A Hero's Duties

01-01 Title Card

## Synopsis

Between school duties, protecting the town and training with Crystal Eye, Dellville’s newest hero has a lot on his plate. Before long, Klaus Melfton soon finds both him and his alter ego – Lightning Dust – in deep trouble as he tries to balance it all out on his own, determined to prove himself truly capable of the burden a hero must carry.

## Plot

The next day, Klaus is struggling to stay awake in class after his long night of training. After drifting off, he quickly startles himself awake, to the entertainment of the rest of the class. Katrine eggs the crowd on and earns herself detention. In the meantime, Klaus is quickly scolded by Ms. Gracie for being unable to pay attention in class. His nap earns him detention after class alongside Katrine. He attempts to argue, but is immediately shut down and left with no chance to slip away. Before he can stress too much over missing his patrol around the city as Lightning Dust after school, he gets a text from Kailey assuring him that Crystal Eye will have it handled and Klaus shouldn't worry.
As class ends, bringing the school day to a close with it, Klaus attempts to slip away before Ms. Gracie can stop him, to no avail. He and Katrine are left in detention, seated next to each other. While Klaus takes the chance to try and work on some homework, Katrine instead begins trying to provoke him. Her teasing doesn't get the reaction she's looking for, however, and the pair eventually go back to ignoring each other.
Before long, a sudden shriek of terror from Katrine catches Klaus's attention - just in time for him to see a giant robot outside their classroom window, ready to strike. The robot smashes the window and grabs Klaus, pulling him inside. From within the robot, a new villain reveals himself, announcing that his name is Doctor Zero and he intends to kill Klaus after supposedly failing to when he was a baby, claiming that he was hired by Josh Sharman to do so way back when. Unimpressed by the claim and the man as a whole, Klaus discreetly short-circuits the robot's hand so he can slip free and runs off. Once he's far enough away, he finds a place to hide so he can transform into Lightning Dust. As Lightning Dust, he speeds right back to Dr. Zero to deal with him.
Returning to Dr. Zero, Lightning Dust makes quick work of his robot, but Dr. Zero manages to flee in an escape pod, which cloaks itself. Crystal Eye arrives shortly after, and immediately scolds Lightning Dust for letting Zero get away, as well as for the wreckage caused by the downed robot. Lightning Dust waves the concerns off, certain that Dr. Zero isn't enough of a real threat to be a concern. Crystal Eye disagrees, and tells Lightning to go take over patrol while he cleans things up.
After an uneventful patrol, Lightning Dust determines that despite the hiccup of Zero escaping, he's been handling things quite well. The easy day's work encourages Lightning to think he can handle the hero work totally alone, without Crystal Eye's help.
That night, Lightning Dust approaches Crystal Eye with the idea, only to have the notion laughed at. Lightning continues to plead his case all the same. After some back and forth, Lightning Dust changes his argument, and insists that him taking over for everything will give Crystal Eye a rare chance to relax. The argument finally wears Crystal Eye down, and he reluctantly agrees, telling Lightning to come get him if he needs help after all. As the young super excitedly speeds off to start his solo work, Crystal Eye quietly assures himself that Lightning Dust will be fine, his worry remaining clear.
The next day, in class, Andy and Kailey anxiously wait for Klaus to show up, worried that he's running late for the first time since he got his powers. Klaus finally arrives just after the school bell rings, awkwardly taking his seat after bursting in. He's called upon by the math teacher, Mr. Barkman, promptly reminding him that he totally forgot about his homework in the midst of his hero work. Though Mr. Barkman scolds him for not having his work ready, he does offer some extra help outside of class, which Klaus immediately declines. As class continues, Klaus makes a mental note to not forget his schoolwork again on his busy schedule.
Later that day, Klaus arrives home, greeted by Edwin, who gives Klaus a quick reminder to be careful about overworking himself before wishing the boy a good sleep as he heads to bed. Klaus enters his room and is all too ready to get right to sleep when he remembers his schoolwork and reluctantly stops himself from going straight to bed. Just as he's starting to get to work, he's interrupted by a surprise visit from Daniel - who Klaus notes looks more relaxed than usual. Klaus asks what Daniel's been up to, which leads Daniel to mentioning some research he's been doing. He shows Klaus an old book that looks like its falling apart, explaining that he's trying to figure out what the book means. That's as far as Daniel elaborates before putting it safely away again, promising to show Klaus properly once he figures it out. In the meantime, Daniel changes the subject by offering to help with his homework, which Klaus happily accepts.
Meanwhile, Dr. Zero is seen in his home, who is greeted by one of his many small helper bots. The bot explains how it has noticed that Crystal Eye has been absent around town the past few days. The other bots around the house agree that they've only seen Lightning Dust, who has seemed hilariously tired the past few days. Dr. Zero concludes that Crystal Eye must be testing Lightning Dust, which gives him the devious idea to up the ante for the young hero...
Following a particularly busy day, Lightning Dust all but collapses into his room after a day of patrolling the city - after running smack into his own window in his tired state. Once on his bed, Lightning Dust begins to drift off to sleep, before being sharply awoken again by Diane entering the room. She quickly shuts the door when she sees that Lightning Dust is in his superhero form, recommending that he be more careful about being his super self around the house if he wants to keep his identity properly secret. Lightning tiredly waves her off, prompting her to ask if he's really getting enough rest. He tiredly agrees, switching back to his civilian appearance, and she leaves him to get some sleep. Drifting off for a very short while, Lightning Dust is again startled awake, this time by his phone reminding him of his schoolwork yet again. As he shuts the alarm off, he takes note of how exhausted he's starting to look. Against his better judgement, he waves his concerns off. Before he can actually start on his schoolwork, however, he's again interrupted by his phone; this time, with a crime alert, informing him that Zero's bots are attacking on the other side of town. Klaus notes that the strange bots have been popping up all too frequently as he changes back to Lightning Dust and reluctantly heads back out to the city to take care of them.
