text: ndreds of cells, and in them, are people, with a some sort of helmet around their heads.
  
  "What are those things?" I ask Leksiah.
  
  "I don't know. They didn't put them on me."
  
  "You said you escaped due to the telekinetic ability that you developed as a side-effect to your enhanced intellect, correct?"
  
  "Yes. This must be a response to that, them trying to keep them from escaping with their telekinesis."
  
  "So those helmets block out telekinetics?"
  
  "Yes. My brain sends out a...sort of frequency that it uses to manipulate items, it is virtually undetectable to human beings, but that must be a some kind of jammer for it."
  
  "But why would they go through the trouble? Why wouldn't they just alter their transformations so the subjects would have enhanced intellect, but wouldn't send those frequencies, and therefore wouldn'tn be telekinetic?"
  
  "It would be a waste, wouldn't it?" we hear a voice say from our side and we both turn towards it. We see a man, who's brain clearly has been mutated to a severely abnormal level. He's standing in the light, which is why I couldn't detect him.
  
  "It seems our prototype has returned" he then says and looks at Leksiah.
  
  "That's him, that's the nameless overseer. That's the guy behind this place."
  
  "Seems like he's been taking some of his own medicine" I say, in reference to his mutated brain.
  
  "Your dark-matter friend here is right. What an interesting thing you are. Where were you made?"
  
  "At a place far too much like this one, by a man far too similar to you."
  
  "Who are you anyway?"
  
  "I had a name once, a regular name, like any other, but I find it unsuitable for my current magnificence. Now, I am called: the Overlord."
  
  "You know, the Ammunition would have loved you."
  
  "I don't want to talk anymore, I want to kill him. Punish him for what he's done!" Leksiah says and projects a telekinetic wave at Overlord. He laughs at her, and reflects the wave back at her, magnifying it with his own power. As it approaches her, it enters the shadows, so I prevent it from hurting her, although blocking it proved surprisingly difficult. His power is on a much higher scale than Leksiah's, and the fact that he's under the light, and can protect it from Leksiah's attacks means I can't take him out.
  
  "Impressive. You have great power" he says and looks at me.
  
  "You have no idea."
  
  "I detected though that the baryonic dark matter that funneled from your body retreated from the light. It seems like you have a weakness" he says and telekinetically redirects the light from the corridor at me. Seems like this guy will pose as more of a threat than I thought. If he can illuminate every shadow I am connected to, he'll kill me. Luckily, the way we came from is shadowed, and leads to the night, so doing so would be virtually impossible. He seems to realize this too, coming to a successful conclusion about how my powers work with his enhanced intellect, and he redirects light to the entrance of the room. I cannot stay connected to both shadows, so I'll have to choose whether to stay in here, where he has me boxed in with light, risking my life, as then it would be possible for him to totally illuminate me, or leave the room, and stay connected to the night. It makes me safe, but I won't be able to protect Leksiah, who doesn't stand a chance against Overlord on her own.
  
  > stay in the room.
  If I leave, Overlord will kill Leksiah, so I stay in the room, hoping to stop him before he can cut me off from shadows entirely. He starts redirecting light closer towards me. Leksiah tries to push him back, but his telekinetic barrier blocks her from him, and the light blocks me from him.
  
  Leksiah looks at me and says "what are we going to do?"
  
  > throw something at him.
  I throw a desk at Overlord, which he tears in half, rendering the attack harmless to him. However, multitasking did not seem to be part of his mutation, as I feel the light between me and the shadows outside vanish. He is unable to redirect the light there and tear the table apart at the same time, so it gives me a brief moment to act wile connected to the light.
  
  > drop an uninhabited island on top of him.
  I find an island that I don't detect any life-forms on, lift it up from the sea, compress it into a building-large boulder, which still contains the island's mass and drop it onto the ground above where Overlord is located. It instantly tears through the ground, and almost drops onto his head, but he manages to keep it suspended above him. It is extremely heavy for him however, and he is unable to maintain his telekinetic barrier while holding the boulder up, so Leksiah pulls him towards me. He tries to keep me away from him, but he's in my domain now.
  
  > Punish Overlord.
  I raise Overlord into the air, as he is helpless to stop me.
  
  "No. Please! Don't kill me. Think of what a waste it would be!"
  
