On a day unlike any other a volcano erupted and the result was a blinding light tearing apart the landscape in an explosion, the ash for which blot out the entire continent. It lasted for a few days before disappearing entirely baffling the world.
On that day the world changed.
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Roy Jackson woke up and his world was different.
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He crash landed in an unfamiliar city of lights, under the night sky. It was incredibly bright and the sound of cars below was a novel experience. He hadn’t heard that sound in ages.
‘Why did I think that? I know what cars are, I know what they sound like but why…’
He couldn’t figure out this strange sense of discombobulated deja vu. He blinked, ‘that’s the empire state building all right but what’s with this odd cyberpunk tinge to everything?’
He wondered if he was even in the right world anymore, last he remembered he was in… he couldn’t remember, ‘Where did I used to live?’
His memories came up blank, thing weren’t the same as he remembered, the cars honked the same as they were stuck in traffic or would be if it weren’t for some of them being low-flying gravity defying machines. There were still the old types of vehicles with tires and glasses but the other ones flew above them on seemingly their own runways.
‘What had changed? Did I go to sleep and wake up twenty years in the future?’
He looked down at the near thirty meter drop, the sheer height dizzying to anyone else. He considered how he would get down, the door to the roof seemed to be locked shut, and he doubted anyone came up here in the middle of the night.
If only he could fly.
The sound of shifting metal burst from his back and a faceplate went up in front of his face as twin wings he could feel there were turbines on the back.
Then he heard a low engine start to rumble.
“Oh no…” They increased in power.
“No no no stop. Command Override!” The turbines began to pull in air, and he was starting to feel weightless. Roy gave up, “Damn it.”
Then blast off into the cloudy night sky.
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The faceplate protected much of his face from the fierce frigid winds of the frost high up in the clouds. If it wasn’t there he would’ve likely frozen to death. Apparently it- the strange armouring stretched to the rest of his body and protected much of his body including his arms. The aesthetic patterns of dark blue with shining light blue wiring coursing through, it reminded of Generator Rex the tv show in style but the colour of his wings were something else altogether.
‘Were these nanites?’ He didn’t know how much however he was going to go and tried to tilt it but that wasn’t going to happen he was a ragdoll attached to fireworks. He was just along for the ride.
‘Damn it, I wish I was aimed at something, at this rate I’ll hit the moon.’ Just as soon as the thought had crossed his mind the sound of what he thought was mecha-shifting his wings disappeared along with the jets.
Arcing through the air, his brief thoughts of the ground and his soft squishy body crossed his mind.
Then he started to fall.
Three kilometers.
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Heart Pounding, “Shit! Wings! Wings!”
Nothing happened, as winds ripped past his flapping clothes and the ground opened up to him, allowing him to see the edges of the city. The view breathtaking as much as the fall terrified him, he blinked as he didn’t have time for that nonsense, “I need to land! Command Override!”
Still nothing. ‘The stupid nanites don’t work on voice command, which was a good thing if someone could mimic his voice but still I’m going to die if nothing happens!’ What he needed was...
A roar answered him, he could hear the distant shattering of class, cars honking and crowds of screaming people.
“If this is shounen now would be a good time for a power up!”
Still nothing, he was less than a kilometer from the ground, and the buildings were even closer reminding him he had seconds before he died.
“Damn it!” Roy gave up, there was nothing he could do. As if things couldn’t get worse he heard the roar come at him, looking to his right he saw a blur being chased through skies by what looked to be a large wyvern dragon with jet engines for wings. They screamed around the city, the blur tried to pull tight turns but it wasn’t fast enough as the wyvern could turn on the spot at near ninety degrees, it was ridiculous.
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He needed to help whoever was running; he had no choice. Seeing the dragon with those thrusters on its wings felt… right. Just as he was a hundred meters from the going splat the wings came back but now they were a caricature of the dragon’s wings. Chestplate came up looking something like the engine intake vents glowing red as it sucked in air at a rapid pace, and the thrusters reversed momentum letting him hover above the street.
Arms were a V-shape that were connected to the three thrusters on each wing that came to a point for aerodynamics and he could move them all independently.
