Shinko's Forum Game Writings

[Shinko]

Non-Medieval ones, specifically, since I already have a hella long thread for that game. XD

But yeah, I figured this may as well exist, right? I've been working on a super, super long prequel story to the Hero City game, and apparently my inspiration is giving me other ideas for things so may as well take advantage.

For organizational purposes, fic titles will be color coded by what story/game they are spawned off of. Hero City will be blue, Wrighton (the modern timeline) will be green, Wrighton (the alien timeline) will be brown, and AUs of any of the above will be pink.

I'll use this first post as a directory, when/if I start accumulating more stories to post here.

[Shinko]

Out of the blue inspiration that hit me today while listening to music on Pandora. Wrote it in about three hours.

Weakness and Strength

SPOILER: Click to show

Denial was a very powerful thing, or so Bill Sinclair had discovered in the weeks since his awakening in the hospital. At first he hadn’t been sure what was even going on. His six year old son, Oswald, had been standing next to the bed on his right, looking into Bill’s face with fretful blue eyes so like his own. It was far from the first time Bill had awoken to an unfamiliar bed, under an unfamiliar ceiling- such were the risks involved in working his job. It wasn’t the first time, either, that he’d awoken to an IV in his arms, or the dim giddy fug of morphine in his veins. His first instinct, upon seeing the way Ossie’s brow was pinched, the way his fingers worried at the white blanket of the bed, and the deep black raccoon rings of fatigue under his son’s eyes, was to reach out a hand to brush the boy’s hair. A comforting gesture, to reassure him that Daddy was okay.

It was in that moment, when Bill reached for his son’s head to pat him, that he’d realized the arm he was reaching with wasn’t there. Attached to the base of his shoulder, where once there had been flesh and bone and sinew, now there lay only air, a limp shroud of the linen bedsheets speaking starkly to the emptiness underneath.

It seemed… wrong. The man could still feel his arm there. The articulation of each joint in his fingers, the smooth sensation of muscles contracting as he flexed his elbows, it was there like an invisible companion lingering just out of his line of sight.

Fortunately, Ossie had been comforted enough by his father’s return to consciousness that the attempted gesture proved unneeded. The small boy had bounced up onto the bed excitedly, flinging his arms around Bill’s chest and babbling incoherently about how worried he’d been and how long it had been since the veil of unconsciousness had claimed the elder Sinclair’s mind. But for his own part, Bill was unable to join in Ossie’s joy, because the little boy’s weight on the sheets and yanked them taught around the stump of Bill’s arm. Unlike the phantom sensations of fingers and flesh, the pain of that pressure on his wounds was very much real, and the hero’s agonized cries had brought the nurses rushing into the room to tend him.

Anna had not been among those tending him. It was a conflict of interest, so she’d once explained, for her to keep being his assigned physician when they’d been dating for two years. But she’d come by later, not as a doctor but as a friend. That was when it had finally been explained to him what had happened. When the memories finally came rushing back, through the fug of the morphine and the protective shield of his own brain.

The cliff. The fight. Star Prophet.

He’d realized what must have happened the minute she told him his own mystical gate had sealed around his arm, severing it. After all, that same arm had been the only thing holding Star- or Devin, as Bill better knew them- from falling nearly a mile into the forest below the sheer cliff face.

In the weeks that followed, as his wounds closed and he was gradually eased off of the painkillers and returned to clear thought, Bill wept many times for his lost friend. The name ‘Star’ had been apt, for Devin had shown like a beacon of warmth even during some of the most trying times of Bill’s life.

For himself, however, Bill spared no tears. He knew, on an intellectual level, that he was going to need some time to adjust to having lost his arm. He knew that. Yet, in his mind’s eye it was still there. He had to remind himself often not to reach for things on that side, when subconscious instinct superseded the memory of his new disability. He was certain, given enough time, that he would be able to operate as easily as he’d done before. That he would return to work, perhaps not in this season but at the start of the next. He attended interviews and press events when asked, letting the powers at be in HCN milk him for angst ratings as they liked until he was back in fighting shape.

That’s what he told himself. But the adjustment was coming with frustrating slowness.

“I think,” Bill remarked through clenched teeth as he returned from yet another doctor’s appointment, “that I’m going to forgo any prosthetics.”

