Binding Oaths | Arc-1 Aeneas | Chapter 17 [Super Powereds]

Exejpgwmv · Jul 27, 2017

Spacebattles Thread: https://forums.spacebattles.com/thr...apter-16-super-powereds.550364/#post-37566170

INDEX
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16

CHAPTER 1

The metro train rumbled irregularly as it made it's way toward Western Brooklyn, the graffiti ridden stone walls flashing by as it shot past at blurring speeds. Most of the people seated in the moderately comfortable plastic benches of the locomotive were either looking at their phones, talking, or trying to catch some sleep despite the constant buzz of noise.
The only real oddity in the compartment being a man with two binders and three note books floating around him in a slow orbit, stopping occasionally and opening when he wanted to read from one of them. Apart from a few furtive glances when he initial stepped on from the last stop he was largely ignored, the man was obviously a Super and one that didn't hide it, the people on train were apparently content to just let him mind his own business while he minded his.

But Shane DeSoto kept his eye on the weathered looking man, he'd originally been reading up on the Hero teams in the area and recent crimes that required Hero intervention when the man stepped onto the train with his lose orbit of office supplies. The guy had short dark hair, graying at the tips, and was wearing a tan business suit, the skin of his head and hands an almost boring dark beige. Shane usually wouldn't have payed such a man this much attention, but this was a rather inconvenient time for a Super like him to be nearby, after all he couldn't have an Advanced Mind over hear that he was going to the base of one of the most famous hero teams, Pristine Strikers.
It would be rather embarrassing to blow his secret identity before his internship had even started.

Thankfully the HCP trained a student's mind as well as their body and powers, learning to martial your thoughts against telepathy was one of the first skills they had to learn before graduating, so while the man's presence wasn't ideal, it didn't merit any real worry on his part. But just to be on the safe side of things he decide to take his attention off the man and put away his phone to get his mind off hero related topics. Shane decided it would be best to just focus on his power for the rest of the trip, a little more training never hurt after all, he leaned back and titled his head down with his eyes half closed, ensuring that people wouldn't notice when the sclera of his eyes turned pitch-black. He could feel his senses warp as he filled every shadow in the compartment with life and his presence, he could never explain exactly how this felt to others, but it was closets in comparison to touch.
With a part of himself in the shadows, and his senses warped around them, he could now "feel" the people, objects, furniture, and even the very walls of the compartment of the train; this sense wasn't exactly accurate but it did a sort of 360 field of awareness and saved from a sneak attack on more than one occasion.

After a few minutes of flexing his awareness and control he heard the call for his station and felt the slow stop of the train, suddenly becoming more aware of the shadows on the outside also giving him a heads up.
He turned off his power and checked his pockets before picking up his mini-duffel bag and heading out of the sliding doors. He trekked his way through the crow and back up above ground and started off at a brisk walk toward his destination with twenty minutes to spare, the Red Hook neighborhood. The brisk Fall wind howling and pushing against his windbreaker as his laced boots crunched over the fallen leaves were his only company as he half-jogged toward the ominous looking structure only a few blocks away.

Like most bases the Pristine Strikers' had originally been a large abandoned factory near the edge of the town they protected. The base was a steel affair, most likely the reinforced kind, sitting at four stories tall and with windows situated evenly but sparsely on each floor, to be honest it would've looked bland if not for the purple and violet light of the sunset and cloudy weather giving it a sort of brooding quasi-medieval presence to it. The entrance was a steel double door with with a rounded marble staircase leading up to it, but Shane wouldn't be going there.

He couldn't very well just walk into the base, even with the security they probably had, someone walking into a base and never coming back out would be a rather obvious sign to the more astute villains and criminals. The text he'd gotten in the morning had very specific details about where to go and how much he could bring; so after one last look towards what might be his new home he toke a left turn down towards the laundry mat that should be exactly a block away and close to closing time. The place had a surprisingly modern look to it, the neon sign up against the front not lit up yet, and the front window had an almost sparkling sheen to it.

A small middle aged woman beckons him in from behind a chrome green counter, obviously having expected him. The door opens with a light bell tone and she quickly hops forward and leads him by the hand into the back room.

"You're awfully early, young man. But no matter, I quite like my employees to be punctual.", she says with a surprisingly cheerful and accented voice, her short stature and chubby frame pulling him along with surprising strength. The woman opened the door and lead him into a rather bare bones looking office with grey concrete walls, and a dirty tiled floor,; the other exit being a emergency-exit door towards the back.
There was a woman with cocoa colored skin that was sitting at a cluttered desk in the center, drinking what looked like tea. "My husband can interview you hear while I handle the register, deary.", and with that she gave Shane pat on the back before heading back out.

Turning back towards the woman in the suit Shane found that she had already gotten to her feet, the empty mug left on top of the desk, she smoothed out the wrinkles in her suit before addressing him, "Why do you serious types always have to get here so early?", she pushed her braided hair back a little before stepping forward with a hand outstretched. "The name's Maria Zaria, I gotta say it's nice to meet the grandson of the first official Super-Hero."

He didn't bother giving his name in return, she obviously already knew about him and his family, he'd gotten used to DVA agents knowing him buy name despite never having met him before.
"I can't help it ma'am, four years in the HCP will do that to you.", Shane replied with a wide smile as he shook her hand before stepping back and looking around the small room. "So is this where every intern goes to get inside the base?", he asked absentmindedly.

The tall woman gave short snort before ruffling his short blonde hair, currently styled as a crew-cut, "Of course not, kid. We've got more than a few stores for several blocks around that we picked at random for each of you.", before he could responded or back away from the sudden contact she closed her eye in obvious concentration as the world warped around them.

"Now get ready, I'm fast, but my power doesn't exactly make for the smoothest ride."

Here is the web serial: http://www.drewhayesnovels.com/superpowereds

Please tell me about any typos or grammar mistakes you find, I need all the help I can get improving my writing.

Exejpgwmv · Aug 1, 2017

CHAPTER 2

Shane had tried to prepare himself for whatever it was Maria's power was about to put him through, his mind cycled through the possibilities as he saw the world around him warp as if he was staring into a giant fun-house mirror. But he was pleasantly surprised to feel nothing at all as his field-of-view narrowed along with the morphing environment, he had all of half a second to take this in before the world blurred by in sudden motion.

It ended as suddenly as it had started, he hadn't been able to make out anything except for a flickering of colors and lights, he imagined anyone that wasn't a speedster would have a similar experience. Aside from that though he didn't feel any worse for ware, but he could see how it might be a less than pleasant experience for someone susceptible to motion sickness.

He was about to ask the DVA agent what exactly she had done before he got a look at his surroundings, the only thought he had after gaping a little being that this at least answered his suspicions of whether or not they had a Tech Super. The interior looked like the love child of a circuit board and aluminum foil, with square indents along the ceiling harboring only what he could guess to be incredibly large light bulbs, the glare being to intense to make out any real details. The air had a stagnate and sterile hospital feel to it, there didn't appear to be any windows in whatever section of the building they were in. Shane was trying to examining the the traces of what he presumed to be electricity that was pulsing through the walls before Maria calls to him.

"Impressive isn't it?", she was already heading down the hallway toward what looked to be a circular intersection with four different paths, one of them leading off to what looked like an elevator. "But the team can explain the obvious Super technology later, the other interns aren't here yet but your mentor two other team members are already back from patrol."

He'd caught up at that point and was following her down the second to right hallway, which as he got closer, he saw what appeared to be a smaller version of the front door. Without so much as a knock Maria swung both doors wide open to reveal what looked like... well, a living room. Albeit one with weird futuristic walls and lights; the center of the room had what looked to be an oval table surrounded by eight lounge chairs, all with a wooden frame and silver color scheme to it. There was what looked to be a giant TV screen up on the far wall, a rather clunky looking computer console right under it, and a regular old projector in the right corner.

Shane could hear the low hum of machinery coming from a doorway to the left of the room, but his focus was firmly on the three costumed people in the room currently standing and watching what appeared to be a Solo-Hero fighting off a gang of Supers. The one on the left had on the classic skin tight black fabric for Heroes that could shift, milky white eyes framed by his long hair the only other indication of his non-human status, Shane guessed that he was Terram The tall woman in the middle had on purple segmented body armor with black highlights and a lavender cape that reach down to her calves, a long cape like that would be a death wish for most heroes but Shane had done his research and he'd seen the Crusader fight; that cape was anything but a liability. Last but definitely not least was the man to the right, Spectrum, leaning against the table and bouncing a yellow ball of light between his hands, his costume was a minimalist white ensemble with cuffed gloves and calf-high boots but no cape; the only exceptional part of it being the rainbow highlights which contrasted with his almost steel-grey hair.

All three of them turned toward the duo as soon as they stepped into the "Living Room", as Maria had called it. "Hey, great guardians of the city, your new intern decided to be all dutiful and arrive a few minutes early.", hallway through talking she'd already turned around and started back down the hallway, presumably to get back to the Laundry Mat. "Try not yo break him before the other three get here.~", with a wave and slam of the double doors she was gone.

"So is this the DeSoto kid?", the woman in purple armor said as she leapt through the air and landed near him without so much as a 'thump'. He hadn't been able to figure out exactly what her power was when researching her, but most people seemed to have pegged her as some form of humanoid Shifter.

"Nice to meet you ma'am, you can just call me Shane.", he reached his hand out and was surprised to see her glove unclasp itself and float of her hand, revealing a delicate looking hand that gave a very firm handshake.

"And you can just call me Rikki, 'ma'am' makes me feel older than I already am.", she says as she pulls back and waves the others over.

"You can call me Hugh, you probably know me as the guy that turns into an eight foot tall alien.", his expression surprisingly warm and reassuring despite the milky swirl of his large pupils.

"And you've already meet me, Rookie.", Spectum ended his with a hearty pat on the back, his considerable(although non-super) strength almost making Shane stumble. "Now that you're on team, you can call me Jack like everyone else."

They'd all finished up their introductions just in time to see a Hero obvious speedster powers mop up the rest of the normal thugs with a quick few dozen strikes of with what looked like a silver quarterstaff. Whatever live feed being streamed to the device ending as soon as the last criminal was done, the screen switching to a detailed map of the city with police reports scrolling down the side.

Shane was a little overwhelmed by the obvious wealth and resources of this team, he'd looked into them enough to know that they were one of the more well known teams in New York, but that definitely didn't account for all this, unless he had seriously underestimated the average wealth of a Hero team. But he would ask about that later, he was sure the others would ask the same questions and he didn't want them to waste time and have to explain the something multiple times.
No, instead he would try and get some practical knowledge about what would be his new home for the next few months.

"Well, since my soon-to-be teammates won't be here for a while, any of guys feel like taking me on tour of the training room? It's where I'll be spending most of my time, so I might as well get familiar with it.", Jack had naturally already met with Shane a few times before the internship was made official, so he knew that Shane wasn't kidding about that if he slipped back into his old habits.

"Sure thing kid, but thing you should go with Rikki for now, she knows it best and should make for a good warm-up partner if time permits.", Jack gestured to the armor clade woman just as she finished reattaching her gauntlet.

With no apparent effort the lavender Hero suddenly floated a few feet into the air before stretching an arm out toward the left door just before it swung open seemingly of it's own accord. "What do say, Shane? You feel like having a little sparring session before the rest get here?"

The eager smile that the young man's usually reserved face surprised everyone but Shane himself; He might not have the same bombastic attitude or seemingly chaotic personality, but the one thing they had always shared was the rush of getting to test out their skills against someone new.

Exejpgwmv · Aug 10, 2017

CHAPTER 3

There was always a certain rhythm or flow to a battle and style of fighting, and anyone could see it, as a spectator it was easier but with enough training and experience you could also see it even while you were the one fighting. You could use it to predict the outcome of a battle, predict what an opponent might do, even figure out an effective counter to a fighting style on the fly. But the most useful and rare application of it, also the one Shane's grandfather had mercilessly drilled into both him and his sister, was to remove any discernible pattern to your own style of fighting, to make it variable and adaptable to your opponents.

However, Shane was intimately aware of all the potential flaws in what he'd been taught; from how it could be useless against someone with enough raw power to potentially fooling yourself into seeing a pattern or weakness that wasn't really there. Despite all of that though, he was fairly certain of one thing while he was fighting Rikki in the training room: He was going to get his ass kicked.

To an untrained observer it might have looked like they were evenly matched, but with Rikki gradually wearing Shane down with superior tactics and experience, Shane even believed it a little during the start of the fight.

The way she able to dive down towards him and then pivot smoothly kept him on his toes and from grabbing her with her own shadow, landing the occasional glancing blow when Shane wasn't quick enough, the occasional object floating up and then shooting toward him only an annoyance considering he could use his own shadow to shield himself. When she lifted an out stretched hand and Shane felt his own shirt contract around his chest before he was flung a few feet back, her power and how much she'd been holding back suddenly became clear.

She was an Animator, if she just had TK then Shane would've just felt an invisible force push him back or wrap around him, not his clothes suddenly contracting and dragging him around. Animators were a little uncommon among Supers, they could control inanimate objects by infusing them with their energy and then giving them commands, it allowed for more fined tuned control than what most telekinetics could have and the really powerful ones could use their objects as an extension of their own body.

Shane danced backwards after rolling from the initial impact, he didn't no her range but the farther away he was the harder it would be for her to get a grip, then he sent four shadows from under the training equipment to grab Rikki out of the air. His shadows didn't move as fast when they were twisted into hands but he didn't want to hurt her, just get her pinned. Predictably she dodged and weaved with deceptive speed and even dodging things she couldn't possibly see, so Shane threw out his initial plan of grabbing her via misdirection and settled for overwhelming her, but he would have to be careful; unless that armor made her tougher then most strongmen then he would have to be a little careful with this. Shane felt himself connect to all the shadows, breathing life into them and bending them into less-lethal shapes.

Before he could get any farther Shane was suddenly yanked through the air in a blur of motion, the sudden movement almost breaking his concentration on the shadows in the room, he quickly brought them forward with him, as he stopped suddenly and felt something soft wrap around his head. The fabric that covered his head unraveled from the top, presumably to let him see what had happened, but he could already "feel" where he was with the shadows around them.

Shane was floating a couple of meters off the ground, only a few inches from in front of the armored hero, her caped wrapped around the bottom of his head and neck, not chocking him but putting just enough just enough pressure to get her point across. But Rikki hadn't completely gotten the upper hand, several shadow constructs had wrapped around her arms, legs, and torso, with a particularly large and wicked looking one pointing at her back.

"Mutual Death-Blow?", she offered after few awkward seconds had gone by, her tone surprisingly light with no sign of fatigue or uneven breathing. "Yeah, besides, I think the others will probably be back in a few.", with that Shane let his shadows shrink back into their origins, the relief visible on his face as the inky blackness in his eyes receded, it wasn't much but pulling together and maintaining so many shadows at once still took a toll.

After being lowered back towards the ground and letting Shane straighten out and tuck back in his clothes before heading out of the silvery sparring/work-out room, more of gymnasium if Rikki was being honest.

"So.. an Animator huh?", they were making their back-towards the "Living Room", seemingly none the worse for ware from their scuffle, "I don't mean to sound ungrateful for the chance to see what you can do up close, but why not just choke me out with my own shirt?"