  "Waste? I am doing humanity a favor."
  
  "Think about everything I'm doing. I'm making everything better. I'm making everyone smarter."
  
  "You're making yourself better at the expense of everyone else. You know who you remind me of? Michael Thorne. You heard of him?"
  
  Overlord shakes his head, and I say "Thorne was trying to perfect humanity. To speed up evolution where there would literally be impossible to improve upon it. Among his subjects was me. You know how he created me? He brutally killed my mother and then fed her to a cannibal. He did that to my mother. And you know what the worst part is? As soon as I had been created, he disqualified me as a candidate for his perfection, locked me up and threw away the key. He killed an innocent woman, and prevented me from having a happy normal life for nothing! That's who you remind me of. You are exactly as ruthless, cold-hearted and selfish as he was, and he is the last person you'd want to resemble right now."
  
  As his pain rises, he starts to scream. I can feel his attempts to free himself become more and more desperate, but they are all equally ineffective.
  
  "Tell me something, Overlord. Did you intend for your brain to grow so large?" I say to him, but he doesn't respond. He just keeps screaming and writhing in pain. I decrease it, just a little bit, which is more than he deserves, so that he can respond.
  
  "Answer my question."
  
  "No...no...I...no...that was....I didn't...."
  
  "So I suppose you want to find a way to decrease it."
  
  "Well...maybe after I'd..." but then I see a lovely sight as his pupils grow larger, as he realizes the purpose of my question. After all, that sort of thing is what his intelligence is for, isn't it? His heartbeat rises even higher than it was, and he is sweating like I've never seen before. "No. Please. Don't do it."
  
  I savor the moment. I squeeze as much terror from him, as he knows the fate that awaits him, and he begs me for mercy. I don't answer any of them, I just stare into his cruel, heartless eyes, and wait for his heartbeat to go down again. Perhaps my moment of pause has given him hope, perhaps he thinks I am actually considering to let him live. Good, then I can inflict more pain upon him as I crush his last feeling of hope.
  
  His look of terror resumes as he feels a powerful force touch his mind. I channel myself around his entire brain, but I don't kill him yet. I just make sure that he feels as much of it as possible, so I compress his brain slowly. He cries and begs all he cans, until he is rendered motionless. I then toss his remains aside. There is no use in punishing him anymore.
  
  > talk to Leksiah.
  "He deserved that" Leksiah says.
  
  "It feels good, doesn't it? Witnessing someone receiving his just desserts."
  
  Leksiah nods.
  
  "Yes. It's nice. It feels right" she then says and looks at me.
  
  > Free the other subjects.
  Upon removing the telekinetically-blocking helmets from the subjects, they all start gathering around us.
  
  "We...thank you. That man was a madman."
  
  "He said you worked for him. Is that true?"
  
  "Ah...yes, we did."
  
  "You experimented on people? Did the same things to them that Overlord did to you?"
  
  "Yes. I didn't understand how wrong it was until he put me in there" one of them says, and the rest of them nod. These people hurt others. They were Overlord's accomplishes, but then again, perhaps they have received a just punishment. They felt what they did to others. Perhaps I should just let them go.
  
  > let them go.
  "Go. You've suffered enough" I say and the people leave.
  
  > leave the facility.
  Satisfied that Overlord has met a deserving fate, we leave the facility. Now it's time to turn back to the matter at hand after this little side-track. I take Leksiah back to her hide-out instantly.
  
  > discuss what to do next.
  "Alright, so you've been in Novarra. What should my next move be."
  
  "Our next move. I'm going with you, you know. Wherever you go, I'll be there to help" Leksiah says.
  
  I give a quick smile, although she probably can't see it. "Then what should out next move be?"
  
  "Well...err...the Novarran government is pushing a new bill. Mutants are no longer to be incarcerated. They are to be exterminated."
  
  "What??? Why didn't you mention this earlier?"
  
  "I...ehh...I knew you wouldn't even consider taking out the brain enhancing facility if you knew about this."
  
  I don't have time to be pissed at her right now. I just have to make sure I put an end to this.
  
