Eggmen: Mercenary Legends: Chapter 1

Eggmen: Mercenary Legends:
Chapter 1

Ah, the saga of the Eggmen… now, before we begin telling this tale, one of the most peculiarly fascinating that the rich history of the Nava-Verse has to offer, in earnest, perhaps it would be best to first paint something of a picture for you; establish some background history, if you would:
With the Eighth Century of the Relative Age calendar well-underway, the Prime Galaxy is at relative peace, and has been for some time… yet will not remain so for much longer.
Ever since the end of the Vision Wars and at an almost steadily constant rate, the mortal inhabitants of the cosmos have been making tremendous advances in technological, communicative and social fields as well as various cross-integration thereof, and largely bettering themselves, at least from most points of view, in doing so. Things around the galaxy are just about as prosperous as they have been since seemingly further back than consensus memory can serve to recall.
With their striding societal progress and increasing independence, however, the various peoples have admittedly grown farther from God, being more dependent nowadays on their ever-advancing new-fangled technology than on the pillars of faith that once were near-universally fundamental to almost all of their cultures. The Underworld has been quiet for many years now, and so have the Heavens, with the biggest present threats to peace and stability in this new era being products of extreme yet all-too-inevitable mortal sin, and it the responsibility to right the various wrongs brought about by such wickedness falling almost entirely onto virtuous, or otherwise heroic, flesh-and-blood individuals. The destinies of mortals now rest in their own - and each other's - hands more-so than ever before, although whether that will continue to be the dominant trend in the years, decades and centuries yet to come remains to be seen; after all, who is to say that this emergence of a new "status quo" for life is not merely another ordained part of God and His agents' even grander long-term plans?

In any case, the tale about to commence being told concerns a group - a quintet, to be precise - of exceptional mortals, their respective rises to prominence from among the crowd, and their eventual coming-together to form a collective force for good whose whole will be greater than the sum of its already-great parts, and whose adventures will come to be remembered - and even imitated - throughout the Prime Galaxy for countless years to come.
Our story starts, and will in fact continue taking place for quite some time to come, on the not-so-humble planet known as Ergnoplis. Located near the edge of the Beta Octant, this world had been well-established for centuries as the home of the Mulshians, a perfect example of a people accustomed to living and thriving on their own with their technology and innovations. These stout, self-acknowledgedly egg-like creatures had never been predisposed toward any particular moral leanings as a race, preferring to follow whatever they themselves saw on an individual basis as the most prosperous and/or satisfying path in life, and coming into conflict with one another more frequently than most other humanoid species as a result of their vastly variable views and goals. In this sense, it could be said that they were among the most "humanlike" of all the Prime Galaxy's humanoid races in terms of behavioral nature.
The Mulshians' society, consisting chiefly of a quartet of "Egg Cities" corresponding to and labeled after the four principal cardinal directions, was sharply divided into several distinct social levels, ranging from the extremely poor to the extremely wealthy, and with little sympathy being shown to the former by the latter at this point in Ergnoplian society's timeline. The first of the noted parties whom we will be following during the ensuing saga now being recounted hails from the richest, most elite of these classes, although he didn't exactly benefit much from its inherent privileges…

On the thirty-third day of the Fifth Cycle of Age 725, the individual who would come to be known as Fire-Egg was born in West Egg City to a pair of wealthy entrepreneurs whose names have since been lost to history and are ultimately irrelevant, with the same going for the original moniker of their child on both counts. To make a lengthy yet rather typical and boring story short, these two had met and become a couple as teenagers before subsequently working together to make a name for themselves by wisely investing in several then-in-development fields of technology, such as the portable holo-screen and the Amazing Hoopler-Dooja (™). Despite not having personally invented anything of note through application of their own minds, they had nevertheless made it big, mainly through a combination of long-term opportunistic savviness and sheer, convenient luck; some other, allegedly-worthier-yet-poorer Mulshians would have argued their prosperity by virtue of these factors to be undeserved.
Now, after more than a decade of marriage, they were finally having their first - and as fate would have it, only - child.
The mother-to-be lay on the surgical bed within a hospital's delivery ward, undergoing the painful Mulshian labor process with her loyal husband by her side. Doctors were standing at the ready across the room, holding up the customary giant cushioned mitt used to safely catch freshly-delivered infants.
"It's…. it's coming!" yelled the mother. "I can… I feel it- BLAUGH!"
Suddenly, her body bulged tremendously and quivered violently, her mouth opened more widely than was possible under any other natural circumstances, and out of it flew the newborn, as-of-yet-nameless Mulshian who would one day become known as Fire-Egg. The baby landed directly in the center of the giant mitt, covered in transparent slimy liquid from his mother's body, a large amount of which had also reached the floor, and upon examination a doctor swiftly, proudly proclaimed the good news to the new parents: "It's a boy!"
As the hospital staff member responsible for record-keeping immediately, officially logged the birth to have taken place at exactly 14:15 per the current, two-minutes-ahead display of the room's overhead clock, cheers for the family were meanwhile heard from the rest of those in attendance, with the mother in particular being generously commended for the successful delivery of her son and partly to help her overcome the pain and fatigue from the process that visibly continued to affect her in its aftermath. Around the time this celebratory expression subsided, a second declaration regarding the child was heard from another one of the doctors, this one sounding far less proud and far more shocked and disturbed: "Dear God… the kid is a mutant!"

