A Need For Speed - part 1
by Torpor

The man who called himself The Fastest Man in the World, a.k.a. the Bullet, was enjoying one of his favorite pastimes.

Jet engines roared to life as Bullet watched from behind a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. The smell of tar and asphalt smoking with the heat of the jet flames entered his nose as he inhaled deeply.

"Ah, that's the stuff," he said, waxing nostalgic for a moment. His attention quickly turned back toward the jet. "I tell y'all what, I'll give y'all a head start this time."

The jet plane shot forward, picking up the tremendous speed needed to lift into the earth's atmosphere.

Bullet bided his time, counting (extremely slowly for him) to three before taking off himself.

It took him little time to catch up with the pace of the jet. He looked sideways as the wings lifted the plane into the air, while Bullet stayed on the ground and continued to exceed the jet's speed with little effort.

After running nearly four laps around the Patriot City Air Base, he allowed himself to slow down to a slow crawl - normal walking speed for anybody else.

"Dagnabit," he exclaimed, looking wistfully through the fence. "When are them boys going to come up with something that will at least give me a good workout?"

Just then, his Freedom Force comm. badge whistled gleefully, and a frown came across the Bullet's face. He pressed the communicator in his silver helmet to establish telepathic link with the home base. "Bullet here. What can I do you for?"

In his mind echoed the voice of Mentor, characteristically melodic as if performing a Shakespearean play.

"Bullet. We have a problem that requires your special talents. You must return to the Freedom Fortress immediately!"

No sooner had Mentor finished the communication than was Bullet able to reply in person rather than on the radio.

"What's up?"

Mentor never seemed surprised by the speedster, though Bullet secretly wished he'd at least show a little reaction. He was the only one that Bullet could never seem to impress with his amazing talents. El Diablo was muttering in disbelief.

Mentor pressed a button on the Energy X monitor, and a picture came into view.

"Holy smokes!" Bullet said as he watched the images flashing across the screen. "You boys best stay here. I'll handle this in a jiffy!"

Without another word, he was gone again. A sonic boom knocked El Diablo and Mentor to the ground.

"Wait!" Mentor cried, but it was too late for his voice to reach a man who traveled faster than sound...

One week earlier...

Randy Quinn looked at her face in the mirror, trying to find some beauty beneath all the blemishes. "I'll never get a date to the senior prom," she sighed.

Randy reached over and picked up a full glass of tap water, chugging it down as if she'd had nothing to drink in days.

She wiped her mouth off as she peered into the mirror, as if expecting some instant result from the quaff.

"I think this diet of drinking gallon after gallon of water is nothing but a fish story," she quipped, allowing herself a small smile.

She ran a brush through her curly red hair, trying to untangle the mess that a full day of schoolwork would soon put into it.

The teenager picked up her glass again without realizing it was empty. As she brought the glass to her lips, she could swear she saw something reflecting in the thin pool of water remaining at the bottom. It's as if someone left a purple crayon floating in the water, she thought.

"Mom?" Randy said, still staring at the glass.

Sighing, she turned toward the entrance of her immaculately neat room and shouted at the top of her lungs, "Mom!"

"What is it?" came the shrill reply. "I'm late for work!"

"Mom! Tell the apartment manager the faucets are broken again! There's some kind of dirt in the water!"

Her mother walked in, arranging pearl earrings that seemed more appropriate for a night on the town than a day as a secretary at a major Patriot City company. "Honey, you know I called them twice already about it last week. They just don't care."

Randy shoved the glass down, maintaining enough control not to let the water spill onto her makeup collection. She didn't notice the glass continuing to vibrate long after she put it down.

"Maybe if we lived in a house, or at least an apartment that didn't charge only $50 a month-"

The argument was familiar to her mother, and she allowed herself to be goaded into it as she always had. "If I could afford more than $50 a month do you think we'd be living here? Or if your father hadn't left us -"

Randy mimicked her mother as she completed the last sentence "-hadn't left us in so much debt with no life insurance, I wouldn't have to work 12 hours a day just to put food in your mouth."

Her mother, finished with her sentence and the earring, turned around and stormed out of the room. She snatched her purse off the table with one swift motion and walked towards the door. "I have to go to a conference with my boss this afternoon so I'll be home late. You can fix yourself one of those TV dinners in the freezer."

Randy collapsed onto the bed. As she heard her mother slam the door, Randy began to cry. "Stop it!" she told herself, wiping the tears away with the backs of her hands. But the crying only increased in intensity, so she pushed her face into the pillow to muffle the sound.

* * *

Nick Craft hated keeping a secret identity.

If any of the other kids at school knew that he was really Liberty Lad, the crime fighting partner of Minute Man and an important member of Freedom Force, he'd be the most popular boy in school.

