-Savior-
The skeletal creature stood still for awhile, seeming unsure of what he should do. He looked around the cavern, watching, unconcerned, as the black liquid continued to pour out of the rock, oozing around the large stone that the man had shoved into the opening.
The creature couldn't remember why it was here, where it had come from, or even who it was. A name suddenly stuck in it's mind. 'Bayne'. It seemed like as good a name as any, so the creature decided to adopt it. Yes, from now on it would call itself 'Bayne'. Having made this important decision, Bayne decided to find out where he was, but hesitated to leave.
Mainline's reaction had given him pause. Suppose all people would react to him like that. Sure, Mainline had been easily brushed aside, but there could be more powerful people who might attack him. He would have to lay low, observe the world and determine the level of danger to him.
As he turned, he suddenly caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye. When he looked back, however, it was gone. A little girl; that's what he thought he had seen. A small girl in a dirty dress, her jeans and shoes poking out the bottom. Not a menacing vision at all, but then why did it make him feel strange.
Shaking his head, Bayne turned and moved away. He floated, his feet mere inches from the stone floor, towards one of the cavern walls. The fire around him intensified and the rock and dirt melted away in front of him. He tunneled through the ground. He would find a safe place to hide, and then he would go find out everything there was to know about this world.
Behind him, the black creatures were oozing up the walls, climbing out through the hole in the ceiling.
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When heroes would later be asked when it all started, none of them would be really sure. It had started so small. They would all be sure it began in Kings Row, but that was it. It was a slow trickle at first, one or two sightings of the black creatures. As the sightings became more frequent, the media immediatly latched onto it. They were dubbed tar-men, and the name stuck.
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About the same time that Mainline was being hoisted up by his own guts, psychics across Paragon were being struck by a wave of mental energy. Headaches and even some spasms were felt by all of them, while some of the more powerful "superhero-level" psychics were plagued by random visions. These visions varied wildly, but one thing was always the same. A feeling of finality. A sense of time, a clock stopping. One psychic hero described it best with his vision.
"I felt like I was inside a clock," he said, "and I could feel each tick as the gears turned. It was slowing down, the ticks gettng further apart, until after one tick there was nothing but silence."
Okay, next part done. I'll be putting up the next "chapter" soon. No posts yet, but it is just starting up. Remember, your hero doesn't HAVE to only deal with this story. He/she can be involved in their own plot to begin with and then be effected by the broad plot later.
After fighting some annoying skulls in Kins Row, Experiment 2.0 decided to patrol a less skull infested area. After the news of the said "Tar-men", he was a little worried about an attack, but not so much to stop going to Kings Row. Suddenly, his phone rang, he was surprised since the news reporter who is his contact never calls. "Yeah?" asked Experiment. The News Reporter on the other side said..."It seems we found a problem, some Tar-men are surrounding the hospital, attacking defeated heroes, we need your help to stop them."
"On my way." and Experiment flew to the hospital.
-Savior-
The first reported attack took place on the third day. A newspaper photographer was set upon by the tar-men he was photographing. Many thought that he had just been too over-zealous. Getting too close and provoking the creatures with his camera flashes. But then another attack was reported, and then another. The fourth report was of an attack in someone's home. The tar-men had entered the building and attacked the occupants.
What was even worse; the victims could not be found. Witnesses told of how the tar-men swarmed all over them, but the victims of the attacks seemed to disappear. Sightings of the creatures were sky-rocketing, there didn't seem to be a section of Kings Row that they were not in. Even the Skulls and the mysterious Lost had been attacked by the gelantinous monsters.
But so far, they were still confined only to Kings Row. So far.
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Meanwhile, the psychics' visions continued, becoming more bizarre and more solid as time went on. A few heroes had even been sent to hospitals, the visions becoming too much for them and threatening their very sanity.
