Due to certain changes in the life of our Finnish Blue Mage, his life has changed permanently. For the better or worse, here is a small sidestory. Hopefully, mister galloway won’t object to this story.
RPGC City, 2 weeks ago
The RPGC Task Force was gathered in their bunker for their weekly good deeds vs. property damage review session, headed by the head honcho, Wilfredo Martinez. As always, the session was a session of delegating the blame to someone else.
“For the last time, Pierson, you CAN’T use Zachary OR any of our reserve Task Forcers as a living subjects to determine how much juice your gloves need to defibrillate someone back to consciousness! It’s not either humane OR productive!” Wilfredo Martinez raged at the Briton.
“Fine, fine, as long as Mabat here stops throwing the kid like an electric baseball! Besides, the sod prods Zachary all the time to use his powers on him to learn someting new!” countered Pierson, pointing at the spikey-haired martial artist next to him.
“Oh c’mon, imagine electric Saikyo with SHOCKING MANTIS flailing! That would be something to behold! Speaking of sods, Galloway can sod off with from my potion cabinet. The bugger has been switching my beers to Bud Light! And that’s like, switching elixirs to sewage water!”, eyed Mabatsekker at Galloway’s general direction.
“Switch to decaf, you Finny moron! It was that pesky Valkyrie raiding your cabinets this time! And by the smell of sewage, I propose we finally wash demigod here. I swear, even if you stick his transparent behind in a spiritual bathtub, the smell will stick!” Galloway tossed the ball right towards the bird-and-cloak-like apparition, who wasn’t giving a damn about the meeting until this particular quip.
As demigod was about to open it’s(?) mouth, Martinez banged a huge MAGIC HAMMER on the poor coffee table, sapping it’s final spiritual energy reserves, and sending Mabat to his usual “I’VE LEARNED IT”-spasms.
“Knock it off, all of you!” Martinez bellowed. He eyed the Task Force throughly and sighed. “Seriously, it’s back to BOOT CAMP X if you don’t get your teamwork up to it’s former glory. Now, as for…”, Wil attempted to continue, but was interrupted by the ear-splitting siren of the TASK FORCE ALERT SIGNAL. “WE’VE GOT ONE!”, yelled GG Crono from the emergency duty phone. Eager to free themselves from Wil’s patronizing, the Task Force found themselves crammed in the Task Force Mobile before Martinez could lower his finger pointing at the ceiling. Which was rather low and filled with cobwebs.
ONE AWESOME DRIVING SCENE LATER
“Robots”, Pierson started.
“Whose robots?”, Galloway asked.
“WOO! ROCK’EM’SOCK’EM ROBOTS!”, yelled Mabatsekker and ran towards the mechanical monstrosities which were trashing the Merlin Avenue, right next to the RPGC national bank, which had a huge frigging hole on it’s side.
“Nevermind that, they are blowing cars up… and that particular burning Toyota almost scratched Auntie Frank’s pie shop”, quipped demigod.
Before the usual “LET’S GET 'EM!” could be announced, the Task Force was quickly tearing up the robot attackers, which seemed to guard the hole made to side of the bank. More and more robots kept pouring out of the hole, with bills, bonds and other valuables hanging from the hinges of whatever containment they had for their loot.
ONE AWESOME ROBOT TRASHING LATER
“Hey, I recognize these!” Mabat quickly noticed, as he surveyed the scrap metal left behind by the battle.
“These are from a bunch of wannabe mad scientists back in where I used to do my first super hero gigs. They sort of got jealous over the attention I got in the media, so they decided they’d want a piece of the lime light. Too bad their boss wanted to use their creations for evil… but I disassembled the group before they got too far.”
“And what are these robots doing in RPGC city?”, asked demigod.
“Don’t know. Don’t care. They’re smalltime. Their effective remote control radius isn’t even a mile long, so the boss should be cl…”
Mabat tried to explain, but was shortly interrupted by GG Crono, still stuck in monitor duty.
“There’s a bunch of mechanic disturbance in the water purification factory, with more of the previously mentioned robots! The lead engineer tells they’re trying to infect the purified water! Get going!”
