((I'll give it a go i guess.))
On the edge of Atlas Park stood a tall, ten-story building. An ancient, gothic style tower.
The Library. Inside it were hundreds of thousands of old books and scrolls, the pages of which hadn't been read for decades. Dust reigned supreme in the place, covering all the texts without prejudice. In the center of the building going all the way to the top floor was a great, circular staircase.
Hanging upside down, his legs around a crossbar below a giant bell on the ceiling of the top floor, was Max Black. No one called him that of course. Those that knew he even existed called him Draculad. His eyes were closed, and he was apparently sleeping, as he had been since early in the morning. Now it was nearing midnight.
On the outside of the Library, covering half of the west wall in between the ninth and tenth floors was a giant clock. As it struck Twelve, the giant bell above Draculad began to sound. Max released his legs and began to fall with the sound of the bell. Falling past the staircase, all the way to the bottom floor, turning upwards in time to gracefully land on the floor.
"Here we go." He said to himself, pulling out his personal police scanner.
((It's now midnight to set a starting time... 
))
((Good idea. I'll send a survivor your way.))
Leon staggered, his chest bleeding severely. He was nothing more than a civilian who happened to arrive after the dissapearence incident.
He knew one safe place, a higher point to lose these bodies of strange red substances. He gazed at the many ruined roads and trashed statues lying about Atlas Park. It wasn't the best place anymore, ever since the dissapearence of the rest of the town.
Leon wasn't only bleeding. He was scared, hungry, thirsty, tired, cold, sick...Leon had so many ailments he couldn't keep still nor continue moving. His legs were too painful to keep staggering on like this, but he was eager to move, almost hyperactive with adreniline.
Leon slowly turned the cold steel knob of the ancient library. He knew this was one of the highest points in all of Paragon, and he angrily stared upwards, to the top of the massive staircase. He climbed the winding staircase for what seemed like hours, no, days, however was only a slight amount more than 15 minutes. He rested on the final step, and stared down, panting.
Watching the strange man crawl up the steps from the bottom floor, Draculad couldn't help but wonder what he was up to.
Focusing his energy he retraced his fall back up, except he was jumping from one side of the circular staircase to another. He didn't have as spectacular powers as other heroes, but he enjoyed his abilities and was good at what he did.
Reaching the top in no time, he helped the man into a sitting position.
"Easy now." He said. "What happened outside?"
((I'll try it out))
On top of the oh-so-familiar Atlas Statue in Atlas Park sat a young man. He had dark blue jeans with holes torn at the knees and a black hoodie, although the hood was down at the moment. He had shaggy brown hair tha was slightly longer than normal, and deep green eyes. Next to him lay a black quiver filled with normal, and not-so-normal arrows and a black longbow. He sat in lotus position, eyes closed and meditating, when he heard a buzz in his pocket. He sighed, and reached into the opening of his jeans and pulled out a cell-phone that doubles as his police scanner.
He flipped the phone open and a mechanical voice of a woman spoke, relating recent happenings. He heard of a lost hero and decided to look for him. The scanner said the Kings Row area, so the man flipped the phone shut and stood up. He slung the quiver and arrows over his back, got his general direction of the train, and jumped off the statue, superspeeding towards the train.
As he arrived in Kings Row, he decided to run around at random and hope to find the young hero. So Matrix, the name most people called him and he adopted as his handle, searched the small area for Gust.
((Kay, up to you now))
(OOC: This'll be a challenge for me considering the OTHER thread, but I've been looking for an excuse to use this character now that her origin is all wrapped up 
)
Silence. Akemi wasn't used to silence. King's Row was usually a bustling hive of activity, but now it was quiet.
Why?
How?
She didn't know.
Don't ask me! came the voice from within her, Kan'u, her Kheldian symbiote.
"I know Kan'u, you never seem to know anything these days," Akemi smirked, "May as well call and tell Jack I'll be home late."
I hope he makes lasagna again, Kan'u commented in a 'tone' that denoted giggling.
"Shut up Kan'u," Akemi laughed as she took out her cell phone.
She wasn't getting a signal.
Odd.
Very odd.
"Huh, no deadzones my cute asian [censored]," she muttered, taking to the air to try to find better reception.
That was when she saw...
(OOC: Your move )
((I'm thinking this looks interesting, but I'm not entirely clear on what's going on... the whole city is empty, except for a handful of heroes and these red termite things..? Sounds like somebody was inspired by the out-of-sync bug, heh...))