Once this bold and alarming statement was heard, all the doctors and nurses in the room frantically rushed to huddle around where the infant still lay so as to confirm, or even just get a look at, the alleged mutation, and many a direly dismayed whisper could be heard while the father and mother simply stared on at the unfolding scene in utter shock and nigh-disbelief, with the latter parent very nearly fainting.
The team of medical personnel proceeded to pick the baby up and transfer him to a different room, one containing the equipment necessary for further examination and proper diagnosis of any unusual conditions. The parents predictably protested this as it was done without them being asked beforehand for permission to do so or even given any real information on what was believed in the immediate-term to be wrong with their son, but with the mother remaining bedridden, there was little they could do to directly intervene. Within a minute's time following the declaration of mutation, the large room was empty save for the distressed couple and a single nurse, who stayed behind to inform them of the situation's nature and keep them as calm as possible.
"What the hell is going on here?!" the father demandingly asked with rather understandable outrage as the nurse approached him and his equally-upset (yet less expressive of it) wife. "Where are you taking our son? I swear, if you people do anything to him, I will-"
"Rest assured, sir," the nurse spoke in a friendly, soothing voice typical of her profession and present specific duty yet at an elevated volume sufficient to effectively interrupt the angered man's raving, "your son will be returned to you in due time; we are simply… analyzing him and his condition."
"So… he really is a mutant, then?" the mother inquired, much more worriedly over her child in comparison to her husband's obvious angriness toward those perceived to be taking him away.
"I'm afraid that would appear to be the case," the nurse confirmed apologetically, "but again, I stress that you must remain calm: right now, all we are doing is diagnosing the nature of the mutations, and no matter what they turn out to be, what will become of your son is your call to make in the end."
"What do you mean, we get to choose 'what will become of' him?" the father angrily inquired again. "We're going to raise our son just like anyone else would; what other options are you suggesting there to be?"
"What I'm saying," the nurse, who was now somewhat noticeably nervous, attempted to explain, "is that you can go ahead with raising your child like a normal person; that is a perfectly viable option… _probably."
The father, with this response clearly only having maddened him further, growled before stepping several steps towards the nurse, closing the gap standing between them to an uncomfortable (for her) degree, and clarifying himself, ultimatum-style.
"Listen here, you stupid woman:" he said; "raising our son is the only option, and I take personal offense to your suggestion that it's not, not only on our family's behalf, but on that of all decent parents. I mean, are you seriously implying that you people think it would be okay for us to be okay with having our child put down or something, just because he's different?"
The now-terrified nurse remained silent.
"I repeat:" he then reiterated even more furiously, "are you saying that you would be willing to euthanize a newborn baby, just for being a 'mutant'?!"
"Please, dear," his wife's voice softly chimed in, "don't make a scene here…"
Her husband reluctantly abided and stepped back, though continuing to glare contemptuously at the nurse for some time afterward.

Several tense and awkward minutes then passed, forming a silence which was eventually broken by the arrival onto the scene of another nurse, who bore a message to relay.
"Hello…" she said to the parents with obligatory, phoned-in positivity; "you should be pleased to know that our doctors have reached a diagnostic consensus regarding your child, and would prefer if you'd meet them in the examination chamber four doors down so that the results of our tests as displayed there can be properly shown and explained to you, although if you still don't feel up to leaving your bed, ma'am, we'd be more tha-"
"Where is our son, woman?" the father demanded to know in a very clearly to-the-point manner.
"Again, your child is in the examination ward, four rooms down from here," the newcomer nurse clarified, "and as I've also been meaning to say, if your wife would be up to heading over the-"
She was at that point interrupted once again, this time not by any interjecting words, but rather by a sight that preemptively answered her in-progress proposal, this being that of the mother strugglingly, painstakingly lifting herself up out of her hospital bed. Working against her body's lingering drowsiness and completely disregarding well-being of the fragile sensors still taped to the surfaces of her flesh, the woman forced herself to bring her two feet to the ground, before beginning to collapse upon trying to stand up straight, only to be caught and thereafter physically supported by her husband.
"Now for crying out loud," the father then said, only somewhat more calmly, as he began slowly making his way toward the door that led out to the floor's main hallway while helping his wife to do the same, "show us to our son!"
Nodding in abidance, the two nurses (who just so happened to look almost indistinguishable from one another despite not actually being related in any way) then led the couple to the fourth door down the hallway from the now-vacant delivery room; it was an unoccupied storage closet. Quickly realizing her mistake of having miscounted, the nurse who had previously promised this room to contain the newborn mutant hastily made up an excuse of it "not counting" as she proceeded to show the parents to the next, fifth door down from the floor's birthing ward, the plaque near the top of which read: "SPECIAL EXAMINATION AND DIAGNOSTICS".

