Turn 5 : I Need a Hero
It started with an ordinary patrol.
He was accompanied by a policeman, as his contract with the local authorities dictated, and he jogged next to the slowly moving car. The evening air was pleasant and the streets relatively quiet, though there occasionally were a few flashes here and there. The old him would likely have shied from the attention, but the current him, Apexman, took it as something to be proud of. Inspiring people, repairing their faith in heroes, giving them hope, this was half the reason he took up the mask after all.
Of course, he was met with opposition, from an unexpected source though.
It seems his efforts to help with the military were too much of a success, and the higher echelon was very much intent on getting him for themselves. Especially after the resounding failure that was the attempted invasion of Canada, back in '99. While their equipment was rather similar, it was soon revealed that their Northern Neighbor had thrown all of their resources in a project dubbed 'super-soldier', which happened to be a resounding success. While individually, they were slightly weaker than Apexman himself, an army of soldiers that were enhanced to the human limits, both physically and, to the horror of the US high command, mentally, was a tactician's nightmare.
The less said about Canadian
spies, the better.
Apexman was fairly certain they were the ones behind the sabotage and reveal of project Z-Day.
It may not be very patriotic of him to think so, but good riddance. Trying to mess with Zombie DNA to strengthen humans and worse,
weaponize the undead plague was so wrong the newbie superhero couldn't even think of ways to justify it, and he was watching the emergency message from the president.
Long story short, while people liked to joke about them, Canadians were very scary to the authorities. Especially after they entered an alliance with Northern European countries and got in the shipping business...
Then there was the Russian attack. More likely a probe, in his mind, because after seeing some of President Voldemort's battles against China, this was pretty much a throwaway, underequipped strike force.
Apexman crouched in his jog and a cat jumped in his arm, climbing up to his shoulder and purring a storm as the man resumed his jogging patrol.
All in all, after his showing, the military was fighting tooth and nails to get their hands on him, officially to motivate the troops, patriotism and all of that, but the man himself was fairly sure they wanted to lock him down in a lab and have their way with his genetics.
He heard a crackling radio noise coming from the car's open window.
"Criminal Pyro has been sighted in sector A-7, I repeat..."
A-7... Oh.
The masked man stopped, eyeing the plumes of smoke rising from somewhere nearby on his right. After nodding at the policeman, he ran through the narrow side street and made a beeline towards the building. All of the exits, be they doors or windows, were blocked, forced closed by heavy metal sheets, held in place with screws that were almost as big as his fists. One glance and tentative punch told him he would't be able to do anything about that. He looked at the wall around the metal. No luck, this was an old, stone building, so he wouldn't be able to do anything about that either.
He repressed a growl, then turned towards the onlookers that were gradually coming out of their homes to observe the situations.
He took a breath and began planning. The young, brown-haired policeman who accompanied him finally arrived with his car and, upon noticing the building, began talking frantically on his phone.
His own eyes went up and up- Idea.
Risky, but doable.
"Anyone with supplies to carve a way open, please hurry and get to it!" He shouted as he began to run in the building next to it, a store, that was slightly staller than the smoking apartment building.
"Sorry about that, need to go up, people to save from a fire." The elderly woman at the counter didn't even blink as she threw him a keyring.
"You do God's work, young man!" she called out as the costumed man ran up, barely taking any time to unlock the doors on the higher levels, then climbing up to the roof. He looked down and saw flames licking the top layer of the building in front of him, walked bask to the edge of the one he was on, and ran to gain momentum before he jumped off.
For a second that felt like a minute, he thought he'd miss, and swore that he would make a scene to ensure every building of the city gets fitted with a set of outside stairs to make hero-ing easier. In the end, however, his fingers caught the very edge of the roof and he climbed up with ease.
Good thing his mask had lenses and a built-in air filter.
The rood on the roof was easy to break and into the building he went. His lip curled in anger as he saw the corpses. People laying dead in front of the door, their backs and throats all showing the same type of wounds, they were hit by an axe. A fire axe, to be more precise. In the lower levels, he heard both screaming and deranged laughter, muffled by what was undoubtedly a gas mask.
