03x04: Stinger and Barrage

THings go as usual for a while until the enemy draws first blood by sending an assassin to the Island.

STINGER AND BARRAGE

 

     That Saturday, Austin continued working in the Tech Garage, still unable to think of a name.

     He had received a request from Jib the previous day to borrow a DVD of Pulp Fiction. He was thinking of all these things when John Jeriel Guino came in from the elevator.

     “Hey, Austin.”

    John was the technical specialist when Austin was gone. He designed most of the weapons that helped put Austin under control and still does.

     “Hey there, John. Like what I did with the place?”

     “I haven’t noticed until today but yeah, I like it.”

     “Hey, imagine you have a car that absorbs the superpower of the driver. What would you call it?”
     “Asking me for a catchy name out of the blue is not my strength. Let me think…”

     “Well, I have been failing the whole week, maybe you could…”

     “Got it! The ‘Mutation Absorbing Automobile’ or ‘Muta-Auto’ for short.”

     “Nah. Too long and technical. I don’t like an acronym for this one.”

     “Give it a nickname.”

     “What then?”

     “Acronyms are easier dude. Power Absorbing Automobile.”

     “John, that shortens to PAA. and I don’t want the name of my baby to be associated with feet.”

     “You could try Power Reciprocating Car. PORECC!”

     “This is why I do not want an acronym.”

     “Okay, good point. What about just leaving it nameless?”

     “That’s it. I’ll call it ‘the Anonymous’.”

     “That’s lame.”

     “It’s my baby and it won’t be going out to society so that name is perfectly acceptable. Anyway, let’s get out of here.”

     Austin and John went up the elevator. Outside, Austin remembered something.

     “Hey, I took your whole ‘Pit of A.R.M.’ idea and put it up to eleven. Here, it’s basically a flash bomb that temporarily disables all powers in the area. Helps for traitors and rogues and stuff like that.”

     Austin opened the doors again and let John go in first. On his way in, he felt something hit his right leg. He dropped to the ground just like his vision the previous night. He didn’t expect it to fulfill itself that quickly.

     He pulled out the dart that hit him and observed it. It was a thin, sleek dart with no marking whatsoever. Just a perfectly smooth surface.

     “Austin, you okay? What’s that?” John asked.

     “It’s a dart.”

     “Oh s**t. Get in here now.”

     Right then, John threw a table at Austin, forcing him to drop to the ground.

     “What the hell?!”

     “BEHIND YOU!”

     Austin looked behind him and saw the chair being engulfed in explosions. One big explosion spawned a few smaller ones and so on.

     When the explosions had cleared out, there was a single figure standing behind it all.

     “Who are you?”

     “You can call me Barrage.”

      “I’ll call you a pinprick retard if I want to!” John said. “Austin, get in the ward. I’ll deal with this.”

     “No, I can handle it.”

     Austin switched to psychic powers and tried to use his telekinesis to help him stand up but he found himself unable to.

     “What’s wrong? Can’t you psych yourself up?”

     “I don’t know. I could easily do this before despite being terribly weak.”

     “What did you shoot him with?!”

     “Oh, nothing. Sadly, I only brought one of those. Let’s play a bit, shall we,” the man said waving the gun he used to shoot Austin around the air.

     John pulled the gun toward shim with his powers but as it traveled in between them, the man fired a beam at the gun. There were numerous explosions in the beam and when it hit the gun, it was engulfed by another explosion. It still went straight towards John, continually exploding until it hit John, sending him back into the base.

     “D****t!”

     “Well, that’ll be all kids. See you next time!”

     The man took out a gun and fired it behind him. It was a Telegun, a gun that can shoot a space portal by sensing your desired destination via psychic powers.

     He walked through the portal. John pulled the stabilizer he used last year to fix the space rift and put it in reverse. He fired it at the portal and it stayed open.

     “Nice work, John.”

     John stood up and rushed towards the portal but as he ran towards it, another explosion beam went out from it and hit John, sending him directly to the ground. John blacked out.