This was the correct room, alright; as was instantly visible across it upon entry, the baby lay upon the center of a silvery metallic slab with a large number of sensors attached to various parts of his body. The wires of these sensors were, in turn, connected at their opposite ends to several different ports on an elaborate mechanical setup featuring multiple large monitors which presently displayed detailed charts of their subject's anatomical layout, body heat distribution, brainwaves and other information.
"Ah, there you two are." one of the doctors - recognizable as the one who'd originally "cried 'mutant'", so to speak, following the delivery - declared in an ambivalent tone as he noticed the couple entering and turned, along with his colleagues within the room, away from the boy and towards them. "Glad you could make it over here;" he then continued: "we have quite a lot of… let's call it interesting information regarding your son here to show you."
"Just get whatever you think is 'wrong' with our boy out of your systems," the father demanded firmly, "and give him back to us!"
"Sir and ma'am," another doctor - one whom had not been particularly involved in any of the couple's earlier dealings within the hospital that day - replied gravely, "my colleagues and I find it regrettable that we must inform you of our findings here, and you have our deepest sympathies, for they may very well change your minds about wanting your son back."
Both parents gave shocked expressions of disgust mixed with strong hints of genuine concern as the doctor then paused before going on to reveal what he was getting at (not to mention "building up", somewhat intentionally-so, as something horrible).
"This child," he said, pointing at the hapless infant on the slab almost accusatorially, "is not only a mutant, but an especially severe and volatile one. Note the unnatural redness of his fleshy surfaces, and his body temperature which would constitute a lethal fever for any normal Mulshian."

Sure enough, the boy was indeed strikingly, deeply red in his body's color scheme, as opposed to the pinkish, tan and brownish skin colors of everyone else within sight, his parents included, and upon looking up at the adjacent monitor displaying his body heat, it could be seen that its representation of him was nearly as thoroughly red as he himself was, indicating extreme temperatures.
"Simply put," the doctor went on divulging, "this infant is destined to grow into a being of flame, inwardly and outwardly: we're talking pyrokinesis here; fiery powers of a caliber I'd never thought possible from any being barring the fiercest demons of legend! Your son, should he go on living, will almost inevitably come to be consumed by the literal fire in his heart, and become a monstrous danger to all around him."
A long silence, in which the mutant child's parents had little idea what to say, then followed. They both found themselves staring at their "monster" of a son, who was now sitting up on the cold, metallic slab in apparent utter confusion, obviously having no comprehension of what was being said about him yet being able to formulate just the vaguest idea that it was not good. This was the couple's first real, good look at their progeny, the womb-slime covering his form plus the doctors' quickness in gathering around him having prevented the immediate wake of his birth from constituting such a vantage point. Several seconds later and still wordlessly, they made their way across the room for a closer look at him still; he was now staring back at them, seemingly recognizing them as his parents or at least more friendly and empathetic beings compared to the compassionless personnel that had been handling him from his moment of birth up until this point. In terms of his quite literally baby-faced expression, the boy looked just as innocent - and adorable - as any other newborn at this time.
Eventually, yet another doctor took it on himself to break this silence which represented an intimate moment of early bonding for the parents and their son while consisting of sheer awkwardness for him and the other hospital personnel in attendance, effectively speaking on behalf of the entire latter party with the advice he went on to give.

"Now, again," he affirmed, "this is your son, and his fate at the end of the day depends on your decision, which we will not deprive you of here. But," he then stressed with considerable accentuation, "and this is a big but, were it up to us, we would either place him under the special care of our civilization's top scientists so that he may be studied and perhaps even found proper purpose for one day… or failing that, euthanize him."
The mother gasped out loud in horror, while the father's mouth fell agape in disgust, disbelief and disgusted disbelief.
"Now, we understand how you must feel, and how harsh - cruel, even - we might sound to you right now," the doctor suggesting these "alternatives" to a regular upbringing continued, "but please: try to consider this, and all the risks that your son's remaining in your care would entail, from a scientific standpoint here…"
As he finished saying this, he began visibly sweating as the father started just-as-visibly walking up to him.
"How dare you." he said flatly and simply, before immediately repeating himself with passionate rage: "How DARE you!"
"Sir, please calm down!" the now-plainly-frightened doctor pleaded while his just-as-threatened-feeling colleagues simply stood idly by, doing nothing to help him in this moment out of fear for their own safety. "All this is just advice; we're not forcing anything on you or your son! By all means, take him home with you; just don't start going crazy here!"
"Oh, believe me:" the furious father clarified; "I understand perfectly well that you're merely advising us here, and rest assured, your doing so as opposed to forcing us to relinquish our son makes the difference of my doing this…"
As he shouted that last word with abrupt emphasis, the man then struck the doctor squarely in the lower gut area without warning and to the fullest extent of his ability. The woefully tactless physician went tumbling backwards into several of his colleagues, though being caught by them sooner than he could fully hit the ground or knock anyone else over.
"…As opposed to becoming a murderer."

