficult coming up with the right ways to make it work swiftly. They come out the hangar with a rod that they made with spare parts that were in the van and tools that were also in the van. "Okay great, now go place it on top of the flagpole near the hangar. I'll get the suit and set it up. Matt will go get the cable in the hangar and pass it to you to connect it up there and he will come back down to connect it to the AD. Once that is done, I'll get into the suit and Jacob will work the monitor while Matt and Reed will make sure I don't die. Good, now go." They all quickly go do what I said, I was hoping they would take a little long but they already finished which meant it was time. I started to worry a little bit until Jacob gave me some support like I did for him. "You can do it, you have the power and the will to do it." Those words made me feel a whole lot better until he told me later that he got that out of a movie from somewhere. I turned the suit on and all the systems had powered on and I took a deep breath and...THOOM. The sound of lightning hits the rod and the lightning was unseen as it traveled successfully down the rod to the core of the AD. It absorbed every last bit of power from that lightning bolt and the suit began showing the transformation immediately with the yellow lightning color spreading through the pattern of the suit that directly connected to the AD. They all finally realized the suits appearance has changed and began to check the monitors to see what my health status was to see if I was being affected by it. My heart rate was beating fast, and I felt like I was sinking to the bottom of the ocean with the immense pressure but I didn't feel like I was drowning. "We have to shut it off, at this rate he could potentially die." Reed spoke out, "No! I can handle it, and it is my first one, so this was expected," I shout back. Reed looks at Jacob and Matt to see them nod their heads. They all allow it, fighting within themselves as I risk my life for this. My heart rate begins to go down and so does the pressure on my body, they all look at me to see the suits bright yellow lightning dim down to a regular yellow color. "Is it over?" Matt asks, as I move my hands and wrists to feel nothing but the normal feeling. "I think it is" I reply. I begin to pull the cords out of the suit that read my vitals and tried to walk off the podium. At that moment the dim yellow color got brighter and in less than a second, it happened as I tried to walk away. "That was weird, do you guys have any idea what that could have..." I'm about to say until I look back to see I am not near them, I had taken a step and was close to ten metres away. I was stunned and was trying to comprehend what just happened. "Nate, what did you do? How did you do that?  Jacob shouts to me, "I don't know, let me see if I could walk back to you" I reply. I try to take a single step without moving so far and that time it worked. "It seems I have to concentrate on not running for it to work right. But I never would have guessed that the speed capabilities were this efficient." I say, they all look pretty surprised but Matt was the one who looked excited the most as he teased me by saying, "You're like an actual superhero now, maybe we should call you lightning boy." They all were considering it until I yelled at every single last one of them that if they ever once said that to me again, then I would kill them. "All right, let's go back to the lab to run the tests and then after all that we could get to Jacob's AD and that whole annoying process," Reed says. "Yeah, let's go back...wait what's so wrong with my AD? Hey Reed? Reed?" Jacob asks as Reed and Matt began to clean up and put everything into the van, ignoring his question. We all laugh as we all headed back to the van.I do the process where I turn the suit off and with our well planned mechanics it worked and it shut down and the suit was stored in the AD. We had to find a way to keep the suit accessible at all times so we looked into the option of bleeding edge tech or nanotech that would be placed into the suits main materials to make it have this function. With my brother and I, and some of Reed, we used our heads to make this possible. As we got into the van, we all finally took a deep breath and realized that our work had paid off and that we were the first people to do this.e all cheered and Reed had the idea for us to go celebrate at my place. We all agreed. We finally got back to the building and set the suit back up in its original position. Reed said that I could take a break from work for right now since I went through a lot when that lightning bolt hit me. I thanked him but insisted that I could look over the plans for the ADs for me and Jacob suits. "Hey guys, do you know where the plans for the AD went? I could have sworn I had them on my desk." I ask them all, "You probably just lost them like how you lost the suit plans. This is why we don't give you the plans and why we now transfer them to the computer." Jacob says to me, "well I guess I'll go upstairs instead and clean up a bit." I responded, they wave goodbye to me as I headed up to my place, I entered to see Karley there setting up balloons and confetti. "What are you doing, you really just ruined the surprise I have been preparing for you since this morning." She says, "oh well to be honest with you...." I reply to her. "You knew this whole time didn't you?" I look at her nervously as she sighs and gives me a hug. She explains that she didn't really have work today and was planning a celebration party for all of us, she had only told Reed about this which is why he had the idea to go to my place. I felt bad but quickly cheered her up by thanking her and complimenting her about all the hard work she did. That really made her smile and made her forgive me. A couple of minutes had passed and Reed and Jacob came to celebrate with us. Reed explained to us that Matt couldn't make it because he had some important family business to attend to. Reed knew the whole time and was helping Karley out by telling us that he had the idea to celebrate at my place. Jacob also knew too since he overheard them talking about it. We all sat down and ate dinner and talked about today and what we have planned for the future. Once we finished dinner, Reed and Jacob thanked her for the meal and headed back to the lab to add the last updates to Jacobs AD that we will test next week. Once they left I started to sweat and cough a bit, "what's wrong?" Karley asks. "Oh nothing, I think I just feel a bit queasy from today." I reply, I start shaking and she quickly comes and tells me to lay down in our bed and rest and that I would feel better by tomorrow. "I know what you would say if I told you that I didn't want you to do this anymore." She says, "I know, but there is always something I could do to fix this and I will fix it so you don't have to worry." I reply, she smiles and gets up to leave until I grab her hand and tell her not to worry, she grabs back and nods, letting me know that she's not worrying anymore. I let go and she walks away to the living room, I lay down and began to think about what I was going to do. I try to not worry about it