     Unable to do anything, Austin watched as the portal grew smaller and smaller until it completely vanished. He started to feel the more drastic effects of the dart and everything turned to black.

 

Austin woke up in the ward. He was all alone except for John in far end of the room, still unconscious.

     Nurse Jen came in the room and saw Austin awake. She went back out and came back in, this time with Kyle and Janella.

     “Hey, Austin, how are you feeling?” Janella asked.

     “I have a major headache.”

     “Can you tell us what happened?” Kyle asked.

     “John and I were fixing up the place and I got shot at with a dart,” Austin said while looking around in his pocket for the dart. He took it out and gave it to Kyle.

      “John then threw a chair behind me, forcing me to duck. Turns out there was a man who shot me and tried to knock me out. He called himself Barrage or something. John fought him but he beat John and took out a Telegun and teleported back.

     “John grabbed the Stabilizer from last year and reversed it or something and shot at the portal. Before he could reach it, another explosion beam came through the portal and knocked John out.

     “I felt seriously ill and passed out afterwards.”

     “We can check out the insides of this dart.”

     “Only John and I know how to use the equipment.”

     “We can ask one of the science teachers,” Janella said.

     “No, I’ll look into it later.”

     “You’re showing symptoms of the flu. I’d suggest you stay in bed. You should be able to go to school on Monday.”

     “Oh, good.”

     “What about John?” Kyle asked.

     “He should be better by this afternoon. He is made of steel.”

     “Quite literal there,” Janella said. Austin chuckled a little.

     “Anyway, that’s good. He should be able to start the test on the dart later. As for me, I’ll just transfer to my room and rest there. Is that alright?”

     “I guess so. Sure. But someone has to make sure you stay in bed,” Nurse Jen said.

     “Fair enough. You guys wanna watch a movie?”

     Janella and Kyle approved.

     “Great. Call Ivan and Patrick over, oh and Berna if you want, Kyle, let’s watch Wanted.”

     “Not too many people!” Nurse Jen said.

     “Okay then.”

    Austin tried teleporting them there but he couldn’t.

      “What’s wrong?” Janella asked.

     “I can’t teleport. In fact, I couldn’t use my powers awhile ago.”

     “Maybe there was something in the dart. Do you think that guy works for the Mastermind?” Kyle asked.
     “It’s pretty obvious, don’t you think?”

     “But we’re not sure right?”

     “Yeah, it could’ve been some graduate who hated your guts,” Janella said.

     “See? At least someone’s using their head.”

     “Fine but what’s the motive?”

     “Maybe they’re testing it out and since I don’t think these people wanna risk losing their powers, they had to test it out on a third party.”

     “So they’re not after you?” Kyle said.

     “Why’d they test it on me? Unless they are sure that it works I�"“

     “Maybe they’re trying to get Dr. Suarez and the other executives powerless,” Janella said.

     “So they might be trying to take over the school? Makes sense but why would somebody have such a clichéd motive?”

     “We’ll look in to the contents of the dart. We might just be overanalyzing this,” Kyle said.

     “Yes, for now, you should rest,” Nurse Jen said.

     Austin tried standing up.

     “What did I just say?”

     “Don’t sorry, I can stand just fine. Get me the Telegun, let’s go to my room.”

     Kyle brought the Telegun to him and made a portal to Austin’s room. They went in.

     Kyle put in the DVD and they watched the movie. It was finished by 5:00 and Austin just wasted a day of his life in bed.

     Kyle and Janella left and Austin had the rest of the weekend to recover.

     John’s diagnosis of the dart was that it was filled with approximately 60% flu virus and 40% some unknown substance. The overall capacity of the dart was 10 ml and it looked like it was filled to the brim.

     John could not identify the unknown substance despite hours of research.

 

When Monday hit, Austin was still feeling a bit sick. He gave Jib the DVD when he arrived and marched back to his seat, resting his head in his arms on the table.

     First period was Math time and Sr. Geck definitely noticed this. It was not yet officially Math class and there was ten minutes to spare.

