Ug

So after my pity fest, I'm finally ready to talk about what happened.

I went there to try to stop him. When "Molten Steel" saw me, though, he threw lava at me and yelled, "You stole my son!" Well, it sounded more like "Yu stho my thon!", as said by a volcano, but you get my drift. And then I kinda took off my helmet and said, "I am your son!"

And things kinda devolved from there. Have you ever seen a mile-tall magma monster have a father-son argument before? Well...yeah, okay, if you were watching the news at the time, yeah, you have. But still.

It was wierd, because I just started venting everything that had ever gone wrong in my life and everything Steel had missed for the first time ever. Things like, "Mom killed herself because of you." And "Where were you when Eliza needed someone to take her to the hospital." And "CJ never would have become a druggie if you had been around once in a while."

And then the bastard had the gall to apologize! He was never sorry before! Damnit!

How am I supposed to hate him now that I know he regrets what he did? The worst part is, right after he apologized, he solidified and all life signs faded, so now it seems that the only reason he came back and destroyed a swath of Illinois was to make his peace with me! So, I mean, I guess I still kinda hate him, since he did nothing to try to make peace with CJ or Eliza, but, still. How are you supposed to feel when someone you hate comes back to life just long enough to say, "Sorry I screwed up" to you?

Ergh! This makes me so mad. I'm gonna go knock over a bank. Probably literally. That might make me feel a little better.

....

I don't want to talk about it.

I seriously don't.

Maybe tomorrow. Maybe. Right now I just kinda want to curl up and die.

Okay, Okay

I'm off to try to talk to the Magma Monster down from his rampage. Or at least make sure "Molten Steel" is in too many pieces to come back from the dead this time.

Why is it I can't avoid doing good deeds? Oh, right, because I'm a sucker. More after this is over.

Man.

You people sure know how to take the fun out of my father being a giant magma monster. Yes, I know he's looking for me and yes, he's headed to New Vineyard. But, listen, he's moving at like a mile an hour. He's too heavy and goopy to move any faster. Before he gets anywhere near Lake Michigan, some hero or another will probably be able to find a way to stop him. And if he gets here? He's just going to solidify when he hits the water. Problem solved.

Next I'll get emails that are all, "blah blah blah, the monster's crushing small towns and it's all your fault." Well. Yeah. Okay, now I feel pretty guilty.

God damnit. Now I have to do something about this.

Judy just raised an interesting point, though. I never got the chance to settle things with American Steel. Maybe now I can have that chance. Hmmm.

Alright, I'll stop him. It seems Quizzer, Mississippi Grizzly and the rest are too incompetent anyway. Plus, it's best to get this over with before he starts calling out Eliza's name and Illinois gets ravaged by a psychotic nephilim fighting a mile-high Magma Monster.

It Never Gets Old

Man, watching this thing slowly move north while batting, kicking, and throwing magma at superheroes never gets old. I've been watching it a couple days now and it is grade A entertainment.

I wonder what it's yelling, though. I don't care what the news says, it's saying something. "Rice Chest?" "Christ Best?"

There's a strong "i" and an "-s" sound. Maybe that hiss beforehand is actuall an "s". It's almost like he's saying....

....oh hell.

He's saying my name. "Silas." I can't believe I didn't realize this before.

That's not just any Magma Monster. That's American Steel. My father.

My Family

All that's happened has got me thinking about my family.

This is never a good thing.

My mother killed herself at the height of American Steel's career. My sister is a serial killer. My brother is a junkie merc. I don't know if either of them is alive right now.

Yeah. American Steel, Protector of the American Family, couldn't keep his own from going to hell. What a shock.

Now you see why I left my father to die in a pit in the bowels of the earth while I gave his murderer a proper burial? He did everything he could for every other person on the planet with his "mission", but he ignored us. Mom just couldn't take it.

Way to go Dad. Your eldest is Doctor Cataclysm, and your baby twins are superpowered psycho Hatchet and equally unstable Overdose.

This is why I don't want Judy to meet my family. Can you blame me?

Yeah, I know. I'm one to talk about people having "Daddy issues". Sorry Fallout.

