LotS/The Story/Puny Human Birthdays III/Origin
Kaanaar soars above the streets, the updrafts flowing over and through him, a chemical symphony lifting him and carrying him through the sky. The endless song of his city.
His form shimmers, deforms, reassembles. A humanoid figure cutting through the sky on massive red wings, throwing his shadow wide.
There isn't a citizen in the city who doesn't look up to the sky and know his silhouette against the moonlight means protection. Means they're safe.
And not a criminal who doesn't feel his shadow pass over with dread.
This is his city.
A familiar tingle drifts across him, tugging at his awareness. Something in his city was calling to him, something familiar. Something chemical, and cold.
Realization hits him like a freight ship, and memories flood back from a nearly forgotten age. A time of simple black and whites and of sudden upheaval and fear. A time of a city undefended.
A time of origins.
---
It's a quiet night in the big city, and the streets were full of those with nowhere else to go.
The poor, the disenfranchised. The cops, the crooks. Dark alleys, dark dealings. Plots and plans. The potential for violence, for disorder. A big city. Quiet, sure, but simmering. Ready to boil.
And through it all, unmarked, a Smythe transport carrying unknown cargo from the city lab to a secure holding facility drifts through the streets. A quiet run, a short trip, and then the cargo would be safely aboard a ship and headed offplanet.
For the Sussurran security on board, it's meant to be an easy gig. A paying job for a newcomer to the city, veteran of one of the galaxy's endless battlegrounds. A warrior ready to lay down arms, and live a quiet life.
But nothing is ever so simple.
Someone wants that cargo. And someone is willing to pay a high price to get it. Enough to afford a mercenary like Shiver.
The icy blast roars over the transport like a sudden storm, freezing it to the street and icing over the engines. They smoke, flare out. The transport is dead.
The security guard inside the transport checks his transparent containment suit for cracks, and checks the cargo for leaks. So far so good, but there's a hammering coming from outside the transport. Shouts, gunfire, and silence.
The rear hatch of the transport frosts over, the temperature inside the compartment dropping dramatically. The guard raises his sidearm and waits, but nothing can prepare him for the violence in store. The hatch shatters, brittle as candy glass, clattering into frozen shards. A howling wind slams through and knocks the guard to the ground, the gun flying from his hand.
The icy wind dies down, and a woman in a terrifying battle suit steps through, pure cold swirling around her hands.
The guard struggles to his feet, feeling himself swirling out of his breached containment suit. He struggles to place himself between the assailant and his cargo, battlefield memories battering him.
"Stand aside, peon," the woman's voice demands. Her suit makes it mechanical, low, menacing, "I just want the compound."
And he'll always wonder why, that first time, he didn't step aside. Whether it was honor, or ethics, or instinct. But he doesn't move aside. He gathers his vapor together, and forms a blade.
"Suit yourself," the woman laughs, and as he lunges she directs the stunning force of her cold gauntlets in a devastating blast that freezes and shatters his transparent suit and blasts him into a swirling, disoriented cloud around the cargo container.
And so he feels it right away when the container cracks in the cold of the blast. Feels the experimental compound hiss out and mingle with his gaseous form. Feels it unravel him, reshape him.
He feels every molecule of his essence being torn apart, reshaped, reborn.
And then, Kaanaar feels the city.
---
The veteran hero draws in the particulate evidence of Shiver's mischief, ponders it, and banks lower. Triangulating her location. Formulating a plan.
Shiver won't be dealing with a rookie hero this time.
It's time she learns whose city this is. Once and for all.