Stone_Tiefling

(( Sorry about the delay, I'm in now ))

Mallory had been looking in the alleyway for several minutes in vain. Nothing had turned up, not even an interesting scrap of paper. As much as she wanted the chance to interact with heroes, she was beginning to feel somewhat silly rummaging around, looking for something that in all likelyhood wasn't there. She finally decided to give up her search and return to her quest for a job. She walked back out of the alley to the sidewalk and looked around for a bit. She had wandered into a section of town that she was a little unfamiliar with, and she began scanning the skyline in search of a telltale statue or building. When she had determined her approximate location, she started to cross the street in an attempt to get back into familiar territory. Just as she stepped off into the road, someone opened the front door of Physiks Technologies and ran out onto the sidewalk. He looked around for a second and started sprinting down the walkway toward her. She jumped out of his way, but 20 or 30 feet before he would have plowed right into her, he jumped into the air and took flight. Mallory was so surprised that she ran out into the street, trying to keep an eye on him as he soared into the sky.

Jim Caldon was driving home from an unusually long day at work. He was just a little frustrated with the way his life was going, and his drive home every day was characterized by yelling at himself and everyone he knew. When he was about halfway to his house, he noticed a grown man running toward a much younger woman on the sidewalk to his right. He breifly considered stopping to help the girl, but before he could even slow down, the man, who was obviously powered, took off, flying almost direcly over his car. For a moment, he was so angry at the buzz flight that the man had performed, he looked out his window, trying to get a good look at him, trying to find some identifying feature that he could describe to the police later. While he was looking to his left out the window, he was not paying attention to what was in front of him, and did not even see that the girl had stepped out into the road.

Mallory didn't see the car until it was a mere 15 feet away. It was moving much faster than the speed limit, and in the half second that she had between the time she saw the car and the time it would have hit, her entire brief life flashed before her eyes. She didn't have time to consider jumping out of the way, so she did all she could. She put her hands up in front of her and braced for impact.

Back when she was much younger, Mallory's father had been murdered. The official police report said that a group of Hellions had been responsible, but the actual story was much more villainous. Her father had been a researcher for the company that would eventually grow to be Crey Industries. He had figured out some pretty impressive stuff, and when his supervisor had tried to steal the work, he spoke out. This provoked someone higher up, who ordered his death. Before he had been taken care of, however, he had done a few things to insure that his work wasn't for nothing. He had been killed so early in Mallory's life that she didn't even remember him or what he had done.

As Mallory's life flashed before her, something in her brain triggered. Luckily for her, it still worked perfectly and swiftly. Without Mallory's concious effort or thought, atoms all around her body were suddenly torn apart, and the resulting energy was forced into the small cracks of space-time. As a result, uncountable gluons erupted around her. She was suddenly surrounded by an invisible sphere of particles, and she was oblivious to the entire process.

Jim didn't know about it either. When he finally looked forward again, Mallory was crouched just two feet from the front of his car. Then, without warning, his car stopped. Completely. It was as though he had just run into a solid wall. The momentum of the car was completely absorbed by the gluons, which pushed them back out of existance. The car crumpled and then bounced backward. Mallory was also propelled back 5 feet and landed on her back. Blackness was invading her vision as she looked up and saw the now totalled car just 15 feet away. Her last thought before losing conciousness was, "How?"

((Hi, read the posts and I think I'd like to get in on this. I like these games ))

Mallory was finally done with her classes for the day at Paragon City University after several hours of the most boring lectures she'd ever sat through. Though she was still only a sophomore, she was still pretty far ahead of what they were teaching as far as the math and the science went.

Since she was done with classes for the afternoon, she decided to spend the rest of the day the same way she had spent the last two weeks... looking for a job. After returning to her small apartment in Steel Canyon that she shared with another girl, Mallory changed clothes into a more "professional" outfit and started her walk toward the monorail. Along the way, she marvelled at the various powered beings that ran, jumped, or flew around her and wished that she had been lucky enough to be a hero as well.

As Mallory walked along the sidewalk, she kept her eyes peeled for outcasts and Council who might want to "talk" to her in an alleyway. She was only a little afraid of them, and really, only the ones who were willing to shoot her rather than let her get away. She had been in track for a long time, back through high school, and she was sure that she'd be able to sprint away from any danger.

Occasionally, she saw places where she thought she might like to work, but she was a little picky, and always talked herself out of each location.

A little over an hour after she had started walking around the city, marvelling at the heroes and shying away from finding an actual job, Mallory happened to be walking in front of a large, ominous looking building. It's sign said "Physiks Technologies" in strange, bright blue futuristic letters. She considered how cool it would be to one day work in a science lab. It had been her dream for a very long time.

As she looked accross the street at the building, she saw several figures outide a side door that led into an alley that presumably ran all the way around the building. Two looked like scientists, but two were much younger, and wearing similar clothing. As she watched, one of the kids went all blurry and a second later, both of the scientists fell to the ground. As she watched, another, much larger man came out of the door. He looked down and started talking, but Mallory was too far away to overhear. The man lit a cigarrette and leaned against the wall of the building. A moment later, yet another person, a black woman in a costume, barrelled out of the door, nearly tripping over the growing crowd of heroes and scientists in the alleyway. The group was talking, their conversation still unheard by Mallory. Then the door opened abruptly and everyone went back inside. She was going to keep walking down the sidewalk and ignore the business of heroes, but as she turned her head to look back down the street, she thought she saw something out of the corner of her eye, coming from down the alleyway. She was going to ignore it, but then she realized that if either a hero or a scientist had dropped something, or there was another clue to whatever was going on, she might gain a little recognition by returning it or pointing it out. It was then that she decided to take a closer look.


((This post is sort of an introduction. I'll get in with the rest of you guys in the next post))