Categories > Cartoons > Static Shock > Changed Consequences
Changed Consequences
Changed Consequences
Authors Note: Takes place from just before the end of the episode Pop's Girlfriend and asks what could have happened if Royce had mutated ten minutes later than he did in the episode.
Part One
English Literature Class
Dakota Union High School
Virgil Hawkins looked down at the test paper laid out on his desk and tried to focus on answering the questions there. It was difficult, what Trina had told him about the missing metagas vials weighed heavily on his mind, as did his earlier encounter as Static with the giant mutated spider and cockroach.
Though Trina wasn't aware of it in telling him about the stolen vials of liquidised metagas she had informed Dakota's own metahuman superhero about the theft, and the fact that they did not have long to find those missing vials. Soon the binding agent used to force the metagas into a highly concentrated liquid state would ware off and the mutagenic compound would return to its natural gaseous state at immense pressure. Pressure that would shatter the vials and lead to another even larger big bang. Virgil knew he had to find someway to stop that from happening, there were enough of his fellow bang babies out there as it was, and almost all of them were bad news.
Compared to the possibility of another big bang happening soon Virgil found that the end of module English test paper somewhat irrelevant. What he wanted to be doing was to be out there in the city in his Static uniform, looking for the stolen vials before the time ran out, not sitting here in school doing a test. But that's the life of a teenage superhero, he thought with a mental sigh before focusing on the test paper, and with effort pushing the thought of the potential looming disaster out of his mind.
For now anyway.
***
Unnoticed elsewhere in the school small whiffs of purple smoke began drifting out of one of the lockers. The locker belonging to the juvenile delinquent, petty thief Royce. Had anyone come along they would have recognised the purple whiffs for what they were, metagas and a sign of growing, impending danger.
But no one saw them. So unchecked inside a metal case Royce had sequestered in the locker four glowing purple vials began to shake, small cracks starting to ribbon across there surfaces, allowing small whiffs of there contents to escape. And still the pressure built as the chemical reaction inside each vial began to gain force, the cracks multiplied, propelled by the terrible pressure building inside.
The danger was growing. But no one knew no one could take action to prevent the inevitable. Unchecked, unchallenged, disaster grew closer and closer.
There were now only minutes left.
***
Royce resisted the impulse to groan as his vision momentarily swum, obscuring the boring test paper in front of him and indeed the whole world in a momentary sparkle of rainbow colours. He didn't feel good, he felt strange and had been most of the day. He was beginning to think that Frankie was right and he should have left those vials of liquid big bang gas alone.
Abruptly his vision swum again and this time he felt a deep throbbing pain in his chest. It was only there for a moment, but it drew a groan of pain from his lips. Faint beads of sweat appeared on his brow at the same moment in time.
"Royce," Mr James asked from the front of the class looking at Royce in concern. It was obviously by looking at him that something was wrong. "Are you alright?"
Royce started to open his mouth to reply when the deep throbbing pain returned, spreading out from the core of his body to affect every single cell in him. Royce stood up and lurched away from his desk with a scream of pain as before the shocked eyes of his classmates Royce began to change.
His skin changed to a light purplish pink colour and his body began to expanded and twist, his clothes tearing apart from the stress being put on them by distorting, expanding muscles and limps. In seconds Royce had changed into a distorted, distended mockery of a human form, he looked like some monster from a cheap kid's television show.
"Royce," Mr James said moving forward to assist the mutated student before he could freak out mentally cursing to himself. He knew that this was going to happen one day, that one day he would come across a metahuman in school. They seemed to be everywhere in this damned city.
He was almost to Royce, when Royce admitted a roar and with a sweep of his incredibly long right arm knocked him flying. James slammed into the far wall of the class and crumpled to the ground unconscious, then Royce turned and charged out of the room knocking a hole in the wall. He had to run he couldn't let anyone see him like this.
