Sanctuary

From what documents I have, and from what I have been able to piece together I am a second generation super. My mother had also been a super, however, I should not have been born. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. Back in <insert a date here> my mother, Dianna Demarco, discovered that she had what one would call above human intelligence. Not genius, or incredibly smart; above human capabilities. She was never certain about where she ahd aquired her powers, this much I know for certain after going through her 'diary'. All that I can say regarding it is that thank god there are actually some decent people in the world. Who knows what would have happened if her lawyer had read it before giving it to me. But I'm jumping ahead again.

My mother had an akward cihldhood. She was 17 when her super intelligence manifested and it scared her silly. She suddenly went from being a C student to correcting the teachers mistakes in tests. She even faced an academic inquirey because her schools thought that she was cheating. After that little incident she was very cautious about who she let know about her gift. When she hit college she, like any other normal teenager, tried taking drugs etc. only they didn't seem to have any effect on her. She was already afraid of being persecuted for being different like hse was at school so she began intentionally writing incorrect answers on tests, pretending to be high with her friends, and generally making her life miserable.

This continued all through her first year and half of her second year, that was when the accident happened. After taking a dare from some friends she snuck into the colleges science department and was about to steal one of the dead animals in the jars when she heard someone about to enter the room. Starting to panic she accidentally knocked into the rack of jars, sending them crashing to the floor. Running to a window she quickly exited and started running. Its because she ran that she never quite saw what had happened.

There were some clippings from newspapers, all tear-stained, that had been stuck into the diary at this point. They explained that there had been an accident at the local college. Aparantly a janitor had accidentally knocked over a rack of jars in a biology lab that contained ethanol. In the confusion he had aparently dropped his lit cigarette, which then ignited the ethanol, followed by the gas lines running into the labs. He never stood a chance...

My mother's diary stops for quite some time after that, I was never really certain of what happened to her during the next few years. When she starts again she is describing what she is currently doing. She works for a private organization. Helping them develop various chemicals, computer programs, whatever they need. But thats during the day. During her own time she was apparantly scanning all news and police frequencies, looking for people to help. She would wear a mask and rush into dangerous situations that most people couldn't go into, she feared nothing. Well that isn't exactly true. She was afraid but she did it anyway, she felt that if she got hurt while helping someone else of a burning car or a collapsed building then she desrved it. She was punishing herself for the death of that janitor. She had never reconciled herself about his death.

Her diary goes on for quite some time explaining various things that she is doing and there's some formulas in here that I have no clue about. They're way more advanced than anything I have ever seen, pity I can't show them to anyone. Anyway, the reason I have mentioned all of this is simple, in order to understand me, you musy understand where I came from.

Jumping ahead in the diarys I find where she met my father, Jack Simons. He had been in a train accident and she had been first on the scene, helping to get people out. Now my father was no super hero in the traditional sense of the word. He had no powers what so ever. He did, however, have the heart of one. Even though he has been in the train during the wreck and had cuts and bruises all over him, he was dragging people away from the wreck and trying to put out small fires using portable fire extinguishers. Well the usual story unfolded and the two of them got married. Well, not quite the usual story, my mother never told my father who she really was. Don't ask me how she managed to hide it from him, but anyway moving along.

My parents were just fine untill two years into the marriage, when trying to have children, doctors informed my mother that she was barren. No hope of children. My father was distraught but my mother was simply furious. By this point in her life, she had come at least partially to terms with what she had done as a teenager and that the universe taking this away from her was a bit much. Wether she was right to fell that or not... well I'd rather not go there. It was because of this anger that my mother did what she did next. She began experimenting.

After about 3 months of barely leaving her lab, losing her job and almost scaring my father half to death because he had no clue about what she was doing, she walked out of her lab able to bear children. I haven't been able to find any record of what she did anywhere and naturally my father has no clue. The only person that could have told me what happened then was my mother, but that is impossible.

The problem was that although she was able to bear children, her experiments had apparantly caused complications during my birth, complications that killed my mother. And so i was that I was raised by my father until age 7. That was when tragedy struck my family once more. I had been at my friends house and his mother was giving me a lift home. As we rounded the corner to my house we saw the red and blue lights flashing on my driveway. Cop cars. My friends mom tried to stop me but I opened the door on the car and ran towards my house screaming for my dad. That's when I saw the strencher carrying him towards the ambulance. Aparantly someone had tried to rob the house when my dad walked in on him, the guy panicked and shot. Four shots to the chest...