This otherwise-clear ultimatum would have gotten its point across to a more-than-sufficient degree, had its audibility not been compromised by the simultaneously-ensuing crying-out of the very infant whom all this escalating fuss was about. The baby was clearly upset at the violent act he had just witnessed, just like any other newborn would have been, but what set this outburst of his apart from those of other newborns was that the average baby did not ignite when it started crying. The whole of the boy's body glowing an increasingly brighter, more intense red before starting to produce erratic, spark-like streaks of flame that burned the sensors cleanly off of him and caused the surrounding displays concerning his status to shut down, all of the hospital personnel reacted in the predictable manner by rushing to the opposite side of the room, a couple of the nurses even fleeing the ward altogether. His parents, meanwhile, kept steadfastly yet cautiously put as they waited for their child to calm down, hopefully returning to a "normal" state in doing so, while doing whatever they could to accelerate that process. For the duration of his crying, it was evident that the baby was completely unharmed by the flames engulfing him, seeming to not even notice them as he remained more bothered by the thought of what had set him off in the first place. As the outburst eventually and gradually subsided, so did the flames, the last of which dispersed almost precisely at the moment the infant fully got over his tantrum and stopped screaming altogether, afterwards swiftly resuming his loving gazing toward his parents as if nothing had happened.
The boy's father then briefly hesitated before picking his progeny up from the now-charred metal table, for fear of his body remaining hot to the touch. Upon at last carefully reaching out to him after looking to his wife in search of affirmation that he should do so and seeing her nod understandingly, he was relieved to find that this was not the case at all, with the child's flesh feeling no noticeably warmer than any typical, normal Mulshian baby's; again, it almost felt as though nothing unusual had happened with him to begin with.
Proceeding to lift his offspring up, hold him up toward the ceiling's lights for an even better view and then embrace him for the first time, the father sustained this hug for some time before hearing his wife chime in with a proposal that he couldn't have agreed much more with: "Let's go home, dear; I'm sick of this awful place…"
Thus, the couple departed from the hospital with their son, having no further words to share with its staff as they made their way out, and likewise, the doctors knew better at this point than to give them and their mutant child any additional trouble. No lawsuits or other major fuss ended up coming of the assault committed that day on the father's part; his family's wealth and legal connections rendered him almost untouchable in terms of being sued. Furthermore, even with the stigma against mutants that did indeed exist in Mulshian society, including non-scientific/medical circles, at the time, the hospital's staff knew that to admit having even so much as suggested euthanizing a newborn baby, regardless of the circumstances, would surely bring about a public controversy whose likes they were not prepared to deal with. Had the issue been made public, the erasure of said stigma's prominence might very well have ended up becoming the mutant's very first (inadvertent) accomplishment in life, as opposed to one of his later, direct ones as it would come about in the form of many years later; of course, for us to speak any further of that matter right now would be to get grossly ahead of ourselves here…

For all the disdain they held for those who had wanted and pressured them to give up their baby, the parents of the individual who would eventually become known as Fire-Egg understood the especially immense, even by the standards of raising a child, responsibility his remaining in their care represented for them, and the very real risk of their child becoming a monster if he was not raised properly. The boy was brought up strictly and rigorously - some might even argue overly-so - yet also in a way that avoided truly upsetting him and thereby setting off his powers. As a baby, he was strangely less prone to crying and tantrums than most others, with most incidences of such behavior that did occur transpiring normally, and there were ultimately only a few early instances of him actually igniting, all of which were assumed to have been forgotten, as most memories from infancy were, by the time he had grown old enough to talk.
Going forward from that point, the boy's parents hoped that his fiery powers would not be reawakened and therefore revealed to him until he was mature enough to learn the truth of his mutant nature, and made a point of avoiding incidents that might set them off whenever reasonably possible. For better or worse, and perhaps inevitably so, this plan did not work out for long, for one day, barely over eight years into his young life, the boy-who-would-be-Fire-Egg became particularly upset with his parents; more upset than either he or they could recall him being at any prior point in his young life. What this displeasure was over is irrelevant; it may have been about some popular, violent and, as some would allege, "Satanic" toy they steadfastly refused to let him have, and if so, this was probably exacerbated by the fact that said toy was produced by a neighboring planet's industrialized civilization with which his parents had done collaborative business before and thus could probably secure one from for free if they were willing…
Okay, so that's exactly what it was.

"Come on; why can't I have Captain Quantaizmic?" the child whiningly demanded to know as he confronted his parents within their mansion's living room. "All my cool friends at school have him, and you know damn well that you can get one for me more easily than any of their parents!"
"Son," his father said to him, "we've discussed this before: that toy is based on an evil demon that was itself based on an even eviler demon from the old universe; it's highly inappropriate for your age, and if you ask me, it just plain reeks of bad vibes in general; rather tasteless. Plus, it's made by Joiemgaws; we don't exactly trust those folks and whatever reasoning went into their producing such a thing supposedly for children, and we'd prefer not to support their enterprises in any case… they're kind of our rivals."
"Joiemgaws?" the boy asked confusedly at hearing this word, which was indeed familiar to him through overheard conversations from his parents and their clients. "But don't you do business with them as well?"
"Well, yes," his father admitted with a sigh, "but… oh, let's just say it's complicated, and that you'll come to understand these nuances of business once you're older, but for right now, just know that a Captain Quantaizmic simply isn't in our best interests to buy for you."
"So you'll have dealings with people you don't like for your own business, but not for me?" Fire-Egg rhetorically "asked" so as to express the shallow assumption he was making. "Well, you guys are just damn hypocrites!"
"Stop swearing this instant," yelled his mother, "or you won't be allowed to have any toys!"
"This is not fair!" the boy exclaimed. "It's not fair, it's not fair, it's not FAIR!"
As he childishly stressed this last "fair", the young mutant lashed out to the side with his arm and unwittingly released from his held-together fingers a small blast of flame, which flew toward a painted portrait of West Egg City's historical third president that hung on a nearby wall. The painting burned to a crisp within seconds, and a bucket of water was thrown at it by his mother to prevent the flames from spreading.
"Look what you've done!" she screamed hysterically per her immediate reaction while the full ramifications of what had just happened were still in the process of setting in. "You've killed poor President Screngedib!"