As the creature Royce had transformed into fled the room and panic broke out amongst his terrified classmates, Virgil's brain came out of its stunned surprise and processed what had happened. The vials of metagas were here in Dakota Union High, he had to get them, he had to get them out of here now before they exploded and turned the whole school into metahumans. Looking at Royce's friend Frankie, who was staring at the hole in the wall in horror and fear Virgil knew just how to find where they were, Frankie would know. He went everywhere and did everything with Royce.
As members of the class began fleeing the room Virgil marched over and grabbed Frankie by the arm, before he could run away.
"The stolen metagas is here isn't it," he said to Frankie. "Tell me where it is." Frankie looked at Virgil in fear, the other teen had his arm in a vice like grip and looking at Virgil now he saw someone he had never seen before. Someone determined, someone who looked like he was powerful, someone who did not look happy with him at all.
"I..." he started to say then his voice trailed off. Virgil rolled his eyes then gave Frankie his best intimidation look.
"Tell me where they are or they are going to end up renaming this place metahuman high," he said feeling his powers tingling through his body, surging in response to his heightened emotions, coming close to the surface.
"Okay, okay," Frankie replied shaking feeling a strange electrostatic tingling like pins and needles racing up his arm from where Virgil was holding him. Looking into Virgil's determined brown eyes Frankie was sure he saw a glimmer of energy there, of contained power. And suddenly he understood whom it was he was speaking to, who was holding him. Virgil was a metahuman, and not just any ordinary metahuman he was Static Shock.
"There in the Royce's locker," Frankie said fearful and respectful of the power he could feel coming up his arm from Virgil's inadvertent emissions of power. He knew that Virgil could pound him into the ground with no effort at all. "Number three two six four."
"I know that locker series bro," Richie said from beside Virgil, inwardly smirking to himself as Frankie buckled under Virgil's intimidating gaze. Up close he could feel the waves of electrical and electromagnetic energy that Virgil was inadvertently giving off, it was the same kind of feeling you got when you put your hand on a television just as it was switched off. "There this way."
"Lead on then bro," Virgil replied letting go of Frankie. The other teen backed away from him then turned and ran away, following the rest of the class out of the room. Richie nodded and hurried out of the room, with Virgil close behind him.
But not everyone had left the classroom after Royce's transformation. Standing near the corner Frieda Goran had seen everything. With her budding journalists curiosity she followed Virgil and Richie wondering what they were doing and where they were going. There was a story for the school paper here she could feel it.
***
Richie led Virgil quickly through the school, racing past classrooms and drawing startled looks from the students and staff within as they raced past the doors. In moments they were at the lockers. It was immediately obvious which one was Royce's locker, thick jets of metagas were coming out of it and the locker seemed to be visibly shaking with the pressure within.
"Virgil, Richie what is going on," Frieda demanded to know a moment before she saw the escaping metagas and gasped in recognition. "Is that what I think it is?"
"Yes," Richie replied. "It's going to blow any second"
"Not if I can help it," Virgil answered looking at the locker. There was no time for him to go and get changed into Static; he had to get that locker out of here now. It would mean revealing who and what he was to Frieda but he didn't have any choice. The consequences he would deal with later.
"What do you mean Virgil," Frieda asked and then gasped as Virgil raised his hands and a crackling corona of purple-white electricity appeared around them. He's a metahuman, she thought stunned, he's, he's Static. He's got to be. No other metahuman has powers like that.
Virgil lashed out with his powers sending beams of electromagnetic force at the rows of lockers. As quickly as he could he pulled the lockers off the wall and started twisting them into a ball with Royce's locker in the very centre. Hoping to contain the escaping gas long enough to get it out of the school and send it towards space, but it was already too late. The pressure in the locker too great for the thin metal to contain any longer, it ruptured wide open with a roar of an explosion.
The concussion wave of the explosion knocked all three of them flying backwards. Virgil started to pick himself up, seeing a massive rolling wall of purple metagas coming towards them. Desperately he tried to erect a force field bubble around them with the electromagnetic part of his abilities he wasn't quick enough.
