by Jason Krate
* * *
Back at the church….
* * *
Rachel Addison was back at the statue of the Virgin Mary, praying to herself that Baron Knight found her daughter and that she was alright.
She hoped she wasn't being a fool by placing her faith in a metahuman.
Then again…he didn't seem to be the kind of metahuman who wasn't deserving of such faith…so far.
That was when she heard the sound of Baron Knight's voice echo out from the darkness of the area of the church she stood in that wasn't lit by candlelight.
"I found her Rachel, she's safe. Unfortunately…she's…well…" Baron Knight's voice said to her with obvious hesitation in its tone.
"Is she alright?" Rachel asked worriedly.
"That depends on you really if she will be alright or not" Baron Knight said cryptically.
"What do you mean?" Rachel asked confused, "where you are, and what's wrong with my daughter?"
"I am all around you, in the Shadow Realm. The sub-dimensional reality I use to teleport through shadows to anywhere within adequate distance and darkness." Baron Knight's voice answered, "Among other things I can also project my voice out from sources of darkness all around you like common shadows or a dimly lit room. As for why it's up to you if your daughter will be okay…answer me this. Who was her father?"
"What are you…?" Rachel began in confusion, why would he ask her such a question?
"Answer me" Baron Knight said curtly.
"I don't know, she didn't tell me because she couldn't remember his name. She hadn't seen him since she was three. Her mother raised her until she died three years afterward…then I found her and adopted her." Rachel Addison answered.
"Then that explains it" Baron Knight's voice said, "So here's the question…if your daughter was revealed to be a Metahuman. What would you do?"
"What are you talking about, she isn't a metahuman. I've raised her long enough to know." Rachel said in disbelief.
"What would you do Rachel? Would you still love her like she was your own daughter…or would you throw her out on the streets?" Baron Knight's voice asked.
"I…I…" Rachel hesitated, "Why would you think I'd be so cruel to do that to her? I love her like she was my own, I allow myself to be whored in order to support her!"
"Then prove it…step through and meet your daughter" Baron Knight's voice said to her.
Suddenly before Rachel Addison's eyes a Shadow Portal formed in the dark corner of the dimly lit cathedral.
Although she was initially hesitant at first to step through due to how she didn't like the question that Baron Knight had asked her.
Why would he ask her such a thing?
But soon enough her motherly instinct towards Rachel took over and she stepped through.
She felt that same 'whooshing' sound and the sensation of 'flying' rapidly through empty space again, this time she closed her eyes…and although it helped her not get that nauseous feeling again.
It didn't help her in any way prepared for flying out of the end of the Shadow Portal.
For a second she thought her eyes were still closed because all she could see was total darkness, then her eyes adjusted and she could see thanks to the light of an open manhole above where she had landed that she was now standing in the middle of a sewer pipe underground.
That was when she saw someone from up above step into the manhole and begin climbing the step ladder down towards her.
She was almost fearful it was a marauder or someone else that she wouldn't want to run into…until she heard the sound of Baron Knight's voice coming from the stranger.
"You need to work on your landings" Baron Knight said to her as he climbed down into the sewer pipe with her, his glowing red eyes acting as almost a flashlight down there in the sewer.
"You need to work on where you send me" Rachel shot, "what are we doing down here?"
"Because your daughter is down here" Baron Knight answered.
"What? What on earth is she doing down here?" Rachel Addison asked in surprised disbelief.
"Hiding" Baron Knight said simply.
"I figured that Baron Knight" Rachel said unamused, "but why is she hiding. I thought you said that she was safe.
"I said that depended on you" Baron Knight said critically, "she is safe…but whether or not she's safe around you is up to you."
"What…will you stop with the mysterious talk already!?" Rachel said in frustration, "Is she okay or is she not!?"
* * *
"Mom…?" a voice that was very familiar to Rachel Addison spoke from around the corner where a strange crackling sound and a blue light could be seen shinning from the left corridor at the end of the tube.
Rachel recognized it as the voice of Kaitlin.
"Kaitlin!" Rachel said in realization, and took off toward where the crackling sound and the light was coming from around the corner.
Once she had, she froze in shocked horror at what she saw.
There was Kaitlin, huddled in the corner near a crackling sparking livewire…was her adopted daughter Kaitlin.
Seeing that she was near something that could kill her, her mama bear instincts took over her sense of judgement and she ran to try and save Kaitlin.
That was when tendrils made of darkness reached out and grabbed her, restraining her from running to her daughters aid.
Baron Knight's arms then formed out of the tendrils, followed by his body, until he was standing behind her, restraining her.
