From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe

A home for the stories of my Heroes and Villains.

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Family Values

Zap-Dragon's Origin Story.

Chapter 1: A Good Christian Son

Zachary Noah. A good Christian name for a son. If Mrs. Grant had her way, he would have been Abraham Noah instead, but who was she to argue with her husband's suggestion? Zachary was a good name all the same. She wasn’t sure why her thoughts lingered on that topic for a few minutes of the bright, sunny Friday morning, but she was distracted easily enough when she heard Zachary himself bounding down the stairs. When he skidded into the kitchen--literally--she frowned at him with the sort of maternally admonishing look that really functioned as a mask for pride.

"Zachary Noah Grant," she scolded, "if you ruin your socks doing that you're going to go barefoot!" Zachary just smiled at her: the endearing, heartwarming, innocent smile of a twelve-year-old. It wouldn't work on his father, but his mother was a different story. He knew just how to manipulate her. "Sorry, Mom."

Rolling her eyes, Mrs. Grant turned to go about her daily routine of sandwich-making. "Now hurry up or you'll be late for school. You don't want your father to come downstairs before you're off." She was right about that--the last thing Zachary wanted was another punctuality lecture. He tore through two bowls of cereal while his mother dropped his lunch into his backpack and clucked in disapproval--"If you keep eating so much you're going to get fat!"--and scarcely had time for a "Bye, Mom!" as he snatched the backpack and raced out the door.

She shook her head, watching through the living room picture window as he sprinted down the sidewalk, but Mrs. Grant couldn't help but smile. She knew he wasn't really going to get fat: he was growing faster than the weeds on the front lawn and had about as much of a waist as a golf pencil, not to mention being the junior track team's star runner to boot. But to her, it felt like something a mother should say.

Just as "Good morning, dear" felt to her like something she should be saying as a wife when Mr. Grant came grumbling down the stairs. "'Morning," he managed, grumpily, handing her the milk that Zachary had left out so that she could get started on the scrambled eggs. Mr. Grant was not a morning person, though his gruff face did brighten when his wife slid a cup of fresh coffee under his nose.

"Zachary is on his way to school," she mused, making small talk. "Good," he said into his coffee, "If he gets one more tardy, he's grounded."

"Yes, dear..." came her complacent murmur, the sound of sizzling bacon rising to par with their voices as they rambled.

As his parents sat down to their breakfast, Zachary made a beeline for school. He was a marathon runner, not just a sprinter, and he could run faster than anyone he knew for farther than anyone he knew. In fact, it had been so long since he felt tired that he was starting to forget what it felt like. Screeching to a halt in front of the school door, he reached for the handle... and then recoiled, crying out in pain, as the ghost of a touch to the metal handle sparked the strongest static shock he had ever felt. He stood frozen for a moment, staring at his hand in wonder.

The bullies, for their part, had little sympathy. While Zachary stood recovering from the shock, Big Mike came ambling up behind him. Mike was the biggest bully in the school, both literally and figuratively, and while Zachary was not a social outcast, he was still younger and a lot smaller than Big Mike, which made him a perfect target for the eight-grader whom now loomed over him.

"Wuss," crowed the bully, clamping an oversized paw on Zachary's shoulder to shove him through the door. The shove never came, though, because the second Big Mike laid a finger on Zachary, he took the full force of a jolt even stronger than the door had given--so strong that a hairline blue arc snapped between Big Mike's pudgy fingers and the smaller boy’s shoulder, knocking him flat on his rear end and eliciting a pained grimace from his target. The opportunity for escape wasn't lost on Zachary, who pushed through the door and ran off down the hallway with Big Mike staring after him as the door slowly sprung closed.

