This is my story, conceived and written by myself. Any characters and events that bear a resemblance to any other character or event is entirely coincidental. I ask that you do not use any of them without my permission.

So here's my latest drivel. A copy of this story can be found on the story site of danath, another user of this site. The more places my stuff can be found the more people will read it, non? :P

Update: I've revised the story, added about seven hundred more words. Enjoy. :P

My name is Break and I am a superhero. God, how arrogant does that sound? But it's true (after a fashion). I'm actually a student who tries to fight crime (and doesn't that just sound silly when you stop to think about it) when he can find the time. If I had my choice I wouldn't bother with school, but Erhaben insists I get an education for some ungodly reason, but he's usually right about this sort of thing and I didn't get where I am today by questioning even the most seemingly innocuous of orders.

The first time I manifested my powers I was 16, a sophomore in high school. I was living with my aunt in Darwin, Australia. She had raised me since I was just a baby after parents had been killed in a supervillain attack. Now Oz, unlike America, doesn't have a reputation for getting its panties in a bunch over people who are different. Not many people ever made any big deal over the fact that I'm an otter morph (second generation. My parents both received morphic surgery to become Otters, I was born an Otter.)

Even so, I didn't feel the need to let others know that I'm also gay. I had a bit of a reputation for reclusiveness. I didn't go out of my way to make friends and didn't typically encourage anyone who tried to get close. There were some kids whom I normally ate lunch with, but that was just because we happened to find ourselves sharing a table more often than not. I'd read horror stories on the internet and even knowing that alot the stuff wasn't likely to happen, I wasn't gonna take the chance.

Starting my sophomore year I picked up a bully, Adam Kessler. It was in vogue that year to have a brainless human jock and his friends repeatedly beat you up for being different in all the wrong ways and I'm not one to shirk the latest trends. He had somehow picked up on the fact that I was gay, because he was constantly calling me fag and queer and any other name he could think up, none of them particularly original or creative. I made an attempt to ignore him at first. It didn't work. Then I tried the system; I went to the guidance counselor and told him about Kessler. She made sympathetic noises and promised to look into the matter. You can imagine how that went. When I started coming home with black eyes and split lips my aunt went to the school board. They told her right to her face that there was no bullying problem in their school. And that was that. I was forced to endure Kessler's harassment while my aunt looked into moving me to a different scool. And the more I thought about it the madder I got and the madder I got the more I wanted to punch something. So I finally worked up the nerve to punch Kessler. Through a wall.

The leading theory on the development of superpowers holds that they manifest in response to extreme stress. Typically this occurs during a life-threatening situation, but apparently in my case due to Kessler's attentions and the school board's refusal to admit that bullying was a problem in their school. Doctor Marion Harmon's essay on the subject presents that there are three basic responses that shape the nature of powers. Push back at the source of the stress, neutralize the source of the stress or escape the source of the stress, with each response being dependent on the person themselves. Turns out I was all push.

So there I was, standing in a crowded hall having just punched the school's star quarterback through the closest wall. Then things started happening fast. An ambulance was called to take Adam to the hospital (He was lucky to come out of the experience with 16 broken bones) and the police arrived to take me in and the Registration was alerted.

Remember what I said earlier about Australia not being likely to mistreat a Morph? Well, the same can not be said for their attitude towards Post-Normals. Some years ago a pair of PNs, strong ones, duked it out in the skies over New York City. The damage their fight caused was horrific and whatever the world's view of Supers was before, the Brawl as it came to be known decidedly skewed its opinion towards the negative. There was a call for the governments of the world to registration. Alot of supers opposed it, many more went to ground. There was a short, brutal war but the Registration ultimately succeeded. As a newly awakened Post-Normal, I would be taken into custody where they would record my name and family history. My powers would be tested and if they felt like letting me go I would be given a new identity in some other country. If not, they would lock me up and throw away the key.

Which is pretty much what the police did until the Registration forces (based in the United Kingdom) could arrive to take me away. A picket formed outside the police station with astonishing speed. All of a sudden I was a dangerous freak who had put that nice Kessler boy in the hospital. They wanted the death penalty. They wanted me to be strung up and hanged. They wanted the freak to leave. I must have fallen asleep at some point because the next thing I knew I was waking up to the sound of screams and gunfire.

The window in my cell was a good nine feet above the ground, a daunting challenge for my modest five feet five inches of height but with my new-found superstrength I was able to jump and grab the bars after only a little practice(hitting your head on the ceiling is something you only do once).

In a world with bonafide superheroes most kids will be very familiar with the who's who of the superhero community and I was no exception. So it was an immense surprise to see Camelot -a relatively new hero who wore powered armor and operated out in Spika, Germany, having allied himself with the resident hero Erhaben- standing in the courtyard encircled by police cars, occasionally firing smoking canisters, probably tear gas, at the cops who had quickly come to the conclusion that their guns would have no effect.

"Stunning isn't she?" A voice behind me said. Completely startled, I let go of the bars and fell heavily to the ground. Looking towards the entrance I saw a quite attractive hyena with no shirt kneeling in front of the cell door, fiddling with the lock.