"What are you doing!? I have to save her!" Rachel Addison shouted, squirming to fight herself free from the metahumans superhuman grip.
"Stop and look at her before you go running off into certain death…she's not in any danger…but you will be if you get to close to her right now. Look!" Baron Knight said, forcing Rachel to stop and look at Kaitlin again…this time without the fear of her daughter's life in danger.
She…she couldn't believe it.
The electricity that was sparking out from the exposed livewire in the ceiling of the ruined sewer pipe tunnel they were standing in.
It was flowing out of the wire in a steady current like water…right into Kaitlin.
Who wasn't reacting to the deadly electrical current like a normal person would have, in fact, the electricity wasn't doing anything to her.
Except disappear into her hands like water to a sponge.
Kaitlin then sighed as if she was satisfied about something, and the current vanished.
Baron Knight then let Rachel go.
Rachel was dumbstruck by this, but she still walked over to her daughter's side.
With a look of great concern and shock on her face as she looked down at her terrified daughter who was looking up at her with a wary look.
She tried to put a hand on her to comfort her.
"No!" Kaitlin screamed, backing away from her adoptive mother touch, "Don't touch me! I don't want to hurt you…"
"Kaitlin? What on earth…?" she said, finding her voice to speak her confusion at what was happening to her daughter.
"I'm sorry mom…" Kaitlin said close to tears, "I don't know what happened. I don't know what this stuff is, but it hurts anyone who comes near me."
"You…" Rachel Addison said in realization, "You're a metahuman?"
"Metahuman?" Kaitlin Addison blinked in recognition of the term she had heard her mother say, "The men that attacked the paladins escorting me home, the ones who chased me, and the man who's with you in the darkness. They called me 'metahuman'. Isn't that what you called those monsters mom? The one with powers? Is that what I am? A monster…that kills people with powers?"
Baron Knight noticed that Rachel Addison seemed to be in conflict about how to answer that one.
For the child's sake, he hoped that she wouldn't make the choice he was afraid she would make now that she knew her daughter was also part of the group she had been raised to hate by her parents.
Even though she seemed to be swaying a bit on the positive si
de, he wasn't sure in his cynical experienced mind that a mother's love could fully eliminate years of prejudice.
That was when Rachel Addison clenched her fists, and for a moment Baron Knight expected her to disown her on the spot for being a 'freak' like him.
* * *
"Of course you aren't honey…your just a little girl who is scarred. I know just what you need to no longer feel scarred. I'm your mother…and I'll show you that you don't have to be scarred of what and who you are. Neither one of us do." Rachel Addison said, bravely walking closer to her adoptive daughter while showing a side of her that Baron Knight had only seen glimpses of.
The side of a mother who loved her daughter, no matter what.
"Just stay calm honey…" she said, using the same tone of voice she had used when Kaitlin had nightmares or was scared during the initial stages of the Ghouls siblings occupation a few weeks ago on her to calm her down and make her feel safe.
While getting closer and closer to touching her with her hand.
"Mom please…I don't want to hurt you like I did the goons that chased me" Kaitlin pleaded in fear.
"You won't hurt her Kaitlin" Baron Knight said from the shadows, his dark voice sounding strangely warm and caring to the two women's ears, "Do as I told you. Trust you love for your mother…and it will all be okay."
"You think so?" Kaitlin Addison asked to the darkness.
She had never seen the originator of the voice that spoke to her and her mom from the darkness, but ever since he had found her in the sewer tunnels.
She had just trusted the voice in the darkness.
It had been kind, caring, and had comforted her in her fear before going off to get her mother and bring her here to her.
Promising her that everything would be fine…if her mother's love had been true.
He had told her that as long as she believed that her mother really loved her no matter what, then everything would be okay.
She hadn't believed him at first, because she had remembered the tales her mother had told her about the Old World.
About how Metahumans, people with powers, were monsters who ruined everything.
She had figured her mother would be so mad at her for turning into one.
So how was he, whoever the voice in the darkness was, so sure that her mother who hated 'monsters with powers'…like her…would still love her the same as before.
"I know so…" Baron Knight assured her, "because your mother not only defied my expectations. She has also made it farther than I did to get near to you when I first found you. See."
That was when Kaitlin noticed that Rachel had gotten close enough to touch her.
And she wasn't being electrocuted, she was okay.
"I'm…I'm not hurting you" Kaitlin said with shock, and then she smiled in relief "I'm not hurting you mother!"
Tears in her eyes, glad that she was okay and not caring at all that she was a 'freak'…a Metahuman. Rachel wasted no time in grabbing her daughter and holding her tight to her chest, while Kaitlin hugged her back.