A man sloached is way along the streets of King's row, his dirt-smeared coat had been green at one points, but had been turn a brackish grey long ago. He stopped across the street from a tenament building that had seen better days, but what part of King's Row hadn't? Floping down in a gesture of exaustion he drew his legs to his chest for warmth, he adjusted his ball cap lower over his face and laid the palm of his right hand up in front of him in the exectation of nothing much. The building across from him was indistquishable from the other tenament buildings around it, except for the bandanna wearing blood brothers that occassionaly looked out though the boarded up windows.
A man wearing the trademark demon mask of the Hellions walked up to the building flanked by his entourage of blood brothers. "Ah, the man himself", Alpha Vector thought to himself. His contact had warned him that the Hellions were brewing up some new variant of dyne. This place was just ne location Vector was keeping an eye on. It was undoubtable a dyne lab, but was it THE dyne lab? Battalion's presence here was a positive sign, a guy that high up in the Hellions was going to be out doing bagman work. Even if this wasn't the lab that was expirimenting with the dyne variant, Battakion would know if anyone would where it was. "I'll just have a little heart to heart with him."
The dishevled man stood up slowly and slouched in the alley. Once swalloed by the darkness he began to run, using strets and allies to circle around to the back enterence of the building, turning into an alley into the last streach he shead the ball cap and the grimy coat. A stranger who saw him then would be forgiven for being alarmed, after all usually when you see crimson pouring out of a guy's pores its usually a sign something's wrong. The red tide streaming over his face and hands lost it's resemblence to liquid soon enough. Each droplet put ot branches which connected with the searching baches from other droplets and wove together. Hard plates now covered his head and hands and were beginning to work their way up his arms and down his torso. It was almost like watching a time-lapse film of a city being build as millions of nanobots continues to march down his body linking up and filling in the gaps with organic tissue.
By the time Alpha Vecotr bust from the shadows and toward the front door he was encased in a lightweight suit of techno-organic armor. He took the first Blood Brother guarding the rear entrance with a jump kick, smashing his head between oncoming foot and unyeilding brick wall.Alpha had sprung into the air again by the time the othe Blood managed to realize what was happening and get a shot off. Vector landed behind the blood and sent a command down nerve pathways no normal human had. At his prompting, the nanobots convering his hands re-arragned themselves almost instantly causing blades to spring from the backs of his hands. The Blood brother whirled about, drawing a switchblade with his free hand. Vector arm flashed before him and the Blood dropped his knife, trying to cluch at the three bleeding lines on his arm and still hold on to his gun at the same time. Alpha flipped backwards, coiling like a spring into a crouching headstand before uncoiling explosively, flying into the startled Blood's face with both heels. The Blood made a meaty thud as he rebounded off the opposite wall and Alpha Vector sprang to his feet. With two flicks of his wrists he tagged the fallen goons with transponders and within a minute they dissapeared. By now they were materializing in the police station infirmery thanks to the mirical of reverse-engineered Rikti technonolgy. A supply of transponders had been handed to him on his first day along with his ID card and comm pad.
"That could have gone better", he thought to himself has he used a blade to slice the doorknob and lock seperate from the rest of the door. He had hoped to take both Bloods down without a fuss, he just hoped that the Hellions inside were as desensetized to a gunshot in the night as everyone else was in King's Row. The interior of the tenanment building had the smell universal to dives eveywhere, it reminded him of a combination of stale cigarette smoke and wet socks. He tired to walk by stepping down with his whole foot rather than heel first in order to minimize the squeeking of floorboards as he moved down the corridors. The guy coming down the hall was making no such effort. Vector heard him long before he saw him. The Blood had been order to make sure the guards in back were all right after a shot had been heard. His reward for his dilligence was an armor-plated fist to the temple as he rounded the corner of the hall. Alpha entered the stairwell he had seen the goon exit and climbed downward into the basement.
-Savior-
Bayne stood on top of a skyscraper, perched on the antennae that rose from the roof. He watched King's Row from his spot, focusing on different parts of the city as he noticed something new. Most of what he saw, however, was much the same. Crime, violence, people hurting one another. There seemed to be no end to it.