"A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head." Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates
MA Arcs: #12285, "Small Fears", #106553, "Trollbane", #12669, "How to Survive a Robot Uprising"
Richard (Rick to his friends) woke up slowly, fumbling about for his watch to see what time it was. Seeing it was only midnight he rolled back over and was about to go to sleep when he realised he'd gone to bed without changing out of his costume yet again. It wasn't until he was halfway undressed that he finally noticed the unnatural silence around him. That was wierd, usually King's Row was full of noise. Even in the middle of the night, there was always something happening outside to produce sound of some kind or other.
Sticking his head out the window, he looked up and down the street in something resembling surprise at the fact that not only was there no noise but there was absolutely nothing visibly moving out there. Not even the usual Skull thugs selling Superadine on the street corner. Stupid guys that the were, always came back no matter how many beatings he handed them but tonight they were conspicuously absent. Grumbling to himself about lack of sleep he put the costume top he'd just gotten out of back on and grabbed his axe, feeling the familiar tingle as the aura of invulnerability the enchanted weapon gave him settled into place as usual. Not wanting to wake any of the other people in the building he climbed out the window and dropped to the ground outside his third story window. Resting his axe over one shoulder, he picked a direction at random and set off to find the source of this unnatural calm.
[Admin] Emperor Marcus Cole: STOP!
[Admin] Emperor Marcus Cole: WAIT ONE SECOND!
[Admin] Emperor Marcus Cole: WHAT IS A SEAGULL DOING ON MY THRONE!?!?
As Matrix was running, he saw someone jump out of a window across from the street where he was. He stopped short and banked a right, stopping in front of the man. He remembered his hood was still down and was slightly mad at himself. It's my costume, I gotta remember that he thought. He remembered the man in front of him and asked "You Gust?" From the man's costume, he looked like a Hero, but he was always ready pull out his bow and arrows.
no u
Infinity and Victory mostly
dUmb, etc.
lolz PvP anymore, Market PvP for fun and profit
[ QUOTE ]
"You Gust?"
[/ QUOTE ]
Richard looked up as someone spoke, reflexively bringing the axe down off his shoulder into a ready position just in case. He straightened up when he saw who was talking to him though, most likely another hero by the looks of him. "Nope, can't say I am sorry." He started to say he'd help look for this Gust, but another voice interrupted him.
"Seriously, does he look like someone who would be called Gust?" The second voice came quite clearly from the axe, and was also distinctly female. "Anyway, he's Richard and I'm Areu. We'll help you find Gust if you want."
Richard sighed. "Sorry. Enchanted axe, has a will of its own and getting her to shut up is next to impossible most of the time." Areu just laughed.
[Admin] Emperor Marcus Cole: STOP!
[Admin] Emperor Marcus Cole: WAIT ONE SECOND!
[Admin] Emperor Marcus Cole: WHAT IS A SEAGULL DOING ON MY THRONE!?!?
((Eh, I'm just going to jump in, if I've got the wrong end of the stick, I'm sure somebody will tell me))
Danny "Target Lad" Troy was soaring above King's Row, flying hard, moving fast enough that his short dark hair was whipping in the wind. His presence there was largely coincedental- the Row was the closest zone to his family's home in the South end of Steel Canyon, and when he'd been awoken by the sudden silence, the fourteen-year-old archer had decided to check and see if any other sections of the city had been affected.
There was a chill in the air this late at night, so rather than his usual t-shirt and jeans, the boy was wearing a long dark trench, green khakis, his usual bullseye-emblazoned t-shirt, his usual targetting monocle, and rocket boots. He'd be the first to admit that the open flames of the rocket exhaust combined with the long 'tail' of the trench was impractical, but he liked the effect, and the speed boost the boots gave his flight was nice to have, especially when he was expecting trouble.
He banked sharply, curvetting above the old Garment Works, a blue-white comet in the still night air as he scanned the ground, studying it. The Police band had managed to squawk something about a missing hero, a little older than himself, but the transmission had been garbled, and the radio quickly went as silent as the rest of the city.
((Plague, if you want to bump Akemi into TL, feel free- he hasn't noticed her yet, but with the rocket boot exhaust, he'd be visible for a good distance))
"A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head." Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates
MA Arcs: #12285, "Small Fears", #106553, "Trollbane", #12669, "How to Survive a Robot Uprising"
Akemi noticed target Lad out of the corner of her eye, still huffing about the lack of reception.
Maybe he knew why her cell phone wasn't working.