Over the next few days, the bots appear around Dellville more and more often, seemingly with no specific motive outside of stirring up general trouble. All the while, Andy and Kailey note that it's only exhausting Klaus faster by the day. One day after class, they decide to consult him about it, tracking him down while he's on patrol. They catch him mid-fight with a small group of Zero's bots. They watch the fight from the sidelines, and can't help but notice how sloppy Lightning Dust's fighting style is in his tired state. After the fight wraps up, Andy and Kailey stop Lightning Dust from rushing off to talk to him about how much he's exhausting himself. Despite how obvious it is in his behavior and his voice that Lightning Dust is overworked and overtired, he argues against their reasoning, insisting that he's doing fine on his own and refuses to get Crystal Eye to help. After some back and forth, Lightning Dust puts his foot down one last time to end the conversation, speeding off before Andy and Kailey can argue any further. With the failed attempt, they determine that they have one other shot at convincing Lightning to give the solo act a rest...
Even as he's flying away from the scene, complaining to himself about the whole thing, Lightning Dust is already dozing off mid-flight; even outright falling asleep and slamming right into a building in the process. As he tries to recover, he hears Daniel call up to him, drawing his attention down to him. Against Lightning's arguing, Daniel quickly grabs Lightning and drags him off to the privacy of the nearest alley to scold him for his overworking himself. The argument goes nowhere as Daniel tries to all but force Lightning Dust to back down and go to bed. Lightning Dust continues to loudly insist that he's fine. The argument is cut short at the sounds of violent commotion erupting a ways deeper into the city, which Lightning Dust immediately takes as a chance to leave the conversation and prove that he's truly doing fine. Unable to stop him from speeding off, Daniel suits up himself and chases after Lightning Dust.
Lightning Dust arrives to find an absolute army of the very bots that had been becoming more and more frequent as of late, destroying everything in sight. Lightning Dust takes the first few down with electrical bursts that help to wake him up, if only slightly more. He doesn't make too big a dent in the pack before the fight is sharply interrupted by what seems like a earthquake at first. Flying above the scene, Lightning watches Dr. Zero emerge from below the streets in a new, bigger robot, ready to attack. Lightning Dust doesn't manage to get a proper hit in - he's caught off guard by Dr. Zero's bot, which uses a vacuum-like tube to capture Lightning Dust, holding him in a glass case inside the bot that makes up its stomach. Though Lightning Dust tries to break out, he's unable to. After a few attempts, his exhaustion gets the better of him, and Lightning falls fast asleep in his glass prison.
Crystal Eye arrives shortly after, just in time to see Dr. Zero making his way through the streets to wreak more havoc with Lightning Dust still trapped. Crystal Eye takes action to try and break the young super out. The attempt does startle Lightning awake, but is unable to break through the bots defenses. The attack prompts Dr. Zero to make use of Lightning Dust's capture, revealing what he captured the young super for: Dr. Zero steals his electrical energy and uses it to power his robot's weapons. Crystal Eye works to fend the robot off, trying to find a way to break Lightning free. In his weakened state inside the bot, Lightning Dust also works to finding a way out. He comes up with the idea to do to the bot what it did to him, and saps the electrical energy right back out of the robot, funneling it back into himself. The mass of energy is overwhelming to him, and he has to force to electricity right back out of him, effectively short circuiting the bot and lowering its defenses long enough that Crystal Eye can break through the glass and let Lightning Dust out. The two supers clear away from the robot as it, without power, topples to the ground. Once the dust settles, Lightning Dust grabs Dr. Zero to get him away from the robot for Crystal Eye to destroy the remains of it. With his plans foiled, Dr. Zero attempts to escape again, unable to get far before Crystal Eye summons crystals to trap him in place.
With Zero dealt with, Crystal Eye and Lightning Dust have a brief heart to heart, where Lightning Dust admits that he thought he'd be able to prove himself if he was able to do everything without any help after all, like Crystal Eye has for so many years. Crystal Eye reminds him that they have different limits, and that maybe he will get to that one day. Even so, he reminds him that he isn't totally in the clear for being so reckless - and Lightning Dust finally agrees to letting Crystal Eye handle things and getting some proper rest.
Later, in a mysterious library of sorts, Daniel is seen alongside a new, strange ally, Chrona. Daniel is scanning through the old book that he showed to Klaus before, both of them trying to take notes and failing to be able to translate, let alone understand the book. As Daniel stresses over it all, Chrona assures that they'll find some way to figure it out. But suddenly, out of nowhere, the book begins to glow, and disappears in a flash of light without a trace. Daniel immediately panics; even once he calms from his initial fit of shouting, he sits there, utterly defeated. Again, Chrona tries to reassure him that it'll be fine, and that she'll keep working on research with what notes they managed to get. Daniel remains worried, stressing over the possibility that the book warns of some sort of threat that he can't understand. Against his lasting stress, he hopes that this isn't the case, trying to glean some hope from Chrona's own statement that it may be nothing after all.

## Appearances

### Main Cast

Klaus Melfton/Lightning Dust

Daniel Carsley/Crystal Eye

Doctor Zero

Andy Kellson

Kailey Heartstrong

### Cast

Katrine Darsenia

Ms. Gracie

Mr. Barkman

Dr. Zero's Bots

Edwin Dowley

Diane Shernall

Chrona

## Trivia

* fun tidbits

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