"What kind of place am I in," he wondered to himself. The flames surrounding him flickered about agitatedly. He suddenly felt like he was being watched. Whipping around he found himself face to face with the little girl he thought he had seen in the cave.
"What will you do?" she asked, hanging in mid-air in front of him.
"What are you talking about?" Bayne asked, totally confused. The girl seemed familiar to him somehow, but he couldn't place it.
"You're here to do something," she stated, her voice eerily calm, "You are here to fix things."
Bayne was silent for awhile, pondering what she said. It felt right somehow, and the more he thought about it, the more sure he was.
"Yes," he whispered to himself, "I'm supposed to fix something. Something to do with this city."
"Good," the girl answered, though she didn't show any signs of happiness, "Now you must decide what you will do."
Then she was gone, as suddenly as she had came. Bayne looked around a little bewildered. He now knew that he was here to do something about this city, but he would have to decide himself on what that something was. Looking around the city again, he winced once more at the acts of violence he saw occuring everywhere. Yes, he would have to do something about this.
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The population of King's Row were now very much aware of the threat of the tar-men, but that did nothing to stop them. Their attacks and the disappearances they caused continued to escalate. A state of emergency was soon declared, people were told to stay in their homes, and more and more heroes were asked to aid in quelling the rising monsters.
But no matter how many battles the heroes won, there just seemed to be no stopping the black creatures. Hero casualties began to stack up (the fallen heroes disappearing just as the citizens had done), and panic began to seep into other areas of Paragon.
Being amongst the psychic heroes of Paragon City, Wiretap had taken the mental blow after the first incident. She found herself turning to meditation and other ways of channeling her body to balance these psychic painful waves. After a few days she chose to head to Kings Row, the source of this pain, or so the papers stated. As the tram drew nearer to Kings Row, so did the pains in her mind, so painiful that she was only able to take a few steps from the tram until she fell unconcious and was teleported to the hospital.
Once at the hospital she saw several other heroes around her, but she had been preparing, she was able to calm her mind. She then heard reports of some of the Tar-Men attempting to get into the hopsital and attacking heros as they left. Her heart beat faster as she tried to figure out what to do. She had heard of these Tar-Men but not of how to defeat them, and that those that tried vanished in their attempts.
Taking a deep breath, she followed some healed heros into the elevators and down to the lobby to help defend those who could not defend themselves. Upon reaching the lobby there was a large gathering of heroes, the doors blocked, melted and frozen shut. Muffled sounds of the battle happening outside caused all the heroes to be ready. She was scared, what would happen, and who was behind this?
As he desended the stairs, Alpha felt a surge of excitement from being onto something important. The so-called Tar Men attacks had severely hurt the Skulls' operations in King's Row. Thus it was to no-one's great surprise that the Skulls' rivals, the Hellions, and decided to take advantage of their foes' misfortune and make pushes into their territory. Still, setting up a dyne lab in what was still really Skull territory was pretty ambitious. The Hellions had probably expended alot of resources getting this site and keeping it secure against the Skulls. If he smashed it, perhaps he could cause the Hellions to go scrambling the way the Skulls were now. The thought of both major street gangs of the city off-balance pleased Vector greatly. It would create many new opening to attack both gangs for someone watchful enought to spot them.
Vector reached the foot of the stairs and crept up on the door in front of him. Pressing up again the door he listened to the sounds of gruff words, the click of guns being loaded and cleaned, and the clink of poker chips striking one another on the table. "Hmm.. Confined space probably.. doesn't leave alot of room to get fancy.. I can do simple."