Totally dumbfounded by this shocking change of events I asked the first thing that came to mind. "Who is she?"

"Pardon?"

"You said 'Stunning isn't she?'. Who is she?"

"Oh, yeah. I was talking about Camelot."

"Everyone says Camelot is a man."

The hyena chuckled. "Well, if she is then she's going to have alot of explaining to do when we get back to Spika. She's engaged to Erhaben. Don't bother me kid, I'm working."

I felt a hot flush of anger, "I'm not a kid. My name is Ethan Packard and I'm sixteen and I could probably kill you if I wanted."

The hyena looked up from his work again and grinned. He had a nice smile. "No, you couldn't. Ah! Success!" he said as he finally managed to open the lock. "Now come along kid, we've got to go now. Scorn will be here soon and she isn't someone we want to mess with."

I followed the hyena through the station, noting the occasional unconscious police officer. "Don't worry." he said, looking back at me. "They'll be all right in a few hours. I'm Exabyte by the way. You may have heard of me." I nodded dumbly and he grinned again. We finally made it outside where Camelot was waiting for us, having dispatched all of the police. She looked me up and down. "He doesn't look like much. Why does the dumbass want him?" she said. It seemed odd then that she would call her fiance a dumbass, but I would soon learn that this was entirely normal for the couple.

"Does it matter? Let's go, Scorn is almost here, ETA five minutes." Camelot reached down and grabbed us both and engaged the thrusters in her feet and on her back. "I hate that bitch." she said as we took to the air.

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It took about twenty minutes to arrive at the airstrip, with Exabyte and Camelot arguing the entire way about whether or not Scorn would be able to catch them. During the twelve hour plane ride back to Spika, Exabyte filled me in on Scorn.

The mistress of fire and flames, Scorn, the Grim Blaze, was one of the most prominent super-villainnesses in the world. Not a natural Post-Normal, she had received her powers from a medical experiment, a successful attempt to duplicate the abilities of the hero Field Test. Though her powers were an exact copy of Field Test's, she displayed far greater proficiency with them than he ever had. Immense control over heat and fire, able to generate them and alter their temperatures wildly, Scorn had made a big hubbub with her debut by killing Texas' premiere superhero Bouncer. A short crime-spree later and she moved north-west, blazing a trail across the U.S. to San Francisco where their own resident hero, Oceanus, failed completely to stop her thievery, though not for lack of trying.

After that she disappeared, and didn't show up again for three years, this time with a new partner in tow. Kaitlyn Lee, a somewhat ditzy Canadian rat with super strength currently ranking in the #2 spot in the world, just behind Skyline, the Ultimate Wolf. The duo made their way to Europe and made a home for themselves in Dublin, Ireland (apparently for no reason other than because Scorn liked the name) where they proved the old adage that if you have enough disposable income you can get away with anything. Though the fortune was obviously obtained by fencing stolen property, Scorn and Kaitlyn were incredibly rich and very generous with their money. Combined with the typical territoriality that supervillains tend to develop towards other criminals, and within a year the pair was being hailed as the greatest thing to ever happen to Ireland (except by the hardcore religious groups who had somehow convinced themselves that Scorn and Kaitlyn were lesbian lovers). Then came the Brawl and the war. Much of Scorn's assets were seized by Registration forces and Scorn disappeared.

When she once more resurfaced she was the leader of her own little Secret Society of Super Villains, a group called the Survivors, boasting some of the more powerful and infamous supervillains that had survived the war. As of late she had been competing with Erhaben, tracking down and recruiting new Manifestations, apparently intent on overthrowing the Registration where Erhaben was only interested in fortifying Spika. No one knew how she found the new Manifestations so fast, but she hadn't been very successful.

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We arrived in Spika a little after eleven. Camelot stayed behind to deal with the plane to see about returning her armor to her workshop while Exabyte drove us to Erhaben's unofficial headquarters in his brother's bar.

The first thing we noticed upon entering Alpha's was a very angry rat screaming "Verräter!!" over and over at a tall wolf, slowly dragging a somewhat smaller wolf and a black furred fox who were holding on to either of his arms, across the room. For his part the tall wolf was alternating between smirking patronizingly at the rat and egging him on.

In between them a pink furred wolf, immediately identifiable as Skyline, was attempting to contain the situation and not having much luck. Around them the rest of the patrons were going about their own business. It's a well-known fact that supers, both hero and villain alike, tend to be fairly dramatic people and the rat, who I realized was Erhaben, evidently blew up often enough that no one was at all disturbed by it. A few people watched with amusement, and I saw money changing hands here and there, but no one made any attempt to help Skyline.

Exabyte shook his head when I asked what was going on, took me by the shoulder and led me to the stairs behind the bar. The entire second floor of the bar had been converted into a loft. He told me to help myself to anything I could find to eat or drink then disappeared back downstairs to deal with Erhaben's breakdown. I later found out that Erhaben was angry that the larger wolf, his brother Alpha, had told their mother he had taken up smoking. This is the kind of people I'm working with now.

So that was the end of the first day of my new life. That was thee years ago. It was somewhat atypical, and life working with Erhaben is anything but easy but I wouldn't go back for a second.