* * *
Tossing my cereal bowl in the sink, I grabbed my costume. It didn't smell very fresh, but compared to the milk it was sweet perfume.
Pulling the suit on, I dove into the bathroom to check myself in the mirror. Yanking the mask down, I adjusted the goggles, tugged on the gauntlets - and took a good long look at my reflection.
Working clothes.
I used to hate spandex. Wouldn't have been caught dead in the stuff. But the costume's part of the job, so I've learnt to adjust.
If I die in this thing...well, I'll just be an embarrassed corpse. Them's the breaks.
Mind you, superheroes have raised spandex to a fine art. It ain't just silly stretchy material anymore. No, they have -special- spandex. Bulletproof. Fireproof. Made of unstable molecules or whatever. There's spandex that costs more than my freakin' -rent-.
My costume isn't that upmarket, but I still had to take a flipping bank loan to afford the stupid thing.
But at least it looks good.
Well, maybe not -good-, but okay. An improvement.
Back when I started this superhero gig, the only spandex I could afford was old workout gear from the Salvation Army. It didn't make a very good costume. I looked like some kind of insane aerobics instructor.
Not exactly the kind of thing that strikes fear into the hearts of villains. Unless they're obese couch-potato villains or something.
'course, for all I know, there really -is- some freak out there robbing banks with a beer-belly and TV remote. This is Paragon City, weird capital of the universe. This kind of stuff happens all the damn time. We get alien invasions once a week, time-travelling Nazis holding up the queue at Starbucks...I swear, if the government started issuing colour-coded warnings, we'd be on Condition Plaid by Tuesday.
And I hate plaid.
There's a reason Paragon's got the highest number of superheroes in the world. Weird calls to weird.
But what's really strange is...the city's -proud- of it. Don't ask me why. They even put it on all the tourism ads. Paragon City, USA. "City of Tomorrow - City of Heroes". You can get it engraved on a souvenir ashtray. And not cheapest plastic, either, one of those frosted glass deals.
It's true. City of Heroes. Can't throw a brick in this town without braining some loon inna cape.
It's crazy. There's this whole -culture- built around the powered set. Weapon stores, costume boutiques, hell, there's even a pocket-dimension nightclub that hopes around town like a Tardis on crack.
It's insane. It's utterly, utterly, -insane-. But nobody gives it a second thought.
I sure as hell didn't, back before my lifestyle change. I didn't -like- heroes, but I never questioned their presence. They were just...y'know, a fact of life. Like death and taxes.
But now I'm one of 'em...yeesh.
Still, I'm not complaining.
Back in the bad old days, superheroes -needed- secret identities. They were on the fringe, outside the law. Now? Hell, we're all -licensed-. Government-backed and everything. Police powers, authority to arrest...
We're legit.
Being a superhero, it's a respectable career. Sure, the pay sucks, but there's no social stigma. Hell, there's even prestige.
So most heroes don't bother with the secret identity thing.
I don't. Not really.
My landlady knows I'm a superhero. She doesn't cut me any slack on the rent, but she likes having me as a tenant. I keep the place secure. Sure, there's always a danger of my work following me home, but it's not like I'm big enough to draw personal attention. But I -am- big enough to put the fear of God into the piss-poor little street gangs infesting this neighbourhood.
So it's all good.
And because I don't have to worry about blowing my cover, I can do things like flying straight out my bedroom window.
Which is exactly what I did.
Of course, it'd be cooler if I actually flew all the way across the city.
As it is, I only zipped to the nearest train station, then started waiting for the next northbound on the yellow line.
What? Look, that whole up-up-and-away spiel is TIRING, okay? Defying gravity isn't exactly effortless. It burns energy. I'm not saying flying isn't fun, but damnit, the Paragon Transit Authority gives out free hero passes for a -reason-, and I'm damn well gonna USE mine.
All the smart heroes do.
Besides, it's faster than flying. I was in a hurry.