This was Pyro alright.
He quickly located the stairs and jumped down to the lower levels. Again and again, the same scenes of carnage, until, at what he calculated was the third level, he finally found survivors, and with them, the pyromaniac monster. For it couldn't be called anything else. Even if it was biologically human, this particular one was far beyond the point of salvation. One of the survivors also noticed him, which made it so the insane criminal also did.
Pyro turned around, their fire thrower spewing flames at the hero, who had to duck out of the room and immediately dislodged a few metal bars from the railings before running back and throwing one in Pyro's direction when they stopped firing at him, jumping out of sight in the hallway afterward.
A clanging noise of metal meeting with wood, immediately followed by a wave of flames through the doorway. He missed. Three more tries. Pyro began walking towards him, heavy footsteps barely audible through the roaring of the fire.
Apexman breathed in deeply and forced himself to stay calm. As long as he had the maniac's attention, the civilians were as safe as they could be in this situation. Now, what did he have to work with? Metal bars, limited space to manoeuver with, as for the insides of the building, they were due for renovation considering the water damage he could spy on the-Idea.
Certain injury, but no pain no gain, right?
When Pyro got out of the room, it fired around to be met with nothing. Then the wall next to him exploded in a shower of plaster as the thin, moldy wall gave way to Apexman's all-out charge, leaving the pyromaniac no chance of raising their fire thrower on time. Their weapons flew as Apexman brutally brought down the metal bars he held in both hands on the criminal's arms, who gave out with a nasty crack and a howl of pain from their owner. The Hero winced as he felt pain from his torso and tasted blood in his mouth. There was a knife lodged between his left ribs. An accomplice?
He looked around. No one. No matter what, they needed to move.
His hand reached for the pouch behind his back and got bandages, sitting down on the floor, quickly patching himself up after he removed the knife while keeping an eye on the downed criminal and calling out to the survivors.
"If you can hear me, we need to go-" debris from the upper level fell ablaze. They couldn't escape through the roof anymore. Da-rn it." We need to go down, people are opening the way. Can you move?" He couldn't very well check right now, so he hoped someone would still be coherent enough to answer.
"Y-Yes!" A rough, male voice. " The missus and Roger are fine too, but Ol'George has a broken leg and little Kirsikka has asthma." Asthma, in a building on fire. Charming. He got up and walked back into the room.
Indeed, an open femoral fracture. No way the man would walk that off, so Apexman decided to carry the man over a shoulder, keeping the girl under his other arm. The three others looked well enough, albeit close to getting in shock. The thickening smoke didn't do anyone any favors.
"Let's go." He ordered curtly and closed the march behind the adults that were scrambling to the lower levels. As they reached the ground floor, he only had a cracking noise as a warning before he made his choice and threw the wounded man and girl forwards, a heavy, burning weight falling onto him, burning his costume and breaking his ribs.
This... Hurt a lot.
However, he couldn't let it end this way, especially as people were counting on him. So he forced himself to turn around, flames licking at his mask while he had to bite his cheek to keep himself from shouting and making the civilians panic even more.
"I am... Fine!" He shouted, using the ground to steady his forearms and creating a small space for him to slip out from under the burning wooden beam.
As he got up, he made the inventory of his situation. His mask and costume were totaled, he had burns all over, he had three ribs broken, and a lung was beginning to fill with blood. Oh, and also, the higher levels were already lost the exit he had marked for the others to open was closed.
Just Great.
'Breathe Apex, you'll make it work. You just have to go beyond what's possible.'
And breathe he did, though spitting out some blood and inhaling some smoke that almost strangled him due to how raw his throat felt. He walked up to the doorway and kicked it. The metal plate had a bit of give to it. Meaning that they did something outside to try and help.
He kicked the plate again, and again, putting all of his strength in it, until finally, it flew off, revealing a group of unconscious people on the street who were carrying items like axes and crowbars. Immediately to his right, barely a few meters away from him was an odd young woman.