After all, the fan club that Nick himself had started now boasted more than 20 members, and all of them were envious of the boy that got to fight alongside the heroes of Patriot City.

And maybe he could get a girl to go with him to the prom, even if he was only a freshman.

"Get lost, Nick!" said Sara Jefferson, turning around and sitting at a lunchroom table filled with teens sporting expensive sweaters, letter jackets and class rings.

"Sorry, I guess I'm not Neanderthal enough to catch your attention," Nick responded, directing his response at the burly boy next to her.

"Who you callin' neo-anthinol?" the boy said, standing up to his full height of at least six feet.

"Gee, I'm sorry, you're right," Nick taunted, "A Neanderthal would speak better English!"

With a speed that seemed like lightning to the other teens in the cafeteria, the star of the high school wrestling team swung at Nick. A few girls turned their heads, not wanting to witness the impending impact.

Nick dodged under the punch without even thinking. He flipped his legs around in the same maneuver, toppling the bully's legs from beneath him. As the wrestler flailed to stop his fall, his right hand caught the plate of mushy corn on the table, flinging it straight onto the object of Nick's earlier attention, Sara.

Sara screamed in disgust, standing up to brush the gooey mixture off.

"You are such a creep, Nick!" she shouted, storming off towards the ladies' room.

Some of the other students started laughing, and Nick slinked back towards the table where the founding members of the Freedom Force Fan Club found solitude for their daily meal.

"Well, that's pretty much every girl in school," said Paul, the boy sitting next to him.

"Very funny," Nick replied, leaning his elbows on the table. "You know, maybe I should ask Randy Quinn out."

The others around the table started laughing.

"What's so funny?" he asked.

"For one thing, she's a senior," Paul said, "'though that hasn't seemed to stop you so far. Plus, she's been out sick for the past two days, and the prom's this weekend! Plus, she's pretty high strung. I think Sara's reaction would be considered mild compared to what Randy'll do to you!"

Nick snorted in derision. "Just because you don't have the guts to ask out the invincible women of this school doesn't mean I don't. You'll see."

Paul laughed. "Yeah, I'll see you in a heap on the floor with mashed potatoes coming out your ears!"

The others joined in the laughter. Nick suddenly wished for some sort of impending doom to approach Patriot City, to give him an excuse to get away from all this.

* * *

Randy woke up in a daze. She was sure she had missed school again, though she couldn't find her clock for some reason. The previous day she was on her way out the door, when she remembered a book left on her bed. When she ran back to grab it, she fell over and woke up an hour after school had ended. What's going on?

She looked around to try and see if the sun was going down yet, but could only see white everywhere she looked.

Have I gone blind?

No, she could still make out forms, shapes, but they seemed so unfamiliar to her. As if the images were blurring back and forth at tremendous speed. She felt like her own body was doing the same thing - her teeth seemed to chatter as if she were driving across a gravel road at 50 miles per hour.

She reached her arm out to get up, but it felt like it was moving through water, slowly and yet at the same time propelled by enormous energy.

Then came the strangest sensation she had ever felt in her life - the conscious awareness of every one of the billions of molecules making up her body. Each one vibrated at a hundred miles per hour.

"I wish I'd paid a little more attention in science class, " she thought to herself, trying to comprehend the situation.

It slowly dawned on her that she was somehow inside her mattress!

Not fused - she could still separate her body from the mattress. But at the same time she was not completely solid, as if the mattress had spread apart to allow her molecules to pass through.

"Randy!" came a distant voice, muffled by the layers of fabric around her. "Randy, are you home! I can't take it anymore! That girl's always rushing around with her friends, she never has time to be at home! "

Randy vaguely heard her mother stomp into her own bedroom and slam the door.

She tried to respond but felt the mattress in her mouth, preventing sound from coming out.

I've got to get out of here! she thought. But she had the feeling if she tried to solidify herself she'd be stuck in the mattress!

She slowly forced the density to increase in her hands, allowing them to pull up and find the upper layers of the mattress. Then, she fully solidified her hands and pulled the rest of her body out, slowly solidifying itself until she was fully on top of the bed again.

"Wow! Th-th-th-that was scary but c-c-c-c-c-cool!" she said. Wait, something's still not right.

She stood up and looked in the mirror. She could see the edges of the mirror clearly, but her own visage was blurred. She looked down at her right hand and realized it was still vibrating. Her other hand, resting on the desk, was causing a small seismic event, toppling over her cup of pens decorated with a unicorn and spilling them on the floor.

"Wh-wh-what in the world?? I c-c-c-c-can't control it!"

Just then, her mother came into the room. "Randy? It's about time you - aaahh!"

Her mother screamed and ran into the other room.

It figures, Randy thought. In a speed that she never would have imagined possible, she whooshed through the front door and into the night.

A few hours ago...