Three sharp raps sounded on the door. Lewis at the card table looked up, annoyance creasing the parts of his face visible above his bandanna. "Yo Hector, get that!", he said as he returned his attention to his hand. "Bad enough my game gets interrupted because Battalion thinks he hears something soes I gotta send someone to check it out! Then that mother has to come back just when about to win an' spoilin my concentration!" He fans out the cards in front of his face and thought, "Three of a kind and a pair, these punks won't know what hit them!", seconds before a balistic Hector hit him. Shoving the groaning Hector off of him Lewis looked up in time to see a figure plated in red chintin deflecting a brass knuckle punch from Denny with one arm and delivering a flurry of jabs with a fist the seemed to be a mass of blades with the other. Lewis got up as Denny went down, "____! Capes and cowls time! Ice this ______!" A brother swung his sledge hammer at Vector, only to discover that he was only holding half a handel at the end of the swing. A series of quick swipes from Alpha's blades and the punk his the floor seconds after the severed head of his hammer did. Several of the Bloods opened fire at him with their pistols, the bullets doing little more then scuffing the techno-organic shell that was a second skin to him. Vector surged forward on a short leap and landed in the middle of the group, a twisting whirlwind of flying feet and blades. Seeing his Brothers going down Lewis panicked and reached in the corner to retreve the shotgun despite the small size of the room. Alpha spun around at hearing the distinctive "ch-chunk" of a shotgun being pumped but wasn't able to didge in time before dozens of buckshot pellets tore into him. Shards of chintin flew off him, but even as Alpha lept into the air to deliver a jump kick to the gunner's face, nanobots were already rushing to the damaged sites to begin their rapid repair.
The door to the next room burst open as Lewis slid down the wall. Battalion, the scowl on his face a perfect match to the demon mask he wore and another Blood burst out. "What the f--" was about as far as the Blood got before Alpha hooked his foot under the lip of the overturned card table and kicked upward, sending the furnature flying through the part of the air the Blood was currently occuping. Battlion managed to dodge to one side in time to avoid the flying pine projectile. "I ain't afraid of you!", he growled. Flames began to flicker to life around the Hellion's fists, "I'm called Battalion, cause I bring the firepower!" Alpha rolled his eyes behind the lens of his faceplate, he supposed that the punk thought that was clever when he thought of it.
"Well okay then champ", Vector said brandishing the blades sprouting from the back of his hands, "let's dance!" Battalion thrust out one fist and a jet of fire spewed forth. Vector sidestepped to the right and kept coming. He jabbed with his right hand, intending to deliver a disablingly painful slice to the punk's arm, but the Hellion's arm blurred and grabbed Alpha's incoming wrist while the hand that had delivered the fire blast seemed to materialize around Alpha's throat without crossing the interviening space between. "You're nothing!!", the Hellion screamed, "I'll kill you!!" Alpha got a good look into the dialated, blood-shot eyes that blazed at him behind the mask. "Great", Alpha was able to think even as he fought the pain of being held by two burning hands, "I had to catch him just after he did a hit of dyne!" The Hellion hurled Vector across the room, the gangsters' drug enchanced strength causing Alpha to leave a crater where he hit the wall. Alpha leap back to his feet only in time to catch one, two, then three fireballs to the chest in rapid succession. Alpha slumped back again the wall, his armor blackened and blistered, the skin underneath seared. Battalion strode forward to finish the fight with a full strength blast at point blank range. "You're gonna make me famous.. hero!" The last word was punctuated with a laugh as he closed the distance, meanwhile Alpha was sending frantic mental signals calling forth the reserves of nanobots in his bloodstream. Battalion was sending almost over Vector when his laugh died in his throat, the blisters were smoothing out and the blacked areas were being re-claimed by vibrant red! Battalion began to raise his arms to fire but Alpha sprange forward like an uncoiling spring, thrusing both set of blades out and running Battalion through either shoulder. The two combatants were face-to-face, allowing Alpha to see the shock in Battalion's eyes as he tried to figure out why victory had slipped away. A crescent kick upward clipped battalion under the chin and pulled him off Alpha's blades.
Alpha Almost doubled over in pain as the adreniline wore off. He managed to keep enough presence of mind to tag Battalion and the other fallen Hellions with the mini-trnasponders that would soon teleport them away to the prison infirmery. Still the pain was slowly starting to reced, that nanobots that he shared his body with tireless repairing the damage the battle had done. He could only call upon his reserves of nanos for a quick surge of healing every once in awhile. Having just done so only minutes ago, he would have to make do as the nanos healed his burns at their usual rate.
