NaNoWriMo Day 15
They were the only parents I ever remember because I was less than one year old when they found me at the crash site of the wreckage of a spacecraft.
It was they that taught me how to use my powers once they began to emerge. It was they and our town’s local physician, Dr. Everitt, who have kept secret the source of my powers. A remnant of my planet of origin, Dromia, pierced my chest at some point in the crash and settled close to my heart. This strangely radiated piece of shrapnel hasn’t seemed to have any ill effects, but it does appear to be what has given me my special abilities. But the powers are not without their potential weaknesses.
The presence of other meteorites of Dromian origin causes the radiations to cancel each other out. Depending on the strength of the radiation from the other pieces, they can cause my powers to weaken, or even go so far as to injury and potentially kill me. Needless to say, my enemies lustily pursue whatever fragments they can find.
Dr. Everitt discovered the shrapnel when I was a child and figured out what was occurring. But he kept the secret for good, even when it lead to his death. One of the villains I’ve thwarted over the years Kenneth Jackson, crony-businessman, politician, and charlatan of the highest order, narrowed down the possibility of Normville as being my hometown. He desperately wanted my identity and figured the towns only doctor must have treated me as a child and recognized my abilities.
Jackson kidnapped Dr. Everitt and tortured him. Of course Jackson had hidden himself from the process well enough that it couldn’t be traced back to him. So when they torture proved to be too much for an eighty-three year-old man’s heart, there was no way to bring Jackson up on charges. The man’s spent some time in prison, though never long enough and never for that particular crime.
Along with my parents, Dr. Everitt knew that my powers had the potential for great good in the world. All three took a role in teaching me not just how to use my power, but when to use it and for what purpose. They never pushed me towards taking on the role of superhero, but they knew that I wouldn’t be able to avoid helping people. But they understood that I would become a symbol. They also understood that that was better than becoming a crutch for humanity. So they prepared me for that role.
But whatever goodness they saw in me that allowed them to believe I could be that kind of hero, was a reflection of themselves. If I am good, then it is they that made me good. Because another of my names, my first name, comes from a dark past.
My Dromian name is Kiv-Ro. Son of my father, Kiv-Yul, and mother, Kiv-Pria. They were the most evil villains in the history of Dromia and two of the worst individuals in the history of the galaxy.
I didn’t learn of my parents until I was twenty-three and met the first another hero, The Osprey, who belonged to a intergalactic force against evil known as The Nest. He used his connections with the group to identify the origins of the spaceship that took me to Earth. He figured out that it was of Dromian origin and one of the last models they ever built before they chose isolation from the rest of the intergalactic community.
My name was present in the spacecraft and on the clothes that I was wearing as an infant. From that, The Nest was able to put together who my parents were and the story of how I ended up on Earth.
My parents were the only Dromians known to have left the planet during a span of centuries, though they didn’t leave willingly. They were exiled from Dromia after they were found to be leading a plot to overthrow the planet’s governing body and install themselves as monarchs. They were launched into space in one of the last remaining Dromian spacecraft and told never to return. But my parents held a grudge against their homeworld and one day did return.
They spent the next few years building up a reputation as a couple of the worst outlaws in the galaxy. The stole, cheated, and killed for hire. All the while building towards their goal of revenge. Somewhere along that way they had me. But instead of a child taming their wild nature, it seems it must have pushed it to new heights. There plan had been for me to become their successor. The first heir in what they hoped would be a long-living monarchy. My birth must have made them irate that that was no longer a possibility.
They had built up considerable wealth with their dirty deeds and bought up a weapon that cost every bit of it. They took that weapon to Dromia and destroyed the entire planet. Everything of my ancestry was gone in a second. And my parents, having not properly judged the force of the blowback from the explosion, found their ship being destroyed by it. I was in that ship and lucky enough to have been secure inside a compartment that was protected from some of the blast. But the explosion sent my ship, along with the pieces of Dromia that would become my source of power and great weakness, towards Earth.
In one moment I learned that my home planet was gone, and that my parents were responsible. It was devastating to learn the type of people that I come from. It sparked a personal struggle that would consume several years of my life and, being honest, still causes trouble for me today. I was concerned that, given my genetics, no matter what my Earth parents taught me, some of my parents evil was still in me. Could I be sure that I one day wouldn’t snap and turn against humanity? With the power I have, such an event might spell the extinction of the species.