Mentor studied the latest diagrams indicating Energy X activity across the city. He was sure that he had been able to link most of the canisters of Energy X to various heroes or villains that the team had already encountered. Without knowing how many canisters had actually survived the explosion, though, he could never be sure that another Energy X-endowed human might not show up at the front door at any moment.

Just then, a buzz from the front door's intercom proved his thought to be precognitive. It's not the first time that's happened, he thought.

On the front door view screen, he saw a human that was obviously under the effects of Energy X - she was vibrating so fast that the camera could barely record her!

Strange - he had not detected the Energy X before now, but a small blip had just appeared on the screen just outside the Freedom Fortress.

"P-p-p-p-p-lease, you have to h-h-h-elp me!" came the female voice from the front door.

"Do not worry, citizen. We shall do everything within our powers to assist you!"

The front door slid open with a quiet mechanical noise that belied its thickness and height. Above her, Randy noticed a scorch mark from some attack on the Freedom Force that had not been fully repaired yet.

Behind the door stood the alien they called Mentor. In person, his enlarged cranium seemed even more forbidding and mysterious than it did on TV.

"Enter," said his melodic voice.

She sped past him, trying but failing to keep at a normal pace.

"I sense that you are greatly disturbed by your powers," Mentor said, directing her into the main briefing room. "We will make sense of them in time."

* * *

El Diablo watched the bar graphs and numbers speeding across the screen, trying in vain to make sense of any of it.

"So, what's with the human jackhammer, eh, Mentor?"

Mentor sighed. Most humans lacked any great amount of patience, but they at least seemed to posses the ability to draw it from deep inside from time to time. El Diablo seemed devoid of any such ability.

"I am still trying to determine the source of her powers," he replied. "Even now, as she is sedated, she continues to quiver rapidly."

"I guess that's what I should call myself," said Randy, sitting up on the table. "Quiver."

Great Scott! Mentor thought. "Very well, Quiver, allow me to explain what I know so far. You have, indeed, been endowed with Energy X, a force known to give great powers to human beings. However, the energy has been diluted somehow, as if you were not present at the actual source of the Energy X."

"If that's what happened with half a dose, I'd hate to see the whole thing!" Diablo quipped.

Quiver sighed. "So you think I'm a freak, too, eh? I thought if anyone w-w-w-w-would understand it would be you guys."

Mentor responded, "Forgive us, Quiver, but your situation is indeed unique. There is the possibility that the energy source that gave you your power could still be out there, affecting others!"

Quiver's words began to run together in frustration. "So what! I don't care what's happening to anybodyelse rightnow, whyaren'tyoudoinganythingtotryandfixme!"

El Diablo remarked, "Ay, I've heard auctioneers that sound like mi abuela compared to this chica!"

Mentor ignored the interruption. "The Energy X infuses itself with the host. In your case, it has given you great control over the very molecular structure of your body and the realm around it."

She stood up and faced him, her face blurring back and forth as she talked. "If it'ssogreat, how come I can't stop?"

"I do not know," Mentor replied. "The nature of Energy X is sometimes unpredictable!"

"I don't want to be stuck like this forever! So, can you help me or not?"

Memories of Man-Bot flooded into Mentor's mind, and he hesitated before answering. "It is easier said than done, my child-"

Before he could finish the last word, Quiver shouted "Fine!" and rushed towards the hallway.

"We gotta stop her!" El Diablo shouted, hitting the emergency lockdown button on the control panel. The pair watched the camera view showing the front door, and a blur of light approached the door and then passed straight through it, as if it weren't there!

Mentor looked back at El Diablo. "There is only one person I know who is equipped to handle this situation."

He pressed a button to contact the Bullet.

Meanwhile...

A low, grumbling, singing voice echoed through the sewers of Patriot City. "Everybody on the whole cell block / was dancin' to the jailhouse rock..."

A man in a gray overcoat, with disheveled white hair protruding from a wrinkled hat, could be seen walking through the sewer pipes upstream. He could be seen, that is, if any observer were brave enough the follow him to that foul-smelling area.

The man continued to hum, looking down at a small box with antennae in his hands. The box made clicking noises which were slowly increasing in frequency.

Suddenly the noises picked up with great intensity.

"Aha!" he shouted. "Just as I suspected! The canister is further up, in the main water distribution center for this neighborhood!"

He clicked a button to shut off the device. Then, he stuffed it into his coat pocket.

"I'll show those do-gooders at Freedom Force that it's not just the bad guys that can take advantage of Energy X!"

As the light from a sewer grate above struck his face, that selfsame observer might see the wrinkled face of an old man. But his powerful voice belied his age, and in fact might strike that observer with a sort of terror. "Soon the rest of the city will know it too, and all Patriot City will know my wrath!"

His laugh echoed through the tunnels, sounding foreboding and evil.

To be continued...