Bridge City: A Superhero Story (Roleplay!)

[Tiger]

Dayna was setting out another platter of drinks when someone appeared on stage out of thin air. She felt a rush of surprise, but being startled no longer made her jump. The woman must be a superhuman, probably a teleporter. Probably a hero with a bruised ego trying to crash the party, Dayna thought...until the woman spoke with much more sinister intent.

Dayna slowly set the platter of wine flutes down, and assuming what she hoped was an expression of baffled confusion, backed away until the crowd shielded her from the white-haired woman's sight. She glanced out the window, checked that nobody was watching, then shut her eyes and vanished.

When Dayna opened her eyes a second later, she was inside the catering truck. It was mostly empty, but a bundle of bags and purses left behind by the caterers were stuffed into a corner. Dayna pulled out her backpack and unzipped a hidden pocket. "Thank you, William," she whispered as she withdrew her costume, so compressed and tightly folded it might have been fresh from a factory.

Dayna dressed in a rush, her fingers flying over the familiar clasps and latches. Blue Jay's uniform was...bright, as her namesake implied - an armored blue top and blue leggings, long black gloves tipped with sharp hooks that looked like talons and tall boots of the same color. A slightly darker blue cape with a feathered texture was hastily draped over her shoulders, she pulled on a mask with a long black bird's beak and a white glare outlining her eyes, and finally, charged her hands with bolts of blue energy and ran them past her head as if to fluff up her hair.

The dark strands did more than fluff - as if charged by static electricity they rose up into a jagged tuft, and absorbed not only the energy from Blue Jay's hand but their shocking color. Despite the situation, Blue Jay allowed herself a smile beneath the bird mask. A gentle push on a pressure point just over her ear flicked dark covers over her eye sockets, and then Blue Jay vanished from the catering van.

A tight frown had returned to her face as she appeared on the side of the building, just below one of the big windows. She snatched at the rim of the building and felt the tractioned pads of her boots latch to the brick. Wishing William had been able to finish the audio-enhancing devices before now, Blue Jay listened with mortal ears for any sounds of panic or the white-haired woman's speech.

[Yoyti]

Kurtis Clark had practiced for this sort of situation. It was listed in chapter 12 (When To Act) of his poorly selling book So You Want To Be A Superhero. If someone materializes suddenly and begins to make a speech, you are to immediately leave, change into your costume, and eavesdrop on the rest of the speech before acting.

Kurtis reached under his table, and pressed a button. A suit was dispensed into his hands. But it wasn't the Disintegrating Cape costume. No. It was his old Ashes costume. Was the (apparently) evil lady behind this? No. Dave Dawson was. But Kurtis didn't know this. What he did know was that he couldn't risk blowing his cover, so he hid the suit and listened in.

He began to realize that he didn't disagree with some of what the lady was saying. Obviously, she was still evil, but given the subject matter of her speech, he began to wonder if maybe he could come out of hiding. Just for the one night. Ashes grabbed the cape of his suit, and tensed up. As he wrote in chapter eight, a superhero must always know where his cape is.

Incidentally, Ashes was the only person who ever had read the eighth chapter. And then only when he was writing it. While enough people had bought the book to make a small profit, no one ever got past chapter four (Monologuing and Ranting). He had later regretted not moving that chapter to the end of the book. What had he been thinking?

Ashes thought all that, and then wondered why.

[Terra]

Patrick sipped a glass of champagne - or, at least, made it seem as if he were (really, his self-control was such that he could probably get away with it, but dangerous things had happened before when he got drunk that were entirely unintentional on his part, and he couldn't have that) - as he listened to a pretty young woman ramble on about everything she hated about her sister's new fiance, who was extremely rich, but, by her account, a sleazy jerk who was going to dump her like he had his many previous girlfriends.

While he was sympathetic, or at least tolerant, at first, he couldn't help but think that her chatter was pointless and unproductive, and thus started to become bored. He began to look around the room for something else to occupy him, so that he wouldn't be tempted to conjure up an imaginary dragon attack or some such thing. (Sometimes he wished that he cared a little bit less about consequences. Life might be a bit more fun if he did. But alas, he always had to think about the future.)

His gaze landed on a rather distinctive man in thick glasses and a high-collared suit that looked rather disheveled in comparison to the perfectly pressed suit jackets surrounding him.

Ah, December Doomsday, thought Patrick. Interesting to see him here, of all people.

Patrick had previously had a few brief encounters with the man - though Doomsday was a man who had caught in his mind immediately on their first meeting. How could you not remember a man with a name like December Doomsday? After their first encounter, Patrick had taken the time to learn a little more about Doomsday. What he had learned was rather vague, but it was enough to know that Doomsday was a man to keep an eye on. (Of course he was, with a name like Doomsday.)

Well, this was a perfect chance to get to know him a little better.

He quickly finished off his "champagne" and said, "Pardon me, but I need to get a refill of my drink. Please, don't mind me." He smiled kindly at the lady who had been speaking.

"Oh, all right," she said, and she turned back to the other men who had gathered and continued right where she had left off.

She wouldn't miss him, Patrick was sure.

He walked off to intercept Doomsday as the latter walked away from a reporter Patrick recognized as being particularly annoying - albeit useful to him at times - but regardless, he was in no mood to talk to her at that moment. He quickly conjured up an image of the Prime Minister and made him walk past on the opposite side of the room from him, visible only to her out of the corner of her eye. The illusion lasted only for a moment, but it was enough to distract her while he walked by.

He quickly approached the bespectacled man.

"Hello, Mr. Doomsday," said Patrick. "What a pleasant surprise to see you here."

At that moment, a white-haired woman appeared quite suddenly on the stage and began to shout at everyone.