"Hmm, probably the same reason you stuck with tryin to grab me instead of just sending a torrent of blades my way.", her accent had a weird mix of Brooklyn and something else Shane couldn't quite place, Long Island if he had to guess. "It was just a little sparrin', and we both still needed to be at least semi-presentable for the meeting."

"Meeting seems like a strong word, aren't just going to do standard introductions before showing off what we can do?"

"Close, but no cigar, Shadow Man."

"Okay first of all my hero is not, nor will it ever be, 'Shadow Man'."

They strode back into the Living Room as Rikki was getting into the, "Silver Age appeal of classic names.", just in time to see three strangers enter from the south door with Maria, the Director of Variant Human Affairs agent, in tow.

The most eye catching of the trio being the young lady in army fatigues who was floating across the ground with her arms folded across her chest, around 7 feet from the initial view Shane got, she had straw-brown tied back into a short ponytail, a scowl etched on to her face. Next in line was a rather stout looking guy with shoulder length wavy golden hair, his stocky frame and HCP grade muscles visible through even his leather jacket and baggy pants. The one trailing behind with Maria was the most average looking of the three; she had jet-black hair that only reached down to the small of her back, the lean figure she had trained in the HCP not as striking as the young man in front of her, but still noticeable despite her rather plain long-sleeve shirt and jeans combo.

"Alright, now that were all here things can finally get started!", Spectrum/Jack exclaimed with a clap and a little spark of blue energy.

Exejpgwmv · Aug 25, 2017

CHAPTER 4

Spectrum or Jack apparently, introduced Shane to the other Interns as soon as he saw him and Rikki get back from their tour of the training/gym room.

“Shane, Rikki, I’d like you to meet the rest of the new recruits.”, Jack swings arm toward the tall flying woman, who Shane noticed upon closer inspection was surrounded by what looked like the warped air of a heat wave.

“This here is Gardeel, her mentor is already on the way, so we won’t have to wait much longer”, she floated to the ground as the aura of distorted air around her faded away, her combat squeaking slightly as she hit the floor.

“Hey fellas, the names Vanessa.”, she said in an accent most of the people in the room couldn’t quite place, and stepped aside to let the stocky man walk past and rested herself against the wall. The leather jacket wearing fellow walked forward with a certain strut to his steps before speaking.

“You guys can call me Samshiel and my civiy name is Greg”, he says in a light southern accent, before four balls of what Shane could describe as “glowing darkness” appeared from thin air and started orbiting around them, “I’ll be your resident Ranged Combat Hero.”, he finished with a wide smile.

The last of the trio steps forward in an almost regal manner, her back straight and her arms hardly moving as she stepped ahead of the group, “And you can call me Simikiel, my real name being Amy, and by now I’m sure you’ve noticed the theme between all of our names.”, she spoke with surprisingly volume and without any discernable accent Shane could hear. “We’re are named after Angels from certain mythologies, although they obviously don’t perfectly reflect what our abilities are, but we picked what we thought would fit us best.”, she finished with a genuine smile.

Shane was impressed by the obvious leader of the trio, but he also noticed that she was the only one who had not given any indication of her power, but he pushed down the question for later, it was only polite that he introduces himself as well. “My name is Shane DeSoto and you can call me Styx while were in the field, sorry if the mythology I picked doesn’t mesh well with yours.”, with a minor effort of will he breathed life into the shadows surrounding them, not enough to materialize them, but just enough to make them warp and twist in unnatural ways. “And I suppose I’ll be the newest scorched-scorched Super on the team.”

All three pairs of eyes widen a touch at that, but before any of them could question him the main door slid open again and what looked a cloud of obsidian shards came through. It dashed through the air and made it to the center of the room before levitating in the center of the room. Now that it was closer Shane could see that it was less a cloud and more like a swirling mass of connected shards that glowed rhythmically. It slowed and settled down into the shape of a featureless humanoid form, but the hundreds of interconnected shards that made up its body were still writhing and shifting constantly, making it seem less solid than it appeared to be.

This was the fourth and final member of the Pristine Strikers, Obsidian Wraith, their most senior member and resident Strong-man(woman) of the team.

The shards suddenly still and compressed together and lost their texture; leaving a rather tall woman with bronze skin and short braided hair in their place. She had a grey featureless mask in her right hand and wore black body suit of a shifting Super, she immediately started toward the gather heroes and interns with a wave and unnaturally white teeth. “Sorry for being late everyone, needed to take care of some thugs on my control.”, she says in with an obviously Brooklyn accent.

“It’s fine Elisabeth, they all just got here a minute ago and we’ve already taken care of introductions.”, Jack turns on his heel towards the door to the training room, “Now that were all here we can get to the demonstration part of the intern admission process, enjoy it while you can kids, It’s going to be the most exciting part of your day.”

They all turn and follow the senior hero down through the door and down the oddly technical hallway and into the expansive space of the Pristine Stricker’s training room. It’s smooth concrete floor, dozens of sets of weights of varying sizes, and the myriad of other work out equipment making it an impressive sight indeed. Although a more observant person would notice the almost hairline-cuts along the edges of the floor from Shane’s sparring with Rikki. After they had all entered Jack pulled out a small remote from one of his pockets with what looked like a series of buttons in different shapes; a square, triangle, and circle. He points it toward the fall wall and press the square one, to the Intern’s surprise only the wall extends outward and forms a stand of metal bleachers, big enough to house at least a dozen people.

“I’m going to be starting things off the same way it was done for me when I interned here, Vanessa will go first since her power is the hardest to explain out of the three of you.”, he puts the small remote back into his before settling down onto the middle of the bleachers, all of the other heroes following suit apparently already aware of what he had planned for them. “Next will be Amy, then Shane, and finally Greg.”, after that he motions towards Vanessa and says, “Go ahead and get changed into your hero suit, the changing rooms are on the far wall.”, he finishes with a lazy wave towards a small black door across from the bleachers.

Amy opens her mouth to say something but Vanessa beats her to it, “I would Spectrum, but the costume company had an ‘accident’ with my costume and they say I won’t be getting a proper one for the next few days.”, she states with a noticeable amount of pent up frustration; this was obviously the reason behind her rather sour expression from before.

Jack gives a sigh before replying, Elisabeth looking similarly put-out from the news, “Well, you wouldn’t be the first Hero who’s had to go out and fight crimes in civilian clothing when they went through all of their costumes and couldn’t get more in time.”, he points at the non-descript grey mask currently one Elisabeth’s lap, “Luckily for you we have several standard issue masks that can at least keep your identity a secret.”

He might’ve said more, but it was then that Shane decided to step in, he wanted to get know these people and it was always good to start things off with an act of good-will in his experience, “Actually I have a spare costume she can use.”, he lifted up his duffel bag and to show how overly large and bulky it was, “It obviously doesn’t have any specific designs, but it’s better than wearing jeans and a T-Shirt, I can promise that much.”

Everyone looked a little surprised at the sudden declaration, the two exceptions being Jack and Amy, but Vanessa ends up being the one who breaks the small silence, “Well that’s nice and all, but I about your clothes exactly fit me.”.

Shane shook his head in the negative, “The main pieces have either strap, belts, or have a zipper and our body types aren’t that far apart; so, you should be able to adjust or re-position anything that doesn’t quite right.”

Vanessa turns her head towards her mentor with a questioning look, but Elisabeth simply gives an approving nod and gestures toward the changing room, “Don’t look a gifted horse in the mouth, go on and get dressed, can’t keep talking all day now.”

Five minutes later Vanessa strides out of the changing room and into the training section in her new hand-me-down Hero costume. The suit had a rather dull white and grey color scheme with sections of thin and flexible body armor on the chest, legs, and arms of the suit and just above; the mask was a standard full face sufficiently hiding her identity. Save for the cuffed forearm length gloves and boots that reached hallway up her shins, it looked more like a simply suit of grey body armor with white outlines.

“Alrighty then, show and tell us what you’ve got Venessa.”, Jack stated, Elisabeth looking reasonably expectant and attentive Shane noticed, he knew it was understandable considering her Intern was about to perform.

Before anyone says anything else, Vanessa takes a rather standard fighting stance and everyone again sees a haze come off of her body even through the new costume. Then without so much of a grunt she does an obviously strong-man level leap across the room and lands a safe distance from the stands. “Alrighty then; my power is Energy Empowerment.”, then she does a small jump and hovers several feet off of the ground with seemingly no effort. “The energy I use is generated from within and I can use it to give myself the speed and reflexes of an average speedster.”, suddenly she shoots forward in a blur of motion, changing direction straight up right before hitting her audience then doing a full lap of the entire expanse room in a second flat. “But I’m most known for the exceptional strength and durability I get from the enhancement.”, she suddenly drops from her position near the ceiling and lands easily before picking up two of the 1-ton super dense weights and twirling them around in both hands before placing them back on their racks. “And then obviously there is the flight, I don’t know exactly how my energy lets me fly but I do know it’s my most draining ability. Any question you need answered?”

“How long can you maintain this state before needing to recharge and how long does the recharge take?”, Jack fired off immediately in his crisp, almost raspy, tone of voice.

“For eleven hours-straight at full strength and effectively unlimited if I keep the intensity low. But that’s while standing still, if I’m fighting at full strength and using all of my abilities in rapid succession then I can last for a little over 4 hours before I need to rest.”, she didn’t even hesitate before replying, as if she’d known this question was coming and had read her answer off a teleprompter. Shane was impressed by the answer itself; several hours of that level of power was more than enough for most any Super fight.

“As for the full recharge time; 1 hour if I keep the intensity of the enhancement low, 25 mins if I’m just taking a break, and 10 if I’m asleep.”, This was obviously the part of her ability she didn’t like to share or let others know considering the noticeable lack of confidence in her voice.

“Hmm, that’s fine, two more questions before you’re done; How much and what kind of damage can you take?”, he asked, almost imperceptibly leaning forward out of interest, this was the most important aspect of a strong-man’s power that a leader need to know. Her role would be to go in and tank the hits others can’t and it would be imperative to know exactly how much she could take and for how long.

“I’m… resistant to most damage forms of damage; physical, fire, cold, electricity, etcetera you know ‘the works.”, she hesitated a little at first, Shane didn’t know if was because she hadn’t been prepared or was about to say the word “Invincible”, am infamous taboo in the Hero world. “When I’m at my strongest most tank rounds send me flying, cause very little damage, and it drains my reserves in 10s of minutes, I haven’t had the opportunity to test against anything of higher power. But probably my biggest weakness is that I have no defense mental attacks and gasses and poisons are still dangerous in the right quantity, my defense isn’t as effective against things that don’t cause immediate physical damage.”

“Alrighty then, last one, you mentioned you can change the intensity of your enhancement, go ahead and tell us the range of power you’ve got.”, Jack had visibly relaxed during her answer on defense, Shane had to guess that she at least measured up to his expectations of a strong-man on his team. He also noticed Vanessa’s change in posture, she stood a little straighter and Shane was willing to bet money she had huge grin on beneath that mask.

“I’d be happy to!”, she blurted out at first before visibly composing herself and speaking in a less gleeful tone. “At my lowest level, I can shrug off bullets, lift half a ton, and move at 60 mph.”, she still had more than a little hint of pride in her voice however, “If I go full boar; I can withstand tank rounds, my strength limit is five tons, and my speed shoots up to around 400 mph.”

Jacks face splits into a lazy grin before he responds, “Okay, if what you’ve just told me is all on the up-n-up, then you’ll make a great new member of the team, and I don’t exaggerate when I say you could rival your mentor in a few years.”, Vanessa didn’t know if the compliment was empty flattery to boost her confidence or a genuine assessment of her power, either way she felt her spirits lift a little at the praise.

“Alright Amy, I heard from Rikki that your now slouch yourself, why don’t get down and see how you measure up.”

Exejpgwmv · Sep 9, 2017

CHAPTER 5

Shane briefly considered hiding his feelings, but quickly found that he had no logical reason to, it was a surprisingly pleasant realization. The years he had spent keeping himself reserved and hiding the exact mechanics of his powers while growing up, except with his Grandfather of course, and the competitive nature of the HCP program had taken its toll. So to finally be able to put complete trust in others without having to worry about competition too much was a welcome change.

With that brief rationalization; Shane let a wide smile stretch across his face and started clapping at the genuinely impressive display. After a moment of hesitation, Amy, Greg, and the Hero’s joined in on the congratulatory gesture. Vanessa visibly stiffened in the face of such sudden enthusiasm, but recovered quickly, with a quick bow she floated towards the changing room and entered, with Amy following close behind. The two young interns returned not even a minute later, Vanessa back in her regular clothes and Amy in her costume. Her suit was a simple affair with obviously layered and SWAT quality armor and a mostly black color scheme with a silver trim, the only real exceptional part of it being the small cape that barely covered her back and the a large grey baton fixed to her waist; It was situated in such a way that it wouldn’t impede movement.

“I’ll try to make this quick, my power can be easy to over complicate If I don’t take things one at a time; First off, I’m a shifter.”, she started off with as soon as she stepped into the middle of the room, “But unlike most my proportions don’t change at all, so I don’t need the kind of special material that Hugh is wearing.”, and with that she shifted.

She suddenly became a blank slate, her facial features blurring and shifting into unnaturally smooth skin, and then all of her visible skin took on a glowing white sheen. And even from up on the bleachers everyone could see the little arcs of what looked like white lightning that seemed to come directly from her body, going through her costume without any apparent affect. Upon closer inspection Shane could see that her skin’s glow was actually rather dim, he could now see that there was what he would describe as a faint aura of white energy around her; similar to what Vanessa had demonstrated but extending about a foot around her.

All told, it was quite impressive and only took around eight seconds, “Let’s start from the top; my main power is super-speed”, Jack nodded in acknowledgement and then Amy promptly disappeared in a blur of motion. It was immediately evident that Amy, or rather “SimiKiel”, had more raw speed than Vanessa. Most notably, she moved in an actual blur due to how fast she was running along the ground, walls, and even dashing across the ceiling for a few brief moments.

Jack knew from experience that, contrary to popular belief and depictions in movies and shows, it was nigh impossible for any speedster to move faster than the naked-eye could see, though certainly not impossible to move faster than any human’s natural reaction time.

‘Although’, Jack thought, ‘If she can get faster from regular training or it just happens as time goes on, then she’ll get pretty damn close.’

Amy finally stops after bouncing from each corner of the room, halting once again in the middle of the room… while floating a good five feet in the air.

“You can fly too? Is this going to be a theme with your group?”, Jack asked with more than a bit of curiosity, “I won’t bother asking exactly how much speed you have since you’re clearly just substantially faster than your friend over there.”

“No, no,”, Amy chuckles out, “We only have the speed and flight in common, that’s where the similarities end between us.”, she turns her now featureless face toward Shane, “Can’t speak for Shane though.”

“Fair enough, two fliers with additional abilities is still a good haul. But do you have anything else aside from just mobility?”, Jack asked.

