It was a beautiful sunny morning in the city of Dakota, the people of the city were already up and getting on with their lives. Amongst them was Static flying through the air on a slightly earlier than normal patrol, having not been able to sleep due to the stress of school as his alter ego Virgil Hawkins.
His partner and best friend Richie Foley or Gear was still fast asleep after the busy late night patrol. Static smirked and shook his hair out of his eyes as he remembered how Richie's newest invention blew up in Richie's face and covered Richie head to toe in a new adhesive that he had created, which turned to stone in a matter of seconds.
It had taken Virgil four hours to free his best friend, who as soon as he was free of the stone cocoon rushed off to take a shower in the bathroom.
Static was half lost in thought that he did not notice the energy in his disc flicker slightly for a moment. Happy that the city was secure, Static changed direction and headed back to the gas station to finish cleaning up last night's mess.
Beep! Beep! Something beeped inside Static's jacket as he landed outside their headquarters, the abandoned gas station of solitude. Static dug into his pocket for the shock vox and answered it.
"Morning Richie!" He said cheerfully as he stepped into their headquarters.
"Bro, has anybody told you that you are way too cheerful for this time of the morning" A tired voice said as Virgil took his mask off with one hand.
"Yeah, my pops before his first cup of coffee... I just finished morning patrol and no sign of crime in sight!" Virgil said, a big smile on his face as he sat down on the old couch and began to slowly change out of his superhero costume and back into his street clothes.
"That's not unusual, it was last night..." Richie's voice said and there was a sound of clothes being moved around.
Richie woke himself up and called Virgil on the shock vox, after putting his glasses on, to find out how morning patrol went as he was still recovering from an experiment gone wrong the previous night. He winced as Virgil answered it in his normal active self, "Bro, has anybody told you that you are way too cheerful for this time of morning" His voice half cracked, as Richie ran his free hand through his hair.
"Yeah, my pops before his first cup of coffee... I just finished morning patrol and no sign of crime in sight!" Virgil's cheerful voice said, and sounds of him slowly changing could be heard in the background.
"That's not unusual, it was last night... well apart from a couple of cats up several different trees" Richie said, throwing his bedding aside and got up to find some clothes draped over the back of the computer chair.
"I know, are you coming here to help clean up?" Virgil's voice asked. Richie had put the shock vox down for a minute to pull his T-shirt and famous blue jumper on. Picking up the shock vox again, and pushing his glasses back up his nose.
"Yeah... Let me just grab a bite to eat and I will be there" Richie said, jumping around a little to get his trousers on one handed.
Virgil heard a crash over the shock vox and he shook his head, as he walked over into the back of the gas station into the bathroom area. "Rich? You ok man?" Virgil asked as he looked in the mirror and adjusted a few bits of his hair.
"Y...yeah! I'm fine" Richie's voice said, his voice sounded a little breathless. "Ok Rich! I'll see you in a bit!" Virgil said and switched off the shock vox.
Moving out of the bathroom, Virgil opened a nearby cupboard to fish out a large broom. Closing the cupboard, he moved over to where Richie's experiment had left a large amount of rubble and dust.
Richie picked himself up after falling over, getting his foot caught while trying to get them on. "Ouch!" Richie muttered.
"Rich, you ok man?" Virgil's voice asked, trying not to sound amused.
"Y...yeah! I'm fine" Richie said breathlessly, getting the annoying pants on before getting up, somehow he had managed to keep hold on the shock vox when he fell.
"Ok Rich! I'll see you in a bit!" Virgil's voice said and then the vox clicked off.
Richie got back to his feet and made sure his pants were on properly this time. Stupid things! Richie thought as he made sure his shirt was tucked in before putting his shoes on and left the room.
Maggie sat at the table, drinking her coffee and was half watching a new show on cooking.
Richie slowly crept in and looked around, half hidden by the door.
"Its ok Richie, he's left" Maggie said knowing that her son was looking for his father, Sean.
Richie sighed an inner sigh of relief, even though his dad had gotten better control of his temper over the last year or so Sean was still a dangerous guy to be around first thing in the morning. He just wasn't a morning person.
"Thanks Mom" Richie said, and placed some bread in the toaster and then helped himself to the ready-made coffee.
"I was expecting you to be getting up late considering it's a weekend" Maggie said, then took a sip of her fast cooling coffee.
