inFAMOUS: Legacy of the Beast

Chapter 1

"What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want."

 ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

~The 1st Day~

Gunfire rang out in the streets of New Marais. Thunder split the air with deafening cracks under a burning red sky. Shouts of anger and fear traded back and forth in the minuscule pauses between shots.

Bullets whizzed past Cole MacGrath as he relentlessly loosed bolts of cerulean lightning from his hands. Two men stood on the balcony of a nearby apartment wearing camouflage fatigues and armed with Glock pistols. They were members of the local resistance whom he had previously allied with against the city's oppressive government.

These two, however, were nameless to him and so left him no guilt as the balcony gave way beneath their feet. If the fall to the concrete didn't kill them, the iron and wood scaffolding did.

The electric man gritted his teeth and howled as several bullets pelted his back. Blood leaked from his wounds and left red spots across his yellow shirt.

He turned over his left shoulder, spotting a group of four police officers perched on top of a green shingled roof four floors high. One of them, wielding a semi-automatic rifle likely confiscated from the numerous outlaws infesting the town, leered heatedly at him with a smug sneer as if proud to have punished him for his actions.

Though his confidence quickly dissipated seeing Cole give a grin of his own. As quickly as the metal casings had shed his skin, his wounds had healed as if they were nothing more than an afterthought.

With a side-arm toss, he sent a small orb of condensed electricity toward the cops, landing it at the edge of the roof. The one who had shot him called out a warning for the grenade and ducked behind a brick chimney immediately to his left. The officer beside him to who could not find cover in time had been thrown from the side of the building as the little blue ball combusted.

Not intending on missing the second time, he pulled his hand above his shoulder and took aim at the man hiding behind the chute. He only stopped upon hearing a dismissive growl come from the giant golem of lava beside him, whose shoulder he had been hovering over throughout the siege.

The Beast, known sympathetically to Cole by the name of John White, conjured a convection of fire between his two enormous hands to create his own destructive projectile. With a great lunge of his arm, the ball of flames rushed towards the officers, who had tried to retaliate with machine gun fire and rocket propelled grenades only to helplessly be engulfed in the blaze. Upon contact, the sphere exploded with enough force to crumble the roof into a rain of green shingles and brick, reducing the building from three stories to two.

The three remaining policemen were nowhere to be seen, incinerated in the attack.

Cole smirked, oddly satisfied with watching the destruction unfold. He found himself rather humbled to be at John's side while he carried out his mission to save the city from impending doom. The more he witnessed the magnitude of his power, the better he felt about choosing to be his ally rather than his enemy.

At the same time, he was conflicted. If he had this level of strength and absolution with his own powers, he probably would have been able to prevent the world from falling into the decaying state it was in.

He shoved these regrets away. Right now, there was a job to do. All that mattered was helping John heal New Marais from the impending Plague that threatened to silently kill every last human being on Earth. He could be alone with his mistakes later.

Pulled through the air like a canine in a harness, Cole remained beside the Beast's massive one-hundred foot tall frame as he trudged closer to the Saint Ignatius cathedral at the end of the street, each footfall a boom of solid stone against concrete rocking his chest. Cars, debris and corpses floated weightlessly through the air due to the gravity-nullifying field surrounding the giant.