Warning: Sleepy, so I started working on Octopussi's origin story. Let me know if this is too long and perhaps I can turn it into an html or perhaps link it from a google doc..? Also, should I just stick this in the fanfiction or whatever area and link to it from here? It is Saturday morning and Im awake
two cups of coffee in and Im just not ready to function yet, so this is mostly serving as mental calisthenics.
-- Moved this from the original thread cuz it was just too durn spammy! It will probably just be glanced at and then filter down to the bottom and that will be okey with me or whatever. I don't generally roleplay on forums anymore, so I'm just not sure of the etiquette here at this point.
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The woman was once simply Sharon McLopez, which is generally a sufficiently confusing moniker. Her great grandfather had immigrated to America and settled in Paragon City from a Scottish region known for being one of the wreckage sites of the Spanish Armada. He started out small with a fruit stand and eventually his grandson owned the largest grocery and specialty cheese store in all of the Boomtown region. When the incident occurred and Boomtown was leveled, FEMA funds and insurance helped the store rebuild in recent years. However nothing could replace the loss of Sharons mother, Saorise, who died when the roof crashed in under the pressure energy bolts from a super-powered fight. Camera footage failed to record whether it was the hero or the villain responsible for the incident.
Sharon, or Pez as she had been known briefly amongst her friend-bracket, was in college during the Boomtown events and returned home briefly to help her father put the business on hiatus during the chaos, and then to assist in the rebuilding of the store later following the revitalization of the region. In the meanwhile, she majored in Romance Languages, speaking all of the modern Romance tongues with a fair smattering of German and Slavic dialects with various accents, none of which could be confused for English. Her linguistic skills and background secured her a position with one of the alphabet agencies following graduate school, and she traveled the world.
The agency that employed Sharon initially sent her to areas in Europe and Eastern Europe, and posed as a B-grade socialite and jetsetter, not quite Paris, but more than your average summer-abroad. As she became more established and by extension, connected her profile grew amongst the elite. A calculated liaison with an older Austrian businessman opened more doors and Sharon found herself arm candy to arms dealers to the rich and demented. Seemingly randomly, she cycled through men until she settled on one particularly well-connected, staying with him and building his trust. At first, Sharon herself thought it might be a love match, but that unprofessional thought soon left her after she accompanied her newest lovah to meet his clients.
The clients
interesting folks they were
spoke oddly to Sharons trained ear, and they met in some strange places. Many of the figures were slight and always wore deep hoods, and others were tall and extremely well-built, bristling and ready to howl it seemed. The dealer and his entourage of advisors, assistants, and candy would arrive at the underground locations, and Sharon would approximate where the entrances were on crude maps covered in lipstick, gum, and leave them in trash cans in gas stations across the countryside. Months later, they were raided by some super group or another, searching for this virus, that weapons cache, hunting that supervillain, or just plain-old bored and looking for some heads to bash.
During one of the meetings, however, the head hooded figure was unhooded while the arms dealer was arriving with his posse. The figure was bald with pointed ears, sharp teeth, and instead of greeting the dealer, simply held up a napkin. Accusations were placed and Sharon wisely kept quiet. At first it appeared as if attention might be focused on her - well, it was her color after all but then the dealer who had also been her lover surprised her, stepping forward to take a swing intended for Sharon. The fight began and then it was over with Sharon hiding in a corner and the gathering of bald figures bent over each of her former
friends, apparently feeding off of them in some manner. Somehow, she could never remember how, she got away. Odds are it involved a sewage tunnel, so the lack of memory is probably a blessing.
In the year that followed, Sharon tracked down leads to discover more about these creatures, trying to identify and classify them to her superiors. Her cover was blown now, and she was limited to covert work, cloak and dagger, and regions where she had never worked before. To this end, she was assigned to work in the various Arabic nations where her skills as a linguistic expert it was later surmised that she likely had latent psychic powers assisting her in picking up Arabic and various local dialects and nuances. A hot tip one day sent her packing up a Landrover and heading off into the desert.
In the general region that Sharons contact had indicated that she should go, a small door, ala the White Rabbit, stood ajar, letting a breeze waft down the cave entrance. From outside the cave, she could hear conversation in a familiar Eastern European accent complaining about the heat. Waiting until the door bounced open in a particular reaction to air pressure discrepencies, Sharon turned on the stealth on her suit and walked as quietly as her shoes would allow into the depths of the base. She avoided what she now knew were large wolves, the creatures that she knew were vampires now, and the purple glowing creatures that simply were strange and new to her. To her senses, typically very sharp, there was an overlay of music, subtly pulling her towards a glassed-in room.
On a table in the middle of a lab, a young boy with bright white glowing eyes was strapped down with sharp pins through the straps and his wrists, connected to tubes that drained a bright fluid from his body into a large vat. As the vat filled, the lights dimmed slightly in the boys eyes before resurging almost furiously. The lights would disappear, showing simply a young Arab boy who could have been from any corner hocking rugs or asking a tourist if they wished to know the secrets of the Sphinx. Instead he was here, being drained. Then the lights would reappear, giving him an unearthly aspect. It seemed as if two beings dwelled in this one form one of this world, and one not. One was dying, and Sharon could not tell which it was. Perhaps
perhaps both were dying.
One of the purple man-like figures of mist flickered into the light and extended a tendril which reshaped into a hand as it assumed a mans body. The hand cruelly twisted the boys face and it bent down to breathe him in, almost luxuriate in his fear and fury. You will be one of us, it intoned. You wont even remember a time when you werent. The boys eyes closed, lids opening and closing rapidly, strobing the room with that odd white light.
A strange urgency filled Sharon. Somehow something must live here. Something must survive, and if she had to die to save this creature, she knew she would. This attitude, incidentally, was very inconsistent with Sharons character, so the emotions perhaps were not her own. Once again, latent telepathy? Empathy? Precognition of the path about to be traveled, willingly or not? Seeing a powerbox nearby and unguarded, Sharon simply walked over
and turned it off. In the chaos that exploded in the darkness, she opened the glass door a little and quietly snuck in, relying on the fact that it was dark, that she was relatively invisible, and that she could be silent to keep her from detection.
Perhaps she should have remembered this self-preservation instinct and clung to it tighter because moments later, she felt herself urged, compulsed, and summoned to the figure on the table. A quick examination of the boy told her he was dying, and so she put her lips to his ear, whispering that he would not die alone, she would tell his mother. Turning his face so that his lips were close to hers, he simply exhaled and a bright light flowed from his body to hers, filling her with a sharp cold that pushed away all thought, all existence, and made her think of the vastness of everything and nothing.
Mind if I stay a while? a voice asked in Sharons head. She looked around nervously, but in all the chaos, no one had noticed her yet. The mist was strange however. She really should be going or else no one would know of Jamil. How strange. He never told her his name. How did she know it already? Really, she must be going. There was in fact a way through the ceiling that led to a service entrance that led to the garage that led to a heliopad that held a helicopter. How odd
that was never in the original tip. Ignoring the petty details, she ran, leaving the husk of the child behind, dead.
To be continued
IRON's website runs under a similar board. It'd be nice if we could do our own HTML entries, but hey.