“Yep.”, she said simply before her now smooth face lit up with a very dim orange glow. She startles slightly at first, looking around in what the others could only guess was awe before turning back to the leader. “Sorry about that; So basically; I can ‘see’ energy sources.”, she explained, “This place was just a little distracting for obvious reasons.”. She flies a couple more feet in the air before stopping and looking over all the others sitting in the bleachers, “I really can only see heat sources, strong enough electrical currents, and unnatural or Super-made energies. The best way I can describe it is that it works similar to infrared vision.”

“Alright, that one is pretty self-explanatory at least.”, Jack says before leaning back, “Okay, last question; Anything particularly special about that baton of yours?”.

With a flick of her wrist Amy unclasps the long and thick looking baton from her waist and twirls it through the air with little effort, “Nothing much to say here actually. It’s made of denser material than regular stun batons, has a higher voltage, annnd…”, she presses a barely noticeable button on the non-pronged end and a gleaming blade slides out from the tip in a flash of gleaming metal. “And yes, before ask, the blade can electrified as well, although it’s more dangerous for obvious reasons.”

Jack simply nodded in response, apparently not having any questions about the slightly modified weapon, “I can see why your interning under Crusader, you’ll be excellent at suppressing groups of Supers just like she is, especially after we train you to fight injunction with her.”, He gestures for her to go back toward the changing room and turns his head to Greg.

“I think it’s about time Hugh’s Intern put on a showing for us; and it better be good with how often he’s been bragging about ya these past few months.”

Hugh only chuckles in response and gives Greg a pat on the back as he heads down to the center of the training facility, walking down the bleachers and across the room with the same swagger and a very eager grin plastered across his face all the way.

He couldn’t physically change shape and wouldn’t be doing any superhuman feats of strength or speed, no, Gregory Austin was planning to dazzle these old-farts in nothing but his hand-me-down training duds.

Exejpgwmv · Sep 23, 2017

Chapter 6

Greg didn’t waist anytime. As soon as he stood facing his audience he immediately flipped the mental switch that would activate his power. Five of what look like mini solar-eclipses fade into existence around the intern, they are the size of baseballs and begin to slowly orbit around the young man.

“This is my power; The Feds called it ‘Energy Construct-Manipulation’, which basically means that the energy I’m using is unnatural and comes in solid form.”, Greg said nonchalantly as he waved his hand, making the orbs around him expand outwards a few meters. Shane took special interest in that motion, it would mean Greg’s power could operate similar to his; although he could manipulate shadows through mental effort alone, hand gesture helped greatly for bigger displays of power. Displays like the killing technique he’d displayed in intramurals, but if Greg needed one just to summon his orbs then it could be a weakness in the field.

This intrigued every one of the team who hadn’t seen his power before, not least of all Shane. Supers that can create energy constructs that emit light were a touchy subject for him.

“Alright, it’s certainly eye-catching, but what can you do with them?”, Jack promoted.

Greg lifted one finger in response, “I can whip them around about as fast as an average sniper bullet, I say ‘average’ because It can be faster or slower based on muh concentration.”, and just like that he has them whirling around him in a nigh invisible blur. “And my control over them is nothing to sneeze at either.”, the orbs stopped their irregular pattern and went through a series of complex patterns and shapes; from a simple pentagram to an infinity sign. “They can be all physical force, so hot it gives plasma a run for its money, or mix of both. If you want to get a sense of how much damage I can do I’ll need some targets.”, he finished and then made a show of scanning the room for anything he could destroy without consequence.

“No that won’t be necessary, we can get a feel for what kind of damage you can do tomorrow. But thank you for asking at least, it’s more than I did when I first got here.”, he comments as he rubs the back of his neck before continuing, “Now, is damage all you can do or do you have any other abilities we should know about?”

“As a matter of fact, there is.”, his eyes narrowed in concentration and four orbs split off from the rest and positioned themselves in the shape of a square. Not even a second later all four flared briefly before a translucent golden barrier popped into existence in that shape. “I found out I could do this while I was taking Focus in my second year.”, the shield orbited and spun around him at an impressive speed, but not as fast as the orbs could move on their own, “It can block just about as much force and heat as I can dish out, which is a damn lot.”.

Hugh breathed a mental sigh of relief that the kid hadn’t called it, “Damn near invincible”, like when they had both first met.

“Alrighty then, just a few utility questions before we move on to Shane. If you’ve got as much as I’ve been told then you’ll be invaluable when dealing with riots.”, Hugh shifted slightly when Greg’s gaze turned on him.

“What would ya like to know?”

“How many orbs and shields can you summon and adequately control at once, how long can you maintain said constructs, and are you immune to or have any secondary abilities because of your powers?”, he rattled off the list of questions quickly and with a practiced tone.

“I can keep good control of twenty orbs If I push it, and can do 6 good shields with them all, they stay around indefinitely as far as I know, and sorry to say but I’ve got no other special abilities like the two shifters over there.”, he waved his hand with mock disdain toward the two young ladies. “The orbs can’t hurt me though; they become basically inert if they come into skin contact with me.”

“We’ll have the shooting range up and ready for you by tomorrow morning, trust me the bots will make the wait worth it.”, he turned toward Shane, “Get on down their kid, we need to wrap this up soon.”

Shane and Greg past each other as they switched places, the former eyeing the black-haired young man strangely.

“You were right in saying that my power would be the least complicated of the bunch; and unlike Greg’s or yours it’s only really good for pure offense.”, the sclera of his eyes turned pitch black and every shadow in the room rose from their surfaces and surged toward him with terrifying speed, even those of the people sitting down on the bleachers. Everyone, save for Spectrum, jumped slightly from the sudden movement coming from every direction.

The shadows stopped a mere few feet away from him, spinning around in a blurry whirlwind before settling into a veritable field of large scythes, dark spires, unnatural tendrils, and bladed hands.

“It’s shadow manipulation by the way.”

Exejpgwmv · Oct 5, 2017

CHAPTER 7

Greg, Amy, and Vanessa reflected silently on Shane's display as they settled down to watch all four of the Heroes spar at once. After his initial show of power they'd expected a little something more from the mysterious new-kid.

~~~

Shane de-solidified and let all the shadows flow back to their origins, but his eyes did not change back from their current pitch-black color. "I'll just run you through all the relevant aspects of my power first.", suddenly his own shadow lifted silently from the ground and made a few quick slicing motions through the air, "All of my shadow-constructs start off bladed, I can't change that no matter how much I concentrate, but once they become solid I can manipulate their shape.", the top of the tendril suddenly stretched and thickened into the shape of a hammer and slammed into the concrete floor, causing cracks to spider-web in every direction. Then it spread out and became a clawed hand, albeit a flat one, and scooped out two chunks of concrete, before tossing them up and juggling them. "My influence isn't dependent on sight and the range has been increasing ever since I first developed my power. From my little demo at the start, you already know I don't have any trouble with multi-tasking."

"Can you take on aspects of shadows or turn into one? And I have to assume that you have some auxiliary abilities considering those eyes of yours.", it was obvious from his tone that Jack was asking for the benefit of everyone else rather than himself.

"Sorry but no, I'm more of a mid-tier energy or material manipulator; I can telekineticly control and shape shadows but that's about it.", Shane admits with a shrug, his shadow stretching into the exaggerated shape of a man and mimicking him, "Honestly the most impressive aspects of my power is its precision, range, and damage output." He pointed his finger toward the east wall and a hair line thick length of shadow shoot toward the wall but stopped just a few inches short before curling back to him in a corkscrewing motion, "I'm precise enough that I can paralyze someone by cutting their lower spinal cord and my shadows can cut through any natural material, even mid-level strongman. And when appropriate...", A shadow from a nearby weight bench flashed forward and suspended itself in front of Shane, he hopped on and let it carry him around the room, "I can use them to give myself a little extra mobility."

"And your creepy abyss eyes?"

"I can use them to see through darkness but it's not traditional night vision, everything just looks greyed-out. And I can 'touch' shadows before and after I make them solid and use them to feel around my environment. It's admittedly not very precise, but invaluable when sneaking around without knowing where a group of enemies are."

~~~

And that had been the end of it. He'd shown off a few attacks and a made a swirling shield, but nothing really exceptional.

Then Jack had instructed all of them to watch has as the team demonstrated all their abilities at once via a four-person free-for-all sparring match. He'd also told the interns to tell each other about their respective mentor's abilities.

They squared off in four different corners, making an uneven square, and readied their powers. Hugh's shift was just as eye-catching as Elizabeth blurring into a flowing violet statue, mainly because he turned into a small giant. His features blurred, skin turning an ashen grey and stretching over his increasingly boney and large form. It took all of three seconds before it was done and he was a little under one story tall with two giant reflective and ovoid eyes with no mouth, skin metallic smooth and hands disproportionately large.

The other two's preparations were decidedly more discrete. Rikki simply floated a foot off the ground and had a few chunks of concrete levitate around her. Jack clenched his fists and a translucent rainbow aura appeared just above his costume, spheres of orange energy appearing around his hands.

Elizabeth moved first, bounding across the area and aiming a tackle at Rikki, but the animator darted to the side quickly before grabbing her teammate by the ankle and tossing her toward the charging Hugh. "Obsidian-Wrath primarily serves the role of a Flying-Strongman, all of her physical powers are at least on par with mine.", Vanessa commented as Elizabeth reoriented herself mid-flight and slammed into the towering figure of Hugh head-on, pushing him back despite their vast difference in size, "And she can shoot out some of the shards of her body as a ranged attack but can't really manipulate them past generating new ones or regenerating damaged ones."

Twin thin beams of sparklingly white energy shoot from Hugh's alien eyes and slammed into Elizabeth, she'd brought both arms up to block the energy and braced herself but was still gradually pushed back from the apparent force. "Aside from the basic strength and toughness from his shifted from Terram has basically 'eye powers'", Greg said before Hugh cut his beam off short and leaped into the air, avoiding a blast of orange energy from Jack, the other careening toward but avoided by Rikki. "He can do that eye-beam, his trademark 'Baleful Gaze', and heal most injuries with a glance." Instead of falling, Hugh's costume tightened around him and he remained suspended in the air before slamming back down as Rikki avoided two more blasts from Jack and as Elizabeth knocked away one aimed at her.

"The Crusader is really just an average animator with really exceptional control and range, she can control any object within a certain range, this obviously includes other people's clothes and her own armor", Amy didn't get to finished before Jack blasted himself into the air with twin burst of orange energy blasted from his feet and aimed another fired off another shot at Rikki before spinning in mid-air to deliver two at Elizabeth before landing in a crouch, both volleys were dodged and blocked respectively. "It makes her astonishingly effective at crowd control and let's her do some obviously otherwise impossible physical feats, not to mention the completely 360 degrees flight." Hugh's eyes take on an inky-black hue as he gazes at Jack and Elizabeth, there is no other flashy affect but both Heroes are nearly brought to their knees, gasping for breath, the only one spared being the airborne Rikki who slams directly into the back of Hugh's head from above. His gaze turns back to its normal luminescent reflective hue as he recovers from the hit, but not fast enough. Jack shot two more volleys at both Hugh and Elizabeth, but these looked more volatile and pulsed before impacting, the concussive force knocked them both clear across the room. But Jack hadn't stood around to see if his shots hit, he'd blasted himself in the air and towards Rikki as soon as he'd loosed his shots. Rikki tried to dodge out of the way, but Jack wasn't aiming for a clear shot, instead his entire body glowed with crackling yellow energy before exploding in every direction. Rikki convulsed in the air and started to lose altitude rapidly before Jack's downward arc intercepted her and he was able to get them safely down with a subdued burst of orange from his feet.

"And that's Spectrum's specialty, finding an opponent’s weakness is only a matter of time with how much of a versatile Blaster-type he is. They come out in bursts in close range and he needs to use his hands to line up precise shots.", Shane said as Jack and the rest of the Heroes dusted themselves off and started to un-shift or deactivate their powers, "Unfortunately, due to the nature of his powers, what he can do is fairly public knowledge; Fire, Kinetic, Electricity, Ice, Rot, Erosion, and just plain old light."

"Alright kiddies, the fun part is over, it's time for you to meet Steve.", Jack had scarcely finished saying before the entrance to the room opened and a fairly unremarkable man in a flannel shirt and khakis, his dress shoes thudding against the floor as he made his way toward the interns.

Exejpgwmv · Oct 31, 2017

Chapter 8

The Interns shared a feeling of awe as they were led by Steve through the sleek hallways of their soon-to-be new home and base. Steve leading them through the various rooms and facilities they were currently had access to.

They’d already visited the living room/meeting area; the kitchen, bathing areas, and bed quarters looked pretty standard, if a bit posh with how much puffy furniture was present. What actually caught their attention were the rooms more directly related to their duties as Heroes:

The armory, server room, garage, and various extra training and personal-meeting rooms were fit out with futuristic looking computers, hidden compartments, and could all be adjusted in some way when Steve pressed certain buttons on a small remote. It was similar in design to the one that Jack had used to make the bleachers unfold in main-training area, except Steve’s had more buttons.

Eventually Shane and Amy decided to speak up.

“Hey Steve, I’ve seen a few Hero bases when I was younger, but this one seems weirdly high tech. Any reason why?”, Shane asks as soon as Steve finishes showing them the emergency exits. Shane’s grandfather had never taken him to any active bases, to many security risks and danger, but recently vacated ones had been fair game. Although some cajoling with the Heroes who had owned it was always needed.

“Same here, in fact, this all kind of looks like something a Tech-Super would make, but I’ve never seen their technology on such a large scale.”, Amy follows up as she casually tosses her luggage onto her new bed.

“Ah, yes, about that.”, Steve suddenly turns to face all of them and visibly draws himself up, “You can all probably tell by now that I’m not a Hero but I am a Super, a Tech super that specializes in agriculture to be specific. Of course, I wasn’t the only who helped upgrade this place.”, Steve continues walking and stops to sit down in the small lounge area near the dorms. “A little over a decade ago this team saved me and a group of other Tech-Supers from a terrorist group headed by a Villain named Polaris.”, he explains with a far-away look in his eyes. “We were a small group of five Tech-Supers working with a small and private construction company. To make a long story short: The Pristine Strikers saved us and me and my colleagues feel like owed them; so, we decided that we should make them our first customers.”, he finishes with a sigh and takes a few deep breaths.

“Wait, if you’re not a Hero or with the DVA, then isn’t a problem that you can see our faces?”, Greg asks the question everyone else was thinking.

Steve chuckles a little before responding, “Don’t worry, I’m under so many contracts on privacy and disclosure that I’m in danger by just thinking about blowing the whistle on any of you.”, he stands up, whining a bit from the pain in his right knee, “Anyway, that about wraps up your tour of the base; It’s about time you met up with your agent again.”

At that moment a shard of shimmering and misty light impacted the floor right outside the lounge and Maria blurred into existence not a second later.

“Hey kids, who wants to have their first official DVA meeting?”, she announces in a sickly-sweet voice.

It didn’t take long after that for Steve to take his leave, citing he didn’t have the clearance to hear any of what Maria would be discussing with them, and Maria herded the Interns toward one of the three official meeting rooms in the base, including the main one.

They all sat around the oval shaped table with visible excitement; the opportunity to learn more about their new lives as Heroes appealing to all of them.

“Now then; you’ll be learning about after-action reports, exemplary resource requisition forms, transportation requests, various readiness statuses, and, of course, scheduling.”

