LIGHTNOVELONLINE SUMMARY — Initialize — Book 1, Origin
Mod Superhero opens at the end of February. Winter is thawing, and Emmett Laraway is working through his senior year as an engineering student at Belport University. He’s a solid student, if a bit of a daydreamer. He spends his spare time reading everything he can on supers and at his internship, working with the aloof and eccentric Dr. Venture, his shut-in daughter Clara, and their AI assistant, TINA. Most of their recent work has been on various aspects of fusion reactors and heat sink design.
Over the last several months, Emmett and Clara have grown close—Emmett trying to conceal the fact that he’s romantically interested in Clara. He’s hesitant in admitting his true feelings so as not to risk their friendship or his internship with the Doctor’s cutting-edge laboratory.
Though Emmett lives in a university apartment with his roommate Lachlan “Lock” Harris, neither of them has been home very much. Lock is every bit as involved in his studies and with his own internship with the Gnosis corporation…
Or so Emmett believes.
Riding the bus home one evening, Emmett is caught in the middle of a battle between multiple supers and villains. The bus is hit by an attack on Champion street, and Emmett is thrown from the wreckage. His last moments are of lying on the street, bleeding out, and unable to move.
Instead of dying, Emmett wakes up in another section of the lab. Dr. Venture and Clara explain that they’ve managed to save his life, though it was no small feat. Emmett now has a cybernetic right arm and his body is suffused with Mutagen-A, a low-level general enhancement serum manufactured by Gnosis. Neither Venture nor Clara explain much at the time, except that Dr. Venture is a retired cape and that Gnosis doesn’t only make beauty products—they make various levels of super soldier serums and are major arms dealers on a world stage.
Venture and Clara drive Emmett back to his apartment, where they briefly cross paths with Emmett’s roommate, Lock, in the halls. Venture’s glasses alert him that Lock has traces of Mutagen-X in his system—one of Gnosis’ most potent super soldier serums. Venture quickly deduces that Lock is a test subject for their program. Venture and Clara say nothing at the time.
Lock also gained information in their brief hallway passing. He is able to see in UV, and sees the readouts of Venture’s glasses. Lock deduces that Venture scanned him and that the Doctor has his own motives and resources to save his roommate’s life… Considering that Lock saw Emmett’s bus get cut in half during the superhero battle on Champion street.
Lock was there that fateful night.
In Emmett’s following visits to the lab, he is given a choice: Continue living a normal life as a civilian, or embrace his newfound cybernetics and enhancements and work as an unregistered mask with Dr. Venture.
In the subsequent week, Emmett comes to a decision—but not before running into a fellow mask on the rooftops of Belport. Athena briefly mistakes him for a jumper before realizing he’s a new super. She escorts him back home across the rooftops while he tests his new abilities.
After Lock has a rough night bouncing at the bar, both he and Emmett realize that their friendship has grown strained in recent months since they’ve both been busy with work and their internships.
In the following weeks, Emmett is slowly brought into the fold—learning more about Venture, Clara, and the lab that he’s worked in these last few months. In addition to fusion research, there is also a mechanical wing, biomedical wing, an armory, and a training wing. The latter of which is fondly referred to as The Gray Room. It is there that Emmett spends most of his time training with his new abilities.
The Gray Room is by far the strangest location in the lab, being a place of grayscale tiles that can transform to simulate a variety of landscapes and topography, usually simulating the sprawling skyline of Belport. Like most of Venture and Clara’s secrets, Emmett is not told about what technology the Gray Room uses or how it was developed. Clara uses a VR setup and robot stand-in to simulate different superpowers for Emmett’s training.
Emmett slowly learns to make the most of his Class 1 abilities, while also realizing that he wants to get stronger. He doesn’t want to stay Class 1 forever.
Emmett works on several mods for his arm, including an extendable whip, lock-picking kit, impact shield, and non-lethal pistol, as well as smaller gadgets that can fit in his upper arm compartments, like smoke pellets and caltrops. At this point, he muses about one day quickly swapping between mods in the heat of battle, but for now defaults to his whip since it is the most versatile.