"Now to see what they were up to", Vector thought to himself as he moved gingerly across the room and through the door Battalion had come in through. Inside this room he found all the usual chemestry paraphanalia one would expect in a drug lab, but then he looked to the far wall. There was a huge hole in the floor that extended through the floorboards, through the foundation, and into the ground below. Around the edges of the hole Vector found specks of a black sticky substance. "Oh no!", he thought as he ran over to the table to examine the equipment more closely. In one tube he found a tube filled with a black viscous liquid. A new variant of dyne. "Surely not even the Hellions could be so stupid and crazy as to try to.. what am I thinking? They could, they are, and they have. Obviously the tarmen came and went from this enterance point. The tarmen were long gone before some Hellion scout found this place and they decided to set up thier little expiriment using the traces the tarmen left behind, if they hadn't been I doubt their would have been any Hellions left here to fight me. That's why they risked setting up this lab in Skull territory, to be close to their source of secret ingredient!"
So absorbed in the contemplation of the contents of the vial was Alpha that he didn't sense danger until a tendril wrapped around his ankle.
- Savior -
It hadn't happened since the Rikti invasion. The total closing of an entire zone. All trams and highways to King's Row were shut down, teleporters were drafted to evacuate citizens and teleport in other heroes. King's Row was declared a disaster zone, only registered heroes were permited in. The tar-men were everywhere. They forced their way into every major building they could. The heroes stood against them, but they were losing ground fast.
The black creatures seemed to have learned that the hospital was an excellant place to find weakened heroes (something they seemed intent on doing) and had beseiged the building. The heroes barricaded themselves in, standing guard in the lobby, ready to protect the other patients less capable of defending themselves.
Other heroes entered King's Row in large groups, mounting rescue missions to apartment buildings and offices. Force fields and elemental shields seemed to keep them at bay, and they could be driven off through normal attacks, but they would never be gone for long. Always coming back in greater numbers and with new tatics. The heroes pushed forward, mostly through sheer numbers, but they couldn't seem to make a dent in the tar-men's forces.
But the real horror was in what might come next; the reason for closing off King's Row. It was a desperate attempt at keeping the tar-men contained. They had spread through King's Row like a plague, and if they got into the rest of Paragon....
Most of the heroes didn't talk about it. They focused on the fight, on saving others. But that fear always lurked just beneath the surface, never allowing itself to be forgotten.
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In an effort to aid the psychic heroes of Paragon, M.A.G.I., E.L.I.T.E., and all the other organizations called on all their most powerful psychics who weren't out in the field. It was one of the largest tasks they had ever undertaken. With a group of support heroes standing by, boosting their powers, the group of psychics reached out to every psychic hero they could in the entire city.
They took the psychic pain attacking them and dissipated it across the astral plain, taking away as much as they could. The visions still persisted, but more mental heroes were able to aid in the fight against the new threat. But there was something else there as well. The group of psychics detected something interwoven into the mental attacks. It seemed to be a message of some kind, but the amount of mental static made it next to impossible to make out. One of the group WAS able to make out one part of the message, seeming to be the origin of the psychic energy.
A name; Rebecca Kerny.
I thought I'd try something a little different here. I'm going to write a story that involves all of Paragon City. Well, I'm going to try anyway. I'm going to stick mainly to broad events, things affecting the city itself. I thought others could write their own heroes story as it takes place in the broad plot. Whether your hero takes a direct hand in the main story or whether they have their own story that is only influenced by what is going on. You can write a solo story or team up with other posters. I'm hoping this will give people a little extra freedom in writing their heroes. I'm not sure if this will work or not, but I'd like to try it anyway.
City of Heroes:
-Savior-
The woman had been standing on the same street corner of Kings Row for almost 3 weeks. No matter what the weather, she stayed in the exact same spot. The police would come and try to get her to leave, but she wouldn't go, and they couldn't take her since she wasn't really doing anything illegal.