She had long white hair with cat-like yellow eyes, pale skin, a black dress reaching her knees with detached sleeves, cat ears and a cat-like tail. She was looking at him warily, a black and gold bow drawn and ready to attack. She said something, but he was distracted by the top of the building, that happened to be falling off, exactly where the woman was.
He tried to call out to her, but bis blood got in the way, letting a strangled warble out instead.
When it rained, it poured, Apexman thought, as he rushed to save the unsuspecting woman.
She called out again, and he tried to point the problem out as he reached for her, but she didn't seem to understand his intentions, taking it as an attack instead. He felt a transparent wall slam into him with terrible strength and he was sent flying back into the building, into the civilians.
He felt dizzy and heard lots of cracking from his bones. In fact, considering he felt the blood pulsating in his ears and his limbs didn't answer to him, he was fairly certain he'd been knocked out. What he saw, upon forcing an eye open, was the woman getting out of the building, leaving him in here, with the little girl who was choking next to him on the ground.
Another wooden beam fell down in front of the entrance, and he saw the little girl's eyes dim with despair as she understood her situation was hopeless.
...
To paraphrase Steve the policeman: 'Fuck this.' He didn't become a Hero to simply lie down and die when things went awry! What kind of hero-no. What kind of
man would he be if he simply died when there were children that needed saving!
Crawling more quickly than he ever remembered, he caught the child within his arms and looked around. A trapdoor. He didn't know where it was leading, but it was his only choice.
The crawl felt too long, and he was hit several times as he made his way there, but he made it.
He fell into the dark, taking care to protect the girl from the shock as the trapdoor closed, trapping them both in the dark. After getting rid of the molten remnants of his mask, he decided to check on the girl, and he felt his stomach fall to the floor, with likely half of his blood.
The girl wasn't breathing.
She wasn't moving.
And, from what little his broken fingers could detect, she didn't have a pulse either.
He tried to think, exactly, when this could have happened, and he could only think of when the woman left them to die in this fire.
Asthma, the man had said.
It was not despair that clouded the girl's eyes, this was her giving up on fighting.
He didn't know how long he stayed in here, in the dark, holding a corpse. One day at least, maybe two. He felt weak, thirsty, his brain trying and failing to find a way out of this predicament when the entire ceiling was ripped off the building and here, in the light of dusk that was burning his eyes, he was a blond man wearing a white hat, pale eyes looking at him in complete apathy.
"My, the presents my kitten leaves me sometimes..." The man muttered. " At least, the raw material is worth it, though I will miss that knife..." He walked towards Apexman, getting a vial in his hand.
You feel yourself trying to scramble away from It. It beckons, it calls it hungers-
The Hero felt a chill go down his spine but was unable to move as the man forced his mouth open and began to uncork the vial.
"BAAAAAAAA!"
Falling from the sky, a golden ram headbutted the man at top speed, sending him away from the down hero then ran after its victim. The vial fell and shattered onto the ground, where it began bubbling and all of his surroundings shook.
I will be born, one way or another, even if I have to rip this world apart to do so!
"Ah~This will be a problem." He felt someone grabbing his collar, lifting him up and causing the corpse of the girl to fall on the ground. Then, a pale, dainty hand also grabbed the corpse's collar, and both were dragged away by an unknown captor. He saw, from the black puddle, a strange pillar, akin to a tentacle, rising, its oily black surface writhing, suckers emerging, except they had white, screaming masks with empty black orbits on the inside. Out of the ground nearby, one more emerged. Then another one. Then, more and more, until the area, looked more like a twisted grassland than an urban area.
Only when he was brought far enough, could he see his savior. A woman with pale skin, black curls, and Greek Priestess-looking clothes and wearing a golden sheepskin hood obscuring most of her features.
"Now then." She turned towards him. " Let's get the both of you fixed up."
"She's dead." Apexman tried to warble, but the woman just slapped his shoulder.
"Now that's just rude!"
She's not breathing. The hero tried again.
"She's just holding her breath." She muttered, producing a golden cauldron from thin air and lighting up a fire underneath it.