Story Time

Okay, I've been getting questions about Nuke, here and on my email account, so I guess it's time for a little story. I'm hesitant to tell it, since it's as much about my father's origins as it is my mentor's and Nuke's, but here goes.

Once upon a time, there was a scientist named Jonah Stevens. He worked in Arkady Industries' experimental lab in Vineyard, Illinois in the 70's and early 80's. His specialty was nuclear reactors, and he was instrumental in the synthesis an experimental isotope originally found in a crashed meteorite that produced much stronger fission energy than comparable amounts of the same material.

Now, in the same laboratory, a wretched little man named Doctor Niles Benton was beginning a process that would irradiate ceramic-coated steel in a way that would make it nearly unbreakable. Unbeknownst to his colleagues, Doctor Benton had stolen this technique from a former mentor and friend, whose face and body he had scarred heavily in an attempt to kill his mentor and take this procedure for his own. That friend was Doctor Calvin Lisme.

Doctor Lisme, once he had recovered from the botched assassination attempt, covered his face and body in duranium, the new steel, armor, and determined to ruin his former protege in revenge. First, he released data to the patent office and every major industrial company in America about duranium, effectively making it open source and ruining Benton's attempt to get rich off it himself. Then, Doctor Lisme, now calling himself "Doctor Cataclysm", locked Benton in the Arkady lab late at night, locked the area down, and set the experimental new reactor to overload, thus killing Benton and erasing any evidence he had ever invented Duranium.

However, two people were also trapped in the lab. One was Doctor Stevens. The other, Conner Ferrian. Conner was a security guard at the time, trying to support his teenaged delinquent son and younger twins. That teenaged delinquint, by the way, was me. Conner had seen Doctor Cataclysm in the duranium infusion room and had investigated, only to be locked in and the creation cycle put on automatic.

Doctor Stevens had been knocked unconcious by my predecessor at ground zero, the reactor chamber. He woke up with just enough time to selflessly seal himself into the reactor, in an attempt to also seal the inevitable explosion in with him. When he told the story, Nuke claimed his last thoughts were of his wife and his infant daughter.

When the fallout cleared and the duranium infusion cycle were finished, instead of two corpses, two super-humans were born.

By some twisted miracle, either of genetics or shear force of will, Conner Ferrian survived the infusion process--only he had become a man made of duranium. Super strong and nearly invulnerable, he praised Jesus (I'm so not kidding) for this second chance to do something with his life, and decided to become super-hero American Steel. Only two other people have survived this process, and I didn't even have the whole enchilada done on me. That other one's Red Steel, his Russian counterpart.

Jonah was far less lucky.

To say Jonah Stevens survived the explosion would be a stretch. You see, Jonah was a latent psychic, around 5.0, ten times the normal person. When faced with his mortality, Jonah focused his mind inward, even as radioactive fire burned away his flesh and bones and meat. In that split second after the bottled radioactive explosion faded, Dr. Stevens was no longer a man. "He" was a man-shaped pillar of radioactive fire, held together only by shear force of will.

Stevens tried to return home, but his family did not recognize him. They feared him, and in the frustration of his furiously strained mind, he detonated in a tiny atomic blast. His wife died instantly, but his daughter survived. She's the supervillain Fallout, by the way. She and I dated briefly. It didn't work out. She has hella daddy issues.

Anyway, American Steel's first act as a superhero was to stop the rampaging Stevens from burning Arkady to the ground. Then the newly christened Nuke built himself a containment suit and started his career of revenge and insanity. He was a regular villain for Steel after that, though he also tangled with Miss Atom and the Mississippi Grizzly regularly, the first due to overlapping themes and the second due to location. He was even in the Corrosive Company, that anti-Steel league that the Doc put together. This lasted until American Steel told Nuke that the first Doc was responsible for the explosion that had ended Nuke's life.

The fight after that was supposed death #5 for the Doc, as the CC's headquarters was nuked by Nuke at the climax. God bless emergency bomb shelters.

And here I am. Steel's son and the Doc's protege. More on what happened last week later.