Spotlight on Scourge, part 1

Fire was an extremely useful element.
If could heat, cook, forge and of course destroy. That last part was what Scourge found particularly useful.
" Please; please mercy!"; The human begged, cowering at his feet. The fire raged around them, the lab ablaze. All was being consumed by the tongues of flame. All the equipment, charts and notes… all the precious genetic material that they had grown him from was all soon to be reduced to char. The air was full of smoke and ash and the extinguishers, which had already been sabotaged, were melting in the heat.
“Now now, doc.” The green hedgehog said with a deceptive warm smile as he knelt down to look the cowering human in the face. “Show a little dignity and pride, won’t you? All this begging and cowering really isn’t becoming you know.”
He laid on hand on the humans shoulder.
“And are you really that surprised that I turned out this way?” He chuckled. “You… all of you… taught me all about betrayal, deceit and power. Did you really imagine that after learning that I’d be content to simply remain your lab rat, shut up in a white sterile box for the rest of my life?”
He shook his hand and held up his free hand.
“Oh no, and I’ve made sure you won’t do it to anyone else either. This lab is going up in flames and the doctors and scientists who helped make me are either dead or dying. I’m going to be the first and last little clone you make.”
" Please, no! "; The human continued to plead. “It .. it was General Blake’s project! We were only following orders!!”
“I’ll get to him soon enough.” The clone replied with an indifferent shrug. “But I’ll finish up here first.” The grip on the human’s shoulder tightened and his claws bite through the white lab coat and into the flesh, drawing blood. “I am... after all… oh what did you all call me? A real Scourge?”
The free hand slashed directly across the throat from left to right, the human gagged out, blood running from the wound like a flowing river. Without hesitating a moment from sticky feel of the flowing red stream he lifted the dying man up and then casually tossed him back into the fires to burn.
Scourge would have preferred to have burnt Blake’s entire base to the ground but that would have required more time than he currently had to escape. He simply settled for destroying the laboratory and ensuring that no one would have to ensure that horribly white room anymore.
That room with its closed in walls and seamless door, sprayed by the hour to keep it free of static and germs had been imprinted on his brain. Enduring it from the moment he had been released from the glass tank in which he had been grown; Scourge had been loosing his sanity bit by bit each day.
Eventually it had reached the point where either he escaped or risked going mad. Yet even after causing a short circuit in the lights to cause the guards to investigate and open the door, Scourge could not be sure if his mind was completely intact.
He had been the result of a five month project designed to grow, from obtained biological samples, super soldiers for a covert branch of the Federation military. He was the prototype, grown quickly in a gestation period that had last mere weeks. Through his growth and physical development, information had been digitised and then beamed directly into his mind. This, he had supposed, was their way of getting around the problem of having him emerge in an adult body but with the mind of an infant.
They had taught him basic stuff first, followed by more detailed and complex explanations of mathematics, politics, economics and of course, advanced warfare and combat.
Then once he had emerged, their training and tests began. Every day he was put through vigorous exercises to build up muscles and improve his endurance and was pitted against the harshest battle simulation equipment they had and was not allowed to stop until he collapsed from exhaustion. In truth, Scourge loved that activity and only dreaded the end of it when he would be carted inside, cleaned to remove foreign bacteria and was then dumped back into the white cell.
But all that was over now and he was free. The world before him and his past burning behind and laughing manically he can run forward to embrace it. It was approaching Scourge’s first chronological birthday when all that came to end.
Since escaping the clutches of Federation military Scourge had been left without direction. The world was full of things to see and do but given his own education and ‘upbringing’ there had been few things he would be either skilled or interested in.
In the end, he decided on simply indulging himself.
At first it was merely petty crime, robbing stores and street vendors. He had worked his way up from there to banks and his activates earned him the notice of the various crime lords that operated within Midgard.
Very quickly he became a mercenary for hire and charged outrageous for his services. He took any job; murder, assignation, robbery, sabotage and fraud. He was a mercenary jack of all trades and uniquely suited to this life.
The lifestyle was rewarding and provided him with enough of a challenge to keep him interested, allowing him to make full use of the abnormal speed he was able to use. There had been times during his new life when he wondered exactly who he had been copied from and how he differed, if in any way, from the template? He had never found out as all the information had gone up in smoke along with the lab.
Although he supposed that this was for the best but even so he supposed that even if he knew it wouldn’t matter. He was an improvement over the original, obviously he would be superior.
Within the space of months his outrageously high price allowed him to live in absence luxury.
By now he had his own apartment in the classiest area of Central City, a high-rise penthouse with a Jacuzzi and pool. He was a self appointed ‘sugar daddy’ to various girls around the country and very soon he would have enough resources to start his own criminal empire.
One the anniversary of his emergence from the tank he lay back inn his pool with a naked girl in one arm and a glass of champagne in the other and let out a content sigh.
“Yep… things are pretty good.” He remarked to no one and took a long sip. As he was drinking, his ears twitched at the sudden and unmistakable sound of helicopter blades spinning.
Glancing back over his shoulder, he watched as a combat chopper rose to hover level with his apartment; intense search lights shinning in through the window. The machine gun on the underside of the aircraft began to turn.
Reacting with his genetically enhanced speed, Scourge grabbed his girl and pulled her under the water to avoid the stream of bullets that racked through the apartment. Walls exploded in brick dust, glass spraying out in a deadly rain and all the expensive furniture folded in upon itself under fire.
While Scourge held no lives superior to his own the girl was his favourite and he would definitely prefer it if she were not killed.
