Super Reporter System - Detroit

Chapter Type: World Building

Detroit, the city of champions, was most well known for being the city with the most meta-on-meta conflicts in the world. As such, there was a lot of damage to the city infrastructure at irregular intervals.

Fortunately, the city was also host to David Tesla (born David Neuheim), the world's foremost inventor and innovator. Although his devices inevitably break down if far away from him, within sixty feet or so of the inventor is some of the most advanced technology on the planet.

Most of his devices reside within a remodeled sports arena he calls the workshop, but the press likes to call the Technology Dome.

Technology Dome is entirely powered by Eye-Kill, a woman who shoots high temperature beams from her eyes when angry. Once started, she cannot turn the beams off; instinct keeps her eyelids locked open while the beams are firing.

Once locked to a help-desk position in Chicago, she now spends a few hours every three days "burning off steam" into a special receptacle in the Dome; she lives in comfort on the electricity sold to the Detroit power grid, although her doctors are worried about her high blood pressure.

For his part, Dr. Tesla builds devices that build other devices, which in turn print out, shape, form, or otherwise work upon his real ideas. Like his earlier namesake, he is poorly adjusted to speaking with his fellow human beings; he retains a staff for that. He gets to build things, which is his enjoyment in life. They make sure those things he no longer has an interest in are sold to private corporations for enough to make all of them wealthy.

It is a model that Muscleborn can respect, even if he has no intention of emulating it. Results that cannot be duplicated are the realm of fools, is what he tells his own staff (a driver, a professional shopper, and an executive assistant). It is why he has been looking into things that someone with exceptional strength can perform, ever since the first Flower of Fate landed in Slovakia all those years ago.

But all of that came AFTER. After his powers were tested, measured, and proven superior to all that had come before. A quick look at the township of Urbino, Italy proved his business model. If you had enough power, people would pay you just to leave them alone. And if they didn't? It wasn't as if more than a handful of people on the planet could stop him. And someone with his resources could ensure they had better things to do on any given day.

He led a gaggle of photographers, reporters, and web-channel hosts; they would have to watch from safety, of course, but Muscleborn was still glad to have them along.

The first station was a device of Dr. Tesla's making. Once he had isolated the wavelength that seemed to empower meta-abilities, he was also able to construct a chamber that measured individual outputs. It was a simple test; he just flexed his muscles, and…

"Seven." The technician tells him. "Specifically, seven point three."

Too low! With a reading like that, there were over a hundred more powerful metas on the planet!

"You're reading the device wrong." He says.

The technician, a blonde teenager, sighs. "Go ahead, flex your muscles again. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Seven point two eight. I'm calling it a seven point three."

"I'm just going to be back here after demonstrating what I can do."

"Okay, I'll keep the chamber fired up. It's not like I'm not paid by the hour."

The fool! Muscleborn would deal with him later. The next were the important tests, anyway. "Is this a brick wall?" he asks.

"Yes, sir. This first layer is a brick wall, then about ten feet beyond it is concrete, and then ten feet beyond that is a layer of battleship plate. We'd like you to run from there," he pointed first at a green line, and then to a red line closer to the brick wall, "to there. From the red line, please jump forward as hard as you can. You can jump half a mile?"

"About that far." Muscleborn says. "I don't have a measuring tape."

"Okay, then you're going to come to a hard stop against the steel. Can you take that blow?"

Can he?

"I can take that on my face." He won't, of course. He's practiced this jump. He'll take the brunt of the blow on his chest.

"All right, proceed." Says the trim man, standing inside a cube of transparent impact-resistant plastic.

It is too easy; Muscleborn picks up velocity, and hurls himself forward.

CRUNCH

CRUNCH

K-TANG!

He comes up short against the steel wall, bending it away from himself slightly. But it holds! NO, this cannot be. His own tests show he can punch through steel.

He screams at the plate wall in defiance, and strikes it with his full strength.

