Pain. Cold. Wet.
Those were the first three things Elias registered. The fourth was the smell—a pungent mix of rotting garbage, industrial smog, and the salty tang of an ocean that had long since given up on being clean.
Elias gasped, his eyes snapping open. He wasn't on a street corner in Seattle anymore. He was lying face-down in a puddle of murky water in an alleyway that looked like it had been designed by a depressed architect. Brick walls towered on either side, slick with grime and covered in tattered posters.
He pushed himself up, his hands trembling. They looked… different. His fingers seemed slightly longer, his skin unblemished, his veins humming with a faint, rhythmic pulse. He wasn't wearing his business casual attire anymore. He was dressed in a simple, high-collared black jacket, dark cargo pants, and strangely sturdy red sneakers with a white strap across the middle.
"What the hell?" he rasped. His voice sounded younger, smoother.
He staggered to his feet, leaning against the damp brick wall for support. His head swam with a bizarre vertigo, not from dizziness, but from awareness. He could feel things he shouldn't be able to feel.
He could feel the neon sign buzzing three blocks away. He could feel the electrical current running through the wires hidden in the walls. But most terrifyingly, he could feel a well of dormant power sitting in the center of his chest, vast and terrifyingly deep.
Elias stumbled toward the mouth of the alley. He needed to know where he was.
He stepped out onto a sidewalk and immediately recoiled. The city was a gothic nightmare of spires, gargoyles, and oppressive shadows, illuminated only by the sickly yellow glow of streetlamps and the occasional flash of lightning. Zeppelins drifted lazily through the smog-choked sky.
"No way," Elias whispered. He knew this aesthetic. He'd read enough comics to recognize the architecture of despair. "Gotham?"
He was in the DC Universe. He had died and woken up in the worst tourist destination in fiction.
"Hey! Look at this."
The voice was rough, grating like sandpaper on concrete. Elias froze. He turned to see three men stepping out from the shadows of the alley he'd just vacated. They were the quintessential Gotham thugs: leather jackets, ski masks, and an assortment of rusty knives and crowbars.
"Nice shoes, kid," the one in the center sneered, tapping a pipe against his palm. "You look lost. And rich."
Elias held up his hands. Instinctively, he expected to feel fear. He was an IT guy; he'd never been in a fight in his life. But as the adrenaline hit his system, the fear didn't come. Instead, something inside him purred. A turbine spinning up.
"I don't have any money," Elias said, surprised by how steady his voice was. "And I'm having a really weird day, so if you guys could just walk away, that would be great."
The thugs laughed. It was a dry, humorless sound.
"Funny guy," the leader said. "Grab him."
The thug on the left lunged, a switchblade flashing in the dim light.
Time didn't stop, but it felt like the world took a deep breath.
In that split second of danger, Elias's mind didn't go to fight-or-flight. It went inward. It dove into that well of power in his chest.
He saw them. A mental inventory.
The Seven Chaos Emeralds.
The Sol Emeralds.
The World Rings.
The Sacred Swords.
The Wisps.
They were icons in a mental interface, hovering in the void of his subconscious. They were dormant, greyed out—locked by his own lack of understanding. Except for one set. The classics. The Seven Chaos Emeralds were vibrating, desperate to be let out.
Requirement met: 50 Rings equivalent of kinetic energy generated by heart rate.
Form Available: Super State.
Elias didn't think. He just pulled.
BOOM.
The alleyway exploded with light.
It wasn't an explosion of fire, but of pure, golden pressure. The rain that was falling froze in mid-air, then vaporized instantly. The thugs were blown backward, skidding across the wet pavement as if hit by a hurricane wind.
Elias floated. His feet left the ground, hovering six inches above the dirty concrete.
The change was instantaneous. His black hair bleached rapidly, turning a brilliant, shimmering gold and defying gravity, spiking upward in a familiar, aerodynamic shape. His eyes, previously a dull brown, ignited into pools of ruby red. A golden aura flared around him, crackling with bio-electricity that danced like playful lightning.