Anna looked up from the couch, where she’d been sitting with Ossie while he watched cartoons. Ash blond hair slid into her eyes as she tilted her head quizzically.

“Why? It’d make things easier, wouldn’t it?”

“I don’t like them,” Bill growled frustratedly, slumping into a nearby armchair. “They… they feel wrong. Heavy and uncomfortable and awkward.”

“Bill, of course they do,” she admonished gently. “You have to practice with them.”

He shook his head ardently. “They’re too clunky, Anna. Not fast enough for what I need in my job.”

She bit her lip. “Right. You’re… right.”

He raised a brow. “You don’t sound like you agree.”

“I just worry, Bill. That you’re setting your expectations too high for your recovery. Your return to being a hero.”

Bill bristled. “I have been the Gatekeeper since I was twenty-four. It’s my whole life, Ann. I’m not giving it up.” He swallowed hard. “Devin wouldn’t want me to give it up.”

Ossie, silent up until this point- he’d finally started to develop his own personality in the last year, but he remained largely soft spoken and demure- finally piped up with a soft, “I miss them. They’re fun. Now it’s sad all the time.”

The boy’s father inhaled sharply, his blue eyes starting to sting. “M-me too, buddy. Me too.”

An awkward silence fell, broken only by the sounds of the characters on the television, singing some wildly cheerful, tonally inappropriate song. Finally, unable to take the tension anymore, Bill rose from his chair- or would have, had he not leaned forward to push himself up with both arms and promptly overbalanced on his right side. He yelped, nearly falling forwards and out of the chair entirely, but just managed to grab the lip of a coffee table in front of the chair in time to catch himself.

Anna had jolted to her feet, starting towards him, but Bill cut her off with a sharp headshake. “I’m fine,” he rasped. “I’m fine.” After taking a moment to slow his racing heart, he stood, legs wobbly but firm. Again, like a mantra, he repeated, “I’m fine.”

Anna swallowed hard, her adam's apple bobbing in her throat. “Bill-” she started, but he shook his head sharply.

“I’m going for a run,” he said. “Just through the park across the way. To clear my head.”

“The park?” Ossie chirped, perking up. “Can I come? We haven’t gone to the park in forever.”

Bill forced a wobbly smile, shaking his head. “Maybe next time, buddy. I’m not playing, just getting some exercise.”

The boy’s lower lip protruded sullenly, but he didn’t complain. Normally Bill would’ve spared a moment to be relieved and gratified at this- a sign of individuality from the child, a sight of disagreement with his father’s opinions even if he didn’t voice it- but right now, the man was far too frazzled.

“I’ll be back,” he said, turning back towards the door. “Maybe we can all go out for burgers later, hm? You’d like that, right Os?”

Ossie’s unhappy expression cleared, the child seemingly mollified by this compromise. Anna, on the other hand, still looked doubtful, her eyes drilling into Bill’s back as he moved to slide his tennis shoes on. He knew she was worried, but he wished she wouldn’t be- Bill had been through a lot in his long career as a superhero. He had endured trials before, he could do so again.

He was able to remember to reach with his left hand for the doorknob- he was getting better at that- and soon enough the man was out in the streets of Heraclia, puffing lightly as he jogged down the sidewalk.

Bill was lost in thought as he ran. Nothing about this situation felt fair. It had been the screw-up of another hero that had sent Devin toppling off the cliff, and their failure to act in time that had cost Bill his arm as well as Star Prophet’s life. That hero had been fired, and was facing serious legal issues for his actions, but it didn’t change the fact that he was still alive. Whole. Nor that the inherent flaws of the system that had given him the entitlement to act the way he had remained unchanged. Unexamined.

Star had once used the fame of the show to reach out to minds and hearts, to champion a cause they believed in. Once he’d recovered, could Bill perhaps do the same? Rally the public support for systemic change in how Hero City, the show behind the supers, was handled?

...Maybe. But first he’d have to actually get on with the business of recovering. Would it ever go away, this phantom limb that felt entirely as real as his whole and healthy arm had? Would he learn to write with his left hand, so that he wouldn’t have to keep asking his six year old son for help composing legible correspondences?

Mid-thought, Bill’s foot hit an uneven spot in the concrete. The next thing he knew, he was falling.

