Zeal/Degeneration Project
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
Contents |
Chapter 1
Zeal let out a quiet sigh, sifting through the pictures in front of him. Energy Siphon, his uncle Al, striking various poses and hanging out with other heroes. It was just a week after his break up with his girlfriend Crimson and he still had trouble getting over it completely. He was doing anything he could in his free time in order to quit thinking about it, but it was hard. He could still feel an uneasy pain well up in his heart when he merely thought about her.
But Zeal persevered and decided to bury himself in a project of his own when he wasn't heroing. He wanted to make an album with all of the stuff he had of his uncle who meant so much to him. The man who helped him open up and actually helped him enjoy his life until his passing. A simple heart failure was the cause, but noone understood why. Regardless, Zeal felt like this scrapbooking project could help him get his mind off his anxiety for a while, so he worked diligently, pasting a few pictures here and there to preserve for himself.
He couldn't help but smile seeing how great a hero his uncle was. It was always kept a secret from him until he saw these pictures hidden in the closet. After a while, Zeal had finished with that shoe box and set it aside, but went ahead and picked up his photo album and smiled at the work he had done before floating up to set it on the top of the shelf. He went to push it back only to have it hit against something. With a confused look, Zeal tried to push it back again with the same result. He then tucked the album under his arm and floated off to find himself a flashlight.
Once he found a flashlight he floated back over to his closet and turned it on, squinting an eye as he wet to peruse the top shelf. Aside from the dust that had collected up there, Zeal spied a folder and set his scrapbook down in order to take the folder. He wrinkled his nose as he looked at it; it was covered in the same dust that decorated that shelf. The young hero stopped himself from brushing it off and instead flew over to the kitchen to get a paper towel and took the dirt off with a few strokes.
When he finished, he pitched the towel and then opened up the folder, quirking a look at it all. It read “THE DEGENERATION PROJECT” in bold letters on the front page and Zeal quietly stared at it before turning the page and going through the neatly typed information in the folder. The information was complicated. Zeal obviously didn’t comprehend much of what was typed out and he continued to not understand. Or at least he didn’t until he found a picture between two of the pages and looked at it.
When he saw it, the information in the packet became much more important to Zeal. Energy Siphon was in the picture talking to a scientist. Zeal knew it was his uncle who wrote this.
Chapter 2
Zeal Drain had been reading through the folder all night. His eyes scanned the information- having read many parts over to fully solidify the information in his mind. The young man hadn’t even known how long he was reading and really didn’t care. The only reason he found out was because he heard his alarm clock go off in the other room. Suddenly, Zeal’s sleepiness became quite apparent. He was seemingly unfazed by it at first, but when he was reminded via buzzer how he completely skipped sleeping. He rubbed his forehead and muttered something about him doing such a troublesome thing and set down the folder to get ready for a new day of heroing.
After his basic normal tasks, Zeal did his normal routine. He went to go get a quick breakfast, and then flew over to Freedom Corps to pick up his morning grape soda. Upon finishing that, he yawned and popped open the top, lazily floating past the various heroes and Freedom Corps members to find his first task. He didn’t feel like socializing like he usually did aside from the wave he spared to a few people. Zeal then went into the office of one of the officers and floated in a sitting position with a weak smile. “Um, yo.”
The officer looked at Zeal strangely before speaking up. “Zeal, are you alright?”
With a moment’s hesitation, Zeal shook his head and tried to make his smile more genuine. “Yup! I am, uh… fine. Why?”
The officer just continued to stare at him before saying “Because your mask and cape doesn’t match your tights.”
The young man went wide-eyed and then looked at his gloves, the big ones from his Freedom Corps attire on his original outfit. He then felt for his mask and realized he had put on his Freedom Corps mask too, and with a quick hand to his back, he knew he had put on his cape also. Zeal reddened and ran a hand through his hair with a deep sigh. “I, um… I had a long night sir…”
“I don’t care about what you do with that girlfriend of yours,” the officer said, spitting out the words bitterly, referring to Zeal’s infamous pseudo-villain ex.
Zeal winced and rubbed his hand down his face with a deep sigh. “We broke up sir... I just did not get any sleep last night.”
The Freedom Corps official shook his head and then motioned towards his door. “Zeal, get some rest. I can’t send you out here in this condition. If you come back later, I’ll give you something you can work on. Just not now.”
A grimace came on Zeal’s face as he listened. To be told not to do any hero work… it hurt. It was essentially his life now. But regardless, the officer’s words had merit, and Zeal knew it, so he nodded to him, letting his legs down from his sitting position. “Yes sir… I’m sorry sir.”
“You’re a very valuable hero Zeal,” said the officer. “Try not to do this again, got it?” He fixed him with a look.
Zeal met the look with a nod. “Yes sir. Thank you. I’ll try not to let it happen again.”
“Good,” said the official as he looked to his computer. “See you later Zeal.”
With a wave, Zeal said “See you,” and flew off through the halls of Freedom Corps to the exit. The purple-clad hero was bothered by what he did and spent the rest of his trip home contemplating how he could let himself slack on his duties for those memoires. He huffed a sigh as he entered his apartment so he could finally land to the ground. Zeal then walked over to the folder and took it to bed with him.
He looked at the folder’s title once again… those big bold letters spelling out THE DEGENERATION PROJECT almost piercing through him. The whole ordeal just made him uneasy, but he was still compelled to finish reading through the folder to keep getting all the information he could. Despite spending the whole night looking it over, he didn’t actually know the whole story behind it.