I figured if I didn't get to Skyway in another 15 minutes, Juliana was gonna kill me.
* * *
(Next Episode: The plot sickens. Superball meets CSI. "What, you telling me this was some kinda racial hate crime? That anti-mutant stuff...it's only in the comic books, man.")
@Acyl
VIRTUE
Blue: Realpolitik, Leading Lady, Glass Lass, Superball, Alec Kazam
Red: Battery Acid, Obsolete, Bugfix
* * *
The train was late.
But I was wrong. Ms. Nehring didn't kill me, she just mauled me a little bit. Actually, she hit me with a pencil then yelled at me for breaking it.
I think she was kidding. I'm not certain. Kinda hard to tell. That pencil seemed fairly murderous. The lead was aimed right at my jugular. I swear, I could have gotten carbon poisoning. A slow and painful death.
Still, I'm honoured to receive such attention. Most villains want to kill me quickly. Sort of an 'ew, cockroach, SQUISH' deal. I'm not exactly a big-time hero, so I don't rate personalised deathtraps. Most criminals just try to shoot me rather than mess around with torture. They just wanna get back to whatever nefarious deed I interrupted, like downloading episodes of Desperate Housewives.
Juliana's different. She actually cares about me. Those threats to rip out my spine? They make me feel all warm inside.
I apologised, of course. With my very best smile. Unfortunately, my mask covered my entire face, but it's the thought that counts.
I started with the traditional "OH GOD, please don't kill me, I'm sorry, I'll never do it again, I swear", and tossed in a grovel or three.
Juliana looked disgusted. Or embarrassed. Maybe a bit of both. Which was good - it meant she wasn't angry anymore.
She whipped her head around, probably hoping nobody'd seen my little display. No such luck. The nice police officers guarding the crime scene were already pointing and staring.
Because when I make a fool of myself, I don't do it by halves. I'm a craftsman. I take pride in my work.
"Okay, okay," Juliana grumbled, "cut it out."
She hauled me to my feet - rather roughly, I might add - and gave me a shove in the direction of the cops.
The police had a little section of parking lot cordoned off. The place was one of those big multi-storey monstrosities, affording peons a spot to stash their automobiles on the cheap.
Apparently someone'd found another use for it. Like parking dead people.
Oh, the bodies weren't there anymore. But I could still tell.
Modern police don't do the chalk outline thing. That's just on TV. It contaminates the crime scene, see?
But there were a buncha lines on the ground. Not in chalk - but blood. Lots of blood. Sketching out some kinda sick ritual formation. The thing was grotesque, a positively Lovecraftian twisting of gore-splattered geometry.
It had a distinct shape, though, a weird kind of symmetry. It looked a bit like a compass rose - with a corpse at each cardinal point.
While there wasn't any chalk, the cops -had- left little plastic markers to indicate their positions. One for each body, probably near the head. Four of them. North, South, East, West.
How cute. Whatever will they think of next?
I'd seen worse, though. Smelt worse, too. Like my breakfast. So I could greet the cops with a nod and wave. Business as usual.
"'allo, 'allo," I chirped, "wot's all this, then?"
One of the cops, a grizzled old sergeant, gave a nasty look. The younger officer next to him laughed. A partial victory.
"Ha ha," Juliana muttered, from behind me, "this is the lunatic I was waiting for. Can we go in?"
Meanwhile, I produced my credentials. A Class H crimefighting license. Mind you, I'm not sure what good it does, since I've got my mask on in the picture. That sorta kills the point of photo ID.
Ours not to question why. Just one of Paragon City's many civic quirks, I guess.
The sergeant eyeballed the card for a moment, then grunted vaguely. His partner waved us through, letting us cross the police line.
The mess on the ground didn't look much better up close. That wasn't surprising, since it was a freaking giant symbol painted in blood. With four dead people. That kind of makes it icky by default.
