From the journal of Shockwayv, disaffected super hero of Paragon City
Sunday, November 27 2005
This morning I was patroling Independence Port and I heard something splashing around quite loudly in the water. It was late and hard to see, but it was
very clear that this thing wasn't supposed to be here.
(Now.... what's out of place here?)
A poor giant Octopus had been washed up into the harbor from the open sea! Acting with the swiftness and desiciveness of a true hero of Paragon I immediately named him Mittens and flew down towards him to try and befriend him. But after being accidentally brutally crushed by his waving tentacles three times it was clear that he wasn't in a state to listen to me. I decided it'd probably be best to coax him out of the port and take him home to my apartment instead, but he was pretty rattled and would
not be moved from the little spot at the end of the docks he'd nestled himself into, no matter how many times I whistled or threw a stick and shouted "fetch!"
At this point a few other heroes in the area were taking a disturbingly aggressive interest in Mittens, and were asking me for direction where to find him over the radio.
Them: "Where is the squid?"
Me: "
Octopus. And his name's Mittens. Why do you want to know, anyway?"
Them: "So we can kill it!"
Me: "
What?! He's an innocent creature! He hasn't hurt anyone! ...All right, he's hurt
me, but I'm pretty sure that was just an accident. All three times. I'm not going to let you kill him!"
Them: "But there's a badge for killing him!"
(This isn't the first time someone's handed me that flimsy excuse for harming one of Bob's innocent creatures unprovoked, incidentally.)
Me: But we've already bonded! He's going to come home with me and be my friend!"
Them: .... What the hell are you on and do they have free samples?
Before too long Mittens was drawing a crowd of gawking heroes; surrealistically it was as if none of them had ever seen a giant stadium-sized killer Octopus before. I explained to everyone how, as a conservationalist, I upheld the right for all life to coexist and if they didn't like that I'd stomp them into a greasy spot, but the general consensus seemed to be that Mittens had to go. I remembered something I heard maybe Steve Erwin or somebody say, about nature's way and animals should be in the wild or something, so I figured it was worth a shot.
I chose the three heroes present that I liked the least and asked them to go reason with Mittens, but unfortunately my plan was overridden and instead we decided to try and herd the big guy out of the port. A Kehldian and two rock-tanks, all clearance level fifty, tried to tug one of Mittens's tentacles despite my warnings, and Mittens misinterpretted their gentle crusher assault to mean they wanted to
play.
Things deteriorated at that point.
I shouted "Bad boy!" as loud as I could but over the agonized wailing screams I don't think Mittens heard me, because he kept right on smacking around the pestering heroes like rag dolls for quite some time. I recovered from my laughing fit after only five or ten minutes, thirty at the outside, and eventually got tired of teleporting brutally-crushed heroes out of harms way to be revived as Mittens continued swatting them like gnats. To break up the monotony of the carnage a few of us organized the heroes into a team to concentrate on just leading Mittens out of the port where these jerks couldn't bother him anymore.
Ever tried to "lead" an octopus the size of an Exxon oil tanker somewhere? Getting into Artemis's pants would likely be easier.
With controlled and planned applications of zaps and strength we finally got the big guy to budge for us. A long confrontation followed as we coaxed the great beast from his resting spot and into the deeper waters, and concentrated on restraining his tentacles one at a time. Finally we wore him down and he oblidged us; submerging and swimming back out to sea.
...We guess. You know, it's not like we checked or anything.
So the moral of the story is, take the Summon Ally teleport power as soon as you can get it. Teammates love you for it. Rally for Sally, everyone. Hero Corps surveillance photos of Mittens follow:
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My first sighting of Mittens, while patrolling Independence Port.
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A good shot of Mittens while I was trying to teach him to roll over. I think the total on dockworkers killed when he finally learned the trick approached but didn't quite reach triple digits.
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Basically the same shot, but it's after I returned to check on him after I originally discovered him that morning.
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Here you can see me preparing to reason with Mittens.
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And now the team's been organized and we've started trying to nudge Mittens out to sea. Mittens was less than appriciative at first.
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But with some gentle prodding ("gentle" being a relative term when applied to a 500 metric ton octopus) we finally convinced him to stop waving his tentacles around and just go back home. *sniffle* I..... still miss him. He was a good boy.