Zeal shook his head and reminded himself he needed sleep before tossing the folder on his night stand. He put on his pajama bottoms and then went to rest on his bed, intent on falling asleep now… but when he did, the images and words from the folder filled his head. After a few restless attempts to fall asleep, Zeal sat up and rubbed his eyes, glancing towards the folder, a prominent frown on his face as he read the title over once more. Finally he grabbed the folder and walked back to his living room and tossed it on the coffee table with an aggrieved sigh, then went over to the kitchen to get himself a glass of water.
As he drank the water, his eyes shifted over to the folder again, furrowing his brow at it. Curiosity enveloped his mind just by looking at it. His exhaustion all but disappeared as he pondered more about the folder- about this project. Zeal groaned quietly and shook his head to clear it, setting the glass down in the sink and walking towards his bedroom again. And yet, he was still compelled to take one glance at this folder and freeze in his tracks again. He rubbed his forehead and cleared his throat and reluctantly he paced over to the compilation of info before him.
“…I’ll just read it until I get more tired,” said Zeal, grabbing the folder, staring at it. It was like he had to convince himself it was okay to do. He then walked back to his bedroom and laid back, opening to the point where he left off and beginning to read it once again.
Chapter 3
Zeal woke up with a gasp, his uncle’s folder lying on his lap. He frowned, realizing he had fallen asleep reading it. So as Zeal rolled out of bed, he set the folder on his night stand and went to get ready for work again. Dressed in his proper hero garb- his Freedom Corps attire- he flew back over to Freedom Corps HQ to go and pick up his next assignment. As promised, he was given a job to go meet some others at a Carnival of Shadows warehouse. Such a troublesome group of villains, Zeal would often say. Their psy protections made it hard for Zeal to combat them on his own, but he manages.
It was standard and relatively easy for the group, but Zeal didn’t stick around for long. He quickly told them good bye and good luck, and then flew back to Freedom Corps HQ. He went to the case reports area and walked in after flashing some clearance with a small smile. The guard nodded to him and Zeal sighed, looking through the vault, cabinet by cabinet for anything relevant to The Degeneration Project. Unfortunately for him, there wasn’t any information around. Zeal had looked for a couple hours for it but ultimately failed to find anything. Frustrated, Zeal finally left to find the office of the case study secretary to ask for the case report on The Degeneration Project watched over by Energy Siphon. When the worker looked, she had no information in her database about it. Zeal was confused by this and asked her why that would be. The case study secretary then told Zeal that she has only the information that was turned in. Then it became apparent to Zeal: His uncle didn’t want people to know.
Zeal thanked the woman and made his way home, disturbed a little by this now. Why didn’t he want anyone to know? Zeal needed to find out, and the only way would be by reading over the entire case himself. He was through most of it, but the rest needed to be read before he could understand it. Immediately when he got home, he tugged off his mask and threw off his cape, gloves, and boots, and grabbed the folder to read it once more. Zeal was focused, getting all of the info he could from this folder. The more he read, the more intensely he read through it. When he finished it, the info just stopped. Zeal couldn’t understand it… at least until he looked at the final day something was written.
Zeal’s eyes went wide in shock and disbelief, putting a hand over his gaping mouth. The disbelief then went to horror and pain… because the last entry was a day before his uncle’s death. Zeal shook his head and covered his eyes, letting a few tears leak out. His mind was numb from this realization as he tried his best to find thoughts that just wouldn’t come to him beside sorrow. He wanted to believe it was just a coincidence, but looking over what was happening and with everything he knew now, he couldn’t buy it. And after one night of restless sleep, the next day he woke up knowing what he had to do. He had to resolve this case for his Uncle Al.
Chapter 4
The hero known as Zeal Drain took the next day preparing. He began his own log book, writing down what he knew, what he needed to find out, and what to do to achieve that. He called off from Freedom Corps that day, saying he has personal matters to attend to. It was stretching the truth a bit, but Zeal didn’t care. This was too important to him.
He first took every name he could from the case and decided he would pay them each a visit and ask them about the ordeal. Much to his horror, the first person he visited ended up dying from a stroke. The second had a heart attack. Then each person he visited after that had one or the other.
This all happened over the course of a few weeks. Zeal would do one thing for Freedom Corps, then shut off his comm unit from not only Freedom Corps, but the Zenvious Foundation as well. He didn’t feel they should be involved with this at all. After all, if his uncle kept it a complete secret, shouldn’t Zeal too? So day by day, Zeal went by without really interacting with those he usually did- many of which he could call his friend. And yet, Zeal couldn’t make himself feel too bad about it because he mind was completely obsessed with this case.
But still, Zeal was desperate to find somebody- anybody he could talk to about this. But there seemed to be nobody he could really talk to. Zeal’s frustration grew steadily as he kept looking for more clues. Anything else he could find to piece together this puzzle. Zeal then started to find locations his uncle went to in order to find information. This was fruitless however because nobody knew anything about it. A few of the people there vaguely remembered Energy Siphon, but nobody knew what he wanted.
And any sort of villain source knew nothing when he interrogated them in the Zig- most of them locked up by his uncle. But with more research, Zeal found the ones that he couldn’t talk to had died from the same stroke or heart attack. And they were always the ones more closely tied in with his uncle’s information. More and more, Zeal started to feel hopeless and depressed. He started to think he couldn’t do it, but he kept persevering. Quitting was never something Zeal did, especially when he felt he owed this to his uncle.
But his constant failing jarred him from his state of secrecy. After so long, he finally decided he should keep it in the back of his head and keep doing research when he could. He began to work with Freedom Corps and the Zenvious Foundation more and started to talk and hang out with his friends again. Zeal slowly got back in the hang of his old routine, though doing at least one bit of research every day. He also felt like he needed to work ‘overtime’ to make up for how much he missed. Zeal was happy again, though in the back of his mind, he couldn’t forget The Degeneration Project. He thought he’d find a breakthrough eventually… and one day, he did.
