Chapter Text
SAN TOMAS, CALIFORNIA
FIVE YEARS AGO
The day my life changed forever. Well, everyone's life did. It was one of those 'you remember where you were' days. But mine, and about 9,000 others, changed the most.
The afternoon started at the park. I was playing basketball with a few friends of mine.
"Come on, Sara, keep up!" Kayla, a black girl with cornrows said as she dribbled the ball back and forth, running in circles around me.
"I could if you stopped taunting me so much!" I laughed, trying to steal the ball.
"There you go, Sara!" Mary, a tall Indian girl, scooped the ball out of the air and passed it over to me.
"My knight in shining jersey…"
"Shut up!" Kayla giggled trying to fight for it back. I ended up shooting a basket when she tried to block me off.
So, yeah. Me and some of my other friends were chilling, hanging, having a good time. Until I saw a live stream on my phone, of two monstrous individuals fighting.
On the first side of the battle, there was the guy with purple skin and green stripe patterns who was the size of a Buick. We call him the Monster Man. It's not like he can oppose it, he can't talk. But this monster always saves the city from a bigger monster. Alien attacks, killer robots, demons straight from hell. Sometimes it takes a beast to kill a beast, right? Even one with purple skin and the ability to smash a truck into pieces.
Then, on the other end of the battle, there was the Red Beast. The bad guy who'd been haunting this city for months. He was a huge red-skinned, monstrous man with fur and scales all over. He had a blackened, graying beard hanging down his face. He looked like he had remnants of a lab coat, but besides that he had nothing on him.
So, yeah, Monster Man and Red Beast were fighting, and… oh, shit. Red was winning.
Screw this shit. I had to get home fast if this was going where I think it was!
I got back to my dad's apartment as fast as I could. He and my stepmom were already watching the TV as attentively as they could. In the time it took for me to run from the park all the way home, Monster Man was already beaten half to death. And behind the Red Beast, there was a sphere that looked like an alien dropped it on accident, with a chrome base, black pegs all over, and crackling platinum electricity.
The Red Beast strided over the Monster Man and ripped one of the news cameras that were filming the fight right out of the newscaster's hand, holding it out in front of him like he was performing a Shakespearean monologue. "Citizens of San Tomas! I am your salvation!"
"La Bestia Roja de San Tomás…" I heard my father whisper under his breath.
Red spoke further. "Once, I was a scientist. My first name was Dr Jeffrey Crawford. I created the reactor you see before you. Once it was to be the clean energy of the future, but I saw a better calling once I saw this man." He lifted the man at his feet with his free hand. "Dr. Robert David. The Monster Man. The strongest, toughest, and most powerful man to ever live on this Earth." Then, he dropped him back down with a monstrous THUD. "Until he inspired me to make myself better. To make everyone better."
I tried to speak up to my parents, but their fear mesmerized them towards the TV.
Red continued his speech. "Many will die, but the ones who remain will be more. They will be stronger. They will be reborn like we were."
It was about that time when just about every police officer in the city showed up, with guns pointed towards the Red Beast, who just scoffed. "Don't bother trying. Shoot the reactor and the bomb goes off early. Shoot me and you'll die regretting it."
The speed of the lightning coming out of the reactor had been increasing more, and more, and more. Red smiled with pointed teeth as he turned to face it. "At last… the world will see the truth. The truth that people have always refused to see."
Then, the lightning stopped. It was ready. "People like me are the future." The Red Beast thrust his hand into the reactor, cracking it open.
Then there was a flash of platinum light. Everywhere.
THREE WEEKS LATER
I woke up in the hospital. Not the first time it's happened. White walls and health equipment aren't foreign to me. The strange thing was, how was I still alive? I should be dead after a blast like that.
Dr. Armin Wilson helped fill me in on what happened. I was found in my home, unconscious. My parents were unresponsive. Me and the ones who survived were wheeled out to hospitals in towns all over California. Still, so many people died… just like that, in one instant.