"Oh my God, I'm sorry!" her son instantly apologized, being able to tell right away based on his slow-to-anger mother's maddened state that it was in his best interests to do so. "I had no idea our kind could shoot fire from their fingertips at will!"
There was then a long pause as his parents looked at each other awkwardly.
"Um… son," his father said to him, "our kind can't do that; only you can. You are what they call… a mutant, although as far as it applies to you, I myself would prefer the term 'gifted'."
"Wait… what?" the child uttered in bafflement as he gazed upon his hand which had produced the flame and was now returned to a normal state. "I'm a mutant; like those monsters on the holo-screen programs?"
"Those are fictional 'mutants', honey;" his mother attempted to console him: "you're real, and far from a monster like them. You're still a person above all else, and don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise!"
"Your mother is right, son." her husband affirmed. "The thing is, a lot of people just don't understand special individuals like you, thinking of them as monsters and the like, but know this: as long as you don't let yourself become the monster some may want to label you as, those people will always be wrong."
"All the 'mutants' I've ever heard of acted like monsters," the boy noted out loud, "and I always thought that was kind of inherent in what they were; in their nature… but you're saying I don't have to be like them?"
"You have to not be like them, son." his father clarified. "If you act like those who would shun you for your gifts expect you to, they become right. It is your utmost responsibility to prove them wrong, no matter what. Is this understood?"
"I understand, dad," his son replied, "and I intend to uphold that responsibility… in fact, I'll surpass it: I'll use my powers for good; to become a hero!"

The father wasn't quite sure what to make of that comment; had he more seriously contemplated the idea and its obvious potential for being taken too far, he would have been wary of his son's notion that the volatile power of flame could be used for good, presumably by destroying "evil" entities. As it was, though, he largely shrugged it off as a childhood fantasy that would surely be outgrown in time.
"Well, I'm glad you understand," the patriarch thus answered, nodding, following only a short moment of hesitation, "and I suppose only time will tell what constructive contributions you'll be capable of making for our people during the long life you have ahead of you…"
He was trying, especially with his use of the word "constructive" as opposed to the inherently "destructive" nature of fire, to subtly hint at his desire for his son to take up his own position as a businessman when he grew up while not explicitly discussing this topic which he knew the child was still too young to realistically understand even the basics of. Ironically, tycoon entrepreneurship, which was widely accepted as an everyday affair in spite of the frequently cutthroat dealings involved, was, at least in this particular way, a more complicated matter than the child's fiery mutation which was at the center of so much stress and discrimination…
The boy silently yet confidently nodded back up at his father after hearing his short speech (yet having no means of perceiving, let alone understanding the implications of, his above-described inner-contemplations).
"Look, son: we're… sorry for not telling you sooner." his mother then added apologetically. "We wanted to protect you, and that's been reflected in how we've raised you so far, but… but perhaps it's best that you come to know the truth now. To be honest, you seem so far to be handling it better than I'd expec- …err, feared you might react whenever you found out."
As she neared her statement's conclusion, the woman tried to give what she was saying a more "positive" spin in accordance with the optimism and apparent surprising maturity in dealing with this discovery that her son was displaying here, although she struggled to maintain such a tone as she let something she was aware could be taken as inconsiderate slip off her tongue before hastily correcting herself at the end there.

And so it was that the future Fire-Egg learned of his abilities and potential. Following this revelation of what he was, that being something fundamentally different and special, many seemingly unusual or inexplicable parenting tactics previously used by his mother and father (and often complained about by himself at the time) now retroactively made sense to him. The child's knowledge that he had powers, meanwhile, made the temptation to use them that naturally welled up within his being whenever he started getting mad all the more palpable and hence prone to being acted upon. Furthermore, even though he had no active general desire to hurt people, the boy also bore a particular hatred for evil and wrongdoing, with his desire to act against such wickedness being more prominent than, and therefore capable of overriding, his aversion to using violence in any other situation.
It thus stands as fairly predictable in hindsight that a major incident would end up taking place at some point or another.
Specifically, it happened towards the end of the following school term, and shortly before the child's ninth birthday, occurring in the form of an altercation with a schoolyard bully that left said delinquent completely blind in one eye… due to said eye no longer existing. Not only was the boy expelled from school, but now being effectively exposed as a mutant, his person as a whole, right down to his very existence, started to come under immense amounts of intense scrutiny from various public outlets, with his parents' celebrity-like status which they had built through their prominent dealings in the business world only making matters worse by attracting that much more sensationalist attention to the case. Over the next several weeks, there was pressuring for the family to relinquish their child to government scientists, have him euthanized or even see him killed by other, less humane means for being a "monster", and even the hospital where the child had been born went public about what had happened in the aftermath of his birth.
Rendered all-but-unable to go out in public, the mutant boy became unofficially, indefinitely house-arrested, with his parents likewise becoming much more reclusive as well. Several of their existing business connections came to be severed, and a significant portion of their total wealth was expended to the end of averting a high-profile lawsuit as threatened by the injured bully's family, which would have tarnished their family's reputation even further and made their son more infamous still.
The first three professional tutors subsequently contacted regarding the continuation of the mutant child's education through home-schooling all less-than-politely declined the offer. The fourth declined in a somewhat more polite manner, while the fifth did so in an even ruder fashion than the first three. The call the parents initially thought they were making to the sixth was misdialed, leading them to a sex hotline, but once actually reached through a correctly-dialed call made straightaway thereafter, this tutor accepted the family's offer, expressing sympathy for them and their mutant son, and went on to educate the boy throughout the following school year without incident.
Even so, things were very, very tough… and the worst was still yet to come.