  > pay a visit to the Novarran government.
  Obviously, they're not going to change this law during the night, but I have to make sure to everyone who has a say in it that knows that laws issuing the deaths of innocent people will be met with most severely. I am not going to force them to change it, just notify them of the consequences. However, as I make my way there, I encounter a barrier, of some sort, a barrier that is not constructed of light. I try removing baryons from my body, but even so, I am unable to phase through it. As I touch the barrier, wondering what it is, I feel that it is making frequent movements. A pair of green eyes then appear in the barrier and they stare at me. This barrier, it is a person. A person like me.
  
  "Who are you?" I ask the other baryonic individual, but he doesn't respond. Just keeps twitching and looking at me. Soon, He extends around me and we are both enveloped in an impenetrable darkness, darkness that I seem unable to connect with, even though I can't feel the barrier even more. I then feel my mass decreasing, like everything about me is slowly vanishing, and then there is nothing.
  
  > Chapter 2-Apocalyptic.
  I find myself encased in the same glass cage the Imperfects stored me in. No, not the same. It has the same design, but the whole place looks and feels different.
  
  Whoever that other dark-matter individual was must have put me here. But who made him? There was no data of a second subject at any of Thorne's computers, and his people were the first ones that created something like me. His twitching also indicated that he was a failed version of me, or an improved one. I have never been able to teleport, but the fact that I am in an area that is not connected to any shadow indicates that teleportation is exactly what he did. Maybe the Novarran government created another me, to combat me, and gave him additional abilities. No, creating me takes years, and I only became a threat to them last night. There's no way they'd be able to create someone equal to me in that amount of time.
  
  Then that can only mean one thing, he's not working for the Novarran government. But then, was he there by coincidence? Did he thwart me from fighting against this new bill without supporting it? No, him being there at that moment to fight me can't be a coincidence. He must be an independant vigilante that supports believes supporting the law through anything is the right thing to do. But if so, if he wasn't developed to combat me, then we must be equal. Perhaps teleportation is just something I haven't learned yet. Well, if it could enable me to escape from here, it would be worth a shot.
  
  > try to teleport.
  I focus on the outside, anywhere else. I try picturing several places in my mind, but I don't vanish and reappear there like the other baryonic individual did. I open my eyes, and I'm still in the vat. If I can teleport, then there must be a reason behind it. Until I understand what it is about my physique that allows me to teleport, I can't do it.
  
  > Elsewhere.
  The night has passed, and in the evening, most of the Novarran citizens sit down in front of their televisions to watch the news. However, the news switch to Baryon's twitching green eyes.
  
  "People of Novarra. I am disheartened, and I can imagine you are as well. Lately, there has been a conflict, between right and wrong in your country, and as usual with such conflicts, both voices are being shouted so loudly that neither is being heard. Across the entire world, I have seen a lot of people attack the innocent and take away their freedom, and people always cheer my name when I put a stop to it. Why shouldn't they? Enforcing what is right is the highest virtue of all, is it not? However, when the assailants hide behind the laws, people seem to cheer their names, instead of those fighting for the freedom of the innocent. People support wrongful incarceration, and soon, they will even cheer as the innocent are publicly executed before their eyes. You see, the unjust in this matter are not the mutants you fear, not the monsters you have nightmares about, not even me. The unjust are you, the people of Novarra, who support this monstrous law, seeing its victims as animals that should be put down simply because their existance inconveniences you. Every night, I will visit Novarra, and every time I come here, finding that this law still exists, I will annihilate a Novarran city, until either you see the light or nothing remains. And in case you don't believe me..."
  
  The camera he seems to be levitating is then raised into the air, revealing the shattered remains of Haengal, a former Novarran city. The screen then switches back to the news.
  
  > Back to Baryon.
  For hours, there is not a single sound. Just me, trapped in this vat, in this dull metallic room.
  
  Soon, I hear loud thumps, coming froun outside. At first, it sounds like they're far away, but then they get louder, indicating that they're getting closer to my location. It almost sounds like someone is knock down walls. The sound becomes more and more familiar as it gets closer. I've heard these thumps before.
  
  Brute then knocks down the wall next to me, and Haste superspeeds to his side.
  
  "Do you ever try knocking?"
  
  "That was me knocking."
  
  Haste sighs, superspeeds to a console next to my vat and starts skimming through it on superspeed.
  
  "Hey. Who'd ever thought we'd be liberating the Liberator?"
  
  "Twenty bucks says Paladin's on his way."
  
