On the streets, reputation is everything.
It's known by many names: The Big Apple, The Five Boroughs, The City That Never Sleeps. To you and your crew, however, it's just New York, rife with opportunity. Opportunity for everyone, from the high rollers in Wall Street to the lowest street scum. Like you.
That won't be the case for long, though.
You're known as Big Johnson. With a big johnson, but an even bigger attitude. Truth be told, you are just a middling street thug, but had caught wind of a sneaky scheme by a "business partner": the guard schedule for one of MOST Solutions' distribution centers. Not just that, but a shipment of some top-of-the-line experimental goods were on the menu, from a prototype cybernetic limb to chips that did things you didn't care to memorize. You're in it for the money. With just your meager share of the pay, you could retire for the rest of your life, hitting up nightclubs and blowing it all on illicit narcotics and ever more questionable decisions.
The rest of your family might appreciate the million you could afford to toss at them, too.
When the day came, you all rehearsed the plan, and it went off almost without a hitch: guards slipped past, security disarmed, your presence disguised. That hacker your business partner found really knows his stuff. Carrying anti-tracking bags, your squad of unbelievably lucky entrepreneurs managed to stuff in two to three pieces of tech each, ignoring the ragged books and creepy dolls. One item was worth a lifetime of wealth on the black market, and though the money would take a while to wash clean, you were content with knowing how much would await you in bitcoins.
However, no plan really survives contact with the enemy, and right when you all packed and split up to spread out any repo efforts, a scream came from behind you, followed by a wet crack of what you could only assume was a limp body against the wall. Hand on the door, you froze for only a second before those survival instincts you've grown over the years kicked in.
You didn't turn back.
The crunching of your boots on the snow was the only thing you could hear against the stilling backdrop of snow and wind. A thin layer of moonlight draped across the alleyway as you rushed yourself forward, occasionally causing you to bump into an outlying pipe or crate. Your back is weighed down by the pack of dubiously acquired goods, and stray thoughts of what you could sell them for seemed like your brain's futile effort to stop the rest of your body from thinking about what waited just behind you. Even your thoughts, unfortunately, were ripped away by your impressive yet unintentional backflip into the air.
You try to cry out, but your vocal cords are pressed upon by an invisible force, your flailing arms freezing in the air. As the world stopped spinning around, you noticed your arms stuck behind your head, and felt yourself hovering, compressed by a stretchy material that pressed your body in on itself the more you struggled.
"I'd stop struggling before going unconscious, to be honest." A young woman's voice rings out behind you. "The cleanup comes out of my paycheck, and I'd hate to take it out on what's left of you." The voice dripped with venom and sarcasm.
You feel a flutter of air above your head, then a glowing red gem lights up, illuminating a faint, masked face. The mask covered the upper half, obscuring the eyes with some form of goggles, with a web-related pattern. The mouth, you could see quite clearly, was curled into a snarl.
"I'll be taking that." The figure moves closer, seeming to loom over you despite being the same height as you. Her hand swipes across your back, and you cry out before the other hand follows up with a slap to the mouth, covering it with a compressive material that locks up your jaw, which you were sure wasn't located properly anymore.
"Hoo-ar you?" You manage to mumble out through the pain, trembling through the adrenaline as you feel warm liquid rolling down to your backside.
"Agent 208334. Target objectives are in custody. Over." You could hear her voice approaching from your side, the glow of her gem intensifying as it swung over in front of your face. She tilts your chin up with a roughly gloved finger, the fabric prickling your skin. "Ask fewer questions. You'll live longer."
From this distance, you could see the glow of the gem reflected in her goggles. Your tortured expression imprinted on those goggles was the last thing you saw before she raised her free hand to the gem and a flash of bright light drowned everything out.
"Agent 208334, requesting disposal of collateral. Over."
The voice was faint over the sound of your muffled groans, your body tense against the restraints holding you in the air. You quickly groaned one last time after a swift chop to the back of your neck from what you could only assume was the woman's arm. Defeated, you could only hang helplessly as the figure's presence seemingly disappeared into the ether.
There was only the sound of snow and wind for company as you hung there, body numbing as the cold overtook your bare back.