The gas cloud enveloped them as it began spreading throughout the school in a suffocating cloud of purple haze. Coughing, eyes watering with chemical irritation Virgil crumpled to his knees, he had forgotten what this awful stuff was like. Faintly he heard thuds next to him as both Frieda and Richie collapsed to the ground, gagging and coughing desperately trying to breathe, before passing out. He tried to use his powers, tried to summon an energy whirlwind to blow away the gas, but the strength had left his limps. He couldn't move them at all.
His vision blurred and he felt himself collapsing completely, he could hear himself coughing. But it was distant, indistinct, fading away. Darkness eclipsed his vision.
Then he knew no more.
***
Freeman Community Centre
Twenty Minutes Later
Robert Hawkins tried to focus on the mountain of paperwork on his desk. For the last twenty minutes he had had the oddest feeling that something wasn't right. That something was wrong. He had tried distracting himself by going to get a cup of coffee and trying to do some of the more complex paperwork. But it wasn't working, no matter what he did he constantly got the feeling that something had happened.
His feeling of anxiety only increased when the phone began to ring. Feeling a chill, Robert reached out and picked up the phone and brought it to his ear.
"Freeman Community Centre, Robert Hawkins speaking," he said.
"Robert its Trina," a familiar female voice, a voice that warmed his heart in away that the voices of his children couldn't, in away that only his late wife had been able to. Yet as Trina spoke there was something in her voice that put him immediately on his guard that sent a shiver of fear down his spine.
"Hello there Trina," hi replied. "Is something wrong?"
"I'm afraid there is Robert," Trina answered. "And it involves Virgil, he's unconscious and is just being taken to the hospital."
"What!" Robert repeated glad that he was sitting down for he would have surely fallen as a sudden weakness hit his legs. He'd known that there was something wrong, he'd known there was. "What happened?"
"Do you have a television in your office Robert?"
"Yes?"
"Turn it on to the local news channel."
Robert picked up the remote control from its place on his desk and turned on the television to the local news channel. To see a view of Dakota Union High from the air from a news helicopter, various emergency vehicles were present around the building. A heading ran across the bottom of the screen, a heading that as he read it sent a shudder of horror down his spine. It said: MUTAGENIC GAS EXPLOSION AT CITY SCHOOL.
"Oh my god," Robert said staring at the screen a look of total shock and horror on his face. Virgil, he thought closing his eyes in pain, he knew what was very likely to happen to his son now.
"Robert," Trina said at last.
"What hospital has he been taken to," Robert asked keeping his voice calm despite the fact that he was inwardly shaking and that unnoticed a few tears were running down his cheeks.
"Dakota General Hospital," Trina replied. "Everyone from the school is being taken there." Robert nodded though Trina couldn't see it over the telephone line.
"I'll go and pick up Sharon and go there immediately," he answered.
"I'll be there as soon as I can Robert," Trina said then there was a pause. "I hope he'll be alright Robert."
"So do I Trina," Robert replied getting to his feet. "So do I. Thank you for being the one to tell me Trina."
"It was no trouble at all Robert," Trina answered then put the phone down on her end. Robert moved the phone from his ear and put it down before turning off the television.
As he put the remote down Robert's eyes fell on the photos of his family on his desk. Particularly on the photo of his handsome son, taken just three weeks ago. Without really thinking about it Robert reached out and gently caressed the class over Virgil's face. Would Virgil still be that handsome boy when he next saw him, or would he have changed. Been transformed into something hideous in appearance. Would he inside still be Virgil or would he have become someone else.
After a moment Robert sighed and turned away and walked to the door. No matter what happened, no matter what Virgil became, he would be hear for him, Virgil would always be his son no matter what he looked like or what he could do.
Reaching out Robert opened his door and left his office behind, heading straight for the car park. First he would pick up his daughter and then he would go to son's bedside and wait and see what happened. Ready to comfort and support Virgil, whatever happened next.
