...Well, what wonders never cease. The bank only has two possible angles that snipers could shoot into safely to take out the robbers, and they're keeping themselves and the hostages away from those. They've sent a negotiator in, but I've already spotted the robbers, and I've read their files. Not hard to find, they've apparently both spent quite some time in and out of jail. Their psychology profiles suggest that these are the types to start shooting the place up under pressure.

Lucky for me, when I decided to return to St. Jean, I got the lay of the land and some of the more likely locations I'd be 'visiting'. I know all about the ventilation system in the St. Jean First Regional Bank. Using the shadows to my advantage, I make my way to the roof, where the entry point into the vents are. Another lucky point for me, I decided to ditch the green and blue tights in favour of black kevlar with dark green highlights and a bulletproof cape. Probably should've included a hood instead of a simple mask over my eyes, something to cover my red hair. I also decided to equip myself with a few extra 'toys', set up in my belt, and if worst comes to worst, I always have my old faithful trick I got just before leaving St. Jean the first time, though I'd rather not have to use THAT on common thugs and bank robbers.

Crawling through the ventilation system, it seems just big enough for someone my size to crawl through. Someone upstairs must really like me today, I guess. Eventually, I make my way down to the main floor. Not hard to find my way down there, just had to follow the screaming. Seems the robbers are getting antsier by the second. And God knows, the negotiator is trying, and he's the best on the force. Problem is, that's not saying much, and these five robbers are NOT going to co-operate. I know that, and I'm fairly sure the negotiator knows it too.

I slip out of the vents into the back of the room, unnoticed. The negotiator has left, and the robbers have barricaded the doors. The hostages are tied and gagged pretty effectively, and I can see the terror in their eyes pretty easily. They know they're maybe two minutes away from one of them getting their brains blown across the floor. I look to the criminals. I could take them out right now, but that would require THAT, and I don't use THAT on ordinary people like them. Instead, I reach into my bag of toys that is my utility belt. Smoke pellets and throwing darts dipped in tranquillizers. Perfect.

I get into just the right position, at the desk just behind the plumpest one. The slowest to react. And, much to my extreme fortune, the one closest to the hostages. This is going way too easily for me, but I can't be lax just for that. I can't be lax for anything when people are bound, gagged, and held by people with guns.

I wait one moment. Then another. Finally, I see just THE opening. A quick roll of a smoke pellet, and before anyone can notice it rolling across the floor, the room is filled with smoke, too dense to really see through. But they freak, and immediately their hands are on their guns. Too bad for them, my finger is already on the trigger, and within a few seconds they're all on the ground, darts protruding from their necks.

Part A of this completed, I move to Part B: Untying and ungagging the hostages and getting out of here before the police barge in. Sure, I'm one of the good guys, but the whole costumed vigilante thing is still kinda treated as a negative by cops. I manage to get seven of the eight hostages free...and that's when I hear the rustling.

It's not until after I see him that my mind flashes back to his psychological profile: Cole, Ryan. Doctors found that he had a seemingly unnatural resistance to most forms of anaesthesia and tranquillizers  And oh yes, he does in fact have a gun. Now, if he was pointed at me, that'd be one thing. I might not have reacted as I did, because it was MY screw up. But he's not pointing at me. He's raising his gun towards the one hostage I HAVEN'T freed yet: an 11 year old girl.

Damn it all. I do not use THIS on ordinary people. But it's him or the hostage, and I can see the fear in her eyes as she knows she's about to die. I raise one hand, hoping I keep it low enough that I don't kill him, hoping that my hope is enough to make it so. And as his finger begins to squeeze on the trigger, I feel the electricity in my gloved hand build up and erupt forward into a bolt of green lightning that knocks him backward, the gun firing harmlessly in another direction.

I don't even care about the police at this moment. I rush over to Cole, checking for a pulse. Good, he's alive, and breathing. Seems I lucked out again. Now if only my skills in the field were as good as my luck, I wouldn't have screwed this up. I REALLY wish Strix was watching this town. It deserves someone better suited to handle this crime wave, not someone who's brand new to being a solo hero.

I hear banging on the front doors to the bank. The police are on their way, and that barricade the robbers put up won't last. They can untie the girl. I flee back into the ventilation shaft, out of there just as the police finally make their way in. Making my way to the roof, I watch as they carry the little girl out, overhearing her tell them that the man with lightning saved them. They might think she just imagined it, I don't really know. Either way, I decide I should call it a night.

I return to my hide out: Doctor Randal's old laboratory...Doctor Randal, my science teacher when I was in high school. The man they called a quack. The man who invented the green voltage, a self replicating source of energy that never dies. The man whose experiments with the green voltage killed him. Should've killed me, too, but it didn't. On that night where the green voltage went out of control, it hit both of us. One of us died, and the other was changed.

I think back to that night as I remove my mask, well inside my place of hiding. Why did it change me into this? It should have killed me. I've gone over it a thousand times in my head, re-read Randal's notes over and over, and nothing lends itself to suggest a reason for why I lived and he didn't, and why my body was infused with the green voltage, effectively making me a superhuman. It threatens to drive me crazy every time I think it over, but at least I have the quiet of this abandoned lab to think it over.

"Hello, Geoffrey."

I sigh, turning to face her: The one person who could get in here undetected by the security system I had set up throughout the building when I moved in. A blonde teenager in a black mask, a black, white, and yellow sailor-like costume, a black cape, a pair of long white gloves, and white stockings under a pair of almost knee high black boots. She looks 100% harmless, but I know better.

And here we go.