The incident was the latest in a weeks-long string of static shocks for Zachary, but none of the others had been like that. He wasn’t sure exactly when they had started, but as he sat quietly in the back row of his English class, slouched low in his seat, it occurred to him that they were steadily getting more frequent and exponentially worse. Something about that filled him with a sense of dread. Maybe, he thought, it was time to tell his parents about it. Surely, they could help him find out what was going on…

“Attention,” the P.A. system crackled to life, “Zachary Grant, please report to the principal’s office. Zachary Grant to the Principal’s office.” Looking like he felt—about two sizes smaller—Zachary stood up slowly and trudged out of the classroom, which began immediately to buzz with whispered rumours. By the time he reached the office he was so nervous he was almost shaking, and when he saw Big Mike sitting in one of the chairs, he actually did. When the principal ordered him to sit down, he did so without a word.

The principal started out slowly. “All right… Michael, let’s start with you.”

If Big Mike ever went into the film industry, Zachary fully expected him to win every academy award for the duration of his career. He pulled it off perfectly—the misty eyes, the quivering lip, the shy retreat from Zachary’s direction as if he might suddenly explode—one might think he was genuinely traumatized, if they didn’t know Big Mike. “It happened on the way into school this morning, sir! I went to give Zachary a friendly pat on the back and I got lightninged! Look!” He stuck his fat hand out toward the principal. For all of Zachary’s innocence, the angry burn on Big Mike’s hand was real enough. Lifting up his collar, Zachary checked his shoulder for a similar burn, but there was nary a blemish on the skin. His T-shirt had not fared so well: the cloth was blackened around a noticeable hole that he had hoped would remain unnoticed.

The principal would give Zachary no such relief, his eyes following the boy’s gaze to the burned T-shirt. Craning his neck for a better look, he raised his eyebrow. “I have spoken with a dozen other students who all confirmed Michael’s account…”

‘Stooges, not students,’ Zachary thought, ‘Big Mike’s cronies.’

“…Now I would like to hear your explanation.”

Zachary blinked, gaping. He had seen the request coming a mile away but he still wasn’t sure what to say. “It… it wasn’t my fault. I dunno what happened…”

The principal sighed. “Zachary, you know that practical joke buzzers and other offensive novelty items are not allowed on school property.”

Zachary couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “It wasn’t a novelty item!” he blurted out, “It… it just happened on its own!” He knew from the look the principal gave him that he was fighting a losing battle. “Honesty is a virtue, Zachary… frankly, I’m disappointed in you. You know that disciplinary action means a loss of extracurricular privileges… and this close to the annual track meet…”

Zachary’s heart sank so far that it seemed to weigh down the foot he stomped in frustration. “I’m telling the truth! I wish I knew how it happened but I don’t!”

The principal sighed and shook his head, pulling off his glasses in a gesture of exasperation. “You’re suspended for the rest of the day, Zachary. I’d like to be lenient on you, but district policy is zero tolerance… come straight here to my office first thing in the morning… the secretary has already called your mother to come and get you.”

Zachary was on the verge of tears. Big Mike, on the other hand, was grinning ear to ear—except when the principal looked his way. Zachary knew there was nothing he could say to the principal to explain away Big Mike’s burns, though that worry was preempted by the thought that there was even less he could say to his parents.

The Grants lived close to the school. By the time he got to the door, Mrs. Grant was already there, waiting for him. The look on her face brooked no conversation, and Zachary was eager to oblige. The short car ride passed in total silence, and Zachary didn’t have to be told to go straight to his room when they got home.

He wasn’t sure why he had felt so itchy lately, but, curled up on his bed in misery, Zachary’s mind had nothing happier to concentrate on—so he buried his head in the sheets and scratched at his arms. Maybe the itch was related to all the static shocks he was getting… and giving. He wished he could scratch them away, that there was anything he could do to make them stop. He didn’t want to get in trouble anymore. He didn’t want to get another shock like what he had just two hours earlier.

More importantly, he didn’t want his father to come home.

Of course, Mr. Grant eventually did. He worked in construction—“Building the houses of God”, he would say—so he was always tired and short-tempered when he came home at suppertime. Usually, a few beers were enough to make him relax, but Zachary didn’t expect his mother to wait for that before giving him the news. As he heard the door shut downstairs, he held his breath to listen. There were a few murmurs of greeting from each of them, then his mother’s voice, quietly. He knew that tone. She was dropping the bombshell.