Changed Consequences
Authors Note: Takes place from just before the end of the episode Pop's Girlfriend and asks what could have happened if Royce had mutated ten minutes later than he did in the episode.
Part One
English Literature Class
Dakota Union High School
Virgil Hawkins looked down at the test paper laid out on his desk and tried to focus on answering the questions there. It was difficult, what Trina had told him about the missing metagas vials weighed heavily on his mind, as did his earlier encounter as Static with the giant mutated spider and cockroach.
Though Trina wasn't aware of it in telling him about the stolen vials of liquidised metagas she had informed Dakota's own metahuman superhero about the theft, and the fact that they did not have long to find those missing vials. Soon the binding agent used to force the metagas into a highly concentrated liquid state would ware off and the mutagenic compound would return to its natural gaseous state at immense pressure. Pressure that would shatter the vials and lead to another even larger big bang. Virgil knew he had to find someway to stop that from happening, there were enough of his fellow bang babies out there as it was, and almost all of them were bad news.
Compared to the possibility of another big bang happening soon Virgil found that the end of module English test paper somewhat irrelevant. What he wanted to be doing was to be out there in the city in his Static uniform, looking for the stolen vials before the time ran out, not sitting here in school doing a test. But that's the life of a teenage superhero, he thought with a mental sigh before focusing on the test paper, and with effort pushing the thought of the potential looming disaster out of his mind.
For now anyway.
***
Unnoticed elsewhere in the school small whiffs of purple smoke began drifting out of one of the lockers. The locker belonging to the juvenile delinquent, petty thief Royce. Had anyone come along they would have recognised the purple whiffs for what they were, metagas and a sign of growing, impending danger.
But no one saw them. So unchecked inside a metal case Royce had sequestered in the locker four glowing purple vials began to shake, small cracks starting to ribbon across there surfaces, allowing small whiffs of there contents to escape. And still the pressure built as the chemical reaction inside each vial began to gain force, the cracks multiplied, propelled by the terrible pressure building inside.
The danger was growing. But no one knew no one could take action to prevent the inevitable. Unchecked, unchallenged, disaster grew closer and closer.
There were now only minutes left.
***
Royce resisted the impulse to groan as his vision momentarily swum, obscuring the boring test paper in front of him and indeed the whole world in a momentary sparkle of rainbow colours. He didn't feel good, he felt strange and had been most of the day. He was beginning to think that Frankie was right and he should have left those vials of liquid big bang gas alone.
Abruptly his vision swum again and this time he felt a deep throbbing pain in his chest. It was only there for a moment, but it drew a groan of pain from his lips. Faint beads of sweat appeared on his brow at the same moment in time.
"Royce," Mr James asked from the front of the class looking at Royce in concern. It was obviously by looking at him that something was wrong. "Are you alright?"
Royce started to open his mouth to reply when the deep throbbing pain returned, spreading out from the core of his body to affect every single cell in him. Royce stood up and lurched away from his desk with a scream of pain as before the shocked eyes of his classmates Royce began to change.
His skin changed to a light purplish pink colour and his body began to expanded and twist, his clothes tearing apart from the stress being put on them by distorting, expanding muscles and limps. In seconds Royce had changed into a distorted, distended mockery of a human form, he looked like some monster from a cheap kid's television show.
"Royce," Mr James said moving forward to assist the mutated student before he could freak out mentally cursing to himself. He knew that this was going to happen one day, that one day he would come across a metahuman in school. They seemed to be everywhere in this damned city.
He was almost to Royce, when Royce admitted a roar and with a sweep of his incredibly long right arm knocked him flying. James slammed into the far wall of the class and crumpled to the ground unconscious, then Royce turned and charged out of the room knocking a hole in the wall. He had to run he couldn't let anyone see him like this.