K-TONG! His hand punches through the inch-thick plate.

"Yup, that was the next test." The trim man tells him over the intercom. "Please move around that plate to the next in the series."

Muscleborn doesn't understand; it looks exactly like the inch-thick wall behind him.

"Ayup, please punch that wall, if you would."

Muscleborn does; the wall dents slightly. He hits it again, harder this time, but with the same results.

"Hi-ya!" he screams, kicking it. With savagery, he strikes the wall repeatedly, the echoes of his blows heard around the Dome.

In the end, when he stops, he had broken two fingers of his right hand, has dislocated the muscles of both sets of fingers, and his right kneecap is a painfull mash of tissue.

But the wall is intact.

The trim man whistles over the intercom. "Impact to the n of eleven point eight. Call it twelve. Very impressive, Muscleborn."

Twelve? Twelve? The Red Dragon in China has a punch impact of n to the fifteen, or double per each point… eight. EIGHT times more power in a single punch than Muscleborn has.

It's not possible; their equipment is flawed.

The trim man, oblivious, gives him a thumbs-up. "Congratulations, you're twelfth in the world in terms of raw strength."

"Twelfth, are you sure?"

"Absolutely. The impact you're making on that six foot thick band of steel verifies it. Well done, sir!"

The man is mocking him, but Muscleborn is not one to be provoked so easily.

He KNOWS what is going on. They have set up today specifically to under-measure him, to diminish reports of his ability to the public.

He has underestimated the cunning of his enemies, of the depths they will sink to in a futile effort to diminish him. Underestimated how long they've had to weave their webs of influence and deception.

They think he is beaten; that these tests will break him. They are wrong.

Still, they have attempted to mollify him. The brunette woman in glasses for the next part of the tests could have been a junior porn starlet. Muscleborn idly wonders what that cleavage cost her, and then realizes from the size of her butt and belly that maybe those are natural. Just maybe.

"When is the little one due?" he asks.

"Oh, if she's on time, another four and a half months." She responds.

Hah! There's no fooling HIM, he thinks.

"Please stand in the red circle for as long as you can."

He enters the red circle.

"Do you have any resistance to fire?" she asks.

"Fire?" he asks, but then he is flinging himself forward, clear of the flamethrowers. He is screaming like a man on fire, because he IS.

He rolls around a bit, and then gets to forcing his regeneration to remove and re-grow the injured tissue.

"Fascinating." She says, watching a monitor at her station.

After what seems like forever, she clicks a button. "Two minutes, twelve seconds. Impressive. Okay, move to the blue circle facing the tripod."

The tripod hosts a gun longer than Muscleborn is tall.

"Any resistance to bullets?"

"Not on THAT scale." Muscleborn says. What are they, crazy? The thing looks like a miniature cannon.

"Okay, hold your left arm out. Uh-huh, like that. Please rotate the arm forward a bit. About half that more. Yeah, palm facing the ground. There. Let me know when you're ready."

He gives her a thumbs-up. He knows they want him to storm off, his enemies. As if little pains like…

"Son of a BITCH!" he screams, as a five inch hemisphere of flesh vanishes from his bicep, exposing the bone. "God DAMN it."

He is splattered with blood, with his OWN blood, which is leaking from the arm, even as he wills tissue back into the gap. The pain isn't quite like his original transformation, perhaps a third as painful.

The healing takes longer because the fools wait for his skin to close over the wound, calling it five minutes fifty-nine seconds. They take a needless x-ray, just to make certain he isn't hurt.

There are other tests, tests he could have done better on if he hadn't lost his emotional balance. They know, they KNOW these tests are not fair.

And because they cheat, they show normal human levels of reaction time, flexibility, coordination, and stamina.

When they add up all the numbers, and run them through their formula, it comes to…

"Seven point seven four. Congratulations, you are one of the top two hundred meta-powers on the planet."

He smiles. Let them think he accepts their deception.

After all, he has a back-up plan.