Greg and Vanessa visibly shrunk back a little into their plush chairs.

~~~

The first half of their meeting went by smoothly, if slowly, as Maria explained the more mundane intricacies of Hero work. Handing out instructions for filling out forms and switching slides on the projector in the room for each topic.

Amy and Shane had kept themselves mostly at attention throughout the meeting, glancing occasionally at their respective hand-outs, while Greg and Vanessa did their best not to show any signs of dozing while they sat.

For her part, Maria kept up a steady pace with an almost clipped tone to her voice, quickly going over the material; at least until the end.

“Now that we’ve gotten past the boring paperwork, it’s time for the really exciting stuff you’ll be talking about with your Mentors.”, she said suddenly and accentuated it with a clap of her hands, instantly bringing Greg and Venessa to attention. “As Heroes of the DVA you can be under three active-statuses: On Call is the first and most common status you’ll be under, this for any Hero or team that is available to be called upon by the DVA to handle any Super or Powered related crimes or threats across the nation. Although the number of Powerds in the nation has been decreasing steadily since the whole ordeal with Charles Adair.”, her eyes getting a faraway look of plain frustrating at the last part. “Jesus, that was a cluster-****.”

“Across the nation?”, Vanessa questioned evenly.

“Yes, on occasion you may be called outside of your local area to deal with variant-human threats deemed appropriate for your team. There are only so many active Heroes in America after all, certainly not enough to cover every city or town.”, Maria replied with practiced ease. “As for the second status: On Duty. This status is for when you are currently involved in any Hero related activity that would be troublesome to call you away from. This can range from actively fighting a gang, chasing down suspects, to infiltrating a gang’s base.”, she continued as she switched to a slide of three different Heroes doing exactly what she listed.

“And what would be the penalty for a Hero not immediately following such orders?”, Greg questioned with more than a little trepidation. “I’d hate to get suspended just because I took an extra minute to make sure some scum-bag got put behind bars.”

The agent nodded in apparent understanding, “We usually don’t pull Heroes while engaged with immediate threats such as enemy Supers or chasing a fleeing suspect and are given the liberty of time to take care of any immediate tasks before being transported.”, she said smoothly placating the stocky young man. “But the status you should be most concerned about is the ‘Inactive’ status, this one’s for when you’re either on your entitled one-day-per-week break, sleeping, undergoing surgery and or therapy or in an official DVA meeting. Just to be clear: You can still be called in even when listed as Inactive, when lives are in the balance anyone’s relaxation time is expendable.”, she takes a breath and reaches down to grab her suitcase before suddenly remembering something. “Also, you need to take at least thirty days off per year; we used to have a real problem with rookies burning themselves out early.”, Amy and Shane nodded at this, they’d both seen and heard stories of Heroes getting smothered by ‘The Life’ early on. “Now onto exactly how you’ll all be establishing your statuses and what is likely to be the most important person in your career…”

She reached down and laid her sleek silver suitcase onto the stainless-steel table, popping it open to reveal four small black boxes, “Say hello to Dispatch.”

Please tell me about any typos or grammar mistakes you find, I need all the help I can get improving my writing.

Exejpgwmv · Oct 31, 2017

Chapter 9

Everyone of the Interns leaned forward in blatant excitement. They’d all had some small amount of experience with the famous figure of the Hero world during the many mock-battles they’d been through.

“Dispatch will be your main means of communicating with the DVA while out in the field, talking to other Heroes, and your main source of information about any threats you may be called into to deal with or run into.”, Maria explained as she handed out all four of the small black cases. They opened to reveal tiny silver earpieces, all identical in design and with no apparent way of staying inside the ear.

Shane tried his on immediately, not particularly surprised when the shiny piece of tech fit in perfectly and stayed that way even after a few experimental shakes of the head. It didn’t even alter his hearing, unlike most other headphones.

“These things can hear anything going on around you within a couple of meters.”, the agent rattled off with practiced ease. “They’re water proof, immune to EMPs, and are ridiculously durable.”

“How do ya turn them on?”, Greg asked with a bit of an obvious southern accent creeping in.

“They’re always on, the internal power can last for a week, and it charges wirelessly; so long as you are in the base it will auto-charge. You can go ahead and register with her now: Just identify yourself by your Hero name and set your status as ‘On Call’.”, she said while gesturing at all of them.

Shane reflexively put his hand to his ear as he complied, “Dispatch, this is Styx. My current status is now On Call.”, he said with surprising confidence. The others quickly following suit before they all simultaneously received a response from a calm voice on the other end.

“Your status has been confirmed, Styx/Gadreel/Samshiel/Simikiel.”, the smooth European accented voice announced in acknowledgment.

Before any of them had the chance to question how she had responded to all of them at the same time and with different words, Maria snapped her suitcase closed and announced that the meeting had officially come to an end. She held the door open for all of them, “Come on, your day is pretty much over now and you can all get more familiar with your new quarters.”

~~~

Shane had only really given the lounging area a cursory glance when they’d gone through it originally. But as he was going through the full-sized fridge that was practically stuffed full of healthy food and all kinds of fruity drinks and bottled water, he was able to truly appreciate how this place could ruin him for when he finally graduated from his internship and made his own base.

“Oh god, I could get used to this.”, Greg remarked as he laid back in one of the bigger recliners in the room.

“How can they even afford all this?”, Vanesa wondered as she rested across the dark-leather couch, shoes off and hands behind her head.

“Steve and his buddies probably gave them a significant discount.”, Amy informed as she looked through all the pantries fixed to the wall, “Besides; they’re one of the most popular teams in the state, standard Hero salary may not be much but the money you can make from merchandise and advertisements isn’t anything to sneeze at.”

“Assuming you’ve got a good enough Agent to handle all the contracts and PR issues.”, Shane commented after picking out a water bottle and plopping down opposite to Vanesa. Agents were considered essential for most Hero teams, they made it significantly easier for Heroes to deal with the media and manage their personal image. “And that reminds, I need to call mine before going to bed today.”

“You already got one? Man, our school barely gave us the basics on the non-combat parts of this gig.”, Greg bemoans as he adjusts the chairs angle.

“Which HCP did you guys come from anyway? I feel like you three definitely would have made it to Intramurals or I at least heard about a group of such powerful Supers.”, Shane asked pointedly. Intramurals was a very closed-door event conducted by every HCP in the nation where they pit their best students against each other in gladiatorial-style competition. There was no way these three, with such high-caliber abilities, wouldn’t have made it in; But Shane opted to ask them instead of making it seem like an interrogation.

Greg opened his mouth to answer before Amy flicked his ear, giving him a pointed glare as she moved forward, “We were hoping to put this off until later, so could you wait until it’s time for dinner. Our mentors will probably be able to explain it better than we could.”, Amy responded in a measured toned and with obvious authority.

Shane had assumed she was the leader and this pretty much confirmed it, but with his curiosity about their background semi-sated, he decided to let it go, “Well, in the meantime let me tell you about my school.”, Shane took a swig of his water bottle before going any further, this was going to be a long story.

“I graduated from the Lander HCP, the first HCP to house Powerds-turned-Supers in human history.”

Please tell me about any typos or grammar mistakes you find, I need all the help I can get improving my writing.

Exejpgwmv · Nov 13, 2017

CHAPTER 10

The young heroes eventually split off to their individual quarters; some to recuperate from power use while others took care of personal matters.

Shane relaxed into the arm-chair of his new room before calling Lenny, his now Agent, to notify him that introductions had gone smoothly and about his suspicions of his fellow interns but Lenny was just as in the dark as he was.

After that the young man decided to reflect on the new team he was on; the Heroes were about what he’d expected, except for Rikki’s rather aggressive first impression and attitude toward training. No, his fellow Interns were the only real concern he had, this wasn’t like the HCP where it was a competition to see who could graduate; they’d all become official Heroes as long they put in the work. The only real potential problems were of trust and leadership. Trust was both invaluable and necessary for any Hero who wanted to last long in a team and any hesitation toward a teammate or Leader while in the field could result in death. The problem of leadership among them was a bit more complicated but he could already see that Amy and him would but heads eventually.

~~~

Vanessa simply lounged on her bed and searched the local news with her phone, finding herself surprisingly content with the day so far.

Sure, she was a little worried about talking about their “situation” at dinner and she could already see that Amy and the DeSoto guy might get into it over who got to be leader. But those problems could only end so badly, besides, she was beyond tired of having to hide so much from everyone. She’d done enough of that to last a life time while they were in school.

~~~

Greg lounged about on the bed in his room, watching videos of fights between gangs and Heroes, primarily looking at any recording of his mentor. Hugh was just as graceful in the fights he was watching as he had been fighting his teammates in the training area.

In truth, part of Greg was doing this just to get his mind off of what would happen during dinner and the wild story Shane had spun for them. They’d all heard rumors, everyone had after dozens of Heroes and one of the richest men in the world, Charles Adair, had gone head-to-head.

~~~

Amy was planning. Writing it down with a simple #2 pencil and a loose-leaf notebook, it’d always helped when she wrote down her plans. Helped her remember what to do, where to be, and when to start something.

She wasn’t worried about her internship, the shadow-boy’s story, or having to reveal her team’s secret at dinner. All she was really concerned about was keeping her position, and even that slight concern would be solved soon enough.

Or so she told herself.

~~~

A few hours later and Rikki floated through the halls, calling them out for dinner. Her costume was gone, in its place was a plain t-shirt and jean combo with a pair of running shoes. It was a surprisingly comforting sight to the Interns that all but rush out of their rooms.

The walk to the kitchen was short and without conversation, the steady murmur of conversation getting ever closer as they approached.

“-till can’t believe you just found a group of those kids waving around some semi-automatics.”, Jack says before stopping abruptly as they all filed in and found chairs to sit at the round and large marble table.

On Jack’s right Elizabeth was quietly eating a plate of steamed broccoli while Hugh’s sat on his left and was currently turned toward his leader, a plate of half-eaten London Broil steak in front of him. Rikki sat down next to Hugh with a bowl of chicken-salad, similar meals were laid in front of each intern.

“Welcome to dinner everyone!”, Jack bellowed happily, the rest of the heroes echoing his enthusiasm. “Now, just to be clear, this is less about food and more about relaxing building trust with your teammates, we won’t always be eating together when things get busy or were pressed for time.”, he started before lifting up a hand for their attention, “But before we get started I think we have to explain a few things to Shane here.”

Shane was briefly surprised by the statement before rationalizing it as them having security cameras in every room, and mics good enough to pick up any conversations he’d had. After that he straightened up a little in attention, eager to know what the deal was with his fellow graduates.

“You were right in assuming that if those three had attended any of the five standard HCPs, they would have been at Intramurals. But they weren’t at any of the known ones, they’re from a newly built one in Michigan.”, Jack said in an even tone.

Shane blinked slowly and almost let his jaw drop before marshalling his thoughts, “Um, when exactly did this happen? I can’t imagine building a new Hero Certification Program is easy.”, he distantly realized this would explain why he’d never heard of them.

“Construction and security was finished up around six years ago, took another year to make it more like a school and less like a military base. Always need a careful blend of the two to make a decent training facility for Supers.”, Jack says before gesturing toward the three interns apparently from this new HCP, “Anyways, it was built in Detroit and has been only open to Supers with certain backgrounds; Supers who are the children of either trusted Heroes or the children of DVA agents. The pool of eligible students was as exceedingly small as you might imagine.”

Shane could plenty understand how small a selection would be available, Supers in general were already rare, Heroes-grade ones even more so. And the children of Supers weren’t inherently more likely to have Super-children either; He would be surprised if they had found enough to fill a single classroom.

Jack looked toward the clock on the wall before looking towards his plate, “Now that that’s been taken care of; I suggest you four start digging in, Hugh has some news from his patrol that you all need to hear.”, he finishes before taking a fork-full of his own meal. The Interns, along with Rikki, quickly follow suite.

“A new gang has started turning up in down-town for the past few weeks; they call themselves the ‘White Boars’.”, Hugh began, his deep baritone easily understandable over the noise of their eating. “At first it was just small-time crime; theft, vandalism, and maybe a few brawls. But recently they’ve gotten a large influx of new members and some illegal firepower.”, Hugh voice had gotten a bit somber at the end, but he kept going without pause. “The real concern for people in our profession however is that they’ve recently started recruiting Supers and Powereds alike…”

~~~

Rikki, now in her Crusader costume, was flying high over her district and was heading toward the east side, grim determination on her now hidden face.

After dinner discussion of this new gang had been concluded, all the Interns had been sent to bed with a warning that power assessments would start tomorrow. As soon as they were all back in their rooms Rikki had been the first to volunteer to get more information on this new gang while Spectrum and Obsidian-Wraith went out on night patrol.

Crusader wasn’t a subtly Hero, neither was any of her teammates for that matter, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have contacts in the criminal world that came from over ten years of fighting organized crime.

She easily navigated the industrial area, her night-vision googles helping just as much as her familiarity with the city. She landed with a dull thud in front of a seemingly abandoned warehouse. This was where her contact would be, ‘Kurtis’, the man who near regulated all illegal purchases on this side of the concrete-jungle.

Please tell me about any typos or grammar mistakes you find, I need all the help I can get improving my writing.

<< Index >>

Exejpgwmv · Nov 13, 2017

CHAPTER 11

Shane woke up at his usual 5:00 AM, the familiar tone of his phone’s alarm bringing him out of pleasant dreams about shadows.

Back when Supers had first been officially recognized by the government at large, many had theorized that Supers having dreams about their abilities was a side-affect from frequent power use. Further testing over the years had shown the source of the pattern to be more physiological in nature rather than anything directly related to their biology or powers.

As he looked around his room Shane briefly hesitated before going through his morning routine. A series of stretches to limber up for physical activity and two minutes to brush, rinse, and floss. After all of that he pulled on some work out clothes and exited his room towards where he remembered the regular work-out room to be. And was pleased and completely unsurprised to see that he wasn’t the only one to start the day off with a morning work out.

Jack and Rikki, along with all the other interns, were all just getting ready to start what looked like some low-intensity exercise. He decided to join his mentor doing jumping-jacks.

“So, power assements right after breakfast?”, he asked easily, the light activity nowhere near enough to affect his breathing.

“Right you are.”, Jack responds just as easily, “You’re gonna want to stick with the light stuff today, we want to test you at your best.”

Shane nodded in understanding before transitioning to the next and least-favorite part of the routine; Squats. Fifteen minutes and a quick shower later, everyone was sitting down for breakfast, the main meal being bowls of cereal and bananas.

“So, Shane, you will be the only one to actually go through power assements today.”, Rikki said as Jack was occupied with stuffing his face. “You’ve probably already guessed this from how oddly specific Vanessa was about her power but for the sake of brevity; the HCP they went to offered unique and exact reports about the limits of their powers.”

“Yeah, they had a bunch military armour, weapons, and vehicles for us to play around with.”, Greg pauses for a moment before speaking again, “While under careful supervision of course.”

Shane was surprised to hear Vanessa stifle a chuckle at that, while Amy simply nodded in agreement. “So, what exactly about my power needs testing? It’s pretty straight forward.”

A sly grin stretched across Rikki’s face, “You'll be going through a durability assessment.”, she says simply before going back to her bowl of rather fruity looking cereal.