There was another guy standing by the grisly display, kneeling on the concrete and examining it with an oversized magnifying glass. He was wearing street clothes, but had a MAGI tag clipped to his jacket.
"Yo," I said, as we approached, "I'm Superball, hero extraordinaire, and this is my loyal sidekick, Reporter Gir---OW!"
No, I didn't mean to say that. Reporter Gir---OW is a terrible superhero name. But Juliana didn't let me finish. She hit me upside the head with her recording kit.
"Juliana Nehring," she said, firmly, shoving me aside, "Paragon Times. I interviewed you last night?"
The investigator looked up, blinking. He was a black guy in his late 30s, with an incredibly dense pair of spectacles. "What? Oh. Yes...I recall. Is this the costumed friend you mentioned?"
"Not sure if 'friend' is the right word," Juliana muttered, folding her arms and glaring at me.
I gave her a wounded look and reeled, clutching my heart in faux agony.
Juliana kicked me in the shin. I didn't really feel it, since my boots are all clunky and armoured. But I yelped anyway.
"Be nice," she hissed.
Turning to the MAGI guy, she continued, "Mr Tyler, this is Superball. Superball, this is Eli Tyler from the Modern Arcane Guild of Investigation."
She stuck a thumb at me. "Could you tell him what you told me?"
Tyler fiddled with his spectacles, pushing them further up the bridge of his nose. He stood, tucking his magnifying glass away. "Oh, certainly," he said.
And then, he did just that.
After two seconds, I understood why Juliana wanted me to speak with this guy directly, rather than giving me a summary.
Clearly, Juliana was trying to kill me. Again. This time, by boring me to death.
Good GOD, could that man -talk-. In monotonous polysyllables, too. I tried to listen, but technical language has never really been my thing. Especially forensic magic. That combines two entire schools of technobabble gobblygook into a whole new Frankenstein monster of jargon.
It's enough to make my hair turn blue.
Well, okay, my hair's already blue, what with all the mutations and all. But that's not the point.
I could feel myself losing the will to stay awake. Until Tyler hit a sentence that grabbed my attention and broke its neck.
"Wait, wait, back up," I interrupted, "you said the victims were supers?"
"...well, they possessed innate paranormal abilities," Tyler waved a hand, "superpowers of a traditional nature. The Spengler flux of the residual life-energies indicates the subjects had a positive Tesla Index, and..."
I winced, and held my hands in surrender. "English, please," I begged, "simple words. Me hero, me stupid."
Juliana snickered.
Tyler gave both of us a disapproving look. "They were," he said with a frown, "mutants."
"What," I goggled, "you telling me this was some kinda racial hate crime? That anti-mutant stuff...it's only in the comic books, man."
"No," Juliana cut in, "they weren't just mutants. They were Outcasts."
Her words hit me like a kick to the head. I stopped, and stared. It's not often that I find myself with nothing to say. My mouth moves on autopilot. I wisecrack without my brain needing to intervene. But this time, I really -was- at a loss for words.
Outcasts. They were Outcasts.
So that's why Juliana dragged me out here. She -knew-. She'd called me around three in the morning, screaming about something I had to see. I told her whatever it was, it could damn well wait until I had some sleep.
I owed her an apology.
But when I turned to her, my throat was dry. It took effort to talk. Of course, the expression on her face said it all. Sympathy, and all that.
That annoyed me. Don't like people feeling sorry for me.
I managed to find my voice, and glanced at Tyler. "How'd you know? They wearing gang colours?"
The MAGI investigator pointed to the spots where the bodies had been found. "The victims were so attired, yes. Their clothing was consistent with higher-ranked members of the group, those with manifested elemental abilities."
I rubbed my forehead, armoured fingers scraping against the cowl. I could feel a headache coming on.
Outcasts. Dear Lord.
The Outcasts are a street gang. But not an ordinary one. They're mutants. Each and every one. A crazy-quilt of ice-slingers, flame-casters, lightning-zappers, and...hell, big guys who throw rocks. Really big rocks. Overgrown juvenile delinquents with superpowers. They preach this crazy fascist-comic-book-anarchist gospel about being born strong, might makes right, angst about being misunderstood by society...and so on, ad nauseum.