As the creature Royce had transformed into fled the room and panic broke out amongst his terrified classmates, Virgil's brain came out of its stunned surprise and processed what had happened. The vials of metagas were here in Dakota Union High, he had to get them, he had to get them out of here now before they exploded and turned the whole school into metahumans. Looking at Royce's friend Frankie, who was staring at the hole in the wall in horror and fear Virgil knew just how to find where they were, Frankie would know. He went everywhere and did everything with Royce.
As members of the class began fleeing the room Virgil marched over and grabbed Frankie by the arm, before he could run away.
"The stolen metagas is here isn't it," he said to Frankie. "Tell me where it is." Frankie looked at Virgil in fear, the other teen had his arm in a vice like grip and looking at Virgil now he saw someone he had never seen before. Someone determined, someone who looked like he was powerful, someone who did not look happy with him at all.
"I..." he started to say then his voice trailed off. Virgil rolled his eyes then gave Frankie his best intimidation look.
"Tell me where they are or they are going to end up renaming this place metahuman high," he said feeling his powers tingling through his body, surging in response to his heightened emotions, coming close to the surface.
"Okay, okay," Frankie replied shaking feeling a strange electrostatic tingling like pins and needles racing up his arm from where Virgil was holding him. Looking into Virgil's determined brown eyes Frankie was sure he saw a glimmer of energy there, of contained power. And suddenly he understood whom it was he was speaking to, who was holding him. Virgil was a metahuman, and not just any ordinary metahuman he was Static Shock.
"There in the Royce's locker," Frankie said fearful and respectful of the power he could feel coming up his arm from Virgil's inadvertent emissions of power. He knew that Virgil could pound him into the ground with no effort at all. "Number three two six four."
"I know that locker series bro," Richie said from beside Virgil, inwardly smirking to himself as Frankie buckled under Virgil's intimidating gaze. Up close he could feel the waves of electrical and electromagnetic energy that Virgil was inadvertently giving off, it was the same kind of feeling you got when you put your hand on a television just as it was switched off. "There this way."
"Lead on then bro," Virgil replied letting go of Frankie. The other teen backed away from him then turned and ran away, following the rest of the class out of the room. Richie nodded and hurried out of the room, with Virgil close behind him.
But not everyone had left the classroom after Royce's transformation. Standing near the corner Frieda Goran had seen everything. With her budding journalists curiosity she followed Virgil and Richie wondering what they were doing and where they were going. There was a story for the school paper here she could feel it.
***
Richie led Virgil quickly through the school, racing past classrooms and drawing startled looks from the students and staff within as they raced past the doors. In moments they were at the lockers. It was immediately obvious which one was Royce's locker, thick jets of metagas were coming out of it and the locker seemed to be visibly shaking with the pressure within.
"Virgil, Richie what is going on," Frieda demanded to know a moment before she saw the escaping metagas and gasped in recognition. "Is that what I think it is?"
"Yes," Richie replied. "It's going to blow any second"
"Not if I can help it," Virgil answered looking at the locker. There was no time for him to go and get changed into Static; he had to get that locker out of here now. It would mean revealing who and what he was to Frieda but he didn't have any choice. The consequences he would deal with later.
"What do you mean Virgil," Frieda asked and then gasped as Virgil raised his hands and a crackling corona of purple-white electricity appeared around them. He's a metahuman, she thought stunned, he's, he's Static. He's got to be. No other metahuman has powers like that.
Virgil lashed out with his powers sending beams of electromagnetic force at the rows of lockers. As quickly as he could he pulled the lockers off the wall and started twisting them into a ball with Royce's locker in the very centre. Hoping to contain the escaping gas long enough to get it out of the school and send it towards space, but it was already too late. The pressure in the locker too great for the thin metal to contain any longer, it ruptured wide open with a roar of an explosion.
The concussion wave of the explosion knocked all three of them flying backwards. Virgil started to pick himself up, seeing a massive rolling wall of purple metagas coming towards them. Desperately he tried to erect a force field bubble around them with the electromagnetic part of his abilities he wasn't quick enough.