Flash-forward to the Seventh Cycle of Age 735: the child was now ten years old and preparing to begin another term of home-schooling by the same kind tutor whom had by now become his closest and only friend outside his family. The young mutant, for one, had grown relatively accustomed to his isolation, and with no more incidents involving him having taken place since that fateful day at school, the public had largely gotten off his case, albeit due to a simple loss of topical interest rather than them actually becoming any more understanding.
One night, Ergnoplis was visited by a malevolent force in the form of a being that was not too different from what Fire-Egg would grow into over the years following his now-imminent assumption of that name in terms of basic nature, yet was quite the opposite of the righteous force the Mulshian would one day be as far as purpose and agenda were concerned.
Let us now take a brief detour into something of a Nava-Verse history lesson:
The Omega Octant, the lowermost of the Prime Galaxy's eight principle sectors, was located directly and immediately above the Lower Dimensional Rift, the main portal linking the physical realm of mortals to the demon-inhabited Underworld, also known as Hell. Despite few actual demonic beings having reached the Prime Galaxy through this rift as of late, its passive seeping-through of evil energies, which affected all of the octant's planets and their respective residents, remained as steady as ever.
The world known as Zornemim rested at the lowest in space, and was therefore closest to the rift, out of all the celestial bodies within the Omega Octant, and it consequently suffered from the greatest amount of residual spiritual pollution. Its dominant native sentients, the race known as the Demioids, were meanwhile a wicked people by their very nature; combine this with the constant corruptive influence upon them which itself was made all the stronger by the fact that the humanoids were perfectly willing to let it get to them, and you end up with just about as thoroughly evil a species as could ever viably exist without destroying itself, which is what the Demioids indeed, almost universally were.

Although his name would not be learned, at least for the considerable time being, by any of those whom his acts concerned, let it be stated here that the particular Demioid who was "visiting" Ergnoplis at this time was called Oseeron, and that the word "visiting" within the previous statement is interchangeable in this case with "going on a killing spree, murdering as many of the population's most important people for the sole purpose of creating chaos (on)".
He was accompanied by a small number of other Demioids - four, to be precise - with these individuals, who shall go unnamed (for now) also being psychopaths who enjoyed causing pain and suffering just like him, but whose power was trivial compared to that of their leader. Oseeron was, in fact, a mutant, one whose chief "power" consisted of his entire body being filled with dark magical energy channeled from the Underworld through the Lower Dimensional Rift, and rendered severely blackened - not that he minded much, or at all - by this attribute which could be accurately described as a more advanced form of something that most members of his species were affected by. Starting from a very young age, he had wholeheartedly embraced his mutant abilities and frequently put them to active, and almost always destructive, use, growing up to be far more of a monster than any of the fictional creatures whose media presence contributed heavily to the conception of "evil mutants" as popularly held in many societies, ironically not including Demioid culture.
Over the next several days following Oseeron and company's initially undetected arrival, a string of gruesome deaths of famous and/or wealthy and/or influential and/or otherwise generally important Mulshian individuals began occurring throughout all four of Ergnoplis' principal cities, and soon made planetary headlines as it became increasingly clear that all of these murders were linked.
The boy whose time of rechristening as Fire-Egg drew ever-closer was sitting near both his parents within their home's living room late one so-far-uneventful evening when West Egg City's leading holo-screen news program made all three of them aware of these ongoing events. As the onscreen reporter put it:
"…and she is expected to make a full recovery. In far less heartwarming news, officials have reached a consensus that there is indeed a spree killer at large here on Ergnoplis. So far, six people, all belonging to elite classes, have been murdered in similar brutal manners across five separate incidents: two in South Egg City and one in each of our people's other capitals, with the latest killing having occurred here in West Egg City less than twenty-four hours ago. Beyond the fact that the rich are clearly being specifically targeted, no motive has yet been discerned. Traces of demonic energies were found on all of the bodies, and experts have yet to single out any suspects. Back to you, Jacobba."

"This is horrible;" said the mother to her husband upon hearing this: "we could be in serious danger!"
"Mother," her son addressed her, "what's wrong?"
"Oooh, nothing;" she attempted to lie: "it's just that there's a dreadful serial killer on the loose, but he's only a threat down in the slums and would never attack people like us. Besides, the police force will probably get him soon."
"Mom, don't lie to me; I overheard everything." the boy, being more observant than his mother was giving him credit for here, correctively countered. "The holo-screen said that the killer is specifically targeting important people like us, and no one has any idea who he is or why he's doing this; assuming the killer even is a 'he'."
His father, who was sitting across the living room, audibly sighed before interjecting with his own take on the issue.
"Okay, so you're right." he admitted. "This killer, whoever or whatever he, she or it is, might pose a minimal chance of threatening us, maybe. Considering how much money we've lost since your little incident last year, though, I doubt we'll be targeted, and you could even consider what's happened a 'blessing in disguise' in that sense. In any case, son, please don't get stressed over this; there are risks and dangers everywhere in life. Furthermore, if anyone ever does try to harm us, whether it be the specific scoundrel the news is talking about right now or any other, please promise me above all else that you'll get yourself out of there safely. Don't ever try to protect us; we're adults who are responsible for ourselves, and we'd rather die than see any harm come to you."
"But father, I'm special!" his son protested. "I have my powers!"
He ignited a small, candle-like flame within the palm of his hand to demonstrate.
"No, son;" his father rebutted sternly: "you shouldn't rely on those for anything; not at your age!"
"Your father is right, dear." his mother added, supporting her husband. "Now please," she then continued, "put that flame out before you damage the house again!"