They'd just be a bunch of emo punks, except for the whole mutant powers thing. That makes 'em a pain in the rear for half the heroes in the city. Especially me.
I know 'em well. I know 'em very well.
Quietly, I asked, "Any names for these guys?"
"One," Tyler replied, "a forensic dentist was able to find a positive match for one of the victims, a Roger Johansson. Quite a criminal record. He broke out from the Zigursky Correctional Facility six months ago. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to identify the other three."
Roger. I knew Roger. The man was a nasty piece of excrement, but even he didn't deserve this. What I was looking at wasn't death, it was Pablo Picasso gone psycho.
"Lord," I whispered. It wasn't a swear. It was a very abbreviated prayer. "So let me get this straight. Somebody offed a bunch of Outcasts? Sacrificed them as some kinda magic ritual?"
"The officers I spoke to said they're treating the case as murder," Juliana said, consulting a little notepad with scribbles in shorthand, "but..."
Tyler shrugged, then pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. "It's too early to say. We're not even sure how they died, precisely. The bodies were badly mutilated, but we don't know if that was the cause of death, or merely something done after. I can forward you the autopsy report once it's ready, along with my findings."
"Feh," I grumbled, "what's their malfunction? Goats and virgins no longer fashionable? Okay, so...any idea who's our mad slasher, then?"
"Sadly, no. The magic here is...unfamiliar to me," Tyler admitted. He scowled, as if taking the gap in his knowledge as a personal affront. "It does appear to have been a summoning of some sort, though I cannot say for certain...I don't know if the ritual was even successful, let alone what it produced."
"Probably calling out for pizza," I mused, "so...no clue who done it? Hellions? Circle? Pantheon? Carnival?"
Tyler spread his hands, palms open towards the sky.
I snorted. "Right. Gotcha."
While we were talking, Juliana had moved past us. Crouching, she squinted at the bloodstained concrete.
"What -I- want to know is...why Outcasts? Does someone have it out for them? And why here?"
I frowned, rubbing my chin. She had a point. We were in Skyway, just outside downtown proper.
Skyway's basically several blocks of bridges, a crossing point for the highways spanning the city. That makes it a veritable rabbit warren of concrete and steel, perfect nesting ground for a street gang. But Skyway ain't Outcast turf. It belongs to the Trolls.
Of course, the Trolls and Outcasts...they're at war. But the Trolls probably weren't responsible for this.
Magic isn't a Troll thing. They're bruisers, thugs hopped up on enough drugs to make a horse explode. Which would be fine, on its own. It's easier on us superhero types when the bad guys kill themselves.
Except they take friggin' superadine. Or dyne, as it's called on the street. Now, the Trolls ain't the only gang of dyne addicts in the city. But they're the only ones who take it to an -extreme-. The Trolls pop enough of the stuff to turn their skin green and grow horns.
A hopped-up Troll can headbutt through a freaking -wall-. Because they don't have to worry about brain damage. The drugs already do that.
Your average Troll spends the day wandering around in rage-filled narcotic bliss, untroubled by the burden of coherent thought.
The Trolls -might- have ripped up these guys for just wandering into their territory, but they wouldn't have made a bloody MC Escher painting with the corpses. They don't have the intelligence for that kind of magic. Hell, they don't have the -attention span-.
So what the hell happened here?
* * *
(Next Episode: Superball goes hunting. "I hate mysteries. Villains always think they're smarter than me.")
@Acyl
VIRTUE
Blue: Realpolitik, Leading Lady, Glass Lass, Superball, Alec Kazam
Red: Battery Acid, Obsolete, Bugfix
(It occurs to me that Juliana Nehring is not, in fact, a reporter for the Paragon Times. According to the in-game text, she's freelance - she runs her own website. It's just that her name's been used as a byline for a few of the Paragon Times articles on the CoH page. My mistake.)