"HEY!" she called, flitting over towards him, her own trail of light energy weaving through the air, "What's goin' on around here?!"
Danny whirled at the shout, startlingly loud in the stillness of the empty city. He relaxed slightly when he recognized the interloper as a Peacebringer- most of them were okay. "Neh, nae clue." he answered, his not-quite-British accent thickening a bit with his nervousness.
"I dinna ha' any idea as t'what's goin' on. Woke up wi' no noise an' th'city was gone... or a'least th'people were. 'tis makin' me nervous, if 'm bein' honest." he admitted. A faint noise to the South made him glance around. "'tis amazin' how far noise carries i' this city when there isna any interference." he added, turning towards the noise and accelerating, blue-white flames leaving a comet's trail through the night sky as he arrowed towards Richard and Matrix' position. "Y'comin' or wha'?" he called back over his shoulder.
"A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head." Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates
MA Arcs: #12285, "Small Fears", #106553, "Trollbane", #12669, "How to Survive a Robot Uprising"
"Of course," the young Peacebringer said, flitting around the rocketing man, "By the way, I'm Akemi, Akemi Shido. I don't have a 'Peacebringer' name...long story. What's your name?"
Suddenly, on the middle of the conversation, the walls of each building seemed to cry out for the heroes. The small red termites hurried out of the cracks inside the walls, gradually pulling apart and expanding. They grew as the crack in the wall grew, eventually coming out by the masses.
They didn't form into the body-like state, but continued to chase after the two heroes speaking to eachother.
((They're going to be pretty hard to fight unless you have some sort of AoE-form power. Of course, you wouldn't HAVE to fight.
No, I wouldn't kill you unless you asked me to. Especially this early.))
((I'm going to assume you were interrupting Plague's conversation and not mine ))
(OOC: Except Akemi and Danny are flying through the air, probably pretty fast too...)
((Oh, sorry Plague, I didn't know about that detail. Ignore my last post.))
OOC:
I'd like to pop in since my schedule is so barren, but a clarifying question first. Is all of Paragon City infested with the terminites or just certain sections?
Matrix flinched when the man brought his axe down from his shoulder, and almost superspeeded away until he noticed that he meant no harm. "So-" he almost apologized until someone else spoke. He darted his head around, but found no one, until he picked up on what was happening. He listened politely to the axe and the man, more out of shock then out of actual politeness. "Well" the young man said, coming over his amazement "I guees the axe is right, althogh I don't make assumptions anymore, all it does is get me in trouble" He smiled, then outstretched his hand. "Name's Matrix" he said, of course, before he saw the horde of red termites coming out of the walls.
Everything slowed down around him. The oncoming roaches coming to a near crawl as he reached at a normal speed towards his longbow at his back. He reached his other hand towards his quiver of arrows and laid his hand upon the one he wanted. He could tell which arrows were which by the texture of the arrows and the feathers on the ends for accuracy. He pulled the sleek arrow out of the quiver and knocked it on his bow. This arrow was made special, a non-lethal dose of liquid nitrogen deposited in the arrowhead. He drew back and let the arrow fly, an audible twang echoed through the soundless night. The arrow landed at the front of the termite army and a wall of ice rose.
To any bystanders, it would have been half a second between him seeing the termites and releasing the arrow. He knocked another arrow, but didn't fire yet. "We'll shake hands later" he said to Richard, still keeping his sights on the roaches.
"Heh, you have arrows and I have an axe. Not exactly the most modern of heroes are we?", Richard laughed.
"Richard, now is not the time for jokes. You know what to do, now do it already before those bugs eat you, or worse." Richard had to admit she did have a point, there was a time and place for making jokes and here and now wasn't really it. He shifted the axe into his left hand, thus freeing up his right to lob what looked like a fireball over Matrix's ice wall. It was nowhere near as strong as what a blaster type might produce but it was a fireball none the less, and since they were only bugs he didn't imagine they would take much to kill individually. It was just that there were so damn many of them.
((Yay for epic pools ))
[Admin] Emperor Marcus Cole: STOP!
[Admin] Emperor Marcus Cole: WAIT ONE SECOND!
[Admin] Emperor Marcus Cole: WHAT IS A SEAGULL DOING ON MY THRONE!?!?
The Gravitational Master, AKA Grav, peered down the top of the Steel Canyon apartment and surveyed the empty streets.
He knew about this area, normally the Tsoo would hide in the park or the Outcasts would terrorize citizens. Now, even the villainous types were hopeful for.