“SUSPENDED?!” thundered his father’s voice. Even upstairs, Zachary winced at the shout. There was the sound of things being thrown to the floor downstairs—a lunchbox, a jacket, boots—followed by the heavy stomping of Mr. Grant charging up the stairs. Zachary cowered, diving down into the narrow space between his bed and the wall as his enraged father stormed into the room.

For a moment, Mr. Grant’s burning eyes missed the small boy hidden in the back of the room. His nostrils flared angrily… and then those eyes met the frightened eyes of his truant son. In a flash he was at the edge of the bed. He was fast. Zachary was faster—but Zachary knew that it would only get worse if he fled. So he set his jaw and let his father seize him roughly by the arm. He let his father drag him out from behind the bed. And at that perfect moment, more panicked than he had ever been before in his life and with his own body completely out of his control, Zachary let out an agonized scream as an electrical arc, like a miniature lightning bolt, shot up his arm and down his father’s, making a lightning rod of Mr. Grant.

Howling in fury and pain, Zachary’s father threw him down to the floor so hard that the floorboards cracked audibly beneath the carpet. “WHAT IN GOD’S NAME IS WRONG WITH YOU?!” Zachary wanted to explain. He wanted to tell them it wasn’t his fault. He wanted to run out the door and get away from his father’s wrath. But being thrown down to the floor had taken all of his breath away and it was all he could do to squeak in terror.

The seams of Zachary’s T-shirt creaked, on the verge of tearing, as his father took hold of his collar and hauled him roughly to his feet. He struggled to catch his breath as he was thrust against the wall, the drywall cracking into a Zachary-sized dent. It was all that Zachary could do to turn his head and squeeze his eyes shut, bracing himself for the inevitable.

Mrs. Grant, standing in the doorway with her arms folded, made no motion to help her son. ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’ was a family value, and the Grants had no wish to spoil the child—so they never spared the rod.

Zachary understood. He held no animosity for his mother, especially since he knew that, after he went to bed, her turn would come. His father had never been this angry before.

That evening, Zachary went without supper. He had managed to drag himself back onto his bed after his father had finally left him, and there he stayed. Every inch of his body stung, but he found himself almost grateful that the pain seemed to block out the itching.

Almost.

He still couldn’t get to sleep by the time his parents finished supper, not a word wafting up the stairs from either of them. He pictured them sitting, both festering with anger, at the table, avoiding eye contact. He had seen it before. And once the supper things were put away, he heard his father’s raised voice again—and the all-too-familiar sounds of violence.

Zachary’s mother took it silently, as she always did. Lying there in his bed, listening to the noise of fighting downstairs, Zachary stared at the ceiling and wondered how things could possibly get any worse.

Chapter 2: Rude Awakenings

Zachary awoke with a pounding headache. The morning sunlight streaming in through his curtains was still dim, and the birdsong in the trees outside was quiet and sparse. It was very early. All at once, as the room came into focus, he became aware of a strange tingling sensation. The bothersome itching he had felt yesterday was now amplified tenfold, as if he had a billion mosquitoes all biting him at once. Instinctively, he reached down and scratched at his belly… and his hand ran into something.

Blinking in surprise, he lifted the T-shirt he had fallen asleep in to look—and just about fell off the bed. Overnight, his skin had turned blue. Not the pale bluish-white of cold or sickness, not the dark, angry blue-black of bruises he might have sustained the previous night, but a vibrant, rich teal-blue, the colour of deep tropical waters.

It was not just the colour that was strange, either. All over himself, he found as he peeled off the shirt frantically, were what seemed like oversized goose bumps. They itched mercilessly, and some seemed about ready to poke through the skin, firm to the touch like big blue warts. It was one of these that his hand had bumped into.

Zachary was instantly in a panic. Whenever he looked over himself again, he noticed something else. His hair seemed to be thinning; a mess of it was spread out all over his pillow. He sat down on the edge of the bed and felt like he was sitting on something; there was a pointy bump protruding from his tailbone. He looked in the mirror—and screamed.