right now and get some rest for the work I have to do tomorrow, I turn my lamp off and close my eyes. *2 weeks later* "Well we did it, we finally finished it." I say to Reed, Jacob, and Matt as we all lean back in our chairs. We had just finished all the testing for both my AD and Jacobs, last week we had finished Jacobs transformation like what I did before but instead of me having speed he has his super strength, he was kind of hesitate for what he would absorb first but he finally got the idea the night before when he was watching the discovery channel on tv and they brought out these crystals. Jacobs AD is different from mine like I said before, my AD has the power to absorb the elemental properties from elements such as non-metals, basically being an Avatar. Jacobs on the other hand, instead of absorbing the elemental properties he would absorb the physical properties such as metals. When he saw the crystal he had the idea to use that as his first power, he brought it up to us when he came in and we thought about it and ultimately let him knowing that it could take a couple of weeks for him to come up with another one. Once we got a crystal we could use for him he would absorb it and the suits structure would change. We made sure that the whole suit wouldn't allow itself to look like a crystal but we made it so the suit would react to it and change into a design that would benefit in situations. We went to the hangar to do it like we did for me and of course he did better at not feeling sick afterwards like I did since he has always been stronger than me ever since we were kids, he absorbed it and his transformation began right away showing the crystal design that we made, although Jacob still couldn't handle it for very long. "Jacob, I still couldn't believe how good you were with suit and that crystal power during the test training." Reed says with a mocking tone, "Yeah, and I didn't once have to power down to take a breather" Jacob responds. I glare at the two of them as I go back to staring into my screen. During the final testing we had already learned how to bring out the powers at will and now we only needed to learn how to use them, so we trained against mannequins using our powers to fight, save, and protect them going through intense situations. We finally finished our "Super hero training" as Matt likes to call it, and we were ready to do it for real and luckily and unluckily there was a fire in an office building which gave us the perfect opportunity to go and use or new suit. We got there and it went good, we had good teamwork getting everyone out of the building, and putting out the fire, and not having a single mistake. "You know, I still can't believe how horrible you two did though during that fire the other day. Everyone got out okay but when you tried to put the fire you made it bigger by using your speed to make more wind in the air making the fire bigger endangering the lives of the people in there, oh and when you got into the building you made the mistake of going up onto the wrong floor and don't even get me started with your horrible teamwork." Matt says to us, we were both getting irritated but knew he was right and how much work we needed before doing that again. "Well Matt you may be right but you got to take into mind that it was their first time doing anything like that and it was bound to happen. They also did save those people which did get them some credit when they were shown on the news." Reed replies, "Yeah you're right, maybe they shouldn't work together though and should focus more on being solo so they could rely more on themselves, but what do I know." Matt says, we all look at him thinking for a minute taking it in. "Matt, that's not a bad idea, I hate to admit it but we don't work together well and having time to get used to these powers alone instead of being bothered by the other one is a good way to do it." I say, Reed and Jacob agree with me and Matt says to go through with it. We got the idea for one of us to go to our other facility down in Florida to train and work there for the time being. Jacob agreed and said that he would be the one to go for three reasons, one being that it would be easier for him to go since he wouldn't want karley and I to go through so much trouble leaving, another reason is that he's sick and tired of New York weather and would much appreciate the nice Florida weather instead, and the last reason being that he could have some luck finding a hot looking girl for him. We all allowed it knowing that the last reason would probably never happen but he was right about the first reason about it being hard for me and Karley leaving, she doesn't really like moving or leaving New York too much for too long only if it's a vacation. We made an agreement that he would be gone for 3 months to work on his powers and I would be here working on mine, at first we didn't really think we should do it but we realized that it is also a very good idea for the citizens of florida to have its very own "superhero" protecting them. He wanted to leave the same day because he really wanted to go but we wanted him to wait until tomorrow at least so we could spend some time with him before he goes, he said fine and went back to his desk to keep working on improvements for the suits. Later that night we all went to go eat out at a restaurant and say our goodbyes. "I just don't understand why I can't leave now, I basically hear the beaches of Florida calling me already." Jacob says, "look, we won't be able to see you everyday and some people here are sad about that fact." I say trying to hide that I would be the one to be sad when he leaves. "I get it, you would be heartbroken when I leave, that's all I wanted to hear" He replies. Everyone laughs and we all eat until we couldn't eat no more, the night was already over before we knew it and Jacob went home to go pack and Matt and Reed were knocked out so Karley and I had to drive them home. The next day Jacob had already packed everything he needed, I expected him to already have left on our private jet but he came to my place at eight in the morning to tell me goodbye in person, I knew after all that he still was a softy and always was tough but never on the inside. He gave me a hug and left, I forgot to ask if he would come back for the holidays but he already zoomed towards the elevator before I could get him. Now we have to live without the guy for awhile but I bet his adventure would be great. I go to get ready for more work in the lab until Matt calls me to tell me that there is another fire and that the fire department can't get inside, I tell him that I'm on my way and hang up. "Another fire? seriously?" I question, these fires happened way too close together to be normal. I try not to think about that too much as head to the lab. When I got there, Reed try to greet me but I completely ran right passed him grabbing my AD and running back to the elevator to the roof, while in the elevator I attach the AD to my chest and it sticks to my clothes and once it's attached it enwraps my body with the armor covering me. I'm at the roof and once I am I speed towards the edge and I jump, knowing that this is the beginning of a new era.