Despite his parent's warnings and his ostensibly agreeing to abide by them, the boy's mind dwelled on the thought of this killer near-constantly for the next few days following that conversation. He was genuinely worried about his parents' lives, as were they for their own, though for the sake of not worrying him too much, they didn't show the full extent of it to their son. The young mutant really did think that he could potentially use his powers to save their lives if anyone did attack them, be it this particular killer or not. He fantasized about some big, brutish, stereotypically-evil figure entering their mansion bent on destroying his family, and of how he would light the killer on fire and watch him scream in agony as he slowly crumbled into ashes… then his parents, and potentially society abroad, would finally see that his powers were a good thing! Yes, that would be awesome; the very thought of it excited the naive child to the point where his body would briefly begin to spark before he calmed himself down whenever he contemplated the matter. In a strange way, the adolescent Mulshian secretly hoped that the killer would come after his parents, so that he would have the opportunity to destroy something with his powers, while knowing that with that something being evil, his doing so would be a good thing.
Rather predictably in retrospect, this "wish" eventually came true, but played out quite oppositely to how he'd imagined things going down. Indeed, after what ultimately ended up happening took place, his having "wanted" it to happen in any capacity beforehand would go on to become Fire-Egg's most hauntingly shameful memory throughout the entirety of his subsequent life.
It was the fourth evening after their conversation regarding the killer, who still remained active, at large and spoken of on the news each night, and the family had ordered in pizza topped with Jajemoar meat bits for dinner. Hungry and eager to eat when the doorbell rang and being alone on the mansion's lowermost floor, the son immediately answered the door despite his parents having repeatedly told him not to do so without them. The boy later came to profoundly wish he'd respected that rule, though it likely would not have made any difference in the end. The child who was about to officially become Fire-Egg would never forget the appearance of the figure that "greeted" him upon his opening the front door: tall, wrinkled (almost raisin-like, in fact), dark-purple-and-black-skinned, with glowing, slanted blood-red eyes, a spiky frame protruding from his upper body and large, bright green claws. His features were so singularly, horrifically striking that the child hardly even noticed the multiple, far less eye-catching additional figures standing behind their leader. It was… Set'Ibutal. Yes, Set'Ibutal, the infamous Primal Deity and military leader of the Monsgnarl Pantheon from Proolycoles, had come halfway across the galaxy specifically to commit serial murders against Mulshian elite; all that stuff about Oseeron earlier-on was just there to mislead you.

…That was our attempt at an inappropriately-timed joke, for which we will now apologize.
In actuality, the "visitor" was, of course, none other than Oseeron, although again, his identity would not become known to Fire-Egg until many years later. The boy was, however, immediately able to discern that this person was the much-talked-about serial killer of Ergnoplis' rich, and with his mind being overtaken by his own much-previously-thought-about fantasies in that moment, he began to light up his body forthwith as he prepared to stand his ground and battle this menace.
The killer evidently either failed to take notice of this ignition or did not consider it threatening in the slightest, and either way, he was clearly unaffected by the flames as he proceeded to pick the young Mulshian up by the top with one hand. The boy felt his bodily fires being extinguished by a rapid onset of overwhelming fear inside him, shortly before the villain launched him across the room with immense force, all without verbalizing so much as a single grunt on his own part. The mutant child went flying diagonally throughout the interior length of his home, eventually slamming sideways into a hard marble wall within his living room and then slumping pitifully to the floor, with yellow blood oozing from several fresh cracks in his flesh.
Now on the verge of falling unconscious and struggling to stay awake, the boy remained just barely lucid enough to witness and comprehend the sight of the dark-skinned killer casually walking across the room opposite him, marching toward and then up the the spiral staircase that led to the household's upper levels where its adult occupants - and his next victims - resided.
Now struggling to lift himself up from the floor in a desperate effort to stop this monster, the young Mulshian normally would have found himself unable to muster up the strength required to do so, but his love for his parents, combined with his rage at this foul, as-of-yet-unidentified villain, gave him the burst of adrenaline he needed to be able to stand up, if only barely. Limping, he slowly made his way across the room, still dripping blood and grunting with pain. All his remaining hopes of saving his mom and dad were then dashed when he arrived at the foot of the staircase and realized that not even his present adrenaline rush could allow him to feasibly climb the steps in his injured physical state. The mutant child could, however, hear well enough what was happening upstairs: namely, he heard sounds of screaming, slicing, crackling and smashing, which then started gradually dying down after an ear-piercing zenith of screaming was reached. In time, the noises wound down fully, with their cessation being followed by sustained silence, and it was in that moment that the hideous realization reached the boy: both of his parents were dead.