~~~

Amy looked on nonplussed as another one of Vanessa’s punches impacted harmlessly upon the shadow-blade Shane had made from the shadow of a Practice-Dummy. The now-material shadow didn’t budge or even show any signs of damage from the increasingly devastating impacts.

They’d all filed back into the training area for Shane’s assessment. After some experimentation with the denser weights they’d found that a shadow of average “strength” could lift 30 tons reliably, anything more and the shadows simply didn’t budge, no straining or tension to be seen, it’d just stop.

After Jack stepped up to test how his constructs handled energy she decided to bow out and spend her time at the track in the basement. Amy had been intrigued by Shane’s power before; A controller that could control, shift, and feel through a non-elemental material(?) was plenty unique and versatile enough to get a Super to Hero status. But his display’s during the assements had her down-right impressed. He’d obviously had extensive training prior to the HCP, which came as no surprise considering that he is the grandson of the first Hero.

The track was a circular room a little over half the size of a football field, a standard red and green track was painted onto the floor of the solid concrete room. She started off her circuit at a jog but eventually worked her way up to a full sprint, after making ten-full circuits at this pace she decided it was time to change. She shifted over the course of 10 steps and assumed her glowing mannequin-esque form and promptly ramped up her speed to inhuman levels.

Shane was plenty impressive, and he was probably really something else while in the HCP, but he hadn’t been out in the field yet. When they were putting their lives on the line to fight against criminals with god-like powers, she’d see what he was really made of.

She distantly felt herself break the sound-barrier as she thought about one of the direct descendants of Captain Starlight.

Please tell me about any typos or grammar mistakes you find, I need all the help I can get improving my writing.

Exejpgwmv · Nov 13, 2017

CHAPTER 12

Shane, Amy, Greg, and Vanessa were all lined up in the gym. All of them dressed in the Hero suits they’d received before they’d even set foot inside their new home.

They stood at attention while Rikki circled them, scrutinizing their suits and subtly using her power to feel the structure and material.

Shane and Greg’s costumes were of similar kind, more like full-body armor than traditional Hero costumes. Shane’s being black with dull grey highlights while Greg’s was a deep orange on his chest and legs, his elbow high gloves and boots a faded black. The difference was more than just cosmetic however; in contrast to Greg’s reinforced cowl Shane wore a full helmet.

Even the composition of the armor was of noticeably different quality. Greg’s thick yet flexible Kevlar combined with heat resistant material looking more like advanced swat armor, as opposed to Shane’s metallic mesh and what Rikki recognized as a variation of Shifter-material made by Tech Supers combined with modern Kevlar; the whole ensemble making him look like a modern-Knight*.

Amy and Vanessa’s costumes were more in line with traditional hero gear, their powers making body armor a non-issue for them. Vanessa in her almost shimmering gold and blue suit, and Amy in her maroon-red with silver outlines and stylized bloody-sword on her chest making it apparent they would be the kind of heroes who attracted attention and drew fire.

Although Amy’s foot wear was of noticeably tougher material, the reason being obvious to anyone who knew what her main power was.

“Alright, nothing to glaringly bad about these; but you’ll definitely want to make little changes and adjustments as time goes on. Everyone does.”, Rikki remarks with amusement tinting her New York accent.

“Changes like what?”, Greg bluntly asks.

“Changes like the shape of your boots if they turn out to be bad for running; Something you’ll be doing a lot of when you’re fighting.”, Rikki responds as Shane and Amy nod in understanding. “Now go back to the lockers and put back on your regular clothes. You’ve got the rest of the day to yourselves and your first patrol starts tomorrow, so use the time you have left wisely; you don’t get many free-days in this profession.”, Rikki finishes, apparently forgetting or not caring about the optional off-days every Hero was offered by the DVA.

After getting changed Shane decided to take the initiative and offer his fellow interns an opportunity that he knew would take up most of the day: Sparring.

Powers and without powers, the four interns spent the next several hours squaring off against each other; Sometimes one-on-one and other times one-on-two or three. Shane getting the worst of it when he went against all three of his new acquaintances, their practiced coordination and familiarity with each other’s abilities very evident.

In truth, one that Amy had noticed early on, Shane was using this chance to familiarize himself with how they fought and moved. It was a personal philosophy of his to always learn how someone fought before fighting along side them.

Before they knew it, the day had come to a close and they all dragged themselves to bed after another surprisingly good dinner with their mentors. Elizabeth’s story of how she had broken-up a shootout and Super-fight between the local gangs and the new “White Boars” still fresh in their minds.

The morning after was mostly a blur. The interns and heroes simply going through the motions of stretching, teeth bruising, light exercise, and showering. The only noteworthy event being after they’d all finished eating breakfast.

“Alright, attention everyone, time for today’s assignments!”, Jack bellowed from the front of the table, his plate picked clean as per usual. Everyone of the interns was at full attention from his announcement, Greg having just swallowed the last bit of his cereal.

“Most of us will be going on regular patrol today.”, Jack started, noting how nervous some of the interns were. “Me and Styx will be watching the north-western part of the city while Crusader and Simikiel handle the east side. Terram and Samshiel will handle the docks; don’t worry about covering the entire area, there’ll be a solo-hero called Intuition that patrols the area to help you out.”

It felt weird for Shane to here someone else say his hero name, he’d chosen the name because he liked what it symbolized but it was still hard to imagine it being something he would or could make famous.

“Obsidian-Wrath and Gadreel will be doing some aerial coverage of the seedier industrial area where we’ve gotten a lot of reports of new gang activity. If they run into any trouble then converging on their location and providing back-up becomes a top priority.”, Jack continues as he turns toward Shane and Greg. “I want you two to always have your powers active when on patrol and to look out for danger since you don’t have any enhanced durability to protect you from sneak attacks like Simikiel or Gadreel do. And finally; Always listen to Dispatch, even if her orders contradict my own, her authority is higher than mine of course.”, Jack finishes with sigh, clearly not liking to talk that much or long all at once

Every intern still gave him a firm, “Yes, sir!”, and only slightly wilted under his light-glare from their insistence on being formal with him. Most out of respect, one out of amusement.

~~~

The suit felt tighter and heavier than all the other times he worn it in his room or when he wore it in the gym. The helmet felt nigh-claustrophobic as Styx looked around the alley that Maria had dropped him and Spectrum in.

“You doing okay?”, Spectrum asked with concern in his voice but not quite visible from his white cowl.

Styx took three deep measured breaths before responding, “Fine, just the jitters. Let’s get going already, no sense in delaying now.”, he said as he stalked toward the end of the alley.

“Just remember to keep that ‘shadow-sense’ of yours on at all times.”, Jack replied as he walked along side him and stepped onto the sidewalk ahead. Styx disliked the name, not because it offended him in any particular way, but because he found the prospect of naming parts of his powers to be… immature.

The streets weren’t too busy under the excessively cloudy sky of the Monday afternoon, the mixture of cloud cover and sunlight making the sky an almost oppressive-grey for miles around.

As he felt and searched the shadows around him, Styx found himself needlessly tensed up, as if he was anticipating an attack. But all he saw were people in rather dark and regular clothes, some staring openly while others took a quick picture with their phones before walking quickly away. The people on their side of the street gave them an especially wide berth as they walked forward.

After a few seconds of stunned silence, even though it wasn’t apparent through his helmet, Styx drew himself up a bit taller and took his mentor’s lead after seeing him wave and pose for a few shots.

“I honestly don’t know why I’m so surprised, I’ve seen Heroes patrol in my hometown before.”, Styx remarked as he gave a thumbs-up to a trio of kids who oohed and aahed as their mother ushered them across the street.

“It’s just your nerves, remember, a big part of patrolling is about exposure and reassurance. A lot of people see you as a sort of representative now, so it’s best to appear amiable. Even if your power isn’t exactly ‘family-friendly’”, Spectrum said easily, not fearing anyone would overhear considering the wide birth they were bring given. “Try to keep watch for anyone trying to covertly take a picture, it’s good practice for spotting someone trying to sneakily pull a gun.”, Spectrum said in a disturbingly casual tone.

The patrol went on like that for a little while. Just Styx carefully watching the crowd and waving or giving some thumbs up to anyone trying to take a sneaky picture. They occasionally passed by some unnaturally pristine and new looking benches, lamps, and sections of previously cracked and stained streets; something that Spectrum explained as a charity working Super that had the power to “renew” objects.

Styx had almost let all the anxiety and tension leave him when a ragged looking figure stumbled out of an alley and made a grab for him. Styx’s ability gave him early warning and plenty of time to side-step the clumsy grab while also animating, what he could now see was a man’s, shadow and wrapping it around him. Arresting his motion, keeping him in place, and pinning his arms to his sides.

The intern risked a glance toward his mentor and saw that Spectrum hadn’t been any slower on the draw, already taking aim at the now obviously homeless man, a dim sphere of orange energy around his outstretched hand.

But as some people ran while others stared at the sudden display, Styx heard something from the man through all the commotion that made him realize this wasn’t just some crazed and ill-planned attack.

The homeless man in ragged and torn clothing rasped out two words from his cracked and blood splattered lips, his sunken in eyes staring desperately at Styx all the while, “Help me…”

*Shane had to the knight-motif when he first got his costume, but eventually thought it too much trouble to change and realize he may be at fault as well. His request for, “Black, grey, and sleek body-armor”, leaving a lot to interpretation.

Please tell me about any typos or grammar mistakes you find, I need all the help I can get improving my writing.

Exejpgwmv · Nov 16, 2017

Chapter 13

Styx used the shadow already wrapped around the homeless man to gently lay him down, noting how utterly malnourished the hobo looked. ‘Jesus, how is even still alive?’, Styx thought before his mind started racing on about what he was supposed to do next. He wasn’t a healer, far from it, and the man in front of him looked like he needed immediate medical attention. He suddenly became aware that his mentor was saying something and was about to turn around when his ear-piece crackled to life.

<The nearest Hospital is two and a half blocks away due west. Quick but gentle transport via your shadow-platforms is recommended.>

“Thanks for the tip Dispatch, we’ll get right on it”, Spectrum responded.

The calm and accented voice of Dispatch and Spectrum’s reassuring confirmation cut through the Intern’s panicked thoughts. Of course; Dispatch had to have dealt with situations like this thousands of times over the years, notifying her should have been the first thing he thought of.

“Thank you, Dispatch.”, Styx said, silently admonishing himself as he un-bound the sick man. He kneeled down and picked him up bridal-style. Ignoring the odd looks onlookers gave him.

“You sure you got this?”, Jack asked as he stepped up beside Styx and made a show of looking out for trouble, and waving off any pedestrians who got too close.

“Yeah, shouldn’t be a problem, especially not with such a short distance.”, Styx said as he easily hefted the sickly, and now sweating man and almost cradled him as he solidified the shadow of a near by building and stepped onto it. Spectrum following close behind.

After making one last check to make sure no one was in the way, Styx commanded the shadow to lift and stretch, easily covering the distance of the entire block. People below openly gawked and took pictures as the two Heroes rode the dark platform.

Then another building’s shadow solidified and rose up to their level, both Styx and Spectrum stepped on and checked their footing before the shadow was willed to move again. Two more transitions later and Styx was in front of the hospital, two Nurses already there with a gurney ready, apparently having been notified early. Styx gently laid the gaunt man unto to the gurney, silently noting the man’s now labored breathing and feverish appearance. He’d been cold and struggling for breath only two minutes prior.

After answering some questions about where and how the homeless man was found they were back on patrol. Styx was more than a little relieved when he heard they had a Healer on staff for sudden patients in serious conditions. Healers that could handle illness were rare, ones willing to work in regular hospitals even more so.

As they took more erratic twists and turns around town, Styx also realized he was all too happy that his first public act of Hero work involved peacefully rescuing someone and using his power for utility, instead of dismembering a criminal. Not that he’d tell anyone that of course.

“Let’s get some lunch.”, Spectrum said midway through their patrol, near a particularly dirty and cracked intersection, traffic significantly slowing down due to the appearance of the two costumed law enforcers. He pulls out what looks like a flat-screen burner phone from his side pocket that displayed a list of restaurants. “Need to keep the locales we visit randomized, keeps us from being tracked easily and makes poisoning attempts a none issue.”, he says casually before pressing a twin-dice symbol and letting the wheel of restaurants whirl, never completely taking his eyes of the street around them. Styx acting extremely vigilant at his side, even looking at the various windows and balconies. “Aww, crap.”, Spectrum says as the phone settles.

Styx took a quick look over and saw that the screen had landed on what looked like a burger joint called… ‘Hot Buns’. “It’s got a bold title, I’ll give it that.”, he remarks.

“Unfortunately, that’s the only thing it’s got going for it, the burgers there are pretty meh.”, Spectrum says before sighing and heading off down the street until they were out of earshot of anyone else. “I know a shortcut through some of the alleys near here, won’t take more than five minutes.”

Styx was on the verge of cautioning about how dangerous that was in this part of Brooklyn and with only two people. Until he realized how stupid that would sound from someone who was supposed to be a Superhero. But he was soon validated in how dangerous he thought it would be at least.

~~~

Halfway through Spectrum’s shortcut they both started hearing shouting from an adjacent alleyway that lead into a more desolate street. Styx used his shadow-sense and let Spectrum know there were five people standing still as they both sped up and heard some more choice words being shared.

“You better back up before you get stomped faggot!”, a gruff voice shouts as they just made it to the corner.

“What? You scared to come over here because your punk boss doesn’t run the streets anymore!?”, another younger sounding voice blusters back.

They turned the corner and saw a group of, what Styx assumes, are thugs. Three at the entrance and two near the corner, the two corner ones wearing white bandanas around the bottom half of their faces caught Styx’s eye especially.

Until he chastised himself and quickly looked them over for weapons, of which he found none.

“If were talking territory, then these are technically the public’s street.”, Spectrum says in a conversational tone as he and Styx came in to full view of the gangsters.

Every single one of them jumped at the sudden intrusion, the two bandana-bros turning around with anger in their eyes, before seeing exactly who was behind them and promptly back pedaled. Despite their prior argument the two small groups seemed to have no qualms with gathering together at the entrance as a singular group.

“W-why the **** is you here!”, the shorter of the two obvious White Boar members called out.

“On patrol, obviously. Makin’ sure the streets are safe for regular folk and keeping people out of trouble.”, he takes a moment to look all of them, making eye contact with each one. “You boys wouldn’t happen to be causing any trouble, would you?”

“Who’s the new guy?”, a tall and lanky young man in the back called out, his pants barely hanging onto his waist.

“Unfortunately, we don’t have time for lengthy introductions. Styx, why don’t you take the lead?”, Spectrum said, both ignoring and answering the question on all of their minds.

Styx knew an opening when he saw one. He started forward, back straight, and heading down the middle of the small group of scared gangsters.
At first, none of them moved, the taller White Boar member with a spider tattoo on his hand even looked a little defiant.

That lasted until they noticed the alleyway darkening as he got closer. Every shadow present elongating and creeping further along the walls and ground, slowly converging towards them.
As soon as the first one stumbled back the rest were quick to follow suit, pouring out of the alley and nearly sprinting away. The two wearing white bandannas sticking together as they went down the street while the three plain looking ones heading toward the alley across the way. And Styx saw that two other men joined up with them as they went further in.

