Helios Fighter

Chapter One

Escape

This story starts with me thrown against a wall.

"Gyah!" I yelled at my back hit a stud in the wall, cracking the material around it. Through the blood in my mouth, I choked my next words. "It... was... an ACCIDENT!!"

"And yet," said my aggressor, "there's a deadly weapon in my house that just so happens to belong to you." There was a table behind him, upon which was a two-and-a-half-foot long barrel connected to a battery source. "Tell me how this doesn't look like a weapon to you!" I coughed the blood from my throat.

"It was... It was for the Solar Fair," I said. "The requirement was that I made something to...to replicate and focus the sun's power!" The Solar Fair was a contest held by the Noble Institution. They held it only every three years, and allowed participants only from the ages of fifteen and twenty join. I was seventeen and had prepared for this for months, and the deadline was approaching in a couple weeks. The goal was to replicate the power of the sun in some capacity. I somewhat had succeeded but, had a little accident to say the least.

"Really? So, what's the handle for?" I knew exactly what he was thinking.

"It wasn't finished! I activated it by accident, it went off, and I called for help!" My project was supposed to be a generator that pulled elements from the surrounding air, and pool the necessary elements into a gaseous form in order to simulate the nebular condensation as well as the fusion processes that occur. The handle was meant to secure the whole thing to one's wrist to prevent it from vibrating everywhere and knocking a component loose. During the testing stage, the generator did start to pool the necessary helium and hydrogen atoms, but because there was no way to contain the pooled atoms, they discharged a massive fireball that bore a hole in the wall.

"You've done a lot of stupid stuff, but this really takes the cake."

"I-I'm sorry I just–" A knock at the door startled me.

"You better not move!" As angry as I was, I stayed put. My aggressor walked out of my room and downstairs to the front door. It opened and I heard a conversation carry on. I breathed shakily. I don't know how long I sat there, but however long it was too long.
The seconds turned into minutes, and the minutes into an hour. The conversation kept getting more and more intense. I heard words like "arrested," and "maniac," and many more, none of which were savory. By then, I was able ready to jump out of a window. Looking at my incomplete project, and the window over my bed... I took a shaky breath. Very quickly, very quietly, I grabbed the biggest bag I had, and put all my valuables into it; my project materials, my manuscripts, and my action figures. I had a set of flash drives, and out of a sense of paranoia of losing them all, I put them all in my pocket. I zipped up my bag, and grabbed my project, which was in front of my bedroom door when the knock came, and started to turn it on. If my aggressor wants to think that this is a gun, then his last memory of me will be of me with a gun. It hummed, and I gasped in fear.

That's when I heard a voice come up the stairs.

"—to talk to the kid," the voice said. I shouldered my bag, and armed myself with my Solar Replicator project-gun. I climbed onto the window sill over my bed. "Hey!" I turned to see a police officer reaching for either his gun or taser. Not really caring for logic in this sense, U took aim at the officer. "Hey, there. Easy, guy. I know you're afraid, but you don't have to do this. Besides, you don't want a criminal record for running from the police, do you?"

"If I let you get close to me, I'll have a record for brandishing a firearm, right?"

"Not if this is just a misunderstanding. The dispatch caller said you mentioned the Solar Fair?" I nodded. "I know things like that can get dangerous. The whole precinct does! But we can't help you if you run."

"I know that... but it's not you I'm not running from." The officer raised his eyebrow. "I swear to you, I'm not."

"Who, then?" I heard the answer come up the stairs.

"The one behind you!" The officer turned, and I fired in the direction of my aggressor. The force of the shot blew me out of the window and was sent flying out, landing on the hood of the police cruiser below me. I immediately rolled off the hood and took off running, which I somehow managed with a giant near full bag on my back, and an accidental weapon in my hand. I could only guess that after the cops overcame their initial shock is when I hear the sirens begin to blare. Multiple times, I heard officers yell "FREEZE!!" but I didn't stop. I couldn't. And honestly, I didn't know where I was going. All sound vanished the more I ran, and I heard myself breathing. On top of this, my heart throbbed in my ears, and time seemed to slow down, and it was all I could do to keep going.

Keep going, I kept thinking. Keep pushing...

I was snapped back into reality when I felt eighty million volts of electricity course through my body.

"Hhhnnngg...!!! GYYAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!" It was all I could do to scream. Remembering the load I was carrying, I realized how much of a problem this was. Give or take, in the physical sense half the materials in my bag were dangerous. Explosive dangerous. If anything was mistreated in anyway, it could blow up. We were now way past that. So, to save the officers, I tried to keep going, and keep running, but that's when the shots came. PAUM-PAUM-PAUM. "Guah!" Of the twelve shots I heard, two shot got me in the back of the leg. I turned on my project again, spun around and fired another shot from my Replicator, and a wall of synthetic nebular fire erupted a few meters in front of me. The tingling stopped, but the pain replaced it. However, it was too late. I only learned later that of those twelve shots, one pierced my bag. My backpack started sparking, and glowing. "No!" I tried to ditch the bag, but I was too slow. Realizing I had no time, I screamed in frustration and braced myself​ for what was too come.
BBBRRREEEEOOOOOMMM....

That was the last I saw, or felt, of anything.