Crying tears of joy herself that Rachel Addison still wanted her as a daughter despite certain…changes…in her life.
"See…you're not dangerous. You're just my little girl." She said assuringly to her adoptive daughter with a warm caring smile, "I'm so glad you're okay. I was worried sick."
"As I told you. It is up to you and what you chose to do that would determine if she is alright" Baron Knight said with an impressed tone in his voice, "You made the right choice Rachel…a choice that not many parents ever made back in the old world when their children became active Metahumans with powers they never had any choice in having when the M-Gene activated."
"What happened to her?" Rachel Addison asked confused, "She never showed powers before…"
"When Mastermind II and the Deathborne Siblings managed to fix Brightmoon City's power…they ended up restoring an element that hasn't been powering a city power grid anywhere on earth in years." Baron Knight explained, "Electricity. Kaitlin is an electro-kenetic. A metahuman with the ability to absorb and control electrical energy for defensive and offensive purposes…much like her father was."
"My….father?" Kaitlin Addison asked in surprised confusion, what was the voice in the shadows talking about?
"Her father?" Rachel Addison asked in mutual surprised confusion, "You know who her father is? How?"
"A long time ago, I was the superhero defender of Brightmoon City." Baron Knight explained, "I had a gallery of rogues. Some stayed evil scumbags till their death, others reformed…one of these villains was an electro-kinetic who called himself: Killerwatt."
"And…he was Kaitlin's father?" Rachel Addison asked in realization.
So THAT'S why Kaitlin had powers.
Her father was a Metahuman.
* * *
"It's possible yes he was" Baron Knight said with conviction, "I assumed he and his wife died during the great massacre…but if she is his daughter."
"You think he's still alive somewhere?" Rachel Addison asked in amazement, "How would that be possible? Kaitlin hasn't seen him since she was three!"
"I survived, so did Mastermind…anything's possible after THAT revelation" Baron Knight shrugged from where he hid in the shadows.
"So how did you know Kaitlin's…." Rachel hesitated for a moment, "gift….would work that way. That she wouldn't hurt me because she trusts me as her mother to keep her safe and comforted?"
"Because her father had a similar ability…it just took him a while to master it. It's a defense mechanism" Baron Knight explained, "if she feels like she's in danger, she absorbs electricity to defend herself. She doesn't have any control over it. It's psychological. It's part of who she is. Luckily for the both of you…you didn't break that trust."
"Why would you assume I would?" Rachel Addison asked in disbelief. Did Baron Knight think she would abandon her like…like she was a dangerous monster like the Deathborne siblings?
"I told you. I have seen 'loving parents' disown their children for being super powered Rachel" Baron Knight said solemnly, "for something that was never in their control or their choice in the first place. No one truly chooses to become superhuman…but they do have a choice in what they do with that power. As do any of us. While parents have a responsibility to steer those children into developing those powers for the good of the child, and those around him or her."
"I'm…" Rachel Addison said looking down at Kaitlin sadly, understanding that Baron Knight had a point to doubt her. She herself wondered if she hadn't met Baron Knight…and learned not all metahumans were rabid monsters. Would she still have accepted Kaitlin's change from normal girl into…into what her parents had raised her to hate?
"I'm starting to see now…that maybe things weren't exactly how my parents told me they were…at least not entirely." Kaitlin Addison said, taking a guess on where Baron Knight was hiding in the shadows when she said it.
"It's a start…" Baron Knight said, taking Rachel's slow baby steps away from her prejudice against metahumans in stride.
But he couldn't help but show admiration and pride towards the young woman for choosing her daughter over what she had been taught during her upbringing about metahumans.
"What am I going to do with you Kaitlin?" Rachel said with great concern, "we can't leave the city now…no one would accept what you are now. I know they won't."
"Don't be ridiculous Rachel, it doesn't suit a woman like you. She can leave, same as you." Baron Knight scoffed in an annoyed tone, "Technoforce, and Brightmoon City are the only cities on earth to my knowledge that have its electricity and utilities back up and running. All you have to do is take her out of the city to one of the still de-powered cities or towns. No electricity, no powers."
"Could it really be that simple?" Rachel Addison said to herself, thinking about what Baron Knight had told her.
She then looked around to try and find Baron Knight, and failing at that she just decided to voice her question to the Kn
ight of the Night "Will you continue to keep your word? Will you help me and my daughter to escape?"
"Yes…" Baron Knight said, and then he added in a surly tone "the sooner you two are gone…the sooner I can get back to my revenge. But first…follow me to the exit. I can't shadow walk either of you while down here in this concrete relic of a sewer system."