The crack in the pavement wasn’t particularly big. Half an inch. Maybe less. Probably it had been cracked by the ground beneath it settling over time, so that one side was slightly lower than the other, until the concrete could no longer bear the stress of its own weight and had split in two. Bill didn’t know how long the sidewalk had been damaged here, since usually he paid it very little mind. For all he knew it could’ve been like that as long as he’d lived in this neighborhood. It might’ve been under his feet hundreds, thousands of times as he ran along just this track in the morning before breakfast.

But all those other times, he hadn’t been ten pounds heavier on one side than the other. His center of gravity had been in a decidedly different place. And if he’d lunged out with his right hand, the fingers and palm he’d felt at the end of his arm would have been warm flesh to brace himself in his fall, instead of phantom sensations that could no more hold him up than could air.

His one good arm caught the pavement and slid, unable to hold him up on its own. Gravel and cement tore open his palm even as his chin and cheek were making impact, and he yelped in pain as the coppery tang of blood filled his mouth.

For a time he lay there, too stunned do more than quiver and whimper in pain. His face hurt. His hand hurt. His knees hurt. Everything hurt, scrapes and bruises no doubt forming across his entire body. He’d been hurt worse than this physically, far worse. This was what he told himself as he rolled over onto his side, trying to push himself up. However, once again his lone arm was not equal to the task, and he slipped back down hard onto the pavement.

As the weight of his own helplessness, settled upon him, the man who had faced down monsters and aliens, supervillains and natural disasters… started to cry. Not for his lost friend, but for himself, for the realization that all of the denial in the world could not undo what had been wrought. For the knowledge that what had been his life’s work for so long was beyond him forever- if he couldn’t even run down a straight stretch of sidewalk, he would never be anything but a liability in battle now.

In the end it was one of his neighbors who found him there, huddled in a broken, sobbing ball on the sidewalk. She had rushed back to the apartment to fetch Anna, who was at his side in minutes with Ossie’s hand hooked in hers.

“Bill!” she cried, horrified at the sight of him bleeding and bruised on the pavement. Ossie, for his part, lurched free of her and darted to his father’s side, small hands clutching at his clothes. Normally the man might have emerged from himself at least long enough to reassure his son he was alright, but now, here, Bill just… couldn’t do it. He didn’t have the mental fortitude left to compartmentalize.

Anna knelt beside him, gently working her hands under his back to pull him up into a sitting position. He offered up no resistance, but didn’t help to hold his own weight either, instead collapsing against her shoulder like a marionette whose strings had been cut. She didn’t say anything- only put her arms around him, holding onto him and running gentle fingers through his tousled blond hair.

At length, he finally whispered. “You were right.”

“Bill-”

“No,” he cut over her. “You were right. I was stupid. Stubborn. W-what good am I to anybody now? I’m d-damaged. A broken tool that can only ever gather dust on a shelf now.”

She didn’t offer up a reply to that. Instead she just held him, nuzzling her cheek against his. On his other side, Bill was distantly aware of Oswald wrapping small arms around his waist, the little boy’s forehead resiting against his father’s spine. Bill hiccuped, his lower jaw trembling.

“I don’t think I can do this anymore,” he moaned.

“That’s why I’m here,” she said simply, her arms not moving from around his shoulders. “It’s okay if this is too heavy for you, Bill. It’s okay if you aren’t strong enough.”

“But I have to be,” the man growled bitterly “It’s who I am. It’s my life. If I can’t do this, what’s left for me? What am I?”

“I still love you, Daddy,” Ossie piped up quietly. “Even if you don’t got two arms anymore.”

Bill finally raised his head, ever so slightly, to glance around towards the child who looked so much like he had at that same age. Anna kissed Bill gently on the forehead. “You’re still his hero, Bill. Still mine. Even if you’re not a hero anymore.”

She squeezed him again. “I know this isn’t easy. I know it feels like your entire life as you know it is ending. You can feel that way. You can be unhappy. We’ll help you hold together. We’ll pick up the pieces.”

Something inside of the hero cracked, and went limp against Anna again, soundless wracking sobs shaking his body. He felt no release from these tears, only a deep, bottomless well of despair and emptiness that he had no power to fill.

But as he felt the warmth of his girlfriend and his son against his body, he knew he didn’t have to fill that void. They loved him. Bill. Not the Gatekeeper. And their love would carry him through this.