When I'm gone... (Part 1/2)

A new Centron story at long last... This one deals with the disappearance of Centron during one of the game sessions (Centron is played by me in an ongoing Mutants and Mastermind campaign). For those not in my group reading this (I'd be surprised if there are any...), the campaign deals with a group of super heroes in your typical super hero filled world.


The reading were off the charts, so much for the South Pole being a safe and quiet location. The rest had gone out to investigate the source of the strange occurrence but I'd stayed behind to make sense of it all. There was something going on and I was going to get to the bottom of it. And just when things couldn't get any worse, an alarm sounded. A security breach. Then everything went dark...
The next thing I knew I was lying in a bed. Not just any bed but my bed. At least it used to be my bed a little over a year ago before I got trapped inside a robotic body and was thrown into the world of super heroics. But everything was different, I could feel, smell and hear just as I used to. No static, no scanning lines, nothing. And when I closed my eyes I could actually feel my heart beat. I was human again.

Is this a dream? Or could it be that the past few months were the dream? Then my cupboard growled and shook. I jumped out of the bed and took cover behind it. The cupboard doors shook widely clapping in and out, making a banging noise each time. Through the cracks in the door I saw the silhouette of a large beast, eyes glowing and steam rising. The growls grew more menacing and each time the cupboard seemed to grow until it took in most of the room. I closed my eyes and the entire room shook. Then it became quiet...
When I opened my eyes again I was alone in a ball room. I could see my reflection in one of the many mirrors. It was true, I was human again and I was in my old body. I was sharply dressed and a little younger then I should be. This would be a dream if it wasn't a nightmare in disguise. Then I heard a voice behind me.
'I've finally got you, you're mine now'

I turned around and saw a young guy sitting on the great steps into the ball room. He was pale and thin, had green hair and several piercings. But other than that he was dressed in a tuxedo, with a high hat and cane. The combination made it look like he had just stolen someone else's clothes.
'Who are you, what do you want with me?'
The man grinned at me, showing off a set of yellow teeth.
'Who I am is not important. But know that this is my domain and that I am God here'
He snapped his fingers and a hint of music started to play.
' You hacked in to my positronic matrix, you exploited my global link with the radio waves to gain a connection. If you know what's good for you then you stop this at once.'
The ill-dressed man laughed.
'Good, they told me you were smart. You were something else. I've never seen a human mind written down in code before. It was a challenge to get the algorithms right and now you are nothing more than any other computer system to me. I have control over everything, with a simple double click.'
And with that, the scene sprang to life. People started dancing around us and the music grew intenser. I recognized it now, I was here many years ago at the Sirianni company ball with Sarah. It was the night of the accident, in a few hours...
And then it all disappeared and I stood in a dark forest. Again I heard his voice, but saw him no where.
'I giveth and I taketh away'

'I've got friends and once they find out what you've done, they'll come after you'
'I wouldn't count on it. I parked your body in a corner somewhere and activated that little robot you had been working on to let your 'friends' know that you had to go somewhere and they shouldn't worry. If you don't mind I named it Crux, a fitting name for your substitute.'
'They'll figure it out what you did...' I wondered here who I meant by 'they'. Most of my present company wouldn't know to use a differential or an integral to calculate the surface under a curve if their mortal lives depended on them.
The forest grew darker and darker until the entire world was black.
'What are you going to do to me?'
'Oh, just some reprogramming'

If only... (Part 3/3)

The final part of this Centron story. If you haven't been following, here's the beginning.

I was glad when I want to get a few new transistors and I didn't find Chloe waiting for me. I'd have gone somewhere else, if I'd trusted another shop to have what I needed. But this was a special electronics store for a special clientel. The owner was a bit strange and looked as if he had been shocked one to many times. But that's okay, I'm not exactly normal and the guy is a genius when it comes to hardware. However, whenever I deal with him, he looks at me like he wants to take me apart. We also usually don't do small talk, which I like but this time he felt talkative.
"Your friend isn't here today. It's strange because she came here every other day"
She probably finally came to her senses and stopped chasing dreams. What is it with humans and their dreams? I can barely remember what they were like, but -
"Must have something to do with that guy yesterday." The shop keeper continued "Seemed like a big agrument and him then dragging her off like that."
My thought patrons stopped and suddenly my mind flooded with the electronic chatter. Radio waves are everywhere and it's gotten worse with the global WiFi project. And I can feel them all, like waves carrying botled messages that keep crashing into me. The police band shouted in my ear.
< ... female caucassian child found dead ... battered ... assualted ... identification Carpenter, ... father wanted for questioning ... whereabouts unknown ...>
If only I - Suddenly I could actually hear something clicking in my positronic brain. The presence that lingered called out for access. Within moments my very thoughts directed the central processing unit of the moon base to start the facial recognition software via three satelites and a local router. The police might not know where he is, but I had found my target and only one thought remained. It was as if I watched from a distance as the body that I currently possess flew out of the store and headed to the nearby motel.
It wasn't hard to find him. It's as if he wanted to be found, as if he was rubbing it in.
The door did not demonstrate to be an obstacle. And then I was face to face with a man, if you could even call it that. Within moments I had him pinned against the wall. He wasn't that though against some one his own size. "I didn't do it, whatever you think I did, I'm innocent" I let him ramble on a bit as my hand squeezed down on his neck. The presence cried out for blood, drained fresh from the fleshy creature. My hand shook as it desired to be bathed in the red substance. Every thought went out to the small girl who had asked for my autograph, the one person in the world maybe worth saving. But I was held back by a final memory. "They bring the bad guys to justice".
It didn't take long to drop him off at the nearest police station, and I waited long enough to see them cuff him and drag him in.