Having failed to save the day in spite of how easy he'd believed doing so with his powers would be and how many times he'd "predicted" his success in a scenario like this while analyzing prospects within his imagination, the child began wondering if there was anything he could have done to make things turn out differently. Maybe if he hadn't been right there at the door when the killer came in, he would have gotten more of an opportunity to set him aflame… This contemplation of what could have been, and the consequent perception that it might have been possible for him to defeat the killer had he not "messed up", only left the boy feeling worse, making it seem like this was somehow his fault.
He fell facedown onto the floor again as he began to sob with intense sorrow, which soon gave way to even more intense anger: how dare that demon-spawn kill his parents! What had they or he done to deserve this? Nothing! Thus, as the young mutant decided, right then and there, that he would have his revenge on this monster if it was the last thing he ever did, his body came to be completely engulfed in a solid cloak of flame for the first time in his life. He stood up fully, his pain now entirely nullified by a second surge of adrenaline, this one far more intense and empowering than what any normal Mulshian's body would have been capable of producing under this circumstance or any other, and started screaming with rage as great balls of fire shot from his hands and onto the walls, and the flames covering his body spread from his feet onto the floor below. In his wrath-consumed mind, he believed that if he burned the house down quickly enough, the killer would perish with it; after all, he had not come down the stairs yet. Of course, little did the boy know that Oseeron had already made his escape through a second-story window…
Within minutes, the entire mansion was aflame, and though the house was located a considerable distance away from any other major buildings, those living in the nearest street block's homes were soon able to see it burning in the distance, with several people calling emergency hotlines, not that their doing so made any difference in how the transpiring events turned out.
Meanwhile, once he was sure that the whole building was engulfed, the flaming mutant marched out through the collapsing front doorway and, with no plan in mind at all, ran away into the horizon and towards the yonder wilderness on West Egg City's outskirts. He had unknowingly chosen to head out in the opposite direction of where Oseeron and his cohorts were simultaneously going, and whether this stands as fortunate or unfortunate is heavily debatable, considering the fact that had he confronted his parent's killer for a second time then and there, his life's story, and hence this narrative of it, probably would have ended up concluding then and there as well.
As he sprinted off into the desert, with no idea at all where he was headed, the child came to realize and understand that all traces of and hope for any remotely normal or peaceful life he ever might have been able to have had ceased to exist, in part by his own flaming hand, as of this dark night. Bearing this in his destabilized young mind, he decided to finalize and complete this destruction of his prior life by renouncing his old name and relabeling himself with one befitting of a dark, vengeful hero, now considering the prospect of reinventing himself as such a figure to entail his only remaining hope of ever finding any worthy purpose in life.
The name he came up with on the spot, and which he shall henceforth be referred to by within this story: "Fire-Egg".
Was it the most creative or maturely-conceived moniker? No.
Did the newly-rechristened Fire-Egg ever look back to question the name after initially deciding on it? No.
Did he intend to make it famous among his peers and beyond as a palpably resonant synonym for justice and heroism, regardless of how stupid it may have sounded in and of itself? HELL-FREAKING-YES.

After running nonstop through the wastes for what felt like hours and across a far greater distance than what any other Mulshian his age would have been able to traverse on-foot without slowing down at least once, a still-flaming (though no longer wholly engulfed) Fire-Egg eventually came upon the sight of a towering Treymoz, a native creature which he had read about at school in the past but never encountered in person. Being a peaceful animal, yet one which would not hesitate to attack something that attacked it first, the sixteen-footed behemoth at first simply stared down at the strange-looking Mulshian, with bemusement apparent in its brutish face and metallic, gold-colored teeth. Fire-Egg, meanwhile and unfortunately for the Treymoz, was mad; mad enough to kill something for no reason.
Intent on doing exactly that, he clenched both his hands together and formed within them a massive fireball which he then sent flying forward. The projectile struck the Treymoz directly in its dangling penis sooner than the slow-witted beast could realize that it was under attack, much less make any attempt at evasion, and it bellowed out in pain, with Fire-Egg having to hold his hands in front of his face so as to ensure that the massive sound waves produced by this did not knock him off of his feet. The wounded Treymoz leapt high up into the air, in a Scapestrider-esque fashion, and held all of its feet together in midair, aiming to crush its attacker with their collective mass as it slammed back down to the surface. Quickly discerning what the creature was trying to do and having no intention of letting it be the end of him, Fire-Egg sprinted forward and as far away from the predicted trajectory of the large animal's imminent descent as possible. When it finally came crashing down with a quaking thud, the Treymoz missed its mark by several yards' worth. Next slowly reorienting its bulky body toward its foe, the Treymoz's gaping maw was, upon coming to face Fire-Egg, met with a pre-charged barrage of miniature fireballs which all tumbled directly inside it. Within the following minute, whole internal organ systems were burning up inside the creature, which accordingly started to moan hideously with clearly intense pain, and within the next minute after that, it collapsed to the ground, dead. Fire-Egg then looked upon his kill, letting what he had just accomplished sink in, before triumphantly beating his chest as he let out a holler reminiscent of many a barbaric war-cry.
Next taking a sweeping look at his surroundings as he returned to relative calmness, with the flames around his body dying down further and his intense adrenaline rush wearing off, causing fatigue and injury-induced pain to start taking hold again, Fire-Egg quickly caught sight of a large forest residing near the horizon and easily within walking distance. Tearing off a large hunk of the Treymoz's partially-fried carcass, he then dragged this mass of meat that would surely constitute his next several meals along with him as he began making his way toward this forest, designating it as a venue for training and self-discovery and determining that it would be the first destination in Fire-Egg's journeys which were, as of right now, officially underway.

TO BE CONTINUED…