“So, they had back-up? I guess we got lucky with our timing.”, Styx says as his mentor steps onto the sidewalk with him. “Should we try following them?”, he asked. After over a decade of training he’d easily been able to spot the signs of them getting ready to start a fight, and neither group looked like the type to stand-down easily.

“Nah, couldn’t really charge them with anything anyway.”, Spectrum replied as he headed up the street, toward what Styx could now see was the burger joint. “If they’d taken a swing at us, pulled a weapon or powers, or had tried to block us from moving through; Then it might have been a different story.”

Styx nodded in understanding. Unless provoked or they saw a clear and present danger; Heroes mostly left regular crime to the regular police. But just to be safe, he kept his shadow sense especially sensitive in case any of them decided to try and double-back.

~~~

Shane took off his mask and relaxed into the comfy chair as he breathed deeply, letting all the anxiety of the day bleed away.

The rest of the patrol had gone well into the late afternoon before Spectrum let him know that their shift was over and they’d made it back to base in short order. Now he relaxed in the main meeting room with his fellow interns, Jack, Rikki, and Hugh. Elizabeth having gone off to start night patrol.

None of them looked particularly tired, but Shane noticed that Amy was carrying herself a bit differently than before. “Anything happen on your patrol?”, he asked conversationally.

“Things were going fine most of the time, but we ran into a speedster who was robbing a deli and I had to run him down.”, Amy says as she finally relents from trying to lean against the wall and takes a load off in one of the chairs.

“I had to transport someone to a hospital and scare off some thugs, but that was about it”, Shane responded in kind.

“Same here; me and Obsidian mainly just scared off mooks whenever we flew over.”, Vanessa says from her seat at the front of the table.

“I only got to deal with a mundane fist fight and the police handled most of it after we called it in.”, Greg says with barely contained jealousy.

“Trust me, after a couple of months, you’ll long for the days when your patrols were mostly low-priority threats.”, Hugh says reproachfully. “And the only reason you didn’t see much today is because a lot of the gangs have started hiding out during the day and only really stir things up at night. The White Boars have really started making a mess of things, especially the black-market deals.”

“Oh, that reminds!”, Jack suddenly pipes up in an all too cheery tone. “Shane, after you get used to regular patrol I want to see about putting you semi-regularly on night-shift duty. After all, you did mention your shadows are stronger the darker it gets.”

“Oh joy…”, Shane remarks with more than a bit of sarcasm and a little apprehension that only two other people in the room noticed.

Exejpgwmv · Nov 17, 2017

CHAPTER 14

Amy had grown, not annoyed, but testy with her first debriefing with the teams DVA agent, Maria. She considered herself a patient woman, but having to retell and wait for Maria to cross-reference the actions during her fight and time of said actions was testing her limits.

Fortunately, the incapacitation of the middle-aged speedster had been relatively simple and was over in around two minutes. Amy was reluctant to even call it a fight; the woman had just been a standard speedster with what looked average acceleration and durability. A kick to dislocate her knee and a swift blow to the temple had been all it took to bring her down after Amy saw her race out of the deli with a gun in hand and people inside shouting “Thief!” after her.

But Amy took solace and pride in the fact that her first Hero battle had gone about as well as it could have and that she had probably garnered some good will with the public after such a performance.
After seeing Shane’s power, she got the feeling he wouldn’t be so lucky.

~~~

Shane found the team’s newest strongwoman lifting ultra-dense weights in the gym. The haze around her body from using her powers all the more obvious under the bright lights.

“Vanessa, do you mind if I borrow you for a second?”, He called out as he approached, but stopped a reasonable distance away. He’d heard about and seen enough Supers with enhanced strength accidentally dropping their weights.

“Oh, uh, sure. What do you need?”, Vanessa almost stammers out, not quite used to being approached.

“I’d like to spar a little more with you.”, Shane says upfront and without hesitation. “I may be more effective and safe at ranged combat, but it pays to constantly brush up on your martial skill incase someone can get through my defenses.”, He tried to not go on a lecture like he use to do when he was younger; he’d found out the hard way that it didn’t endear him to others.

Vanessa looked skeptical nonetheless said simply, “Is that all?”.

Shane thought about trying to politely brush off her question or cleverly avoid it, but thought better of it. He hadn’t noticed at first, but over the course of the past three days he’d seen that she avoided being social with anyone that wasn’t either her mentor or her two friends. After practically being forced to team up with and befriend multiple people during his HCP tenure he’d found that being up front with people like Vanessa was for the best long-term.

“Also, because I noticed that you have less martial-skill than me and that I would like the person in charge of going hand-to-hand against strongmen should be just as good at fighting as I am.”, Shane said and then steeled himself for whatever response she had.

At first Vanessa looked a little stunned, then introspective, then nodded in apparent understanding. “You’re right, and I noticed that too.”, she says before chuckling softly, “At first I thought it was fluke when you flipped me onto to my ass the first time we fought one-on-one yesterday. But after seeing you beat Greg, Amy, and then hold off all three of us at once; The truth sunk in pretty heavily after that.” Vanessa then puts the weight’s back on to their racks with a dull clang before going into one of the training circles and letting her power fade. She silently beckons Shane forward.