So here I am, standing on a tall appartement building. I've already contacted Shade and he's on his way so I just need to stall a bit. The van speeds around the corner, money bills fly out as the driver punches the gas once more. From here I can see that he's covered in scales, so this should prove to be interesting. Let's be a hero.

Save me... (Part 2/3)

The continuation of the Centron story I posted yesterday

I honestly can't understand girls. I've found it more difficult to relate to humans since my recent accident but young girls are a completely seperate enigma. Especially this one. The self-proclamed biggest fan named Chloe just became quiet and stared for a while, as if she gathered up all her courage.
"Could I have your autograph?"
This sounded a bit too familair for my taste. All I wanted was a metagraph for my analysis...
"I'm sorry, I think you have me confused with some one else"
The small girl gave me a look indicating that there weren't a lot of cyborgs walking around New York these days.
"Nope, you're definitly the super hero; Centron"
"I'm no hero, small human"
"But you stopped a murdering robot and vanquished a terrible vampire"
This is one well-informed girl.
"It's more complex than that, there's more to being a hero than just killing bad guys"
Chloe seemed startled by what I said.
"Of course there is, heroes don't kill 'em, they bring the bad guys to justice"
This is where I gave in. I wasn't in the mood and had a space ship to repair. I tore off a piece of the receipt I got and cribble my name. Chloe beams with excitement as I give her the paper.
"Thank you very much. I'll treasure this. But I'd better get going before my dad gets angry at me for staying away for so long."
She runs away and I walk into an alley. I jump up and take flight. It takes me about two minutes to leave Earth's atmosphere and this usually gives me time to think. This time I thought up new and inventive ways for Shade to do these pick ups for me.

Unfortunatly a few days later I find myself in the city yet again. The thermal transducer broke which I needed for my infra red spectral analysis of the ship. I was quite suprised when I saw Chloe standing next to the electronics shop where I had met her a while ago. When she saw me, she jumped up and run towards me.
"I knew you'd be back. I've been coming here everyday after school in the hope of seeing you. No one believed me at school when I said I met you."
"What is it you want this time, child? You already have my autograph"
She suddenly looked down.
" ... I lost that ... but I have a better proposal"
"Which would be?"
"Well... could I be your sidekick?"
"Why would I need a sidekick?"
As I said this, the prospect of some one to pick up stuff did seem very appealing.
"Eeuhm... I'd always be by your side, helping you fight crime, delivering witty comments when the oppurtunity presented itself and you'd come and save me whenever I get kidnapped and stuff."
However the annoyance of coming down every few days to shop seemed less than that of having to babysit a child. I have enough of that with Shade.
"Sorry, not really interested"
With that I walked away but I had a feeling she wasn't going to give up just yet.

A strange creature indeed... (Part 1/3)

Part 1 of 3 of an extra story about Centron (The first of many if I have my way)

I rarely visit New York anymore. There's no need, nothing to do here, no evil corperations to bring down and no one for me here. I prefer it on the base anyway, away from humans who remind me of a forgotten past. And it's been very quiet these past few weeks. Not even the type of quiet that comes before the storm. It's the usual quiet where people go about their lives, stuff happens but nothing I really need to concern myself with.

But unfortunately if I want to get this alien ship analysed I need some supplies and since Shade isn't around on the count of it being so quiet, I need to go get them myself. Here I am, brain the size of a planet and I'm doing grocery shopping.
I've had to select my suppliers carefully and dress up in hat and long trench coat to go do these things. And then I still get strange looks walking down the street. People fear the things that they don't know and a human mind trapped inside an android body is right up there with spikey hair guy wagging his tail.