People looked at him in shock as the thrusters from the wings whipped up clothing and other loose articles, cameras and phones were being shot at him. Expressions of awe, fear and confusion were the most prominent, others were just trying to get out of the area.
‘Yeah it’s time to go.’ This time the wings responded more intuitively and he shot off into the sky. He could feel the type of fire and could increase it accordingly even feeling as the changes took place from the bright bursting white and crimson flames to the cold lightning blue.
He broke the sound barrier as he shot off.
‘Now I need to find that dragon.’ Suddenly a HUD popped up, the nanites seemed to be using his eyelids as the screen shining symbols of light on them in a way that didn’t hurt them.
He read the layout but much of it was in another language that didn’t make sense.
“Who the hell made this thing, aliens or flipping egyptians?” It was about more specific detail was incomprehensible but he could get a general idea that certain things were likely about altitude, and information he had read before on the screens of an airforce pilot. Then a circle popped up, moved to his right where it zoomed in and focused on something. It was the blur, zooming in closer revealed the details of a person dressed in white.
‘It’s no one I recognize but it doesn’t matter,’ his heart was pounding, luckily the nanites didn’t replace his organs, he wasn’t up for losing parts of his humanity for something lesser.
His HUD changed and suddenly diagrams and symbols were being shifted through but there seemed to be errors as it was starting to find each one in error, there were many empty slots as well. ‘Maybe the data files were corrupted?’
Finally the entire slideshow disappeared and a new empty popped in, it seemed to be prompting for a new design to be made. ‘Is it asking for a new weapon? Or something else?’ He decided to just take the thrusters from the wings and stick it on his arm, there wasn’t any need to be complicated, not that he would’ve understood it. It ended up looking like a basic sci-fi blaster cannon, the nanites seemed to reconfigure parts into a better design as a feature of auto-streamlining the process.
He was soon upon the cat and mouse game, aiming and firing on the dragon. It dodged, and turned on a dime downwards shooting into the busy streets.
Following it wasn't hard, if it weren’t for the trap it had laid, its thrusters glowed red as it fired into the sky with red lightning.
Swearing Roy didn’t die only from his prior warning of the HUD of the trajectories of the blast. There was other information but not much of it was in English yet, the nanites told him they were switching gear and translating what he had been saying into the language he was speaking now.
His HUD started to make more sense but it was getting distracting so he disappeared everything but the crucial.
He fired on the dragon but couldn’t hit it destroying the alleyway garbage below, swearing as he needed to pay attention to collateral.
Pulling up earlier to avoid smashing into the ground Roy flew up as the dragon reversed course and started to chase him, before the blur came out of nowhere and smashed into the dragon sending it flying.
Surprisingly it seemed to shake off a hit like that without much fanfare and shot off into the sky before breaking the sound barrier and disappearing.
Roy was breathing heavily as he hovered over to the building the blur someone he knew from his cursory reading of the comics in another dimension.
The Jewel spoke, “So I’m guessing you’re not with the… dragon?”
Roy landed as his legs seemed to almost give out before he stood straight, Jewel almost rushed to help landing beside him holding him up, “Nope. You’re Jewel?”
She seemed to smile nervously, “Superhero extraordinaire at your service. You a hero? I mean if you’re a villain I’m going to have to take you in, and-”
“Not a villain.”
“Oh,” She seemed to sigh in relief, then shift her eyes around as if she was looking for something to talk about, “ So uhm, you come around these parts?” Roy just stared, and closed his eyes, “Something like that.” He wondered briefly if he should just mention her real identity or…
“You know what Procognition is right.”
“Isn’t that seeing the future? But I thought you were a… robot? Cyborg?”
Roy thought to the definition and found it fit as he was part machine and man, then mentally apologized to Cyborg of the other universe for stealing his name, “Cyborg works. I have… I guess you can say I peered into the history of another universe, and it's the closest thing to seeing the future as any would come.”
Roy wondered if this was the right move, but felt was too tired to even care he was telling her this, he did hypothetically consider what he would say if he was ever in this position and had gone in circles. The best he felt was being as honest as possible and leaving them to make their own decisions.
Jewel asked, “Wait are you from another dimension?”
“That’s not the important bit right now, the important piece is to avoid a villain by the name of Kilgrave.”