  "Oh yeah? We better hurry then."
  
  "Hurry? But then we might miss him."
  
  "You wanna fight the guy that put Liberator in there? Be my guest. We can go much faster than you anyway. Speaking of being faster, you didn't loose the leader, did you?"
  
  "He can handle himself."
  
  "Oh yeah, because he always excels at combat" Haste responds and seems to be finished with the console, as the vat opens.
  
  "Right. I'll go find Treebeard, you get him out of here."
  
  Haste then vanishes on superspeed and Brute approaches me.
  
  "I was right, wasn't I? Getting captured alive is way worse than dying in a proper fight."
  
  "I...what?"
  
  "You're confused? Ah, what the heck. The talking guys will be able to get your mind straight. We'll just get out of here, and if we're lucky, we'll run into Paladin."
  
  "Who's the Paladin?"
  
  "You don't remember the guy who sorely kicked your ass? He's the reason you were captured."
  
  "This Paladin...he's the guy who's like me?"
  
  "Like you? You don't really think they'd use freaks to fight for them, right? Naw, he's just a guy in a suit. A suit that's made to fight against you. Now, are we gonna get the hell out of here or what?"
  
  "Are we going to meet Eve?"
  
  "Yeah, if the Paladin has his way."
  
  > follow Brute through the prison complex.
  Brute and I go back the way he came, through the entire facility. and I stay underneath him to use his extremely large body to shield me from the light.
  
  "So where are we?" I ask Brute as we make our way through the compund.
  
  "This is one of their largest prisons."
  
  "Their?"
  
  "Wow, they really did a number on your memory, didn't they? The alliance. All the countries teaming up to fight against you."
  
  "Me?"
  
  "Well, us. You primarily. You're the Liberator after all."
  
  "Why am I called that?"
  
  "Well, freaks like us mostly call you that, but its true. You've been freeing keeping mutants safe on a global scale for years."
  
  "Wait, this law...it's global?"
  
  Brute nods, and I then add "I thought it was only in Novarra."
  
  "Yeah, like 8 years ago. Then you started kicking their asses, and they didn't like getting their asses kicked, and they used your ass-kickery to convince the rest of the world that freaks are monsters and should be exterminated."
  
  Brute then looks up into the ceiling, and says "alright, we should be close enough to the ground now. Come on, hold on tight."
  
  I then grab Brute's arm as he leaps through the ceiling and into the night above, allowing me to connect with it.
  
  "Haste and Grove should be around here somewhere" Brute says, and then a blur leaves the compound, which looked like Haste carrying Grove.
  
  "Follow them. I don't recon you remember where our base is."
  
  > follow Haste to the base.
  I transport myself and Brute to the base Haste goes to: an abandoned underground base in Siberia. I don't realize that we're there until I channel myself around the surrounding area. As I enter the base along with Brute, I feel that the whole place is very vaguely illuminated. Clearly designed not to inconvenience me. There, I see hundreds of mutants, some I have seen before, and some I haven't.
  
  Grove approaches me, and he appears to be the leader of this place.
  
  "Baryon. Glad to have you back. The Imperfects aren't the same without you."
  
  "Imperfects? I'm an Imperfect again?"
  
  "Again? No. Unfortunately, this can hardly be called the same team. We just use the name. The Imperfects symbolize everything we stand for. Mutants that make the world better. Mutants that deserve to coexist with the rest of the world."
  
  "And you were made leader?"
  
  Grove looks at Brute and says "what happened to his memory?"
  
  "No idea."
  
  "Well, yes, I was made leader in your absence."
  
  "What about Eve, Freakshow or the Amphibian? Surely, they would have made better leaders?"
  
  Grove looks down uncomfortably. "Ah, yes. They would have."
  
  "Wha...what happened? Tell me what happened."
  
  "Do you know about the anti-mutant laws?"
  
  "Yes. They started in Novarra and now they've spread globally."
  
  "Exactly. When they hit America, the Gorgonian people tried to have the Imperfects be accepted as exceptions to this rule, as they've proven that they're not a threat to anyone, but Eve refused. In fact, we all refused. We wanted to be treated as mutants, hoping that it would cause the country to reconsider this, but they didn't. When all mutants were made illegal, agents came knocking on the base. Freakshow gave up without a fight and walked into his cell voluntarily. He died there of old age two years ago. Amphibian was never a powerful combatant, so he was killed in the attack."
  