The power was intoxicating. It felt like he had plugged his nervous system into a supernova. He felt invincible. He felt fast.
The lead thug, coughing and blinded, looked up. His eyes widened in sheer terror behind his mask. "What... what are you? Some kind of meta?"
Elias looked at his hands. They were glowing gold. He clenched his fist, and the air rippled with a sonic distortion.
"I'm..." Elias hesitated. He felt the urge to say something witty. The persona that came with this power demanded it. A smirk tugged at the corner of his lips. "I'm just a guy who hates waiting in traffic."
The thug scrambled for a pistol tucked in his belt. "Freak!"
He fired.
To Elias, the bullet moved through molasses. He watched the slide of the gun retract, the casing eject, and the lead projectile spin slowly toward him.
He didn't dodge. He didn't need to.
Elias simply raised a finger. He tapped the bullet in mid-air.
Clink.
The bullet shattered into dust against his skin.
The thug dropped the gun. "Oh, god."
"My turn," Elias said.
He didn't run. He blurred.
He moved forward, not with a step, but with a burst of acceleration that shattered the sound barrier. BOOM. A sonic boom rattled the windows of the surrounding tenements.
Elias was instantly behind the three men. He hadn't hurt them—not really. He had simply moved past them with such velocity that the displacement of air sent them spinning into a pile of trash bags against the wall. They were unconscious before they hit the ground.
Elias hovered there, the golden aura pulsating rhythmically. He felt amazing. He felt like he could run to Metropolis and back before his next heartbeat.
But then, the drain started.
It was a gnawing sensation in his gut. The power was finite. Without physical rings to sustain the connection to the Chaos energy, his body was burning through his own stamina to maintain the form.
Ring Count Depleting.
"Right," Elias muttered, his voice echoing with a metallic flange. "Gotta turn it off."
He focused, exhaling slowly. He imagined the seven suns in his chest dimming, returning to a dormant state.
The golden light flickered and died. Gravity reclaimed him, and his boots hit the pavement with a splash. His hair settled back down, turning black. His eyes returned to brown.
Elias slumped against the brick wall, panting heavily. Steam rose from his shoulders, his clothes dry despite the rain because the heat of his aura had evaporated the water.
"Okay," he wheezed, clutching his chest. "Super form is a go. But the stamina drain is no joke."
He looked at the unconscious thugs. He had just taken out three armed men in less than a second. And that was just the standard Super form.
He closed his eyes and checked the mental inventory again.
Super Form.
Hyper Form (Locked - Insufficient Mastery).
Dark Form (Locked - Emotional Trigger Required).
Darkspine Form (Locked - World Ring Resonance Required).
Excalibur Form (Locked - Artifact Missing).
The list went on. Werehog. Wisp powers. Cyber-corruption. He had access to every gimmick, every power-up, every deus ex machina that the blue blur had ever utilized in thirty years of gaming history.
"I'm a Swiss Army Knife of physics-breaking bullshit," Elias murmured, a grin spreading across his face despite the exhaustion.
A siren wailed in the distance, getting closer. The sonic boom and the golden flash would attract attention. In Gotham, attention usually meant the GCPD or, worse, the Bat.
Elias pushed himself off the wall. He needed to find a place to lay low, figure out the timeline, and understand the extent of his abilities without burning himself out.
He looked up at the gargoyles peering down at him.
"Welcome to Gotham, Elias," he whispered to himself. "Try not to die again."
He crouched low. He didn't transform this time, but he channeled a tiny fraction of the chaos energy into his legs. Blue sparks crackled around his sneakers.
With a sharp vwoom sound, he vanished into the maze of the city, a blue streak cutting through the grey darkness.
High above, on a rooftop overlooking the alley, a dark silhouette cape flared in the wind. White lenses narrowed as they scanned the unconscious thugs and the lingering traces of unknown radiation.
Batman tapped his comms. "Oracle. I need a scan on a new energy signature in the Bowery. It's… bright."
"On it," came the reply. "What kind of energy?"
Batman looked down at the scorch marks on the wet pavement where the golden light had been.
"Chaos," he said.