All she did, day in and day out was talk. She didn't shout or scream at the pedestrians, she simply spoke normaly but urgently. 30 days; that's what she predicted when she first appeared. 30 days before "It" would arrive. She never said what "It" was, she simply spent her days warning people against it.
Those who took the time to listen to her were told of Paragon City's descent into ruin. She insisted that the crime that practically besieged the city was a syptom of a personal apocolypse for Paragon and it's citizens. And, according to her, time was almost up.
On Wednesday, of the third week, she collapsed on the pavement. Fall was slowly turning to winter, and one too many days of standing in the pouring rain had finally taken their toll. It was around 20 minutes before an ambulance arrived to take her to the hospital, but it was all in vain anyway. She died within 10 minutes of arriving.
The police identified her as Rebecca Kerny. She used to live in Galaxy City, and was actually in the process of applying for superhero registration, before she disappeared about a month ago. Rebecca had been a burdgeoning psychic, and had displayed a slightly above average talent for mental powers. How she had ended up on a street corner, preaching about the end of Paragon City, was a complete mystery to even her closest friends.
Rebecca Kerny left no lasting impression. There were many crazy things and people that showed up in the city, and Kerny was written off as another sad case of insanity. Her message was forgotten almost before anyone heard it. The corner where she stood became just another dirty patch of concrete. And life went on as normal.
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One memory that always stuck out in Howard's mind was the swing in his backyard. As a child he would always play on it with his father. Howard was certain that, if only he could get high enough, he could touch the sky by jumping from the swing. His father would encourage him in his plan and whenever his mother was away (she didn't approve of the game) his father would push him on the swing until he could go no higher. At the top of the arc Howard would jump from the seat, his arms stretched upward as far as they could go.
It was on an especially high jump, one sunny spring afternoon, that Howard was sure he had almost achieved his goal. He seemed to swing higher than ever that day, and when he launced himself from the swing, he could feel himself flying up. He could see the sky in front of him, almost taste it in his mouth. But gravity had pulled him back down to the earth, breaking his arm in the process. As his father rushed over, Howard continued to stare at the sky.
"Did you see me?" he asked his father, breathlessly. "Did you see? I was so close. I could almost touch it."
But that had been back when he was 6 years old. Howard Robern was grown now, and was much too busy to try and touch the sky now. His power to control kinetic energy had manifested in his teens, and he had jumped at the chance to become one of Paragon's heroes. He had been so eager at the beginning, but after fighting battle after battle, and seeing the gangs and monsters STILL going strong, he had quickly become disillusioned. Whenever that memory of the swing entered his mind, he couldn't help but grieve a little over the bitter man he had become.
But he soldiered on. His parents had raised him to fight for what he believed in. Howard, registered as 'Mainline' in the city hero registry, didn't have a dramatic origin like many of the city's heroes. His parents had died peacefully of old age a few years ago before the Rikti war, even. He had never had any personal run-in with any criminals before becoming a hero. It was mostly just wanting to help out and be part of the exciting, colorful world of the other superheroes.
Now it was later and many things had changed for Howard 'Mainline' Robern. Now he stood outside a run-down office building in King's Row. Some utility workers had been examining the power lines in the basement and had reported some strange occurences. Magic was suspected and Circle of Thorns involvement was speculated. Mainline was sent to investigate.
Making his way to the basement, Mainline knew almost immediatly what the workers had been talking about. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end, and the slight tingle down his spine was a sure-fire sign of magic. Finding the spot were it seemed strongest, he concentrated, using the vibrations around him to wrap his hands in glowing energy.
Tearing through the floor, Mainline tunneled down, hitting dirt and stone before finally breaking into a large cave underneath the building. Not seeing any Thorn monks, Mainline carefully dropped to the ground. Getting up and turning around, he jumped as he found himself looking down at a small girl. She wore a dirty pink dress over a t-shirt and jeans. Her hair was straight and black, hanging down to her jaw line.
