Rainbow Avenger

Never underestimate air superiority. This is especially true of PvP. That you are out of melee range of non-flying mobs goes without saying.

Raise your hand, how many times have you been on a team wipe where you got jumped from above because somebody (it's usually the Scrapper and sometimes the Tank) didn't notice the pack of baddies 10 feet above his head in a split level room? (Raises hand) Is that everybody? Good.

In PvP that baddie 10 feet over the Scrappers head is you. Jump him, NOW!

It's a fact, people don't look up. Remember the BBB always take full advantage of any foolish inattention.

/emote Bows humbly before his sensei.

Thanks Hermod. I wrote this in honour of Rainbow Avenger dinging 50. I wanted to capture the moment he became a Kheldian. I want to to do some more writing and the logical sequel would be the following morning when Rains boyfriend wakes up next to a Warshade with an urge to explore human sensation and emotion for the first time. Unfortunately I can't think of any way of keeping it PG13.

A dark blot moved against the night sky over Kings Row. Like a hungry mosquito it crisscrossed the human landscape following a scent. Closer, farther, closer, closer still... There. The scent of power. It paused over the roof of a squalid brick tenement. Sprockets were busily disassembling what was left of the ductwork. Below, two intoxicated humans threw inept punches in front of the sputtering sign of a neglected bar. Three young men in grey jackets loitered in the shadow of the alleyway waiting to roll the winner.

The shape moved down, a bit more, to a fourth floor window and phased through the sooty brick wall. A small apartment, timeworn and crumbling but clean. The source was over... yes, here.

Two human bodies occupied the bed, the taller curled protectively around the smaller. No, not human. The Nictus stroked a sensory tentacle across the body of the smaller one and tasted his energy. A young Mutant, weak and immature. The Nictus dismissed him with no further thought. The other... <taste> Metahuman. Normal base DNA with significant chemically-induced distortions. And powerful, very powerful...

The Nictus hesitated. He had arrived (after long consideration) to the belief that it was better to have the hosts permission but part of him shivered with the old urge to force his will. It would be so easy to just take this one. There was the taste of willingness here, an ingrained habit of receptiveness that would make it so easy. This host wouldn’t struggle much, he might even enjoy it.

The instinct that tells a human when he is being stalked made Rain open his eyes and throw back the stifling bed sheet. Rolling onto his back he struggled to adjust to the blackness of the room. Too black. Where was the sodium glow of the streetlights, the radiant light pollution of the Garment Works, the flickering neon of the gun shop downstairs? As he shook off sleep he registered the black “hole” in the room hovering right over him in the bed not two feet away. A Nictus.

<Ye Gods.> A satisfied smile fluttered through his mind, dying before it reached his lips. <Finally.>

The being spoke to his mind with a voice as cold as space, deep and resonant.

*You want this.* It was a statement, not a question.

<Oh good, it’s male.> He whispered: “Yes.”

*Why?*

“New power? New frontiers? New challenges?”

The Nictus drifted a bit lower. *Not helping others? Protecting the weak?* The voice slithered with contempt.

“That’s never been my motivation.”

*Which is... ?*

Rain raised his chin in a small gesture of challenge and defiance. “Come and see...”

The Nictus chuckled. Utterly perfect.

“And now my dark friend...” the human whispered, “Your motivation?”

The Nictus hesitated. It was not his habit to explain himself to his hosts. This one did not have the spirit of a slave however. <I am so weary of being the master. so... lonely.>

*I desire Freedom. Conquest is slavery. Control becomes drudgery.* He hovered lower, almost touching Rain’s face. *We will have power and the freedom to use it as we please. Those who oppose us shall submit or be crushed.*

“We were Caesars, being nobody to contradict us.”

*?*

“Pierre Radisson, 1661.”

Rain reached up and tried to touch the Nictus. The dark form resisted his hand with a magnetic repulsion. Pure energy, very cohesive.

“I’m ready.”

The Nictus wrapped his dark tentacles around the human and lifted him effortlessly about a foot above the bed. The delicate sensoria on the tips played up and down the humans body sensing ley lines and seeking out the swirling portals of the seven chakra points. Seven chakras, the Nictus chuckled to itself. These humans had no idea how unusual that was, or how perfectly suitable that made them.

Rain closed his eyes, his breath catching in mingled anticipation and rising animal panic.

<Dear Goddess, what am I doing?>

He began to tremble with a jolt of adrenaline as the tendrals of energy tightened inexorably around him. Stark awareness of the situation triggered the primitive instinct to flee. Deep in his bones he felt the Short Circuit building that would drive away the black inhuman thing that had taken hold of him.

“Wait, let’s discuss thi... ”

Sensing his hosts hesitation the Nictus acted, pouring himself into his new body’s energy exchange centres and collapsing into his new form as a staple snaps shut into a ream of paper. Rain’s body convulsed as the dark form pierced his spinal column, his pelvis, his skull, pouring black frozen fire into his flesh and his soul. Opening his eyes and mouth in a silent scream, umbral light poured out and ran across his naked form in coruscating ripples of deep purple piercing into the ultraviolet with a bass thrum.

All support gone, he fell back into the bed weak and drained, an infant Kheldian. They opened their eyes. Rains bedmate, alerted by some old instinct had stirred in his sleep. They reached out and stroked the warm skin of his shoulder, soothing him back to slumber. They smiled at the unexpected sensation of warm physicality and their new body’s pleasant response. Snuggling closer they allowed the soft unaccustomed muzziness of sweet sleep to descend.

Oh yes, they thought. This is going to be fun.

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OK not sure if anyone already answered about some of these (wasn't able to read the entire thread). But I believe the reference to Loius Forest and the Red River one are in fact Canadian references.

Since all of these places in Founder's are about revolution and founding stuff, I came to that conclusion. the Louis one is fro Louis Riel who, with Gabriel Dumont and some other metis leaders rose up in the town of Red River in Manitoba to break away from the country of Canada to form their own sovreign nation. Of course that failed and most of them were rounded up and hung for treason, but the war lasted a good many years and the battles stretched from Manitoba through Saskachewan and ended in Alberta. Yeah that is about the most exciting thing that has happened up here.

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The Gaspee is also a Canadian geographical reference, being the name of the peninsula in south-eastern Quebec (bordering New Brunswick).

How can you say Canadian History is unexciting? We also have the Mackenzie Rebellion in Upper Canada. That was in 1837 when a bunch of guys got drunk at a bar in North Toronto and marched south along Yonge Street in the general direction of the Parliament building with torches and farm implements. They got about 5 miles to another bar where they stopped to get drunker then they already were, lost interest and went home.

True story. Canadians are maniacs, MANIACS!

Rainbow Avenger is a personal trainer to the wealthy, which allows him the time and flexibility to fight crime whenever it suits him and to look fabulous doing it. He's extremely well compensated for what little work he does but is unconcerned about his living arrangements because he is seldom home. When he is, he's usually in the bedroom.

He shares a rather squalid fourth-floor walkup in Kings Row with his friend Kid Clockwork. It was the Kids place originally (before Rainbow crashed one night and never left). KC is a renegade Outcast Shocker but is gradually distancing himself from his gang background. His proximity to the Avenger is gradually strengthening his abilities. That and the fact that he has not quite said no to Superadine. He mostly hides this secret from his roommate, who would not approve.

Kid Clockwork has no job per se, and I suspect he may still be selling restricted substances from his apartment and/or robbing the thugs he arrests. In either case he will have to outgrow these habits to become a real hero. Stay tuned kids!