<>
"Mike, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity!" Emil gives back the letter, patting you on the back. "We could use the recognition, get some extra funding, and… Hey, you alright?"
You sit there, holding the letter from Sweden, slightly trembling. "Yeah, it's great. Couldn't have done this without you."
He points at you with both hands. "You've got that look. C'mon, let's hear it. What's gotten Dr. Michael Morbius down when his life's work is about to be recognized by the world?"
The letter flies off the side of the table as you toss it away. "That doesn't mean anything! I -- we've worked our asses off for what, years? – a-and we still haven't gotten a cure for my condition --" You cough violently, pushing aside Emil's hand when he holds it out in assistance. "I -- urgh, I'm fine." You rise from the table, one hand balancing on it and another gripped tightly on your crutch.
Emil squats down to pick up the letter, his brown overcoat making him seem like a bat hunched over the ground. "Alright, I get it, the event's just about meeting guys we've never met before, making some speech you wouldn't care to give, and wasting time we could better use elsewhere… Did I miss anything?" He shrugs his arms, face inquisitive.
"You know me so well." You hobble towards your workstation. The surface wasn't visible under all the papers and references you've accumulated and refused to clear up. "Just saying, leaving all this behind feels more like leaving my life behind. I understand what a break is. I just don't want to be that guy who dies on international TV, blood coming out of my mouth, and the laughingstock of the internet."
"Hey, I made a promise, Mike." Emil shuffles behind you, voice solemn. "I promised I'd help you get that cure. Sure, we haven't gotten there yet – but look at all the data we've collected." His hand goes through the papers, showing titles and diagrams that return you to the years of progress that you have both indeed made:
Important choice! Choose 1:
[] Animal DNA sequence analysis, statistical potential for human trials, and details of electrotherapy on the human body. (Path of Life, "canon" storyline. Classic morbin' experience. You will go down the path of the living vampire that Morbius canonically goes down, with some magical and technological twists due to the setting)
[] Human genome sequencing, machine-human interfaces, and theories on nanotechnology integration. (Path of Tech, cyberpunk-y storyline. More combat-oriented story. Your research and applications will anger very powerful entities!)
[] Ritual tomes, archaeological papers, and reference materials pointing you to MOST Solutions(TM). (Path of Magic, Fae storyline. More intrigue-oriented story. Your investigations may lead you to a solution you may regret and may not be able to fix through sheer force of arms or logic alone)
"... and, you've promised to at least try looking at the bright side." He waves the letter and tosses it onto your desk.
A smirk runs across your face. "Occasionally."
"Occasionally." Emil raises his hands, exasperated.
"Right, okay. I see what you mean." You gather up a few papers and gather them into a neat pile. A small spot of tidiness in a sea of chaos. "It's a start. I do mean what I said, though, it doesn't feel like there's too much time left. Recent results showed deteriorating red cell counts, sickle cells, and overall -- it's just... shit."
"Oh." Emil frowns. "Shit."
"Yeah. It keeps getting better. But," You pick up the letter again. "A short break to clear our minds could help us gain a new perspective. We have what, a month, before that either way? Want to uh... get some lunch? On me." You turn towards the exit and nudge his side with your free elbow on the way.
Emil chuckles, the worry in his eyes still lingering. "My name's on the letter too. Honestly, our work being recognized is enough for me."
"If it can save even one life, I'll be glad." You turn your face to the door and sigh.
<><><><><>
Hello fellow morbheads! Welcome to Morbquest! (Yes, SV, you are Morbius!) This is a Morbius-based quest, as in the character Morbius and some Morbius-adjacent information from his original lore (and maybe some from one of the movies of the year) are going to be used, with an original-ish alt-universe of my design, where the basic premise is that magic is intrinsically tied to the world and magical creatures have imbedded themselves in society in many ways, including in the highest echelons of society, like business owners, politicians, and aristocrats. So there will be elements borrowed from stories like Cyberpunk, PMMM, and various other superhero tales, which you may notice, but not explicit characters, except for Morbius and his few close canonical family and friends.
I'll be aiming for 1 to 2 updates per week, but please do understand if there are any disruptions!
Feel free to ask about the three choices for the story to go down if you want any details, as this will set the stage for the rest of the story! I'll try answering to the best of my abilities without divulging too much of the story.