"I'm sorry," she said, sadly, after staring at him awhile, "but you're the first."
Then she was gone, just as quickly as she had appeared. Shaking his head Mainline looked around again, wondering if he had imagined the child. His eyes finally fell on a formation in the center of the cave. The rock seemed to suddenly grow upwards, forming a sort of chimney. A large flame pulsed and sputtered from within the cylinder.
Mainline watched as the fire grew bigger, wavering more violently. As he stared, something appeared from within the flames. It was a hand, but with no flesh or muscle on it. Another appeared soon after, grabbing the sides of the rock and pulling the rest of the thing up. What emerged was a skeleton, the bones seemed broken and cracked, held together by nothing but the mass of flames that surrounded and followed the thing.
The thing looked around, confused, paying no attention to Mainline. He, however, was paying attention to nothing else BUT the creature, which is why he almost missed what came out of the rock after it. At first it looked like nothing but black ooze, but soon started seperating into individual blobs that began taking on vaguely human shapes.
Mainline was starting to panic. None of this could be good. The black things attacked first, launching themselves at him. Summoning the energy to his hands again, Mainline batted them away, striking back as they fell to the ground. He ran into the middle of the group, punching and throwing the things into the walls and ceiling of the cave. But they kept coming, bubbling up through the hole in the rock.
Summoning as much power as he could, he tore rock from a nearby stalagmite and rammed it into the hole, trying to block it up. The black monsters that he had knocked down were already picking themselves up, their bodies oozing back together as they rose. Mainline didn't know what to do. The things didn't seem hurt by his attacks and there were too many for him to keep contained for long.
Just then he thought of the fiery skeleton. The black things had come out of the rock right after it, maybe it was controlling them somehow. Looking around he saw it, still standing still, looking as if it didn't know where it was. Taking advantage of it's distraction, Mainline drove his energy covered fist into the back of the skull. The flames were agonizing to touch, but he pressed the attack, hitting the thing's head as hard as he could.
The skeleton, however, reacted to the blows as more of an annoyance than an attack. Catching the hero's fist, the thing thrust it's arm forward, tearing through Mainline as if he were made of tissue paper. The flames licked around the hero and the teleporter that should have taken him to the hospital in case of serious injury, sparked, sputtered and died.
Mainline hung in the air, suspended by the flaming arm imbedded in his chest. His longish hair hung about his face, a slightly surprised expression frozen on his features. In the back of his mind he knew he should try and escape, but he couldn't seem to move. The skeleton suddenly pulled back and threw Mainline upward. He crashed through the rock, the floor above, and every other floor in the building, finally flying through the roof and into the air.
His speed slowed, and time itself seemed to stop. The sky stretched out all around Howard Robern, the city lay below, but all he could see was the blue of the sky, white cottony clouds streaking across it. For a second he hung in the air, until gravity finally caught up to him and his limp body was dragged back to the earth.
The cracks in the sidewalk spread out from his body in a spiderweb-like pattern, flowing from an impression in the cement where he lay on his back, his face still looking up to the sky. Many people saw the incident. The paramedics were on the scene in 10 minutes, but it was already too late. As blackness overtook his vision, Howard found himself once again thinking of that spring day on the swing with his father.
"Did you see me? Did you see? I was so close. I could almost touch it."
Okay, that's the first "chapter". Now I have a basic plot that all leads to an ending, but I've tried to allow room for flexibility for when other people start adding their posts. Just some basic information here: All characters so far are not in-game. Mainline (who, yes, IS quite dead) and the skeleton are just made up for this story. I may throw in one of my heroes futher down the road (don't worry, it would only be in a minor way) but not anytime soon. Also, just to be clear, the skeleton is NOT controlling the black things. Beat up the black ooze as much as you want (it will soon be infesting the city) but I'd appreciate it if no one takes on the skeleton just yet. Or if you HAVE to meet up with him, just don't kill or beat him up. He's an integral part of where this story is going. Well, hope I've sparked some interest here. Hope to see some posts.