Shane smiles and then strides into the same circle, facing her directly in a standard martial stance. “Ok then; let’s work on you countering when someone gets inside your reach.”

~~~

After a few rounds with Vanessa and with a not insignificant amount of soreness in his muscles, Shane prepared for bed. The dinner meeting and subsequent talk had been largely uneventful. The most exciting thing being Amy retelling her exploits and Rikki giving her, and by extension the rest of the Interns, some advice on how to better notice and capture criminal Supers.

Shane laid his head down and fell fast asleep. Then woke up what felt like five seconds later to the sound of an alarm.

He was groggy at first, but his mind quickly latched on to what the yellow flashing lights and high-pitched whistle meant. Their Mentors had walked them through what these alarms meant, the yellow one in particular means: “Immediate and high-level Super related emergency in the city. Get down to the garage in five minutes or be left behind.” The voice of Dispatch from his earpiece only served to further confirm what he knew.

<Styx, please be aware that you and your team have been called in to handle the high-priority threat that has appeared in the industrial district.>

He sprang up and slammed open the closet for his suit, silently cursing himself for not practicing getting dressed quickly. “Dispatch, what are we dealing with here?”, Shane asked as he got halfway through putting on his gear.

<There are reports of a one story tall half-bull half-man going on a rampage near the local brewing companies. Likely a shifter or the work of a high-end summoner.>

“Thanks!”, Styx barked out as he ran out of his room and down the hall toward where he remembered the garage was. He was briefly worried that he wouldn’t be able to make it in time; then he felt someone lift him up by his armpits and fly him the rest of the way towards and through the entrance. He looked up and saw that it was Vanes- Gadreel who’d given him a lift.
They arrived to find that all of their mentors were already there and ready to go, except for Obsidian-Wraith who was supposed to still be on patrol.

“C’mon, let’s go!”, Spectrum yelled from the drivers-side of what looked like a futuristic Humvee. Greg, now in his Samshiel costume, was blurred in by Simikiel seconds before Styx practically threw himself into the vehicle. Once everyone was secured and accounted for the garage exit snapped open with a loud clang of metal.

Rikki in her Crusader armor, Gadreel, and Simikiel flew out with Terram bounding along not far behind in his shifted form.

The Humvee roared to life and speed-up, onto the streets, and took off where Dispatch had said the threat would be.
An almost uncomfortable silence fell over them as they rode along, before Dispatch relayed more information that set the two Interns on edge.

<Be advised; The creature has been identified as a Manhattan-Level threat. First priority is neutralization of the Super before any more damage can be caused. Lethal force is officially authorized and the targets life is now a low-priority>

V's patron · Nov 17, 2017

Chapter 2 you mispelled "ma'am" as "ma'ma" when Rikki introduces herself

Chapter 3 has a sentence about Shane's extensive training that appears to be cutoff.

Exejpgwmv · Nov 18, 2017

Z218 said:
Chapter 2 you mispelled "ma'am" as "ma'ma" when Rikki introduces herself

Chapter 3 has a sentence about Shane's extensive training that appears to be cutoff.

Thank you, and fixed.

Exejpgwmv · Nov 18, 2017

World Guide

Supers - A person who possesses and can control an ability beyond the physical capabilities of humans. Though seemingly straightforward, the exact definition for what constitutes beyond human abilities is always changing. An example of this are Tech-Supers, whose powers were not originally viewed as fitting the requirements to make them a class of Super.

Powereds - A person who possesses abilities beyond the physical capabilities of humans, but has no conscious control over activation and/or management of their abilities. Power activation can be completely random, connected to physical ticks(Ex: sneezing), or spontaneously in response to intense emotions.
Note: Abilities that cannot be de-activated make the difference between a Powered and Super blurry. A Powered who has a naturally enhanced physique power would be indistinguishable from a Super with the same power.

HCP(Hero Certification Program) - A system designed to educate Supers on the duties and strategies of being a Hero while simultaneously weeding out those who cannot handle such responsibility. Currently there are six colleges in the United States that offer Hero Certification Programs.

Hero(es) - A Super who has been trained and certified to fight Supers engaged in criminal activities. These are the only people that are deemed as insurable and as such are protected from culpability over damage caused in the course of their duties. The process to become a Hero requires acceptance into and completion of the Hero Certification Program, followed by two years working under the supervision of a current Hero.

Privately Employed Emergency Response Supers(PEERS)/Corpies - Privately employed Supers that are trained in rescuing civilians from various emergency situations. However, unlike Heroes, they are not authorized to engage criminal-Supers unless in direct self-defense of themselves or others.

Character Guide

Pristine Strikers
Shane DeSoto, Styx
Bio:

Height: 6’5”
Body Type: Athletic
Eye Color: Dark Brown (Go pitch when power is in use.)
Hair Color: Black
Other Distinguishing Characteristics: Hair is always cut in a style reminiscent of a crew-cut.

Power:

Shadow Manipulation/Shadow Solidification: allows him the ability to Manipulate, 'Feel/Sense', and Solidify shadows

Vanessa Skovgaard, Gadreel
Bio:

Height: 6' 9"
Body Type: Amazonian
Eye Color: Blue
Hair Color: Straw Brown
Other Distinguishing Characteristics: Rarely seen not in loosely fitting clothes.

Power:

Energy Empowerment(Non-Natural and Internal) that results in Enhanced Strength, Speed, Durability, Reflexes, and Flight

Greg Zeitlin, Samshiel
Bio:

Height: 5’8”
Body Type: Stocky
Eye Color: Amber
Hair Color: Long-Blond(Now shorter.)
Other Distinguishing Characteristics: Likes to wear leather jackets.

Power:

Energy Constructs(Non-Natural): the ability to manifest Orbs of that emit intense heat and deliver tremendous kinetic force, can also generate shields by linking said Orbs.

Amy Serio, Simikiel
Bio:

Height: 5’ 5”
Body Type: Muscular
Eye Color: Green
Hair Color: Jet-Black
Other Distinguishing Characteristics: Prefers plain clothes made for utility.

Power:

Energy Physiology(Non-Natural)/Shifter: results in Enhanced Speed, Durability, Reflexes, Energy Vision, and Flight

Jack Alspach, Spectrum
Bio:

Height: 6,7”
Body Type: Muscular
Eye Color: Brown
Hair Color: Steel-Grey
Other Distinguishing Characteristics: None

Power:

Elemental Blasts: The user can release elements/energy over a specific target area causing great damage and/or delivering great shock waves of pure force.

Rikki Kornai, Crusader
Bio:

Height: 6’ 4”
Body Type: Lean
Eye Color: Hazel
Hair Color: Brown
Other Distinguishing Characteristics: Almost exaggerated NY accent.

Power:

Animation: The power to remotely control/animate inanimate objects.

Hugh Ahumada, Terram
Bio:

Height: 6’ 7”
Body Type: Muscular
Eye Color: Milky/Cloudy
Hair Color: Platinum-blonde
Other Distinguishing Characteristics: Usually expressionless face.

Power:

(Secret)Alien Physiology/Shifter: Power to use the abilities of and transform into an extraterrestrial.

Elizabeth Engelhardt, Obsidian-Wrath
Bio:

Height: 6’8”
Body Type: Toned
Eye Color: Dark Purple
Hair Color: Black
Other Distinguishing Characteristics: Surprisingly soft spoken.

Power:

Crystal Mimicry/Shifter: The power to transform into or have a physical body made up of crystal or crystalline substance.

Will be updated as new characters are introduced.

Exejpgwmv · Dec 7, 2017

Chapter 15

Dave was surprised as he pulled his now massive and fur-matted form out of the apartment building’s rubble. The tons of falling steel and cement had been the only thing to even faze him as he rampaged through the city.

If Dave was a more introspective person, or didn’t currently have mind-numbingly-addictive drug burning through his system, that might have made him pause for thought. Instead, he simply shook off the debris and ignored his many injuries that were slowly healing as he let the exaltation consume him once more.

He’d been so unsure of himself before, so weak, even though he’d always been an exceptional Super; the mere thought of attracting the attention of Heroes had been terrifying. They’d seemed indominable before, and his previous boss’ nearly threatening warnings to use his power sparingly because of his size hadn’t helped either.

But then he’d joined up with the White Boars. They were mostly just a bunch of wannabes and upstarts, which made it all the easier to rise up the ranks with his power. The pay being killer hasn’t been half bad either.

It had still been just another gang back then though, with same exact **** excuses from the lieutenants: “Don’t use your power in public.”, “Don’t stay changed for too long.”, “Don’t let anyone not part of the gang see your face when you change back.”.
With, “Don’t go out bragging or your dead.”, being a terrifyingly new one.

This had gone on for months before he’d been recognized by the boss, guy called himself “Immadesco” and dressed in a pretentious looking red suit all the time. Dave kept his mouth shut during the meeting regardless though, he was a grunt, but not stupid. The rumors about what happened to those that disrespected or deserted the Boss pretty much shared as dogma throughout the group.

Boss had wanted to reward him with a new “serum” that had some weird Greek sounding name, meant to enhance a person’s power without needing a true Enhancing Super on hand. Dave would have called bullshit on anyone else and told them to test their new drug on some other chump with nothing to lose. But it was made pretty clear that his reward was not optional. Besides, the dosage was pretty small anyway, barely enough to fill a shot-glass.

The one thing Dave hadn’t expected when he was ordered to take it while in the warehouse with Immadesco was for the unassuming and small amount of liquid to actually work.

All the apprehension of being ordered to meet with his boss and the fear of having to test some shady drug melted away instantly. Dave’s ever-increasing friction with his cousins in the south, his debt, the constant paranoia over getting stabbed in the back again; all of the usual and ever-present worries in his mind simply melt away at the feeling of the dull-brown liquid flowing down his throat.
But then he felt lost. He felt like he needed to do something, that he needed someone to help him. He should be doing something with his new-found freedom, shouldn’t he? Then Immadesco had opened one of the larger doors and given him one simple order, “Go wild.”. His thin nasally voice slid over Dave’s mind and he was out the door and shifting into his Minotaur form, disregarding his clothes as they ripped from his expanding frame and muscle. Every citizen in the nearby harbor could him scream in rapture as he charged forward, but none were prepared for the destruction that followed.

Dave finally blinked the rest of the cement dust out of his eye’s as he lumbered forward before truly getting into his stride again, surprisingly nimble despite the muscled and bulky appearance of his shifted form. His bovine red eyes flared in their relatively tiny sockets as he spotted a small car driving recklessly a few blocks away right before he dug his hooves in and gave chase.

He easily caught up to the speeding silver vehicle, his long digitigrade legs moved with unnatural speed as he prepared to charge right over and crush the screaming motorist, his gaze focused solely on the road immediately in front of them.

Which made it all the more surprising when a dark purple blur, barely perceptible against the night sky, streaked down and slammed into his chest. The blow actually managing to knock him unto his back where he could now clearly see the imposing form of Obsidian-Wraith herself glaring down at him.

“Alright, *Heffer, give up now and- !”, she started shouting before Dave rolled back to his feet, either ignoring or not registering the pain of his obviously broken sternum, and made a hasty swipe at the floating Hero.

She simply glided back from the awkward strike and waited in midair with her arms crossed as Dave raged and prepared to charge again. But was yet again sent stumbling as a similar but less powerful force cracked against the back of his head.

He spun wildly in response to the sudden attack and actually felt his elbow clip something as he turned and was just in time to see a figure in a blue and gold suit go careening through a house’s shingles. Dave felt another blow to his left arm, but didn’t deign to acknowledge it as he concentrated on the burning that built in his chest then quickly traveled up and through his mouth in a gout of violet-flame and swiveled his head every which way, melting off sections of masonry on a few unlucky buildings.

The experienced Heroine flitted away from the sudden and unnatural blaze, waiting for him to either stop or find an opening in his seemingly random attack pattern.

Dave spun his head once he caught sight of her and tried to concentrate his rarely used power on the flying figure right when, “*Gucck!*”, he gagged upon having felt something small and hard go through the front of his neck and down his throat. He immediately clasped his hand around the source of the sudden sensation of a hole in his trachea as half-a-dozen solid black balls surrounded by halos of light shallowly punctured his chest and legs, leaving small but visibly bleeding holes across his front.

After realizing that the neck injury was nothing lethal or crippling Dave quickly brought his arms up to ward off the other shots and searched for the source of the nuisance and found a hulking grey figure clinging to the side of a nearby building.

The Minotaur snarled and a small part of his mind recognized the creature as a Hero named “Hugh” right before the famous Shifter’s eyes flashed with a baleful light and he felt horrible. His body now ached and sweated as if he’d run a marathon and his mind felt strained and tired, barely able to stay on his feet, the criminal Super stumbled lightly and nearly toppled when a volley of bright yellow energy orbs slammed into his chest and caused him to spasm to his knees.

Still not registering the pain and injuries on him but feeling the affects of the precious liquid start to wane as the damage mounted faster than his regeneration could counter. He took a step forward then grunted in surprise as the joint in his right leg suddenly wavered at an unnatural angled.

He looked down and saw a small figure in a red and silver costume was on his knee and had slammed a gleaming blade into his kneecap while another Hero in orchid armor that was directing a group of floating blades to try and cut his joints. The smaller one’s masked face looked up and then she blurred away in a burst of speed before the Minotaur got a chance to grab for her. Instead he went for the more heavily armored one, but soon had to defend his face as she sent all of her gleaming spinning blades up to attack his eyes and nose, by the time he had batted them all away and looked back she was already gone.

“RAAAAHHH!”, the fierce battle cry was all he heard before the heroine in the gleaming suit that he had clipped came soaring through the air and landed a haymaker directly across his jaw, no longer concerned with holding back, and managed to knock-out more than a few fist-sized teeth.

For the first time in the whole battle, Dave screamed.

Not in pain, but in terror as the fear and anxiety the drink had taken away began to come back in full force. Suddenly his mind became focused on retreat and he remembered that he was part of a gang and angled himself toward where he thought one of the bases would be in this section of the city.

They could help him, they would help him. Help him kill these Heroes and then give him more of the bliss and strength inducing serum that made him stronger than ever.
The fact that Dave wasn’t actually any larger or stronger than usual was a piece of introspection he wasn’t presently capable of.

Dave crouched and tensed the muscles in his legs, the various injuries along them being exacerbated and bleeding more profusely. He jumped with as much force he could muster and sailed down the street, feeling various blasts and shots hit his back as he flew, before slamming into and cracking the street with his landing and running in almost a scramble on all fours.

He barreled down two blocks like a freight train towards where he thought the nearest White Boar base would be and dimly noted that a clog of traffic was coming up fast in his path. Dave eye’s flicked to the top of a small apartment complex right at the edge of the traffic jam and saw a lone figure standing there. Another Hero clad in what looked like gleaming black suit of armor just stood there with his arms out towards him, not moving or even making a sound, just standing there. Dave let out sound between a snort and a chortle as he got closer.

‘No way he can stop me…’, Dave’s now less drug addled brain slurred in thought. ‘That purple bitch caught me when I was just playing, but I’ve got real speed now.’, with a slightly more solid thought in mind Dave squared his shoulders and increased his speed.

Then the darkness came alive and attacked him.

Dozens of shadows from parked cars, buildings, lampposts, and benches leapt forward as deadly blades that wrapped around and cut deep into the Minotaur’s ankles, largely circumventing his momentum and causing him to slam face first into the street with a tremendous crash.

Before he could even gather his thoughts the shadows from six different alleys rose in the form of massive bladed hands and lashed out, latching onto Dave with deep lacerating and bloody grips before lifting him bodily into the air. More shadows came then and the ones already upon him began to widen.

The Minotaur tried to flail, but four of the six shadow hands easily arrested his motion, the others that had truly gouged his ankles had let go and were joining all the new ones in curling around him, swarming all around until his vision was filled with spinning blades of animated shadow.

Dave’s last acts of defiance were to breath violet fire again and simply try to brute force his way out of the animated darkness containing him. Hope blossomed within him briefly as his fire burned a clear hole through all the shadow constructs, but soon died as a shadowy hand took hold of his head from behind, preventing him from turning his head and burning the rest. His attempt at using pure strength to brake free proved to be just as useless, some of his muscles even seemed completely unresponsive as the storm of shadows continued to stab and slash.

Suddenly Dave felt something through the liquid in his body that had made him impervious to pain, a small but sharp tugging sensation in his lower back which was followed quickly by his entire body going limp and his fire-breath dying away as the shadows consumed him again.

‘No, I won’t fail. I can’t fail. I’m… supposed to. Supposed to do?’, were Dave’s thoughts as the last vestiges of the serum began to wear off. ‘Oh god… I’m going to die. I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die.’, he wept all the way into unconsciousness as his form finally shuddered and began to shrink and the shadows stilled.

* * *

Shane would never complain about guard duty for fleeing civilians being boring after tonight.

Styx had almost his entire being focused on maintaining the sphere of flowing and cutting shadow blades that contained his target. The criminal breathing god damnded fire again had caused a small part of him to panic, but his plan to just hold the Minotaur’s head still and keep cutting into any ligaments he could find payed off.

So distracted Styx was that he almost doesn’t notice his teammates traversing the rooftops towards his guard position, he snickered behind his mask as he saw Samshiel riding Hugh’s back.

“You got him Styx?”, his mentor asked with a surprising amount of concern in his voice as watched his Intern hold his arms out, hands clenched into fists. The gesture was at least familiar, he’d noticed before that Styx used hand gestures when doing things that were both large scale and complex.

“…He’s still squirming.”, Styx’s voice was visibly strained, but nothing that was immediate cause for concern, “But he can’t break out and I think I can take him non-lethally.”. Not three seconds later Styx suddenly unclenched his hands and every shadow seemed to froze in place, save for a few that still seemed to be shifting slightly. “…Alright, yeah. He’s shifted back and seems to be unconscious now.”, he informed his team as the sphere of deadly shadow constructs unraveled to show the ferocious minotaur was gone and a heavily built and completely bald middle-aged man had taken his place on top of a platform of shadow. His body was crisscrossed with multiple lacerations across his torso, arms, and legs; but the man seemed alive, nor did his injuries seem life threatening.

“Holy ****.”, Styx heard Samshiel whisper fiercely before Dispatch spoke up in all of their ears.

<Situation status acknowledged. DVA personnel with the proper containment gear is inbound. Watch over the target for signs of awakening and use of proper amount of force to re-neutralize.>, Dispatch spoke in a calm and crisp voice that brokered no argument.

“You heard the lady!”, Spectrum barked out in a tone that brought every Intern to attention, “Hughs and Obsidian; I want you two standing guard, weaken and knock him out again if he tries anything funny.”. Both Heroes gave curt nods before jumping off of the apartment building they were all on and down towards the slightly raised shadow platform that Styx had moved next to the sidewalk for their convenience, and so that they didn’t have to step in all the blood.

As Styx let all of his shadows and focused his attention on putting the criminal Super in a cylindrical shadow from the neck down, lose enough to not aggravate any injuries but certainly small enough to make shifting a very bad idea, he decides to take a quick look at all his fellow Interns.

Simikiel had a deep scowl on her face as her fists shook in frustration, Gadreel had her face downcast and seemed to shy away from them, and Samshiel was staring wide at the perps rather gruesome looking injuries, his face paling significantly when his gaze strayed too long on the veritable shallow-pond of blood that had come from the massive Minotaur’s form, with bits of hacked off skin floating on its surface.

For his part, Styx merely felt unsettled at having mutilated another human being and was dreading the inevitable De-Briefing and the media fallout, *‘Well, things could be worse. At least none of us died; it’s more than some Interns in their first team battle could say.’

*Despite her overall aggressive and militaristic Hero persona, Elizabeth is well known for mocking villain by naming them after old-timey cartoon characters.
*Before Shane had even entered the HCP his Grandfather regularly told him horror stories of unlikely Interns in their first battles.

Exejpgwmv · Dec 13, 2017

Chapter 16

Debriefings were just as tedious, but obviously necessary, as Shane had been told and thought they would be. It definitely didn’t help they hadn’t been able to sleep after their fight with the criminal Super.