She doesn't move!
"She's just sleeping! It's a bit early, but it's evening!" He heard bubbling water, and the woman threw items withing it. Gems, herbs, and body parts he hoped belonged to animals.
"She doesn't have a pulse!" He managed to shout, causing the woman to look at him, and he saw a flash of lavender irises. The woman smirked at him with condescension.
"That's just your nerves malfunctioning." She answered with a smug voice, before carrying up the little girl in her arms and dumping her in the boiling cauldron.
Apexman was still, from both shock and his weakness, as the woman began stirring the concoction ('with a child's corpse in boiling water!' His common sense screamed) using a golden rod and humming pleasantly as if she wasn't desecrating the dead. Then, she gave the cauldron a whack with the golden rod.
"And one extreme healing done~" She sand, letting go of the rod, putting her arm in the boiling mix and getting a very wet, very confused, and very alive little girl out of it.
That's when Apexman decided he wouldn't think too hard about this situation.
The woman let the girl to the ground, next to the hero who tried to save her, and she immediately grabbed him, warily looking at the woman who had begun laughing, lifting her hand in front of her mouth with her palm facing outwards.
"Hohoho! This is why simple heroes will never cut it! So restricted by odds and the laws of nature they are!"
The man mulled over what she said, and had to admit, she had a point. In fact, she was completely right! The man thought as she forced a red liquid down his throat that had him itching all over.
She then waved her hand and sparks fell on his body, his bones setting and body visibly healing.
"Oops. Wild magic surge." She mumbled, and Apexman felt fear grip his spine at those words. Why? He didn't understand, but he saw the girl suddenly letting go of him and refuse to look at him.
"I don't suppose you have a picture of what you're supposed to look like, don't you?" The woman smiled at him with a smile that wasn't really all that apologetic
Apexman shook his head. The man clapped her hands together in glee.
"Oh well, I'll just have to get
inventive!"
He probably should have been more afraid at these words, but the woman was clearly a fellow hero, she even managed the impossible where he couldn't do anything! And she was right. As long as he allowed himself to be constrained by limits, he was bound to fail in his endeavors! Common sense? What was that? All he needed to do was look at the objective, and then, go even further beyond!
The air shook, and all three of them fell onto the white stone platform they were lounging on, which reminded the hero that something was going on here.
Out of the black face-tacles was emerging a black fist that opened like a flower, black bolts sailing in the air to destinations unknown. The hand writhed around, before the tip of the fingers found purchase on the ground a,d began pushing, trying to get more of its body outside of the ground.
A man with long white hair, wearing red and black robes appeared, flying high and away from the recovering group Behind him, the sky lit up with geometric shapes that fell onto the hand like a rain of fire. The air filled with some sort of... Energy, that had Apexman shiver in fear, at least until a voice colder than the tomb and the clanging of chains reached his ears.
"
Perverting magic to act like a wild animal. I think not."
A greatsword seemingly fell from the sky, embedding itself into the stone platform with a minor shockwave that spread in the air to its surroundings, causing luminescent spider cracks to form all around it. A light blue smoke came out od the runes engraved along its length, rising and coalescing into a humanoid form that grabbed its handle and lifted it off the ground. The humanoid gained more and more detail and consistency until the form was finally revealed.
It was a giant of a human, clad in spiky black armor. The hero could only see his back and his tattered black cloak, but he could see he was wearing full plate armor and two massive horns adorned each side of the helmet.
"You're late." Golden Fleece crossed her arms, huffing. The man didn't dignify this display with an answer and instead, walked towards the giant hand, his form turning into ash blown away with the wind. This is when the American hero noticed he completely lost that feeling of fear he had acquired in regards to these 'wild surges'.
The hand managed to claw and grasp at the ground to free its body up to the elbow, the tentacled carpet while the white-haired man was charging up on something, something in his hands shining brighter than the sun as the runic circles behind him were spreading all over the sky. At the very edge of the tentacle forest, a blue wisp appeared, zigzagging in, entire swaths of the forest dissipating in its presence, before rushing towards the flailing arm that was trying to free itself and climbing onto it.