ONE AWESOME HURRYING SCENE AND BUSTING INSIDE THE WATER PLANT WITH MAXIMUM PROPERTY DAMAGE LATER
“AHA, I knew it was you, Robo-Teekkari!”, Mabatsekker was quick to point out the villain assaulting the water purification factory!
“You won’t stop me so easily, Blue Mage! Once this vial of super denaturizer falls in the water supply, the whole town will go blind! And then people will have to buy my super eye drops which I will produce with my ill-gotten funds! Mwahaha!” cackled the geeky evil engineer from within his robotic suit.
“Umm, couldn’t you just get rich by robbing the bank? Besides, we broke all your 'bots down already”, pointed Pierson out.
“WHAT?! NO! MY ROBOTS!”, yelled the robo-suited villain and produced a dozen lasers and a dozen cameras from within the back generator of the suit.
“I cannot miss, lousy heroes! My optic nerves are connected to each one of these precision camera lasers!”
THEN IT WENT BLURRY
… The villain dropped the vial towards the water supply intake to concentrate on the camera lasers…
… A slowed down NNNNNOOOOOOO could be heard, as Mabat produced a burst of speed so fast even Quicksilver would’ve won The Flash in the Marvel/DC crossover if it happened again …
… Galloway sneered at the thought of blinding several eyes worth of villain at once and started pulling his hands towards his forehead …
… demigod teleported his transparent form to distrupt the electronics of the robotic suit by extending his hand through the mechanics and happened to brush against Mabat’s form leaping through the air …
… Pierson filed his fingers throughly, since he obviously didn’t have nothing else to do …
Robo-Teekkari: “DI…”
Galloway: “SOLAR ATTACK!” bright flash is emitted that overload’s the villain’s optic nerves, which are connected to the cameras…
Mabatsekker: “AAAAARRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHH” …which are mysteriously connected to Mabatsekker’s own, as the intangible demigod functions as a conduit between the mechanics he’s trying to short-circuit
Glass Vial crashes right as Mabat lands face-first on the vial’s content
Robo-Teekkari: “GAH, FOILED AGAIN!”
DARKNESS
(“MY EYES! MY EYES ARE ON FIRE! MY EYES ARE FREEZING! MY EYES ARE BEING ELECTRIFIED!”)
UNCONSCIOUSNESS DUE TO SEVERE PAIN IN TEMPLE AREA
(“I… can’t see. It’s all dark! I can’t see!”)
Astral Vision
“Hero, do you desire vision?”
“Who are you?”
“My personality is not important. Your drive is.”
“???”
“If you wish to affect your future as it once was, you must sacrifice something. The threads of fate have been thrown into a chaos by forces uncomprehensible.”
“Even if I couldn’t see, I wish I could at least help those who could.”
“Your choice is wise, Hero. Remember, even though I am blind in my trials, you must do what is right to keep the scales in balance…”
** NOW ***
Wake Up! Please, you have to wake up!
“Mmm? Kat-Chi? 'zat you? I can’t see… I seem to have bandages over my head.”
“Do not remove them. Your eyes… they bled so long we thought we’d lose you.”
“I won’t go that easily, even without my eyes.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
In two weeks time, Mabatsekker’s eyes recovered, but not without a cost. His ability to absorb magical energies and new aptitudes to his body through visual lore does not function anymore. He has become near-sighted. Any gaze abilities cause him extreme pain. No laser eyes or petrification gazes, And heavens no, no more bright lights.
And that is the reason why Mabatsekker has to wear glasses now. His ability to learn things by witnessing them has been lost. And he’s still not sure if Galloway doesn’t hit Blue Mages wearing glasses. Well, he probably isn’t, since the glasses the Blue Mage wears are atrociously 80’s. Way to go, Austin Powers.
This is my way to to evolve an avatar character with it’s owner. The Future RPGC Mabatsekker sacrificed one aspect of his powers for the sake of Justice, and to keep the future from mysteriously changing. Me? I noticed my eyes get tired very fast playing games and my right eye is horribly near-sighted. And to think, during my army time I just thought I had a bad aim. Thanks a lot, conscription health inspector. That’s no way to do justice to my eyes, which are required to fully enjoy my massively time-consuming hobbies of video games and comics!