Even his face was teal now. What remained of his hair was patchy and thin. His eyes seemed to have sunken deeper into his skull… and his teeth all looked like canines. Even his chin seemed to be jutting out.

Mrs. Grant came ambling into the room after a minute, in response to the scream. She had not slept well, that much was obvious, but her eyes snapped wide open the moment she glimpsed Zachary. “W-wha…?” she gasped in bewilderment.

Zachary had been a handsome boy—angular features, the foundation of a strong, lean build, mesmerizing blue-green eyes and a naturally thick head of honey-coloured hair—now, it looked as if that handsome boy had been replaced by a bluish-green monster. Hurriedly, Zachary’s mother turned and retreated from his room back to the master bedroom. Zachary heard her getting dressed.

He wasn’t worried about his father. Mr. Grant never woke up early, especially if he’d been drinking. But Zachary was fairly bright, and he knew that when his mother started to get dressed, he should as well. By the time she came back, he was ready to go.

“Come on,” she beckoned, gesturing for him to follow, “We are going to the Emergency Room. Right now.” He could tell from the tone of her voice that she was still angry at him, but no amount of anger could stop a parent like Mrs. Grant from dealing with a problem like this. She drove to the hospital faster than she had ever driven anywhere, Zachary bouncing around uncomfortably in the passenger seat.

When they reached the hospital, they weren’t made to wait for long. In fact, the receptionist stared at Zachary from the moment they walked in to the moment he was ushered into the ER. So did everyone else. His cheeks and ears burning hotly, Zachary was quick to follow the nurse that came for him.

The doctor and the nurses were more professional than the receptionist… apparently manners were related to the size of the paycheque. They didn’t stare at him like some sort of freak the way everyone in the waiting room had; rather, they seemed to look at him with more of a curious concern as they tethered him to a ground wire—a wise precaution, although his shocks had been strangely absent so far that morning—before they poked, prodded, and measured, drawing blood samples and ordering tests. By the afternoon, they still couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him… so he was told he would be held overnight for observation. Zachary’s mother didn’t follow him to the ward—she had already left by the time the examination was over.

Zachary was glad he had missed school and facing the principal again. He was glad he wasn’t going home to his father that night. It was only afternoon, far too early for sleeping, but the muted white noise of the hospital was as good as a lullaby, and he was feeling inexplicably tired. His eyes drifting closed despite his intent; he slept away the rest of the day and all of the night.

When next he awoke, Zachary felt like he had bathed in poison ivy. If the itchiness of the previous day was bothersome, this day’s was torture. The sheets must have bunched up beneath him, he thought, because he could feel an uncomfortable shape beneath his bottom. Groggily, he reached down to pull the sheets free, snapping awake all of a sudden when his fingertips reached the object, which was not at all a bundle of sheets. It was warm and rounded, with a smooth, dry surface. Zachary could feel the subtle lines of definition separating interlocking scales.

A snake! There was a snake in his hospital bed! Sheets flew every which way as the energetic boy leapt out from beneath them, tumbling to the floor beside the high bed and turning back to look for his assailant… but it was gone. There was no snake in the bed; there wasn’t so much as a bedbug. Zachary was dumbfounded.

Then, something touched his leg.

Zachary looked down… and there was the snake! He dodged away from it. It followed! He spun in a circle. Still it followed!

Wait.

The scales of the ‘snake’, he noticed, were the same vibrant teal colour his skin had been the day before. More importantly, it wasn’t touching the floor—it was hanging. Zachary’s stomach turned. It was hanging off of him. It wasn’t a snake. It was a tail. He grabbed hold of the tail, only to find that it was sore and sensitive, like freshly-healed skin that just lost its scab. Looking down, he craned his neck to see his back as best he could. Sure enough, the tail protruded directly from his tailbone, the open back of the hospital gown draped to either side of it.

As he was noticing that, Zachary noticed another thing: The backs of his hands were covered with scales, too. Frantically, he pulled hard on the collar of the hospital gown, ripping the flimsy ties holding it to his neck and shoulders and letting the light fabric fall to his waist. Sure enough, his entire torso was covered with shiny-smooth scales, mostly in that now-familiar teal colour, but with patterned accents of a blue shade that reminded Zachary of the deep end of a swimming pool.