They all react the same. Suddenly crossing the street, whispering among themselves. But I don't mind or even care, not since I became this way or maybe even before.
As I walk away from a recent heavy duty metagraph purchase, I find my way suddenly blocked by a small creature gazing up at me. I look down to analyse the obstacle. A child, no more than twelve years of age, wide eyed, bewildered and with a tiny voice.
"It's is you, isn't it? You're part of that new super hero team that's been protecting the city recently."
This is a new reaction to people meeting me for the first time.
"What's it to you, small human?"
"I've been following your adventures in the papers since you guys formed. I've even saved all of the clippings. My father always tells me off about it, says you're no more than a bunch of renegades. But I know better. And out of all of them, I think you're the coolest."
With a large smile, the tiny girl adds
"My name is Chloe Carpenter and I'm your biggest fan"

A Strange Pain...

Christopher Cobb had a knack for dying and not staying dead.

When he was young, Christopher was the smartest kid in class. Everybody knew he was going to make it big some day, however it's these types of kids, like Christopher was, that make excellent targets for bullies and such. He would later look back on his childhood as being a very unhappy one, one with no friends and all time spent behind a computer or pulling apart some mechanical device. All of the therapists he would later frequent, would attribute this period of his life the fault for his lack of faith in humanity.

Of course, once he got out of high school and into a prestigious university that changed, a bit. He tried to spend as much time as he could alone but now he had a very social room mate, named Barry Bovinski. Barry was in the university's athletics team, had a sports scholarship and was determined to get Christopher away from his computer every second he could. He dragged him to every party he knew about and they soon became friends. It was at one of these parties that he met Sarah Sirianni and it wasn't long before he fell madly in love with her. Sarah was an arts major, ballet dancer and daughter of Mister Sirianni, founder and CEO of Sirianni Tech. Those few years were the happiest of Christopher's life. His therapist would later tell him to embrace this time and not shun it. Christopher would say that the only purpose those years served, were to give him false hope.

Things got bad in Christopher's third year. He accidentally found a strange bottle of medication in the room and confronted Barry about it. Barry told him that it were just some pills to give him the 'edge' that he had gotten from his trainer. Christopher pleaded with him to stop and Barry said he would. But after a bad run, Barry started taking them again and Christopher found out. He asked again if he would stop but Barry got angry with him and they got into a fight. Afraid of what the drugs were doing to Barry, Christopher went to tell the Dean. This was followed by a massive investigation and Barry among a few others were expelled.
If that wasn't bad enough, a few months later whilst driving back from visiting Sarah's parents, Christopher and Sarah got into an accident when they hit a tree that fell onto the road as their car was passing by. Luckily a passerby saw the crash and called an ambulance. Both of them were quickly rushed to hospital. Whilst in the ambulance, Christopher almost died when he went into cardiac arrest but was revived in time by the doctors. Unfortunately Sarah wasn't lucky, and upon arriving at the hospital she was declared dead.
It took several months for Christopher to fully recover and he was never the same again. He became more of a shut-in than he had ever been before and had developed a limp, even though the doctors could find nothing wrong with his knee. This is around the time he was forced on wave upon wave of therapists, who all described his limp as survivor's guilt.

Christopher soon found a way to vent his anger at world by writing computer viruses that tormented thousands of computers. He continued this until he was caught and banned from using any computer for three years, not to mention pay a serious fine. And this is where Urban Explorations came in. They offered to pick up his tab and at the end of the three years, offered him a job at their company. He was to work on a new kind of virtual interface. With his unfriendly attitude and general dislike of other people, he soon became loathed by his colleagues. When the time came to test the machine, they were all glad that he had gotten the short straw.
It was during this test that Christopher died again. While they were loading his mind into the computer a power drain knocked out all of the electricity in the Urban Explorations building. What happened to Christopher's mind was similar to what happens to your game if you shut of your game boy whilst saving. Without a mind, his body soon died and Christopher was trapped inside the Urban Exploration main frame. His mind sought a way out, a way to interact with the world. He found this in a forgotten corner in the basement. A long abandoned project where they tried to reverse engineer an android that had came from outer space to wreak havoc on the Earth a number of years back. The reason of the discontinued was a presence suddenly appearing in the body, a dark and vile presence. Efforts to remove it failed. And in the end it was deemed too dangerous and the project was scrapped.

In his new body, Christopher escaped the building but was soon captured by two super heroes, Copycat and Shade. Brought back to Urban Explorations, he was presented with a new job offer, help a newly formed super hero squad. Christopher reluctantly agreed.
With the loss of his own body and implantment inside a robotic body, he felt utterly disconnected from humanity and his world was a dark and cold place. In fact, as far as he was concerned Christopher Cobb was dead and he was something new. He called himself Centron and severed all of his ties with his former life. The only thing that still reminded him of his previous existence was a strange pain in his knee.