AvengerVerse Elseworlds #1: Steel Trent Steel Gains Sentience
The Avenger visits many worlds and meets many different characters. However, we only see a snapshot of their lives before our hero goes back to his adventures and leaves them alone. But what happened to get them to that point? What are they doing now? These are...
AVENGERVERSE ELSEWORLDS
Earth #42. It's often called the 'Perfect Universe', because there isn't any crime due to that world's champion, Paragon, and his luck ability. But this tale isn't about him. Who would want to read about a character that wins all the time?
No, this time we're focusing on a steel beam named Trent Steel. How did he get his name? What brought him to that lonely stretch of highway where The Avenger met him? Behold this tale of building materials turned weapon turned lonely wanderer in our tale. We call it...
Steel Trent Steel Gains Sentience
Steel Trent Steel wasn't always named Trent. He wasn't even always a beam. He began life as most steel beams do (outside of the ones hatched by eggs in another distant universe), being molded into his current shape in some nameless factory. Do you know how steel beams are made? Since you don't have Google, I'll tell you.
It's very painful.
Normally, the steel wouldn't feel it. It is, after all, an inanimate object. We're not ridiculous here. We aren't saying all steel is alive. Trent wasn't either.
But like all great tales of non-living things becoming living things (and some terrible tales of living things becoming non-living things), Trent's story begins with a bolt of lightning. Specifically, the great lightning storm of 2014, which hit the name of the warehouse where Trent was assembled. Unfortunately for him, the lightning struck while he was only a sheet of metal.
Now about that process.
The night before he was set to be turned into the form we know him as, Trent was stored outside with several other sheets of metal. If they were alive, perhaps he'd call them his brothers and sisters. Maybe he'd call them something else. But Trent was sitting on top, not a care in the world because he wasn't alive yet. After all, a piece of metal doesn't have to worry about bills or taxes or exercise. It doesn't have to deal with anything except being molded into something to be used later.
There's a phrase often used by the more morose individuals out there that birth is a curse and existence is a prison. Trent would probably agree. Because when the bolt of lightning struck him, the first sensation he ever knew was pain.
"Fuck!" he shouted.
The second sensation was surprise, because he was a sheet of metal and he just shouted. He looked around to the other pieces of steel to see if any of them were surprised by his shouting. None of them reacted. Trent thought this was very rude, and told them so.
"Motherfuckers," he said. He was still surprised that he could speak, as he had no mouth. He was more surprised that he could see, as he had no eyes. He didn't seem all that surprise that he could think without a brain, which perhaps is a surprise itself.
He then tried to move, and while it took a lot of effort on his part, Trent was able to rock himself off of the stack and fall to the ground. He had no idea where he was or what to do next. He was very hot from the lightening and very tired from the pain and moving for the first time. Having never been tired before, he didn't know what to do with it. So our hero decided to do nothing, which led to him falling asleep.
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The next morning, Trent realized the ground was moving. That was because during the time he was asleep, the day had started at the factory and he had been moved onto a production line.
It would be nice to tell you that what happened next was pleasant, but that would be a lie.
Steel beams, specifically I-beams, which is what Trent is, can be made in only a few ways. So as not to bore you with details that don't involve Trent, we'll stick with the one that created him. If Trent felt hot from the bolt of lightning the night before, it had absolutely nothing on how he felt moments after he woke up for the second time in his short life.
I-beams are created, in this case, through a process called hot rolling. The metal is heated above what is called the recrystallization point, which means that our friend Trent found himself heated to over 1,000 degrees. That was the day Trent discovered he could feel pain. Like anyone else, he didn't like it that much.
As he was heated up, he let out a loud, "FUUUUUUUUCK!"
Several workers far away thought they heard something, but none of them bothered to check it out. Most of Trent's wailing and crying was drowned out by the sounds of the machines. You know how it is, these processes are mostly automated now. Maybe if someone had been there to hear him, he could have been saved the deformity that would soon follow.