@Acyl
VIRTUE
Blue: Realpolitik, Leading Lady, Glass Lass, Superball, Alec Kazam
Red: Battery Acid, Obsolete, Bugfix
Been working on this for a while, and figured...heck, I'll just post. Hopefully, someone out there will like it. Here's a little something from Superball, my wisecracking scrapper on Virtue. A hero in spite of himself.
I'll probably update at least once or twice a week, until this is done. For now, enjoy...
* * *
FOUR SEASONS SHUFFLE
* * *
I'm not a morning person.
Left to my own devices, I'll gladly sleep the day away. Me and the sun, we're not exactly on speaking terms. But it's not my fault, okay? I work most nights, so our schedules don't exactly match. Besides, the sun's a nasty little creep. He never writes, he never calls, I don't think I ever meant anything to him.
I hate mornings.
But I don't have a choice. Not today. I've got an appointment.
Still, getting out of bed, that's a pain and a half.
Groaning, I hauled myself off the mattress, slinging aside the covers. Stumbling on the floor before regaining my balance. Blearily, I peered at the clock on the beside table. Electric green digits blinked merrily.
I swear, the damn thing was laughing at me.
I'd set the alarm to go off an hour ago. It had. I'd spent the last sixty minutes hammering the snooze button at five-minute intervals.
Look, I really hate mornings, okay?
Bleh.
At least the room was still dim. Not much light filtering through the blinds. Enough to see by, but not enough to be irritating, what with my eyes still sensitive from the coma of sleep.
Small comfort.
I headed for the bathroom, and parked myself over the sink. I looked in the mirror, and my reflection stared back - hair mussed, unshaven, a livid bruise running down the left cheek.
Gingerly, I touched it - then immediately wished I hadn't. Ow.
I swore. Not at anyone in particular, just in general.
But honestly, it wasn't so bad.
Considering I'd gone to bed with a broken jaw.
The worst of it had healed overnight. The only injuries left were just cosmetic.
Still hurt like hell, though.
Picking up the toothpaste, I squeezed out a tiny bead of minty freshness. The tube was nearly empty, so it took some doing. Then I brushed my teeth. Between the miniscule amount of toothpaste and the state of my toothbrush bristles, it didn't really do much for dental hygiene.
But it got the taste of sleep out of my mouth. That counts.
I splashed some water on my face, and stared at the mirror again. I still looked like crap, but at least I was marginally awake crap.
Shaving was probably a bad idea, with my face like that. So I skipped that.
Briefly, I considered a shower. But hell...I was clean enough. And water's expensive. I was late on the bills as is.
Hygienes overrated, anyway.
So I just fixed my ponytail and headed out. Grabbed a couple of aspirin from the bathroom cabinet on the way. Painkillers. Elixir of the Gods. I think the guy at the neighbourhood store worries about me. I tend to clean out his stock on a weekly basis.
Screw him. I can't help it. It's not like I'm addicted or anything. I need the damn things. With my lifestyle, it's that, or run around screaming like a little girl the whole day.
I headed to the kitchen. Well, kitchenette, anyway. My miserable little apartment's too small for a proper kitchen. Just a scarred counter, a couple drawers, and aging appliances predating the Industrial Revolution. Not quite a kitchen. But close enough for government work.
Opening the wheezing mini-fridge, I looked at my food supply. I didn't have many breakfast options. There was bread, but it was stale. It was stale when I got it. Fresh food? That's for people with money.
Still, sufficiently charred...it could make decent toast. I figured.
But I didn't want to fire up the toaster. Fire up, literally. Last time I used the thing, it tried to kill me. Luckily, the burns healed fast. But people were asking me weird questions for a -week-. By Wednesday I was telling folks I'd been mugged by a Clockwork boss named Toaster Prince.