Patrick was rather startled - and he was not alone, based on the fact that everyone in the room had immediately stopped talking at once.

That's quite a bold costume, he thought, looking at her medieval-armor-like garb. And a bold declaration, as well.

Patrick detested her sentiment; he found it quite presumptious when anyone presumed to know what was best for the people, the country, and so on. One couldn't ever know that what one was doing was right - there were too many factors. Morality was variable, and besides that, those who claimed to speak for the people were often entirely out of touch with the concerns of the people themselves. So why act as if it were otherwise?

Still, he could not help but be interested in what she would do next. Was she all show, or could she cause some genuine instability? Change things up a bit? Give him new opportunities to twist to his advantage?

Perhaps. He would wait and see what she would do. Then...who knew?

He certainly couldn't predict.

[Jayeee]

It hadn’t been the simple entrance that Jackson had hoped for as he’d stood outside the doors of the charity ball and coerced the security guard into letting him in. The side-effects of his powers meant that he easily loomed over the man; they both knew that he could snap him like a twig if the inclination entered his mind.

“I can’t let you in if you don’t tell me your name, sir. I need to check the guest list,” the guard said meekly, as Jackson leaned on the man for support. He was already experiencing double vision from the whiskey, not that it was anything he wasn’t used to.

“That one,” he said, pointing to a name on the clipboard abstractedly, all the while leering inside to spot the bar.

The guard looked puzzled. “Your name is Veronica?” he asked.

“Tha’sh right,” Jackson slurred and patted the guard on the head, almost flooring him. He slowly made his way through the doors, holding on to anything he could to remain upright and began walking to what appeared to him to be the bar. He stopped on the way to swipe a woman’s glass of champagne who’d tried to greet him out of fear, and then continued swapping empty glasses for full ones as he made his way into the ball.

“And what are your views on this upstanding cause to limit these super-powered beings?” One man asked as his drink was pilfered.

“More kids for schools,” he announced proudly, mixing up the signature line he always used to stay away from political situations. He saluted to the man, spilling champagne on both of their tuxedos and then stumbled over to a nearby table where he all but collapsed on it. At least there was a bottle of champagne on there to keep him company.

And that was where Jackson came to hear Ancien’s speech, or part of it at least. His ears lost interest at ‘hello’ as he attempted to fumble with the champagne cork that was so heinously denying him a drink and muttered, “Hello yerself,” in reply to her.

[Yoyti]

So You Want to be a Superhero has a few things to say on the subject of capes.

A cape, it says, is about the most massively useful thing a superhero can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you face off a villain at the north pole; You can lie on it on sandy beaches while on vacation; You can sleep under it; Use it as a sail on a boat; wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat; Wrap it around your head to ward off noxious fumes; you can wave your cape in emergencies as a distress signal; and, of course, use it to fight crime if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a cape has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a normal (normal: nonsuperhero) discovers that a superhero has his cape with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a GPS, grappling hook, harpoon gun, digital watch, little green pieces of paper, etc., etc. Furthermore the normal will then happily lend the superhero any of these or a dozen other items that the superhero may accidentally have "lost." What the normal will think is that any man who can fight crime across the world, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still knows where his cape is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

The Encyclopedia Britannica also has a few things to say about capes.

It says that a cape is any sleeveless [outer garment], such as a poncho, but usually it is a long garment that covers only the back half of the wearer, fastening around the neck.

The Encyclopedia Britannica sells quite a bit better than So You Want to be a Superhero

~~~

The Disintegrating Cape's cape was particularly impressive. He formed it out of scraps of cloth, and used his powers to keep it in place. It was rather pressing on his powers, but as he rarely ever fought crime anymore, he could afford to have showmanship.

Ashes' cape was much more straightforward. It was a single piece of maroon cloth. It was cheap and easy to replace. And it had to be replaced often. His cape was also very flimsy. It was easy to tear. This was by design. It was all too easy for an enemy to grab onto a hero's cape (and Ashes often thought that his book may have sold better if he'd included this bit of information). A cape that could be torn wouldn't handicap him if it got caught on anything, or if it blew around in his face on a particularly windy day, to cause him to overheat in his already fairly stuffy costume. And while Ashes' powers didn't need a cape to help his powers, he had managed to design a cape that complimented his powers.

His cape had another use. One he hadn't initially counted on, but as Kurtis Clark slowly tore small shreds of cloth off of his old cape, recognized as a valuable weapon.

(OOC; Yes, that's it. All that to explain that Ashes is tearing pieces off of his cape. I did put thought into this.)

[Dju]

Who is this one now? Another megalomaniac, Fenice though, but there was no time to waste now. Even though that woman's speech had a point, her enthusiasm was going too far. Far enough to harm civilians and put this building to the ground.

Fenice kicked the glass once, nothing happened. Twice, nothing again. On the third attempt she gave her kick a boost of fire energy, resulting in a wide whole in the window.

"Everyone please calm down," she yelled as she leaped inside the hall, "the party is over and there is nothing else to see. Go to the emergency exit near to you as fast as possible."
Fenice moved her hands and feet, bending energy to form a wide corridor around the guests, it was bright and colorful like fire to guide them to the exits. And hopefully strong enough to shield them.

[Draco]

Kagenura walks forward and in front of Ancien. He begins to pace back and forth.

"Woah waoh woah woah, so what's going on now? Here I am enjoying a nice ball that I wasn't invited too and here you come in trying to be the center of attention."

He stops and stares at her.

"That's my job. So if you would like to crash the next big shindig, you can. You see, we need to work these things out in a schedule or something."

He begins to think about how they could go about doing this, totally forgetting he was speaking in front of Ancien, a bunch of heroes, and a lot of other people.