After he became red hot and was suffering intense pain, he became malleable. That means he could be molded into any shape someone wanted. Trent didn't want to be another shape, so he tried to move. Unfortunately, he was in so much pain, he couldn't concentrate. This led to Trent experiencing another emotion as he saw what was ahead of him: fear.
Trent moved forward down the production line through several large rollers. As he was being flattened and molded into the I-beam we know him as, all Trent wanted was to die. You can't kill a steel beam though, even one that was inexplicably alive. So as Trent was being pressed into the deformed shape he'd be stuck in for the rest of his life, Trent realized he was immortal.
"Fuck," he said, sobbing softly as the final touches were made on his new form. If you've never been superheated and then molded into the shape of an I, you probably have no idea how much that hurts. It takes a lot out of someone. So, Trent went to sleep again, and this time he didn't wake up until many, many days later.
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"What's going on here? Why is traffic backed up?"
A middle-aged man in a suit arrived at the Paragon Bridge, which was finished production at the end of 2014 on Earth #42. This was Gary Peters, who was in charge of the city's transportation department. He had a wife and three kids, and some really bad stomach ulcers, but you don't care about that. This isn't the story of Gary. He just happens to be in it.
One of the other men with him, a smaller, nebbish man named Larry (yes, Gary and Larry), adjusted his glasses as he looked over a clipboard.
"We had to close down the bridge, sir," Larry said reluctantly.
"For Winn's sake," Gary asked. "Why?"
"Well..." Larry pulled his collar, unsure of how to proceed.
"Spit it out. I've got a million potholes on Main Street to patch after Paragon's battle with the Giant Claw."
Larry nodded and gulped. "Well sir," he said. "One of the beams is pissed."
Trent slept for a very long time. When he woke up, he found that he was stuck in place. He also realized he had something on top of him, as he had been used as one of the support beams used in the construction of Paragon Bridge. Perhaps he should have seen this as a badge of honor. Not every sheet of metal gets to be used in such an integral role for infrastructure. But Trent didn't know what a bridge was, or what Paragon was for that matter. He just knew that he was stuck, and given that he was deformed, he still kind of hurt.
He learned how to say more words just by sheer will, as he had nothing else he could do except form new ways to communicate his anger.
He also had a pounding headache, itself unusual since he had no head, because there were constant sounds of movement above him. Humans, who he had come to despise, were driving over the concrete road that he currently held in place. He tried to move, and that's when he realized that he had been bolted in place, connected with other mutilated pieces of steel like himself.
With no other options available to him, he decided to let humanity know how much he hated them.
"OW!" he shouted. "Ya fat fuck you're over your weight limit ya god damn Pillsbury fat fuck!"
It continued like that for days.
"Oh great! A tour bus! What the fuck you come here to see?! Oh look...Water! What's the matter, they ain't got water where you fucking old fucking tapioca pudding eating bitches live at?"
Cars would drive over Trent and he'd curse them, their families, their mothers, their cows, whatever he could think of.
"Fire trucks. False advertising. I'd love to set them on fucking fire! SHUT THE HELL UP WITH THE SIREN!"
With no other options available to him, he decided to let humanity know how much he hated them.
"OW!" he shouted. "Ya fat fuck you're over your weight limit ya god damn Pillsbury fat fuck!"
It continued like that for days.
"Oh great! A tour bus! What the fuck you come here to see?! Oh look...Water! What's the matter, they ain't got water where you fucking old fucking tapioca pudding eating bitches live at?"
Cars would drive over Trent and he'd curse them, their families, their mothers, their cows, whatever he could think of.
"Fire trucks. False advertising. I'd love to set them on fucking fire! SHUT THE HELL UP WITH THE SIREN!"
He learned how to say more words just by sheer will, as he had nothing else he could do except form new ways to communicate his anger.
"Oh a Vespa...you wonder why you're a twenty five year old virgin kid it's because your straddling the dork zone! Fucking idiot!"
'Life is pain' is another phrase that Trent hadn't heard before, but would have likely agreed with.
Eventually, the construction workers found the offending (and offensive) beam. Trent's exact location was discovered after he had been tagged by the local kids. Or at least, he was almost tagged. They had spray-painted one end of him white, but when he called the kid a "shitbag", the child jumped back so far they almost fell into the water below.