While training and working on his mods, Emmett spends evenings running across the rooftops of Belport. One time running into the low-level villains, Zanté and Green Mask. Emmett barely wins their first encounter by surprising the strength-based Zanté with the inhuman strength of his cybernetic arm. Afterward, Emmett is escorted home by Clara, who donned her own exosuit, a flying and cloaking-enabled power armor in case he needed the assistance. Clara admits that both her and her father are artificers, a term for supers that rely on technology instead of inherent powers.
Shortly after his first fight, Emmett reads about a former cape, Porcelain, who is wanted for her connection with the Champion street attack that nearly killed him. This is the first time that Emmett realizes Venture has been keeping pertinent information from him. Venture says that Emmett isn’t ready yet to chase leads on Porcelain, despite their connection to Emmett’s near-death.
While Emmett makes progress, Venture comments on both Emmett and Clara’s potential. Emmett’s body has taken exceptionally well to both the Mutagen-A and the connections between his nerves and the cybernetics. Emmett is unknowingly charting revolutionary ground.
Lock is shown in a brief chapter, going into the bowels of Gnosis, somewhere in the old undersystem of the city. There he fights another Gnosis test-subject. The fight is brutal, short, and Lock wins easily. In the aftermath, Lock realizes that Emmett is taking Mutagen-A… and resolves not to confront Emmett about it. If Emmett isn’t ready to talk, then Lock will wait.
On one of his outings, Emmett runs into Athena and she ropes him into taking out a stolen shipment of Gnosis mutagens. These are revealed to be variants of other formulas—either being stolen from Gnosis or manufactured by a third party. Emmett and Athena destroy the shipment, but not before Emmett takes several formulas for his own use.
Clara investigates a lead on Porcelain, but finds only remnants of her duplicates. Meanwhile Emmett tries to appear normal during a party at his apartment. That evening, one of Lock’s friends is revealed to have powers, and Emmett speculates if anyone else in Lock’s friend group has them… The next day, Emmett visits his family for dinner and laments that he can’t be honest with them about his near-death experience or about his newfound life.
The next week Emmett takes the first of his new mutagens, giving him enhanced night-vision and starts work on a utility belt to hold even more gadgets.
There is an interlude of the super, codenamed Pythia, infiltrating a magical Donjon club for supers. She uses her carefully hidden poison powers to dose a powerful reality warper, Amarque, with a hallucinogen. Later on, Emmett runs from the resulting explosion, which is barely thwarted by Paragon, one of the most powerful supers in the world. In the aftermath, Emmett runs into Zante and Green Mask again. Emmett wins much more easily this time, but not before Paragon commands them all to vacate the streets. The sight of Emmett’s childhood hero, eyes blazing red, is enough to shake Emmett to his core.
Soon after, Emmett is told the truth about his accident—his bus wasn’t hit by a villain. It was a cape that nearly killed him on Champion street. Once again, Emmett is prevented from pursuing that cape and the truth.
In the middle of training in the Gray Room, Emmett and Clara are summoned to pursue a lead on Porcelain. Emmett sees the armory for the first time, which is nearly as strange as the Gray Room. They find and fight Porcelain in an abandoned warehouse. The former cape appears to have been hiding while her mind degrades. Emmett is injured in the resulting fight and Clara takes him back to the lab, abandoning Porcelain.
Emmett hallucinates while unconscious, a side-effect of the poison from shards of Porcelain’s body. Porcelain was affected by the same poison used on Amarque.
The next time they go after Porcelain, Lock tracks them. Emmett and Clara engage Porcelain, but their battle is interrupted by a masked Lock, who completely overpowers all of them. He kills Porcelain before Emmett can get answers, but not before Porcelain reveals that Lock was there that night on Champion street. Lock then remarks to Emmett, “I am not your enemy… But don’t cross Gnosis.”
In the aftermath, Venture reviews the video of the final battle, noticing that the masked Lock is worried for Emmett’s safety… Venture continues keeping Lock’s powers and involvement in Champion street from Emmett—under the pretense of keeping Emmett safe.
Also, Emmett finally settles on his superhero name: Mod.
In the epilogue, one of the leaders of the Summit of Heroes visits Venture in the lab. The spymaster, Wight. He both hints at shared backstory between the two capes, and warns Venture to keep his proteges “on the rails” and out of trouble.