The gas cloud enveloped them as it began spreading throughout the school in a suffocating cloud of purple haze. Coughing, eyes watering with chemical irritation Virgil crumpled to his knees, he had forgotten what this awful stuff was like. Faintly he heard thuds next to him as both Frieda and Richie collapsed to the ground, gagging and coughing desperately trying to breathe, before passing out. He tried to use his powers, tried to summon an energy whirlwind to blow away the gas, but the strength had left his limps. He couldn't move them at all.
His vision blurred and he felt himself collapsing completely, he could hear himself coughing. But it was distant, indistinct, fading away. Darkness eclipsed his vision.
Then he knew no more.
***
Freeman Community Centre
Twenty Minutes Later
Robert Hawkins tried to focus on the mountain of paperwork on his desk. For the last twenty minutes he had had the oddest feeling that something wasn't right. That something was wrong. He had tried distracting himself by going to get a cup of coffee and trying to do some of the more complex paperwork. But it wasn't working, no matter what he did he constantly got the feeling that something had happened.
His feeling of anxiety only increased when the phone began to ring. Feeling a chill, Robert reached out and picked up the phone and brought it to his ear.
"Freeman Community Centre, Robert Hawkins speaking," he said.
"Robert its Trina," a familiar female voice, a voice that warmed his heart in away that the voices of his children couldn't, in away that only his late wife had been able to. Yet as Trina spoke there was something in her voice that put him immediately on his guard that sent a shiver of fear down his spine.
"Hello there Trina," hi replied. "Is something wrong?"
"I'm afraid there is Robert," Trina answered. "And it involves Virgil, he's unconscious and is just being taken to the hospital."
"What!" Robert repeated glad that he was sitting down for he would have surely fallen as a sudden weakness hit his legs. He'd known that there was something wrong, he'd known there was. "What happened?"
"Do you have a television in your office Robert?"
"Yes?"
"Turn it on to the local news channel."
Robert picked up the remote control from its place on his desk and turned on the television to the local news channel. To see a view of Dakota Union High from the air from a news helicopter, various emergency vehicles were present around the building. A heading ran across the bottom of the screen, a heading that as he read it sent a shudder of horror down his spine. It said: MUTAGENIC GAS EXPLOSION AT CITY SCHOOL.
"Oh my god," Robert said staring at the screen a look of total shock and horror on his face. Virgil, he thought closing his eyes in pain, he knew what was very likely to happen to his son now.
"Robert," Trina said at last.
"What hospital has he been taken to," Robert asked keeping his voice calm despite the fact that he was inwardly shaking and that unnoticed a few tears were running down his cheeks.
"Dakota General Hospital," Trina replied. "Everyone from the school is being taken there." Robert nodded though Trina couldn't see it over the telephone line.
"I'll go and pick up Sharon and go there immediately," he answered.
"I'll be there as soon as I can Robert," Trina said then there was a pause. "I hope he'll be alright Robert."
"So do I Trina," Robert replied getting to his feet. "So do I. Thank you for being the one to tell me Trina."
"It was no trouble at all Robert," Trina answered then put the phone down on her end. Robert moved the phone from his ear and put it down before turning off the television.
As he put the remote down Robert's eyes fell on the photos of his family on his desk. Particularly on the photo of his handsome son, taken just three weeks ago. Without really thinking about it Robert reached out and gently caressed the class over Virgil's face. Would Virgil still be that handsome boy when he next saw him, or would he have changed. Been transformed into something hideous in appearance. Would he inside still be Virgil or would he have become someone else.
After a moment Robert sighed and turned away and walked to the door. No matter what happened, no matter what Virgil became, he would be hear for him, Virgil would always be his son no matter what he looked like or what he could do.
Reaching out Robert opened his door and left his office behind, heading straight for the car park. First he would pick up his daughter and then he would go to son's bedside and wait and see what happened. Ready to comfort and support Virgil, whatever happened next.
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