Trent, who still didn't have a name yet, was located and removed, before being placed gently on the dirt next to the main road.
"Fucking took you long enough," he said as they lowered him down to the ground.
Larry, who surprisingly wasn't as bothered by this as one would think, knelt next to him. Larry had just witnessed a real-life Night of the Lepus just the week before, stopped by this world's heroes, so perhaps he was just glad the talking steel beam didn't have some brain-melting laser gun.
If Trent had one of those, he would have melted as many brains as he could.
"Listen," Larry said. "We're terribly sorry. We had no idea you were alive."
Trent grumbled something that Larry couldn't hear, but the second-in-command at the DoT didn't bother asking what he said. He was just glad that the problem was removed and they could fix the bridge and continue on.
"Are there...any others like you?" he asked. He had a job to do, and they didn't want to close the bridge every time a piece of it decided to have a potty mouth.
"Fucking WHAT?"
Larry found himself intimidated by this beam, and he didn't know why. "Are there any other steel beams that are alive?"
"Fuck no," Trent answered bluntly. He didn't know if that was 100% true, but he didn't care.
"Good," Larry sighed, a wave of relief hitting him. "So, we should probably warn people about you. They'll think you're normal and possibly try to use you for a building or something. Do you have a name?"
Trent thought about this long and hard. He had learned a great many things while he lived as part of a bridge. He learned that some people liked to sing about beer and horses, while others liked to sing about 'Wet Ass Pussy'. He learned that there were two groups of people who ran things and, depending on who you asked, both of them were pure evil. He learned that there was a sale at the local market, a pound of beef for only $3.99.
But there was one thing he didn't know.
"What the fuck is a name?" he asked.
Larry didn't know how to answer. "It's..." he said, struggling to come up with the words. "It's what I would call you. I can't just call you Steel. You wouldn't stand out."
Oh, names! Names were those things that people used to greet each other. Mom, Dad, Jake, Mary, Asshole, Douchebag. Things like that. He heard several of them used, particularly when cars stopped and people got out to talk.
He did remember a name. He heard it used by one particularly foul-mouthed individual who was arrested by police, who taught him many of the colorful words he had been using on the residents of The City."
"Trent," he said. "My fucking name is Trent."
Larry pulled out a pad of sticky notes and scribbled something on a sheet, before placing it against Trent's body. The piece of paper now served as a nametag, for anyone that might meet him later.
"Nice to meet you, Trent. I think this could be the start of a beautiful..."
Suddenly, Trent rolled forward and came down right on Larry's foot, breaking his talus bone in two places.
"OH MY LORD!" Larry said, falling to the ground and holding his foot once Trent flopped back to where he was.
He then began to roll away, aiming his body so that he would go into the desert. Sure, it would be hot, but what was a little sunlight compared to being melted? If there was one thing about his permanently disfigured shape he liked, it was that he had an easier time moving. As he went off into a new life for himself, he had one last thing to say to Larry, who really did nothing wrong but was human and deserved to pay.
"Fuck you, asshole." Trent said. He then began to flop to his new life, away from humanity, end over end until he vanished into the horizon.
And so, Steel Trent Steel, as he would come to be known, was finally free of his mostly painful life. Free of humanity and free to seek out new sights and sounds.
As the world around him grew more and more quiet, Trent felt a new sensation for the first time in the year he had been alive.
He felt a sense of calm and it was fucking beautiful.
"Rush hour. Why don't we just call it what the fuck it is...PARKING LOT! MOVE! YOUR! FAT! ASS! FORWARD! WEIGHT WATCHERS IS WORRIED ABOUT YOU HUSKY FUCK!"
Finally, people began to hear him. At first they thought it was perhaps a glitch in their car radios, someone suffering road rage, things like that. But when he finally threatened to do unspeakable things to a late-night motorists eyes, they realized it was something on the bridge.
Once the Department of Transportation came out to confirm that, indeed, this was not a ghost, they realized that, as Larry put it, "one of the beams is pissed."