That's when I realized, "My parents… my family… my friends…"
"I'm sorry. We can't guarantee that everyone's safe. We'll try and find who we can. But only 2% of the population survived the attack."
"2%?" I asked, in disbelief of the destruction.
"San Tomas had 500,000 people before the bomb. Now it has 9,000. If that."
"So many people…" I cried, unable to help myself thinking of all that death.
"Hey, there, there, it's alright…" He comforted me with a decent bedside manner. "The bad guy was apprehended and put into UNSAC custody not long after the blast. You can at least rest easy with that."
"I… I guess…"
"But, there's something else you should know." He sat down next to me, pulling out a clipboard. "Every last survivor has exhibited some kind of unique powers. Everyone who didn't share a mutagenic gene that activated upon exposure to extremely high ultraviolet died from poisoning. That was his freaky plan…"
"To create an entire city of superhumans? I swear that'd be a dream if people didn't die…"
"You'd be surprised at how quickly the radiation dissipated, too. City's a ruin now, obviously, but people will come back, and the city will be safe. Not as it was, not nearly, but as close as possible."
"So, I could come back to San Tomás once I'm ready."
"Of course. There are a few other common traits, too. Like everyone in the blast, your condition - strength, speed, agility, senses, everything - are all at minimum the best of any human. Your immune system can fight and beat any toxin, chemical or radiological. Your cells can regenerate at a rate beyond belief. And those are just the bare minimum. You could have other powers that no one else has. Not only is it my job to take care of you, it is also my job to figure out what those abilities are."
He asked me if I would accept the following tests, with the knowledge that most, if not all of them, would kill a normal human, and placed my full legal trust in my doctor. I accepted, verbally and on this little sheet of paper he handed me.
"Good. Then, let's begin." He said, with a warm smile. "Drink this. It'll make you feel better."
I took the cup, and drank what was in it. It just tasted like water, with no real color or taste to it. The worst it did was make my stomach feel slightly funny. "What was that, exactly?"
"Arsenic."
"WHAT THE HELL?! RAT POISON?!?" I spat up and gagged.
"Toxin immunity test initiated. How do you feel?"
"Angry that my doctor just fed me poison. But… besides that… I'm not dead!"
"Subject successfully demonstrates toxic immunity. Test successful." He wrote a check on his clipboard.
I followed him to a different room, with a cabinet he opened up. On a mannequin, there was a simple navy blue suit with light gloves and a big white wave shape over the abdomen. Between the shoulders and the top of the chest there was this large triangle in the same color. "We've used suits like these to monitor motor disability patients as they relearn to walk. With luck, it'll be able to track your internal systems just as well."
I tried it on. It didn't look half bad on me, but it felt a little tight.
"Now. Onto our next test." Again, he pulled out the clipboard. "Judging by scans conducted while you were in your coma, your cells generate a vastly increased amount of bioelectricity."
"What's that supposed to mean? I give more static shocks?"
"I propose that you will be able to concentrate that bioelectricity in such a manner that you can discharge it from your body towards a target. So…" He wheeled in a cart which had a stack of old boxes. "Here is your target. So, fire when ready"
I looked closely at the target of the impromptu shooting range."Hmm… pew pew pew." I made finger-gun motions. Nothing happened.
"Nope… um, bang!" Zero.
"Shazam!" Zilch.
"Ka-boom!" Nulla.
"Please?" Nil.
"Ugh! This is so… STUPID!" I screamed as I threw my hand towards the boxes. It was only then that a crackling burst of mint-green light and electricity shot out of my hand, veiling the topmost box in dispersing electricity. I leaped and cheered for myself when that finally happened.
Dr. Wilson smiled and nodded with approval. "Bioelectric blasts. Check. No concussive force, perhaps it has an effect on the nervous system. Next test."
Another day, in another part of the warehouse. The two of us were on opposite sides of elevated platforms attached to the wall. "According to my tests you've got some genetic markers in common with some superhumans who can fly."