So bread was out. I didn't feel like going one-on-one with my kitchen appliances so early in the day.
That left menu B.
I snagged a bowl of cereal and my pet carton of milk. The cereal was stale, too...but I wasn't worried about that. The milk hid the taste, mostly.
Especially since the milk was two weeks past its expiry date.
I stuck a spoon in it and called it breakfast. It'd do.
I began shovelling cereal into my mouth. It didn't taste very good, but it was food. And I wasn't worried about food poisoning.
I don't get sick. I heal too fast for that.
I can deaden my taste buds, too. Not much, but enough. I'd have had trouble forcing this crap down, otherwise.
Taste bud control. Such a lifesaver. Saved my sanity a couple years back, on a truly awful date.
Not that it happens a lot. I don't have much of a sex life. Bacteria get more action that I do.
Look at the milk. The bacteria in there? They're definitely getting more than me. Having lots of little bacteria-babies.
Lift spoon. Chew. Swallow.
Ugh. Even suppressing the gag reflex...
...bleh.
Mind, if nothing else, this breakfast might be effective in combat. Biological weapon. Some thug punches me in the stomach. I vomit all over him. Victory.
It works for zombies, right? I mean, I've had corpses puke on me dozens of times. Dr. Vahz might be a whiz at reanimating bodies, but he can't seem to wire a stomach right. Bless his black heart. If he still has one after all that reconstructive surgery, anyway.
Of course, much more of this breakfast, and I might need reconstructive surgery.
So when the distraction came, I welcomed it.
My laundry was ringing.
Now, contrary to what my landlady thinks, I do organise my clothes. I have them nicely sorted, in two piles - soiled and unsoiled.
Look. My flat's too freaking tiny to fit a washing machine. At least by any mundane means. And I'm not desperate enough to break the laws of reality for just a modern convenience. Especially one I can't afford.
But hand-washing clothes takes time. And visiting the laundromat takes money. I don't have much of either.
That means a big pile of dirty clothes.
Doing the Nokia tango.
Well, kinda, anyway. It wasn't a phone ringing, nothing so passé.
No, my suit was ringing. The cowl, anyway. I fished around in the clothes pile and pulled out the offending article, pulling it over my head.
Putting on my game face, I ran through the mnemonics for the role. Slightly nasal whine, excessive cheeriness...
"Yo," I said, with an enthusiasm I didn't feel, "Superball's House of Heroism. How can I hurt...I mean, help you this fine morning?"
There was a groan on the other end. My caller didn't appreciate the joke. Which was okay. I didn't either. But bad humour's part of the persona. I've got standards to maintain. All part of the job, see?
"...right," she said, after a moment. It was Juliana. She's a reporter, one of the best in the business. She works the costume beat, and passes info to me and other heroes. We've got a good working relationship. Emphasis on 'working', though. I asked her out, once, but it didn't go too well. She was rather pissed at my keeping the mask on the whole evening.
In retrospect, I sorta see her point. It clashed with the rented tux.
"Ha, ha, funny," she was saying, her voice rattling from the tiny speaker in my ear. She didn't sound amused, though, more like she was gonna rip my entrails out and string 'em from the rafters. "You're late. Where the HELL are you?"
"Uhhhhhh..."
I flicked my goggles on, and glanced at the time display. Oh crap.
"...on my way, sorry. Got, uh...delayed, there was...a crime, see. The Seventh Street Shamleggers knocked over an alcohol store with a bulldozer, but the bulldozer ate them. It was hungry, and..."
"Superball?"
"Yeah?"
"Shut up."
"Shutting."
"Just hurry."
"Yes, ma'am."
She hung up.
I hurried.
* * *
(Next Episode: Superball meets spandex. Superball meets public transport. "This is Paragon City, weird capital of the universe.")
@Acyl
VIRTUE
Blue: Realpolitik, Leading Lady, Glass Lass, Superball, Alec Kazam
Red: Battery Acid, Obsolete, Bugfix