  "And Eve? What happened to Eve?"
  
  "Paladin's first victim."
  
  "The Paladin killed her?"
  
  "Yes. She was the leader, which made her Paladin's prime target. After he killed her, you went after him, and he defeated you as well."
  
  "Why did he kill her? Why didn't he take her alive if he did that to me?"
  
  "Because she fought him in Novarra."
  
  "That matters?"
  
  "The law has spread globally, but not all countries state that mutants are to be executed. Some only incarcerate them, which is why you fought him in Russia. If you lost, then at least you'd still be alive."
  
  I listen to what Grove has to say, but I am still trying to accept that Eve and Freakshow, two of my best friends, are dead. We may not have departed on good terms as far as I remember, but they deserved more.
  
  I then see a familiar face as Leksiah enters the room, smiles and runs towards me.
  
  "Baryon! You're back!"
  
  Before I realize it, Leksiah has grabbed my hand and kisses me. I could phase through her, but why would I do that?
  
  "Ahem, he probably doesn't remember you Lexie" Brute says and Leksiah looks at him. She then looks at me again and says "what? What happened?"
  
  "You two seem to have a lot of catching up to do" Grove says and notes the rest of them to leave the room, which they do.
  
  > speak to Leksiah in private.
  After they've gone, Leksiah touches my hand again.
  
  "You're not twitching anymore?"
  
  "What?"
  
  "Lately, you've been twitching a lot. How did you fix it?"
  
  "I...I've been twitching?"
  
  "Yes. I've been studying it like you asked, but so far, I haven't come to a conclusion. I might be close to something though."
  
  "Have I...have I ever possessed the ability of teleportation?"
  
  "No. Not that I know of. That cage wouldn't have held you if that had been the case, would it?"
  
  "No. I guess not. It's just...the last thing I remember is that I was going to confront the government officials that supported mutant-extermination, and then I encountered someone like me, only he was twitching, and he could teleport. The next thing I knew, I was in that vat, and eight years had passed."
  
  "That's strange. I mean, if they would wipe out your memory, why wouldn't they just clear it? Why would there be something left. Also, I've never heard of another Baryon. Are you sure this happened? Someone would have heard of him."
  
  "You're the hyper-intelligent one here. Not me."
  
  "Actually, you are. I don't imagine you remember that any better, but the brain activity of regular human beings is limited due its organic tissue, which you don't have."
  
  "Interesting. What else did we learn about how I work?"
  
  Leksiah smiles, approaches me until her face is just inches away from mine.
  
  "Well. We learned that you can induce pleasure, just as you can induce pain."
  
  > sleep with Leksiah.
  I channel a portion of myself into her, stimulating her entire body and causing her brain to release endorphines. I don't imagine kissing me is very comfortable, I must feel very dry, but for me, the feeling is both exotic and wonderful at the same time. I've always been curious about how this would feel, I've always wanted to experience it. I can't physically have sex, but this is close enough for me.
  
  After we're done, Leksiah looks at me, smiles and says "are you sure you've lost your memory?"
  
  "We've done this before?"
  
  "Lots of times. You should go back to the others now. You're the leader of the base, and the rest of the team need you" she says and I leave the room, where Brute, Grove and Haste are talking to some other mutants. They look at me and Grove says "good. You're done catching up I take it."
  
  > tour the base.
  "Show me the base" I say to Grove, and he nods.
  
  "Well, it's not exactly a large facility, but its enough. The place splits into three areas, the civilian area, the Imperfects area and the power area. The Imperfects area is for the mutants that take part in the war, like me, you, Brute, Haste and such. The civilian area is for people that don't take part in the war. Children, old people, mutants whose mutation leave them unable to move without difficulty and such. And the power area is where the generators are. That's where our power comes from."
  
  "How many people are here."
  
  "Imperfects and civilians alike? Around sixty-thousand."
  
  "And this place is small?"
  
  "Compared to the fact that it is basically a mutant city, yeah. There are more of them, but this is the capital. Russia is perhaps the country that has put the least concentration on hunting down mutants. That's why we're based here and that's why you chose to battle the Paladin here."
  
  "When I fought the Paladin, wa