Finally, people began to hear him. At first they thought it was perhaps a glitch in their car radios, someone suffering road rage, things like that. But when he finally threatened to do unspeakable things to a late-night motorists eyes, they realized it was something on the bridge.
Once the Department of Transportation came out to confirm that, indeed, this was not a ghost, they realized that, as Larry put it, "one of the beams is pissed."
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Eventually, the construction workers found the offending (and offensive) beam. Trent's exact location was discovered after he had been tagged by the local kids. Or at least, he was almost tagged. They had spray-painted one end of him white, but when he called the kid a "shitbag", the child jumped back so far they almost fell into the water below.
Trent, who still didn't have a name yet, was located and removed, before being placed gently on the dirt next to the main road.
"Fucking took you long enough," he said as they lowered him down to the ground.
Larry, who surprisingly wasn't as bothered by this as one would think, knelt next to him. Larry had just witnessed a real-life Night of the Lepus just the week before, stopped by this world's heroes, so perhaps he was just glad the talking steel beam didn't have some brain-melting laser gun.
If Trent had one of those, he would have melted as many brains as he could.
"Listen," Larry said. "We're terribly sorry. We had no idea you were alive."
Trent grumbled something that Larry couldn't hear, but the second-in-command at the DoT didn't bother asking what he said. He was just glad that the problem was removed and they could fix the bridge and continue on.
"Are there...any others like you?" he asked. He had a job to do, and they didn't want to close the bridge every time a piece of it decided to have a potty mouth.
"Fucking WHAT?"
Larry found himself intimidated by this beam, and he didn't know why. "Are there any other steel beams that are alive?"
"Fuck no," Trent answered bluntly. He didn't know if that was 100% true, but he didn't care.
"Good," Larry sighed, a wave of relief hitting him. "So, we should probably warn people about you. They'll think you're normal and possibly try to use you for a building or something. Do you have a name?"
Trent thought about this long and hard. He had learned a great many things while he lived as part of a bridge. He learned that some people liked to sing about beer and horses, while others liked to sing about 'Wet Ass Pussy'. He learned that there were two groups of people who ran things and, depending on who you asked, both of them were pure evil. He learned that there was a sale at the local market, a pound of beef for only $3.99.
But there was one thing he didn't know.
"What the fuck is a name?" he asked.
Larry didn't know how to answer. "It's..." he said, struggling to come up with the words. "It's what I would call you. I can't just call you Steel. You wouldn't stand out."
Oh, names! Names were those things that people used to greet each other. Mom, Dad, Jake, Mary, Asshole, Douchebag. Things like that. He heard several of them used, particularly when cars stopped and people got out to talk.
He did remember a name. He heard it used by one particularly foul-mouthed individual who was arrested by police, who taught him many of the colorful words he had been using on the residents of The City."
"Trent," he said. "My fucking name is Trent."
Larry pulled out a pad of sticky notes and scribbled something on a sheet, before placing it against Trent's body. The piece of paper now served as a nametag, for anyone that might meet him later.
"Nice to meet you, Trent. I think this could be the start of a beautiful..."
Suddenly, Trent rolled forward and came down right on Larry's foot, breaking his talus bone in two places.
"OH MY LORD!" Larry said, falling to the ground and holding his foot once Trent flopped back to where he was.
He then began to roll away, aiming his body so that he would go into the desert. Sure, it would be hot, but what was a little sunlight compared to being melted? If there was one thing about his permanently disfigured shape he liked, it was that he had an easier time moving. As he went off into a new life for himself, he had one last thing to say to Larry, who really did nothing wrong but was human and deserved to pay.
"Fuck you, asshole." Trent said. He then began to flop to his new life, away from humanity, end over end until he vanished into the horizon.
And so, Steel Trent Steel, as he would come to be known, was finally free of his mostly painful life. Free of humanity and free to seek out new sights and sounds.
As the world around him grew more and more quiet, Trent felt a new sensation for the first time in the year he had been alive.
He felt a sense of calm and it was fucking beautiful.