The arm felt the intrusion and flailed with renewed vigor, dark red energy crackling around it like lightning and protrusions emerging on its surface. However, from where he stood, it looked like they fizzled out of existence, like a drop of water on a heated frying pan, whenever they encountered the blue wisp. The hand formed a fist and ballooned, energy easy to see through the membrane that was the fake skin and a hole formed directly under the blue wisp, that was suddenly hit with a violet falling star, away from the pillar of energy that appeared.
Both of them were about to collide with his group, he realized, and Golden Fleece snorted, lifting her sleeve to reveal a silvery glove with two prominent metallic prongs, cocking back her fist and muttering something. Electricity began arcing along the limb and a blue forcefield began to form.
As the comet seemed to be about to hit, Golden fleece hit it back with a textbook perfect punch that had Apexman's ears pop and his eyes water. He also felt slightly nauseous.
In a split-second, he could see the comet was, in fact, a very surprised Asian middle-schooler dressed in frilly black, star-patterned clothing, holding the armored man with one hand and an oversized mallet in the other. The girl pouted, her eyes glowing with the colors of the sunset, and flew up, still carrying Black Armor, until they became a small light point in the sky, among the evening stars, then it went down, rather brutally, as a city-sized glittery hammer winked in existence and hit the hand at an impossible speed.
The impact was as strong as one could expect when a hammer half the size of the city hits something at a speed that goes past the speed of sound.
"How puerile." Golden Fleece sneered as the shockwave his a transparent shield around them. "They are using attacks of this magnitude without even checking if there are people around."
"Are there?" the blond superhero asked, somehow already knowing the answer.
"Of course not." She huffed. "This is the spirit of it I am criticizing! Heroes are so careless most of the time, the ones who suffer the most from their activities are the bystanders!"
Apexman nodded in thought. Indeed, now that he thought back about his actions, he probably should have ensured people wouldn't get close to the building on fire. This would have avoided the incident with the woman. Speaking of which...
"Do you know of a superhuman, a female one, about your height, with feline features?"
"Cat ears and tails, wears black and uses a bow?" The woman asked dryly, earning herself a nod of confirmation. "She is a traitor to our organization. However, while she is annoying, we have bigger problems to deal with than taking care of her."
A supervillain then. And a traitor, to boot. Apexman frowned.
"This is why heroes are unreliable. With villains, you know where you stand, most of the time. The affable ones are the only ones you need to be afraid of. For heroes, they'll do just about anything, they'll be unpredictable, they'll ruin your plans, break into your house and destroy your possessions without a care because they are 'heroes' and do 'heroic' acts. You'll never know how they think, you'll never be certain of where they stand or their loyalties. They'll hide their true colors under their masks and will think taking them off absolves them of their responsibilities! And what's worse? They glorify those kinds of behavior and the rest just gobbles it up!"
Another nod. Indeed, he should ditch the mask. Clarity was key in the superhero business, and he should make sure to work with the Law whenever possible, to show a proper example to the younger generations that will follow. Truly, Golden Fleece was a thoughtful person to even worry about a Hero's posterity. Meanwhile, Golden Fleece continues.
"Heroes are cancer for this world!" The woman almost shouts while the American shook his head.
"You do not truly think that. Otherwise, you wouldn't be so angry about the ones who misbehave."
That stopped Golden Fleece on her rant, and her lips twisted down.
"What I think is irrelevant. What matters is what is. Right now, the world doesn't need idealists or people who jump half-baked into danger. What the world needs is people who know what they do and how to do it. Else, these kinds of things happen." She waved her arm at the battlefield, where the arm turned into a tide of black liquid that submerged the blue wisp, just as the circles behind the white-haired man rotated and gathered light within their centers, to unleash them in a rain of light rays that pierced the black liquid, allowing the blue wist, Black Armor, to escape.
"I think ideals are important." He began, trying to gather his thoughts. "Every bit of goodwill can help."
"Will is worth nothing without action. Good intentions without anything to support them are nothing but cruelty." She immediately shot him down with no small amount of venom in her voice.