He seemed worried at the least bit that not even a car roll along the street. He wasn't sure what to do, so he unlocked the hatch on the rooftop and slid into the fifth floor of the building towering over the park.
Grav used his gravitational powers to lift the door from it's place. He casually sauntered into the apartment room and sat on the dusty sofa next to the wall.
A tiny red bug scuttled on the armchair. He set his fist down and crushed it.
Three more arrived. He got up, and scratched his masked head, his eyes glued to the couch. More and more of the termite-like creatures arrived, like always. But this time, he dealt with them himself.
He lifted a large pile of the creatures with his gravity-defying power and sent them off of the balcony.
This aggrovated them, most of them forming into the second-phase body, solid and red.
"Gah!" Grav shouted, as he sprinted to the balcony and took a great, gravity-defying leap to the street. The body leaned over the balcony, then suddenly warped away and broke into the smaller termite-like creatures.
[ QUOTE ]
OOC:
I'd like to pop in since my schedule is so barren, but a clarifying question first. Is all of Paragon City infested with the terminites or just certain sections?
[/ QUOTE ]
((Most walled-in areas are colonized, they can rapidly colonize a certain area. War Walls are un-colonizable, along with any areas that sprayed with any type of toxin. All types of Vuron are resistant to toxins, excluding the queen, making only places that are yet to be colonized vulnerable to the toxins.
What I just found really weird, is that ants just started piling on my desk.))
"They call m'Target Lad, an' all this i' prolly my fault somehow... I seem t'be a lightnin' rod f'r stupid." the boy archer said, working a shrug into his flight. "If'n ye dinna like th'stupid codename, call me Danny."
Arcing downwards, he drew his bow, the transparent arms of the Vanguard-issue Talsorian bow almost imperceptible in the darkness. A brief roar of lightning around him, and he loosed a fistful of arrows.
Below, Matrix and Richard found a brief respite in the form of a shower of arrows... each one electrified to the point of being the world's fastest, pointiest bug zapper. Target Lad hovered down, still staying a good twenty feet off the ground- as far as the kid was concerned, 'gravity' was something that happened to other people. "So... I dinna suppose tha' you lot ha' any better idea o' what's happenin' than we do?" he questioned.
"A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head." Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates
MA Arcs: #12285, "Small Fears", #106553, "Trollbane", #12669, "How to Survive a Robot Uprising"
September 12, 2008
What may have seemed like a simple interrigation could turn into a nightmare for Gust. Gust was your average hero, born into a family of mutants. Family tradition says "you're a hero at thirteen." Gust is fifteen, and he attends a strict and private high school, specialized for mutants and other natural powers. Now... onto the real story of this day.
Gust rummaged through his backpack to find his police band scanner. He switched it on and observed the data pouring through his ears:
"BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR DR. MILON, SAID TO BE CAPTURED BY AN UNKNOWN FORCE. HE HAS BEEN OBSERVED LAST IN WAREHOUSE 112.". Gust knew this was his call of duty, and he galloped down the sidewalk.
Nobody was taking a walk on the sidewalk.
No cars cruised along the dusty roads of Paragon.
Not even Skulls mugged passing-by pedestrians or Vazhilok interrogating civilians.
The whole area of King's Row was completely empty excluding him.
Total silence.
His eyes wandered about the streets. He looked for strange signs... anything that could possibly be a clue to open the idea of this silence.
He sprinted down the gringy sidewalks and swung open the rusty warehouse door.
Yet still, at the doorway, nothing. Nothing but silence.
He lifted the first garage door. He recognized a dozen termite-looking creatures crawling on the wall.
Then came a dozen more.
And another...
And another...
Until finally the wall was full of strange red termites, quickly lunguing towards him. They formed into a humanoid-shape, and suddenly shifted into a fully-solid state. It was a gigantic red body. Nothing else.
Gust stared it up and down, until finally, it moved.
It slammed Gust into the wall, more red termite-like monstrosities racing out of the white walls.
The red body choaked him on the wall, with the strange termite-like creatures crawling onto him, taking complete control of his body.
This is the aftermath of this incident.
((Okay, let's hit the basic rules: no godmoding, controling, etc.
You'll be playing as part of a search party for Gust, and the rest of the Red Giant's victims. They're all that's out there anymore, but they tend to stay inside walls. If you get too close to a wall, they'll probably pop out and try to kill you.
The red body-things can only be formed when you disturb an entire colony of those termites.
I'll be controling the victims you come across, along with the colonies of red creatures. Anything I forget?))