I went to the hospital in the ambulance with my dad but even then I could feel it. Death. They rushed him in to the hospital, tried everything they could, but it was too much. He was gone. Social workers came and got me and took me to a childrens home in the city. I hated it there. I was there for a year before someone adopted me. As much as I hated the place though, where I went next was far, far worse.

Carol and Steven Geofreys were two of the worst people I have ever met in my life. The only reason they adopted me was so that they could get the welfare check every month for having so many adopted kids. Oh, I'm sorry, did I forget to mention that. I was now one of six kids. I hated it. All the other kids picked on me the most because I was the new one, the latest addition to the litter and most importantly, I was the fat one. I suppose I should add that in here. My whole life I've what you'd call overweight, not horribly so, but enough thats its definitely noticable. And so it was that life went on. I got older, I went to school, I did pretty well. Being president of your high schools chess club wouldn't win me any popularity contests but hey, it kept me away from the house...

Anyway, as I was getting to my sixteenth birthday something strange happened. Something extradordinary happened to me that I wouldn't be able to explain until I turned 21. But thats for later. What happened then went as follows. Finishing up from a chess match against a rival school I was walking home as usual at about seven at night. It shouldn't have been a problem because, I mean, I'd done it tons of times. This time, though, it would be different.

I was walking past an alleyway when suddenly someone grabbed me and pulled me into it. The next thing I knew was that I had a knife pointed at my throat and soemeone telling me to hand over my wallet. What the hell was I supposed to do now. I had a wallet sure, but there was nothing in it. I tried explaining this to the goons that had me... big mistake. One of them started punching me in the gut, asking me if I was enjoying thr massage. Then, probably trying to make himself seem impressive, he threw me against the far alley wall, and thats where things get interesting.

Instead of simply hitting the wall and then slumping down next to like physics would dictate, something else happened. I hit the wall... and flew off it so fast I smacked straight back into the guy who had thrown me and knocked him off of his feet. I was too stunned to realize what was going on, the other goon thought that I was somekind of freak and tried to punch me... I didn't even feel it. I guess instinct took over at this point because I specifically remember a detatched feeling as I punched the guy and watched him go flying down the alleyway to crumple in a heap against a trash bin.

I'm not quite sure how I got home that night, everything was sort of fuzzy. I do rememeber sitting in my room for ages before starting to laugh unctrollably. This was it, this was why I had always felt so seperate from other people, why I felt different. Because I was, I was different. I wasn't normal, I was a super. I soent the next couple of weeks designing and making a costume for myself. The purple thing looked fairly snazzy if you ask me. Anyway, things only became even more interesting after that.

I, naturally, tried to do the good thing and be like one of the other super heroes, go on patrol, look for bad guys. The usual things. I mean I did manage to stop a few thugs and what not, nothing spectacular. My first major mistake was this one, up until now I hadn't really felt any pain. That would be because someone punching doesn't do all that much damage. Bullets on the other hand do, especially when they're fired from a shotgun. And thats precicely what happened to me when I tried to stop a group of jewelry robbers. I ended up with a stomach full of buckshot. I still have the fragments actually. But anyway, back to the story. After I got shot I guess I blacked out because the next thing I remember is waking up on a hospital bed with the sound of blips and beeps coming from all around me. The only inconsistancy? This wasn't a hospital.

It was fairly large room lit with dim blue light that seemed to emenate from the ceiling. When I tried to get up a hand pressed me back down and a womans voice spoke, "Hey, don't move. Just relax. You're in good hands." And then, for a moment before I blacked out again, I saw her face. It was Ember. One of the newest super heroes to join vanguard. Once I had fully recovered another life changing event would occur. I would be offered a position. Working for Ember, finding out how super heroes worked. Acting as her backup. This was too good to be true... and it was. But thats a different story. Lets just say for now that I only truly discovered my heritage when I turned 21 and the one good, uncorreupt lawyer in the city found me and delivered a package from my mother. My real mother. Apparantly it was supposed to be given to my father on my twenty first birthday for him and I to have together but barring that, it had to be given to the alst remaining member of her family. It was her diary. And it explained oh so much.

But all of this is for another time. This is the birth and introduction of bounce-boy to the world. This is his origin. May everyone forgive me for what I helped happen... I had no clue about what Ember had planned. None...

Seraphim, end log.