     “Austin, is something wrong? You’re putting on your standard Poker Face again.”

     “Umm…” Austin said, thinking of saying nothing was wrong but decided against it. “I just have a slight fever, that’s all.”

     “Oh,” Sr. Geck said, putting his hand to Austin’s neck. “Yes, you do have a slight fever. Everyone, sit down.”

     The followed and Austin felt the sickness getting worse.

     “Just rest. Do you want to attend my class or do you want to rest for a while in the clinic?”

     “I can stay for your class, sir. I feel well enough.”

     “Okay then. If you say so.”

     Sr. Geck went his table.

     “You sure you’re okay?” Mey asked.

     “Yeah you don’t look so good,” Marise said.

     “I’m pretty sure I can take it…” Austin said. Then he suddenly felt his head getting heavier and more painful. He tried sleeping in his seat for the remainder of the time before Math class.

    It wasn’t getting any better until he felt someone tap his back.

     Austin looked up and it was Sr. Geck.

     “You’re definitely not okay. Go to the clinic now.”

     “I can take this.”

     “Come on, Austin, go to the clinic,” he said in a tone that convinced Austin to stand -up and walk to the clinic.

     Nurse Jen recognized him and he only had a 37.5^oC temperature. He still begged to rest since it was getting worse. She allowed him to stay for thirty minutes.

     After thirty minutes, he got a lot better and went back to class.

     He was still a bit hot and still unable to use his powers. He sat back down in Sr. Geck’s class.

     He was able to do well in this class. The next class, however, was Filipino.

     Ms. Becky did not make a lot of sense when it came to projects and if it did, it had a very small significance. At this moment, their lesson was poems and they have to design a cake solely for the purpose of writing a poem about it. This was done on the bridge.

     Austin did pretty well here since he wasn’t able to do much at all. Most of what was done to the cake was nauseating. Joven Pagal did graffiti with the strawberry syrup. Froilan and Jeffrey played catch with a Stick-O jar from two different floors. The others put crushed M&M’s on the cake in a heart pattern. This group was all boys.

     On the creative side, Renz wrote a poem. This poem was very honest since one line was: “Noong ginawa namin ang keyk na masagwa... (When we made this nauseating cake)”

     The worst part was that they had to present it to teachers together with poem reading. Their group presented it to Sr. Dan Labajo and Ms. Delia, one of the Science teachers in first year last year.

     The teachers reacted appropriately to the aforementioned line in the poem and Austin felt the sickness leaving… until Science class.

     It was after recess and they had Double period Science.

     The worst part of this experience was that Sr. Jojo was simultaneously teaching one of the most interesting lessons in Biology while cracking jokes in the process and any reaction whatsoever that Austin had made his head hurt.

     Eventually, Marise, Mey, and Renz noticed and called Sr. Jojo’s attention. Austin revisited the clinic.

     He was allowed to rest for as long as he wanted. He woke up around an hour later where it was almost the end of the double period Science.

     He still felt sore and when Nurse Jen checked his temperature, he had a high fever and was advised to go home.

     He was strong enough to ask for Sr. Dan’s signature and the next teacher’s signature, which was Ms. Sharon.

     He went back the clinic and gave one of the copies of the slip and Nurse Jen asked for his ID. She inserted it into the newly installed, “transport slot” and soon, a transport car was waiting outside the clinic.

     Austin liked this addition but this reaction still caused headaches and he just focused on getting into the car.

     He had to lie down in the car due to fatigue. Eventually, he decided to change the course of the car. He directed it to the Base instead using his executive ID and decided to rest in the ward. He brought in John’s research table with the dart and tried finish the research.

     He then tried to put the specimen into a “Time Capsule” John developed. This Time Capsule moved time within it and took whatever is placed inside, with it. Austin tried to put it right before it hit him. Unfortunately, this did not mean regeneration of the fluid but the fluid that was there was supposed to go back in time as well.