"I got to go and meet Virgil down at Rocket Comics! There's a new shipment coming in soon," Richie said while stirring a little bit of milk into his coffee before taking a sip.
"Oh, that's fine Richie" Maggie said, then carried on watching the show.
Pop! The toaster went, and showed two pieces of freshly done toast. Richie left them there while he found a knife and the butter; he loved melted butter on hot toast.
Happy that there was enough butter on his toast, Richie finished his coffee as quickly as he could before leaving the kitchen with one piece of toast in his mouth and the other in his hand.
Finishing the piece of toast in his mouth as he made sure that his shoelaces were done up correctly so that they could be undone in a hurry.
"See you later mom!" Richie said opening the door and left the house, still with only half of his breakfast eating.
He closed the door and ate the other piece of his toast as he headed over to the gas station, it would have been much quicker to nip into an ally change into Gear and fly there but walking gave Richie time to think and to puzzle out why last nights routine experiment could have gone so far awry.
Virgil had started cleaning the rubble and dust left over from Richie's experiment, the rubble was no problem even though there was a lot of it, the dust was the main trouble. Every sweep of the broom stirred up a cloud of fine particles that he kept inhaling, which resulted in frequent sneezing fits. Several times he'd ended up sneezing for a good few minutes each time.
Taking a slight break from the hard work and the sneezing fits Virgil went to rest outside and to get some fresh air.
My powers could work as a fan and push the dust out but then cleaning up would create more dust and... Virgil thought to himself then rubbed a hand through his hair and felt that if he used his powers to try and get rid of the dust that when cleaning that would create more dust. This predicament gave Virgil a headache - or maybe that was because he'd been sneezing so hard and so often - and a problem. How to clear away the rubble without filling headquarters with a massive cloud of dust.
And then it dawned on him. He could just use the damned cleaner. They'd salvaged it a few weeks ago and while it wasn't the most reliable cleaner in the world it would get the job done. Without throwing up those annoying dust clouds. Now why didn't I think of that before, he thought mentally berating himself for not thinking about it earlier.
Going back into the gas station, Virgil headed over to the same cupboard where he had taken the broom from. Digging under the folded materials that were used for repairing their superhero costumes, he found the cleaner and pulled it out.
Hoping that this would actually work, Virgil found a spare socket and plugged the cleaner in. He would of used his powers to power up the cleaner but he would of rather of not risked it.
"Yes!" Virgil said as he pressed the switch and the cleaner spurred into action, and so he started cleaning up the rubble and dust - the dust now was sucked into the cleaner, which was laid on the floor - Happy that there was hardly any dust, Virgil was able to clean up the rest of the rubble without trouble.
"Hey bro! You here?" Richie's voice called and the door opened to reveal the blonde genius.
Virgil shut off the cleaner and said, "Hey Rich! Just in time to help shift the rubble! Had a slight problem with the dust, but this old cleaner works like a charm!"
"That's cool! So is that really how much dust and rubble there is?" Richie asked coming over to where Virgil was and checked the bag inside the cleaner, which was full.
"Wow, full already, huh?" Virgil said leaning against the broom and felt a tickle in his throat. Trying to cough it away brought tears to his eyes.
Richie was stunned and quickly went to get a drink from the fridge and noticed a fine layer of dust laid on the top of it. Getting a bottle of water out, he quickly went to his best mate and opened the bottle of water before offering it to him.
Virgil gratefully accepted the bottle of water and drank half of it without realising. "Thanks...bro" Virgil said breathlessly and went to rest on the old couch for a bit.
"Gave me a fright there Virg!" Richie said, moving to sit down on the couch next to Virgil.
"Sorry bro... show's how much dust there was..." Virgil said and slowly finished the bottle of water.
"Yeah," Richie agreed. "I didn't realise that there would be that much dust."
"Tell you what bro neither did I or I would have brought a dust mask. So any idea what caused that experiment to blow up in our faces?"
"Not a clue bro. I don't have a clue. I'll have to properly analyse the data to determine that. But that mix shouldn't have exploded."
"Well at least it didn't blow up a garage this time."
"Just made a hell of a mess," Richie agreed laughing and wincing as he remembered what happened the last time an experiment with supposedly stable compounds blew up. At least this time no harm had been done. To anything or anyone.