"Yeah, but… does that mean I actually CAN fly?"
"With the radiation that activated it, yes! Your goal is to get from that platform to this one. Without using those side rails."
"Really? What if I fall? This is 10 feet high!"
"Ah. One second…" He climbed down the ladder, setting down several mattresses in between the two platforms. "Just in case you can't fly, if you jump, you can land on here…"
"I can do this… I can do this…" I took a deep breath and jumped off. I let out a yelp of "YIKES!" as I fell, and closed my eyes. But when they opened, I was hovering right above the ground. I guess that works for birds and people, who knew?
Controlling it was a different matter. I had trouble figuring out how to lean forward and back, maneuver around, until I landed onto the side of the platform. "Self-propelled levitation… check." Dr. Wilson remarked. "I've always wondered how that actually worked. Anti-gravitons? Psychokinetics? Gotta analyze that."
Funnily enough, there was one power that we sort of discovered by accident. During another test, which required me being close to him for a little while, he said he began to feel dizzy. "What? Are you okay? Do you need water?"
"No, no, I'm fine. It just… might have been something I ate." The two of us sat down and just talked for a while. All of a sudden, he started to look at me funny. "What's that on your face?"
"Umm… sweat? I was working pretty hard on the test you just gave me."
"One moment." He took a sample of it back to his lab. Some time later, he got a rather interesting result. "Astonishing! Your bodily fluids contain large trace amounts of insectoid pheromones!"
"That's… cool? And a little gross…"
He wrote on his ever-present clipboard yet again. "Pheromone-based influence on others. That's a new one…"
We did a few more tests after that. Evidently, I can lift a car over my head, I can heal from a cut in seconds, and I can even keep up with a sprinter friend of Dr. Wilson's.
Then, one day, all of a sudden he stopped testing me. "Well… that's the last test. You're ready."
"Ready? Ready for what?"
"You have incredible powers. You're eighteen years old. You'll have a whole city full of people almost exactly like you. The greatest tragedy in the state forged you into something better. I have been training you, testing you every day. I ask you, Sara Drew, what do you think I have been preparing you for?"
"You were training me. To be a superhero." I laughed. "Wow. Never in my life…"
"Would you have ever thought of this opportunity? I thought not. But, the best heroes are the ones who are given a chance by fate and destiny. But, whether you want to be a beacon of hope, or just another member of society, that's your decision. And I will respect it."
"I got it. But… it's not like I have much of a normal life to go back to anymore. So, I guess I should give this… Beacon thing a try."
"Yes! You will be the Beacon of San Tomás!"
"You're right, Dr. Wilson. That does have a nice ring to it!"
From that day forward, if you ever took a trip to San Tomás, the City of Superpowers, one day I might just be another face in the crowd. But another, I'll be flying over as a symbol of hope and justice.
Let's just see how long a Beacon can shine!
……
CHARACTER BIOGRAPHY
REAL NAME: Sara Drew
OCCUPATION: Adventurer, Student (currently self-teaching)
LEGAL STATUS: American citizen
OTHER ALIASES: Beacon
PLACE OF BIRTH: United States
PERSONAL STATUS: Single
KNOWN RELATIVES: Ricardo & Rachel Drew (Father and Stepmother, deceased), unknown mother (status unknown)
GROUP AFFILIATION: N/A
Base of Operations: San Tomás, California
Height: 5'7
Weight: 120 lbs
Eyes: Black
Hair: Black
Powers:
- Common traits of a San Tomás survivor:
- Enhanced strength, speed, agility, stamina, durability, etc.
- Complete immunity to toxins and radiation
- Highly resistant to injury (enhanced healing)
- Self-propelled flight
- Able to channel bioelectricity into stunning electric blasts
- Able to generate a variety of pheromones to influence others
Skills & Talents:
- Currently learning skills in self-defense, strategy, and law enforcement techniques thanks to her secretive mentor, Armin Wilson.
Weapons & Equipment:
- Specialized training suit she uses as a hero.