     He put it through the microscope and observed it. He saw some moving black particles. He set it to HPO and looked again. “It couldn’t be!” he thought.

     He placed the liquid inside the Composition Detector John developed and the results came out.

     “70% H20; 18% INFLUENZA; 12% A.R.M.”

     Long story short, he had been injected with A.R.M.’s and the mystery of the unusable powers was now solved.

     He asked his classmates for the homework and after a while, Queennie sent Austin the homework for the day vie Desk Phone. One of them needed a book from school.

 

 

The next day, Kyle, Patrick, Ernst, and Janella visited Austin in his suite (He transferred over the night). Austin explained his findings to them.

     “So I guess you can’t use your powers anymore, ever?” Patrick asked.

      “No, the A.R.M.’s should be detected as waste but it’ll take a long time for them to be removed. My estimation is that in one milliliter of a 30% A.R.M. solution, the subject experiences twenty-four hours of ‘powerless-ness’.”

     “Powerless-ness?” Kyle pointed out.

     “Yes, Kyle, you and your logical sensibilities.”

     “Just kidding, sheesh, you gotta take it easy,” Kyle said.

     “I know right?!” Janella said.

     “Can we get back on topic please?”

     “Sorry,” Janella said.

     “Since there could be ten mL of stuff in that dart and John estimated 40% of the stuff was the A.R.M. solution, I should be back to normal by 1:00 PM tomorrow.”

     “That’s a relief,” Patrick said. “I thought we wouldn’t be able to shoot fireballs at Ernst again.”

     “Hey!”

     “Come on, Ernst, you know you’re my best friend!” Patrick said.

     “No, you are not.”

    “Meanwhile, I’ll just sit here and watch a movie. Hey, Kyle, put in BTTF Part II will ya?”

     “Back to the Future?”

     “No, Billy Turner Tries Farting, OF COURSE BACK OT THE FUTURE!”

     “Sheesh, take it easy…” Kyle said as he took out the DVD.

     “Once again, we feel similar,” Janella said.

     “I bet he’s a lot worse when you’re with him, eh? All that cheesiness up to eleven…”

     “CHEESY BUT TRUE!” Austin said.

     “Blah, blah, blah,” Kyle said mockingly. The others laughed at this. Austin was frustrated at this. He looked at Janella and she gave him a reassuring smile. Austin then started to laugh along as the movie started.

     He felt better that afternoon and decided to go over to school to pick up the book that he needed. It was Math time and Sr. Geck was surprised to see him as well as everybody else.

     “Austin, nice of you to drop by,” Sr. Geck said.

     “I was just picking up a book for my homework.”

     “Go ahead. Oh yeah, did you by any chance have a sore throat?”

     “Yes I did,” Austin said as he looked for his book in the shelf.

     “Are you talkative?”

     “Moderately, sir.”

     “Because talkative people tend to have sore throats. After all, a lot of teachers get sore throats.”

     There was subtle laughter at this.

     “Austin!” Jib said.

     Austin found his book and looked at Jib. He was waving around the DVD. Austin took it and went outside the room.

     “Thank you, Sr. Geck.”

     “No problem. Oh, yeah, what else did the doctor say?”

     “I’ll be fine. I can come to school on Thursday.”

     “Okay, good.”

     “Take care,” some of the CV students said to him.

     On his way back, Austin felt something strange, as if he suddenly felt at home in CV just for those two minutes.

    

 He started doing his homework the next day when he was feeling way better and there were no classes due to the inauguration of Noynoy Aquino, the new President of the Philippines. One of the assignments was from Sr. Leo where they had to watch the inauguration and write an essay about it.

     Austin watched the program while doing his other homework and by 1:00, he felt his strength going back to him. He checked his watch at around 1:10 and realized that his powers were back.

     He tested it by psychically lifting his homework from the bed to the table and he was able to do it.

     He finished up the homework and got ready for school tomorrow. At this moment, he was thinking about Barrage and his possible motives. Who was he? Is he working for the Mastermind?

     Eventually, he fell asleep.