As the chopper paused to reload, Scourge pulled her to the water and almost threw her towards the still undamaged stairs that lead down into the building
“We’ll carry this on later, sweaty.” He told her and turned back to face the chopper, no longer caring whether or not she got herself to safety.
There were no indentifying markings on the chopper although it looked military. It opened fire again, a stream of bullets flying at him. He dodged them again using the lightning speed for which he had been grown, sliding in between the bullets as if they were moving in slow motion.
One of his girls had once compared how he moved in a fight to a type of dance. Scourge had never cared much for that interpretation.
Once the machinegun paused to reload again, Scourge took a running jump towards the chopper, somersaulting until he caught the landing pads with one hand.
The aircraft swung backwards at the sudden extra weight and then quickly tried to gain elevation.
The green hedgehog swung his athletic body up and with a twist, smashed his foot into the underside of the metal hull. His strength was not as profound as his speed but he was strong enough to knock the entire front end of the chopper up, tilting the entire aircraft on its axis.
With this near vertical surface, Scourge quickly ascended to the glass cockpit. Inside he could see the two surprised pilots staring at him in astonishment.
Suddenly the air was filled with more noise. Looking back the green hedgehog saw that two more unmarked choppers were rising to fly towards them and each had missile launchers on the underside of their wings.
Scourge was good, but not that good.
Somersaulting backwards he fell away from the chopper as the projectiles were launched, slamming into where he had just been. The chopper exploded with the impact, the shockwave nearly knocking Scourge out of his controlled fall.
As pieces and pieces of charred metal begin to fall around them, he swung his body around in a circle until he was able to place his feet against the side of the building. Friction and momentum did the rest, keeping him fixed to the side of the glass and brick as he ran trying to outdistance the falling aircraft.
These guys weren’t joking around. They’d shoot at their own guys to get at him.
He darted to the left, avoiding a piece of faster falling debris.
Who were these insane clowns? Why were they targeting him? As Scourge ran, his mind raced, trying to find someone he might have ‘upset’ with his criminal career over the past few months. There had been any number of individuals who would have held a grudge enough to have killed him in his sleep but none of them were resourceful enough or brave enough for something like this.
There was a new sound and glancing sharply to the rest the green hedgehog could see what appeared to be a swarm of bugs coming at him. Then he realised what they were, Beetle robots…. Head sized automated attack drones used by the military, each one armed with a small plasma projectile underneath their small metal bodies.
They swarmed after him in formation, coming forward in a flying V.
With the choppers coming at him from above and this new treat trying to cut him off, Scourge was pinned.
“Heh… so you think.” He said, a grin spreading over his face.
This particular technique was instinctive. He had always been able to do it and he supposed it was yet another of the programmed abilities the scientists had put into it.
Tipping his body forward, it curved almost perfectly into a ball; spinning around so faster that his form blurred into a single orb of green. When moving this way, he had the maximum amount of control over his body and could direct it with devastating force.
Bounding off the side of the building, he blew like a ball at the robots coming at him. They managed to fire off a few rounds at him, most flying off in horribly askew angles.
He shot through them, his quills turning so fast they acted like blades slicing through the robots as if they were made of cardboard. He bounced from bot to bot, bouncing too and fro, explosions and debris flying out in his wake.
The choppers soared overheard, tilting their ends forward to fire their missiles at him again.
Almost as if he sensed the attack coming. Scourge reached out while still spinning and grabbed on of the few beetles that hadn’t been smashed. He held it for only a moment, his spinning body giving it all the momentum it needed. At the right moment he realised it and it was sent flying like a missile up at one of the choppers.
It slammed through the aircraft at such speed that the metal frame tore itself to pieces, the rotating blades snapping off and flying out in all directions. Engulfing itself in flames it began to fall tumbling over itself.
By now the carnage had been noticed by the police and other emergency services, sirens in the distance growing larger and the blaring of lights on the top of emergency vehicles visibly from the high vantage point.
Scourge came down on a nearby rooftop, skidding to a stop so sudden that his feet cracked the surface.
He turned back and looked at the devastation he had wrought and by now, all that remained of the attacking forces was a single chopper.
“Oh come on… I know you’re not that stupid.” The green hedgehog muttered, dusting his now tattered clothes off as the aircraft hovered there as if in indecision.
Then the noise of sirens grew louder and the chopper about turned and fled, flying away low over the buildings in retreat.
Scourge grinned and put his hands on his hips
“Ooh baby. I am good!” He remarked to himself.
“True... just not that good.” A voice behind from replied.
Scourge whirled to face this new speaker but before he had even turned, he was struck at close range by a charged particle blast.
The sensation was equivalent to an electric shock passing through every cell in his body.
The blast threw him several feet, his clothes charring around him and his quills beginning to smoke.
He tumbled across the roof until he slammed into the side of an air vent, denting the metal with a loud clank.
He struggled to get up, straining with his muscle complaining at the effort.
The roof shuddered with a sudden weight. Scourge pushed his eyes open at the sight of a mech landing at the far end of the rooftop.
It was a walker, standing a good twenty feet high with bright screech lights glaring down on him from near the glass covered cockpit.
The large, still smoking, cannon on its underside revealed its make as a Hot Shot. Certainly not the biggest mech in the Federation arsenal but few others packed the same, charged punch.
Behind it hovered another dozen Beetles, all in an encircling formation around the larger machine.
Scourge forced himself back to his feet, now painfully aware that the warm up was over.


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(yes Scourge is a comic character and yes that does mean comic characters will be appearing here and there but please do not swamp us with notes requesting your favourite)