That association did nothing to make him feel better about what was happening, though—especially when he noticed that his face had changed shape even more. There was no mirror in the ward, but based on the way his jaw, cheekbones, and nose felt elongated when he prodded them, he figured he probably looked like some sort of reptile chimpanzee.

Not a comforting thought.

While Zachary stood panicking, one of the doctors walked into the ward. He was flanked on one side by a nurse and on the other by Zachary’s mother, and was carrying a heavily-laden clipboard at which he peered with a furrowed brow.

All three did a double-take when they saw Zachary.

The doctor was the first to say anything, and what he said did not put Zachary at ease. “I wasn’t expecting it to happen this fast.”

“What? What weren’t you expecting to happen this fast?” Zachary’s voice was soprano with worry. His mother’s, though, was more level than his own when she asked, “What’s wrong with him?”

The doctor waved calmly, dismissively, under the barrage of questions. “Nothing is wrong with him. According to the test results, your son is the healthiest patient we’ve—“

“Have you LOOKED at him?!”

“—ever seen. Ma’am, Zachary is not sick. Judging by his blood tests, he is a mutant.”

Mrs. Grant was skeptical. “No son of mine is a freak of nature.” Taken aback by her declaration, the doctor attempted to explain diplomatically. “Mutations are a normal thing, Mrs. Grant… although cases like Zachary’s are very rare…”

“Well, what are we supposed to do with him?”

“…I would recommend taking him to see the people at G.I.F.T… This sort of mutation is beyond our realm of expertise.”

“G.I.F.T.? What’s that?”

“It stands for Genetic Investigation and Facilitation Team… the Federal Bureau of Super-Powered Affairs has a standing order out to every hospital in the country to—“

Zachary’s eyes moved back and forth like tennis balls as he watched the exchange. His mother, he thought, was doing an awful lot of interrupting.

“Super-Powered?! Zachary won’t be getting involved in any of that! We’re leaving.”

“But ma’am—“

“But nothing! He’s healthy, right? So we’re done here.”

The doctor continued to protest, but Mrs. Grant turned a deaf ear to it and dragged Zachary out of the ward, down the hall, through the waiting room, and out the door, all the way clad only in the remnants of the hospital gown, tail trailing behind.

Zachary was sent straight to his room when they got home. Mrs. Grant was even angrier than she had been after driving him home from school two days ago. He couldn’t fathom why—after all, he hadn’t done anything wrong this time, had he? It wasn’t by choice that he was going through these changes—changes that were going to take some getting used to. That much he realized when he tried to get dressed and had to figure out how to keep his pants up with a tail in the way. No sooner had he finally managed to make it work by hitching the belt up over his tail than he heard the front door open and close.

His father was home early. Had Mrs. Grant called him? He didn’t sound upset… but as he listened, Zachary heard a third voice, belonging to neither of his parents. After a moment’s listening, he recognized its owner—it was Reverend Malcolm.

The Grants’ Tennessee hometown was a stone’s throw away from Knoxville, the metaphorical buckle of the Bible belt. Here, in the heartland of Baptist America, it was a routine event for a family to welcome its church’s minister into its home for tea or dinner. Zachary had been ritually bored by Reverend Malcolm’s sermons every Sunday, without fail, for as long as he could remember, and he was no stranger in the Grant household. But the timing was too perfect, the early homecoming of his father too suspicious. In the pit of his stomach, Zachary felt hollow. Slowly, panic began to set in.

He knew that his father wouldn’t lay a finger on him in front of Reverend Malcolm, but Zachary couldn’t help but be fearful. As the footsteps began to sound on the staircase, he curled up on his bed, hugging his knees to his chest, his tail curling around him tightly.

Zachary had wondered two nights before how things could possibly get any worse. He was anxious, but not anxious enough—he had no way of knowing that the answer to his pondering was on its way up the stairs at that moment. No amount of bracing could prepare the young mutant boy for the night that fate had in store.

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