This... was sadly true, he realized, as he thought back of the fire. More people could have come to help. People would have tried to come in and get them out, or demolish the walls. In the end, however, he had to wait for the heroes to come and save him. Hm... Clearly, that could only mean one thing.
"Does your superhero team take applications?"
Golden Fleece jumped, obviously startled rather badly.
"No." She immediately answered, with a tone that made it clear she wouldn't change her mind.
"I know I am not the most qualified to deal with these situations, however, together, I am sure we could come up with some kind of system to ensure what you fear does not come to pass."
Golden Fleece remained silent. Something in what he said must have struck true.
"Maybe some kind of sch-"
"SHUT UP!" The woman suddenly shouted, bringing a hand to her temple." I said no to Helga, I said no to Semiramis, and I will give you the same answer! I will not allow myself to fall into the same trap, again and again, for it to end it all in flames,
again and again! I am not one of those hypocritical, useless wastes of space who will slap a bandaid on a torn throat and call it a cure, and I will most certainly not give mankind
yet another way to murder each other with total impunity!"
The woman hit her foot on the ground and disappeared in a shower of sparkles, leaving the superhero wince. He'd stepped on one of the woman's issues here. Considering what was said, it was most likely he'd been hurt by a hero before and considering her flippant attitude around the girl's corpse, and the fact she lost control when he mentioned a school... It was highly likely the woman had something terrible happen to her children.
Apexman sighed. Now he felt bad.
Which was rather strange, all things considered. After the day he's had, it would be fully acceptable of him to feel completely drained and devastated, just coming down from an emotional rollercoaster and yet, it was almost as if those events didn't happen.
Maybe the woman did something to heal his mind and heart as well as his body?
Truly her healing ability was off the charts if she could do this on top of bringing back the dead. That could even be the very reason the terrible event happen to her in the first place. Power like that would be sought by everyone, really. Children were an easy way to pressure parents into obedience.
He really didn't like where his mind took him...
He looked back to the battlefield, reassuring the little girl that everything would be alright, as Black Armor, the Magical Girl, and the one he tentatively called White mage all launched an attack that made everything go white as he fell to the ground from the strength of it.
When he could see again, he noticed everything was gone. The monster, the superheroes, the magical girl. Only a crater, the platform, the girl and himself.
At least, it didn't take too much time for the helicopters to arrive and give him a lift. The girl's parents were, unfortunately, the victims of Pyro, so she was staying with him for the time being.
As for the Catgirl, he managed to get the police officers to show him some recordings of their altercations. He saw how she attacked the civilians who tried to pry open the exit of the building and, more damning, he heard her answer as she was told her rights during her arrest.
"Sorry gents, would love to stay and chat but I would rather not be going to jail for crimes I did not commit." She said, just before running away.
This was a pretty clear cut case of villainy here, and he was feeling rather vindictive this night, so...
Smiling a rather dark smile, he suggested a name for the newest American supervillain.
When he finally came home, feeling more tired than he ever was in his entire life, and peeled back the rest of his mask, he noticed his ugly mug. Except it wasn't ugly anymore. Plain was the word, he still had his defining features, chin, eyebrows, cheekbones... He wasn't what one would call attractive, but they were striking.
Apexman thought. And thought.
He would indeed let go of his mask. After all, he had done nothing to be ashamed of and, as sad as it was, he had no one to endanger. Also, that way, maybe the kids would stop calling him Crab-face...
Craidd cried a lot upon waking up, and was scared of both darkness and closed spaces for a long time. Still, all was not bad, for he saw something worth remembering...
[] Surreal Might
[] Rekindled Hope
[] Iron WIll
MP results:
No voiding! (yay!)
Apexman isn't ugly anymore!
Apexman and his shoulder loli are safe.
No global-scale wild magic surges
The giant octopus-hand thing is locked away. For now.
Supervillainess Smoked Kitty is now wanted in all of America.
This was supposed to be 1.5k long. It then ran away. I blame the dice. 48 Hours votes.
