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Walter Sands is an Engineer, and a veteran Naval
officer. Still active in the Coast Guard reserve, he was assigned to
help with water patrol on a 4th of July weekend.
They had had the usual run of holiday problems that afternoon: People
drinking as they piloted, sailing too close to shore, speeding through
navigation channels, and so forth. Nothing huge.
Things slowed down after dark, though there were some jet-ski riders
running in close to where the fireworks were supposed to go, so they
headed in to herd them away to a safe distance.
The show began on schedule, with a sudden burst of rockets. But
something went wrong. Several of the rockets hit
*something*
in the air, over the beach. Something large, and unseen until that
moment.
The powder charge in the rockets would have been enough to level a
house, and that's pretty much what it did to the blimp? spaceship?
thing in the air. It went to pieces, scattering debris all over the
crowd on the beach, and onto the boaters in the water.
Chaos erupted as people tried to dodge the wreckage, and failed.
The small patrol boat he was on surged into the area, as they pulled
bleeding and injured people from the water. Some were dead already,
some were obviously dying, but they had to recover them all, if they
could.
There was an oil slick of some kind on the water, and Sands was soon
covered in it, as he was the one on the rescue platform, at water level,
pulling people out.
It was a nightmare that lasted all night. The official explanation was
a plane crash, but the wreckage Sands saw wasn't from any airplane he
had ever seen. He was informed that it was an airplane, and he would
believe it, and that was an order! He asked no more questions.
Over the next few weeks, however, he began to develop an awareness for
the weather. He felt it, knew what it was doing. This sense grew, and
as it did he found that he could influence the wind, bend and direct it
to his will.
One month after the accident, he took his first flight.. He wore a
loose rain pancho, so the wind could catch it, and he directed the air
into a tight whirlwind around him. It worked, and he found that he
could command and ride the wind.
But it appeared that he wasn't alone in his development of odd
abilities. There were a dozen costumed people showing up in the news,
demonstrating superhuman abilities. Some worked to uphold the law. Most
didn't.
The drive and personal principles that had lead him to serve in the
Navy, and that had lead him to rescue those people at the crash, pretty
much made his decision for him. He prepared a costume, using scavenged
Kevlar sailcloth, complete with a padded mask (Facial structure analsys
and thermo-graphics won't show his true face), and a utility belt. And,
of course, a large, billowing cape.
Oddly, although he uses abilities that others have called magical, he
doesn't believe in magic. Being an engineer at heart, he is sure that
there is a logical explanation for what he does. He just doesn't have a
clue what it could be.
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