Hearing everyone’s first-hand account of events had been interesting at first of course, especially considering he hadn’t been present to see most of it for himself, but it quickly became dull as it only took two retellings to get the general sequence of events. Though Shane suspected that, out of all of them, their DVA agent Maria suffered the most. She was the one stuck with having to take near constant notes and write down the sequence of events in what looked like excruciating detail. His teammates didn’t fare much better as they went through the motions. All of their Mentors went through it with stoic expressions and practiced ease, with Amy and Shane trying to imitate them with varying levels of success.

Greg visibly slumped in his chair and suppressed more than one yawn but responded immediately when prompted by Maria with surprising clarity and recollection. Vanessa was much the same, though she did tend to grimace slightly whenever someone went over her initial clash with the Minotaur, who had now been identified as “Dave”.

After Greg finished telling of how, when, and what he saw Shane do to trap and incapacitate the Minotaur he finally spoke up, “Are we gonna have to worry about Shane getting in trouble for what he did?”. At his fellow Intern’s confused looks he quickly continued, “Not saying what he did was wrong, he saved a bunch of people after all, but I think certain groups might have a problem with the tactic he choose. What Shane did to that fella was pretty brutal, and I’m pretty sure more than a few people caught the whole show on their phones.”

Both Jack and Maria nodded in understanding while Hugh gave his Intern a look that was a mix of approval and appraisal.

“I was actually going to have a talk with Shane about his technique after the debrief was done and escort him personally to his agent tomorrow.”, Maria said, her tone tired but not as annoyed as the Interns had guessed she would be. “Anyone with half a brain could tell that Shane wouldn’t exactly be a ‘family-friendly’ Hero, but this was still a pretty bad public showing of what his Shadow-manipulation could really do; even if it was inevitable.”

“If it makes you feel any better,”, Jack began as he gives Shane a meaningful look, “I’m fairly certain that whatever videos been recorded has already spread to every criminal-Super with an internet connection and two brain cells. And neither Heroes, the public, or the DVA care about Heroes looking scary to them.” He gives an enthusiastic thumbs-up that Shane returned after a moment of hesitation.

“I mean, it’s not exactly a secret that Heroes sometimes have to kill. What Shane did can’t stir up too much outrage, can it?”, Vanessa said from her edge of the table.

“It’s one thing to just know in the back of your mind that Heroes sometimes make life-or-death decisions. It’s something else entirely for people to see graphic video evidence of a Hero iron maiden-ing another Super with a writhing mass of living-shadows.”, Elizabeth countered with more than a little exasperation.

“We can debate how badly Shane may or may not get reamed by the Media later, point is; What he did wasn’t illegal and we still need to finish this debrief.”, Maria says before prompting Vanessa to re-tell what she saw once the Minotaur ran away.

* * *

A few hours later and all of the Interns lounged about in the common room, watching the news on the communal TV. It was the next day and a few hours before they needed to go on their new afternoon Patrol, so both Amy and Shane had decided to watch the fallout of their battle from last night and then get in some light *Focus training.

They all noticed that Shane had brought a non-descript brown leather-bound notebook, but none thought it worth asking about as the news-woman started speaking, “Early this morning a Super that shifted into what looked like a giant Minotaur went on a rampage through the Red Hook business area and caused widespread destruction before the Hero team, Pristine Strikers and their new Interns, stopped the monster.”. She began in a professional drawl before directing the feed to another reporter on the streets. Leaving Vanessa and Shane briefly wondering if she meant “monster” figuratively or literally before listening to the rest of the broadcast.

All told; 26 people had died, unconfirmed amount of wounded, before their team had arrived. The brief fight with the criminal-Super had caused relatively minimal property damage and exactly zero injuries or fatalities.

They all visibly relaxed at the fact that their first Hero battle had been a textbook success as far as Super fights went; No property damage at all was pretty much a forgone conclusion when every Super involved had high-caliber display abilities.

Then the video of Shane capturing the Minotaur finally came up. There were actually just three videos of it, one from the back of a car in the traffic jam, one from someone’s apartment window, and another from a traffic camera. The traffic camera was the steadiest but the one from the apartment window was the longest and caught most of the action, so that was the one the news broadcast choose.

“… Well, it’s not as gruesome as we thought it would be.”, Amy tried to appear optimistic as they all watched the giant Super be shanked into submission by Shane’s power.

Truth be told, it wasn’t as graphic as they had thought would look, which Shane chastised himself for not thinking of since it was being shown on public television at all. The roaring and screaming was significantly muffled by the distance and wall, all of the lacerations were mostly concealed by all the shadows trying to restrain the Super. But the unnaturally dark blood and bits of skin that came from the Minotaur and pooled onto the street was still very much visible however.

The brief gout of violet fire was pretty at least.

The reporters and host, Neal Chandler who made an appearance any time Super fights broke out, looked on with morbid curiosity and awe.

“…I can see why you told me not to watch this before coming in live.”, Neal adjusted his tie as he gathered himself again, cheeks slightly flushed. “This new Hero’s name was ‘Styx’ you said?”

The male reporter, who’s name Shane always forgot, answered first, “Y- yes. He was first seen using his power to transport a sick civilian while on patrol. But it didn’t grab much attention, nor did his ability seem so... destructive.”

“Speak for yourself.”, Vivian, the female reporter with vivid orange hair, spoke up. “I knew from the start that he could wreck shop. The Pristine Striker’s have a reputation to keep after all; Surprised they went for a *Summoner of all things though. Not many of them work on a strike-force oriented team.”

“Summoner?”, Neal asked with no small amount of incredulity.

“Yeah, there’s no way there were actually that many shadows on that street; I’m betting he’s just a clever Summoner with a lot of versatility.”, her assessment was said with surprising confidence and fueled by a history of seeing numerous Heroes hide the exact nature of their powers in various ways.

‘She’s not entirely wrong I guess.’, Shane thought as he began to tune out the news and slip his notebook into one of his coat’s pockets. ‘There weren’t that many individual shadows nearby, but there were plenty of big ones I could stretch and manipulates into multiple tendrils.’

“What’s with that book, Shane?”, Vanessa pointed blatantly at the bulging side-pocket of his coat. She tried to keep her tone light and conversational, but seeing him bring it and then just not use it all peaked her curiosity.

“Ah, it’s my, ‘Lives Lost’ book, I guess you could say. Never really thought of giving it a name.”, Shane said with an unusual hesitance to his voice.

“Sounds morbid. What, are you going to right down; all the people that get killed in every fight?”, Vanessa decided to press the issue, even when Amy and Greg gave her warry glances.

“No, no, nothing so dramatic.”, Shane assured her with a chuckle, “It’s a habit my Grandfather told me about; a lot of the Heroes I’ve meet use it too. You’re supposed to write down the names of every person you weren’t able to save, supposed to keep a Hero grounded apparently.”. Shane neglected to mention that his grandfather had less “told” and more “ruthlessly” drilled the quasi-tradition into him.

Amy frowned sharply, “My parents never mentioned such a thing and they’ve both been Heroes for over twenty years.”.

“It’s a tradition among my family and the Heroes in my grandfather’s circle of friends, but not really prevalent outside of that.”, He briefly thought about asking who exactly her parents were as Heroes, but decided now wasn’t the time.

“So, since nobody got so much as scratched during our fight?”, Greg had apparently finally gotten bored of the argument still going on between the reporter and host.

“Then nobody gets put in the book yet.”, Shane said as he took out and flipped through the moderately thick, yet empty, tome.

“What if I’d killed someone when I crashed into that house?”, Vanessa suddenly asked. Everyone’s attention suddenly snapped to her and the mood turned decidedly less amiable. “It wouldn’t have taken much, he could’ve hit me at a lower angle and sent me through a window instead of skidding across a roof.”

Shane decided to take his previous approach with Vanessa; brutal honesty, “I would have still kept my list blank. But, if you were so inclined, you could’ve written down and memorized the deceased person’s name, learned from your mistakes, and even go to apologize to family members personally if you felt up to it.” What Shane said last wasn’t the lie it would appear to be to someone unfamiliar with the aftermath of Super fights; It wasn’t particularly rare for Solo-Heroes and teams to make public and private apologies after especially dire battles, even when they had done their best.

Vanessa took the hypothetical advice in stride, only grimacing slightly at the word “mistake”, before letting her sharp features relax into a sad smile, “Thanks, Shane.”, she said before giggling as Greg slung an arm around her shoulders and gave her a shake.

“Com’n V, you still moping about that? Do I need to give you another pep-talk to get your fine glutes in gea-!”, Greg’s friendly tirade was cut short as the air around Vanessa warped and she lifted him bodily into the air.

“No pep-talks necessary, Lil-G. And I’ll thank you to not talk about my ‘fine glutes’ in front of my new friend.”, she said before putting her stocky teammate into a fireman’s carry and haul him towards the training areas deeper in the base.

Shane gave Amy an inquisitive look, his face a mask of barely contained snickers, “’Fine glutes’ and ‘Lil-G’? Seriously?”.

Amy rolled her eyes and pushed off of the plush couch, “They’re not dating, nor do they have some unknown crush on each other. You could call them… Flirty-Friends I suppose” She grabbed her blank bottle of water and sauntered toward her room, “Now come on and get ready, I really want to work off the nerves from last night before going on patrol again. I’m still plenty upset I only got to stab that dick in his knee and runaway.”

*Training in the HCP consisted of different specialties a student could prioritize: Weapons, Subtlety, Focus, Close Combat, Range, and Control. With Focus being, predictably more geared toward precision use and multitasking with your ability.

*Summoners are Supers with the ability to create life-like energy constructs (Not unlike duplicators.) The summons themselves are usually formed to compensate for a perceived shortcoming.

Exejpgwmv · Dec 17, 2017

Chapter 17

Can’t believe I’m doing this.’, Shane reprimanded himself as he dialed the dreaded number. He was sitting on the edge of his bed in full costume, save for his helmet, and listening to the ring-back tone as his call went out. There was a good fifteen minutes of free-time left after the light training with his fellow Interns was done, and Shane didn’t want to feel like he was putting this off.

“Hey, little bro!”, Angela’s bombastic voice came over clear as day from his phone’s speaker, “Sorry about not being able to call you earlier, it’s been real busy here in Port Valins lately. But I heard about what you did; Gotta say, I’m a little impressed. I didn’t think you’d actually swing such a good first impression.”.

Shane nearly let out a bark of laughter at her words, but managed to stifle it down to a chuckle. After all; it was a rare day indeed when Angela DeSoto said “Sorry” to anyone.

“It’s fine, Angela. I was planning on calling and letting the family know I was okay anyways, but only had time to chat with you.”, Shane checked the time on his hardy looking wrist-watch that slid over his body armor, curtesy of Steve, before continuing. “And I don’t see what’s so impressive about me taking down that Super. I’ve always been your better in terms of sheer damage capacity.”, Shane was determined to prove himself as the better Hero, but unearned praise just annoyed him.

“Not that, dumbass; though I do want to talk to you about that. I’m talking about that evac work you did during your first patrol. It may have only made small-time news, but I know that having your first public act as a Hero be non-violent means a lot to you.”, her words had softened just a touch, sincerity slipping into her tone.

Angela’s statement struck a chord with Shane, and brought his mind back to recent news he’d heard. The man he’d saved, who had been identified as “Brian Duke”, hadn’t been homeless as everyone had suspected. He was a business man who’d gone missing for several weeks, now presumed to have been intentionally kidnapped based on his horrible physical condition. Police suspected Super activity; Which had Shane hoping he be able to take a swing at whoever was responsible.

And she was right, his first official act as a Hero involving zero bloodshed had made Shane feel oddly… vindicated. Not that he’d tell her that of course. “Thanks, Angela, I appreciate it.”, he’d been expecting a lot when making the decision to call her, but a semi-apology and sincerity hadn’t even vaguely crossed his mind. ‘Maybe field work is getting her to take things a little more seriously?’, the thought filtered through his mind before asking, “And what do you want to talk about my team’s fight?”

“Well, less about the about fight and more the aftermath.”, Her barely suppressed snicker was his first and only warning, “The news cameras caught how that Simikiel girl was staring at you, and I was just wondering if you’d already hit that or no- *click*”

“I guess it was nice while it lasted.”, Shane grumbled before shaking his head with a reluctant smirk and sliding on his helmet, fastening it with a snap. “Dispatch, this is Styx, my status is now On Call”, he’d had to go inactive for the debriefing and subsequent sleep afterwards.

<Acknowledged.>

* * *

Styx silently thanked whoever the DVA hired to make costumes for having the foresight to make his cold resistant, as what he guessed was frigid wind hollowed around him and Spectrum.

They’d been dropped off in an alley in one of the less reputable parts of Red Hook, the nigh-dilapidated look of some of the buildings and sidewalks a stark contrast to the polished structures Styx was used to seeing.

“Keep your eyes peeled, this tends to be a bit of a problem area; Had more than a few dumb crooks think they could get the drop on me before.”, Spectrum supplied as he waved at a man layers of grimy clothing pushing a shopping cart down the road.

“Right.”, in spite of his usually logical mind, a small part of Styx was half-expecting another giant Super to come barreling around the corner as they took a turn down a side-street.

This patrol was a little different from the first, but not so much as to distract Styx from his practice at feeling all every shadow as he walked. Hardly anyone stopped and stared, most just hurrying past or away when they caught a glimpse of the two Heroes. One young man even yelped audibly after turning a corner and seeing them walking towards him.

Styx suspected it was because of how prevalent the gangs were in this area; plenty of wannabes were hanging out on stoops and had scattered at the sight of them, and he asked Spectrum as much.

“You’d be right, Styx.”, Spectrum said in a conversational tone. “The gangs have a lot of people here scared of being known as being a ‘snitch’ basically, so they tend to err on the side of caution when they see a Hero making the rounds. Try not to take it too personally; we can’t be around to protect them all the time after all.”, despite Styx being Spectrum’s first Intern he sounded like he’d given this talk many times before.

For Shane’s part, he hadn’t taken any offense in the first place, but nodded his understanding all the same, ‘I researched a lot about this place, but I evidently need to learn some local behaviors that doesn’t show up in polling data.’

The pair briefly stopped their patrol in front of a small knick-knack shop and prepared to get some lunch. Spectrum spins the restaurant wheel on his phone, and even through his mask Styx sees his expression light-up at the selection. “Alright! Come on, rookie; It’s time for some old fashioned lasag-“, Spectrum’s happy tirade is cut short by a shout from nearby.

“Hey, a fight’s about to go down, I could use some help!”, a gruff female voice comes from the figure of another Hero clad in a blue suit with black trim, one they both recognized as “Pulp”, running out of an alley and up the street.

They hesitated for all of one second before sprinting after the Heroine, with Spectrum muttering something about “injustice” all the while.

Pulp was a solo-Hero, only five years out of her Internship from Colorado, only having come to Brooklyn a few months prior to Styx’s own arrival. She seemed to act the part of a classic Strong-Woman, though Styx suspected there was more to her abilities than what was shown to the media.

“Styx, care to verify just in case this is some kind of trap?”, Spectrum prompted, breathing still even despite his full-on sprint.

Styx extend his senses and tried to parse out the shadows further away from them, his speed faltering lightly from the concentration needed. “She’s telling the truth; two groups of about a dozen people are facing off in a courtyard down the street, some of them have guns and melee weapons.”, his analysis came out in a quick and confident stream of all the pertinent information.

Spectrum didn’t have time to be impressed however, as he outpaced his Intern around a corner while following Pulp’s flowing cape, and got to said courtyard, getting to see just how accurate Styx’s senses were.

“Everyone, on the ground and hands behind your head!”, Pulp shouts as she used the momentum of her run to perform a strongman leap and land just a few feet from the two hostile groups.

Both she and Spectrum took in the situation in an instant. At first glance, it seemed like a bog-standard turf war between some White Boar members and another local gang; with knives, bats, and small firearms being wielded brazenly by both groups. But their more experienced eyes recognized the higher grade semi-autos wielded by some of the older looking of the White Boars and the one loan member that stood with no weapons and bare chested despite the frigid weather.

“This is your one and only warning!”, Spectrum followed up on the younger Hero’s command as he let two crackling yellow orbs form in his gloved hand and mentally categorized the one shirtless member as a possible strongman. Electricity would be best for a large group with little protection, but he’d have to be careful not accidently hit Pulp if a fight broke out.

Most of the thugs froze at the sight of two Heroes entering the scene, some of the younger and dumber members continued to still shout and approach each other though. Both Pulp and Spectrum see some of the one’s who look like leaders start glancing at nearby alleyways, probably thinking that they could escape in the confusion of their members running away and fighting. A Blaster and a Strongman weren’t exactly optimal for corralling large groups after all.

That train of thought lasted until both gangs saw Styx round the corner seconds after his Mentor, sunlight gleaming off of his sleek armor.

Memories of what was seen on the news flashed through all of their minds before they noticed flickering movement from the ground beneath their feet. Everyone went quite as they saw that all of their shadows had risen up behind them as wickedly sharp blades, shadows from the nearby alleys also materialized, further dissuading any opportunistic runners.

“Drop your weapons and get on your knees. Nobody needs to get hurt.”, Styx didn’t need to yell like the other two, his voice carried easily over the now silent courtyard.

He watched as one particularly gruff looking White Boar member turned toward him… and dropped his weapon before getting down to his knees, hands behind his head. His surrendered was followed quickly by a cascade of bats, knives, and guns hitting the concrete and others making similar gestures of compliance.

Styx wasted no time in capitalizing on their surrender, thickening their shadows into tendrils that restrained them in short order, lifting them bodily into the air and out of arms reach of their weapons. He ignored the few yelps of surprise as he informed Dispatch, “Dispatch, we’ve got… twenty disarmed gang members here, one of them a possible Super.”

<Acknowledged, authorities are in bound. Please provide a description of the suspected Super.>, she’d been listening the whole time, and had probably been preparing to call in reinforcement in case the situation had gone pear-shaped, but Heroes still needed to clarify and make official requests when they could.

“I know him.”, Pulp said as she stepped forward and peered at the shirtless man’s face, ignoring the myriad of glares on her. “His name’s Derrick, just a basic strongman who works as muscle.”, she says with obvious contempt before clamping a hand on his shoulder and giving a hard squeeze. The man grunts in discomfort before she let’s go, “Yeah, just barely bullet proof too.”

<Thank you; ID is positive and record of crime and power is found.>, Dispatch’s voice came clearly through all of their ear pieces before they heard the sound of sirens approaching and two DVA vans pulled up.

* * *

Maria was less than pleased to have to conduct another debriefing so soon, but thankfully it was a mercifully short one.

The only one to take any real actions was Shane, and even then, there were no injuries or other complications. Jack and the solo-Hero only needed to relay where, when, and how they got to the crime scene before she called the meeting to an end.

“Nice going, kid. You’ve got a real versatile power there, I’m almost a little jealous.”, Pulp says to Styx as he escorts her out of the base. “All I can do is punch hard.”, she seemed adept at self-deprecating humor and was honestly very amiable young woman.

Styx instantly didn’t trust her claims, “I’ll admit, I do like the utility of my power, even if it isn’t exactly inconspicuous.”. He pressed a button on the small remote given to him that unlocked the probably-not-steel doors that led outside, “But I don’t believe for a second that you’re just a Strongwoman. I’ve read up enough about you to know that you’re a *Subtly-Hero and I’ve seen news of you doing things that should be impossible with just physical force.”

Pulp simply shrugs in response before giving him a wry grin, “You’re sharp for someone still in their Internship, but as a rule, I only share secrets with official Heroes.”

“Not asking for your secrets,”, Styx had the curtesy to swing open and hold the door for her, “Just letting you know that you don’t have to waste your breath lying about your power to me.”

She gives a flippant wave over her shoulder in acknowledgement before walking out of the base and into the afternoon gloom.

Shane closes the door behind her and takes off his helmet, letting out a brief sigh of relief before languidly stretching, the little pops from his joints and brief strain on his muscles soothing him. Nobody knew- Well, nobody except Jack maybe, knew how nervous he got when in a fight. It never showed as physical ticks, he’d gotten past that long ago, but it still seemed to tire him mentally. Having to suddenly converge with a Hero not from his team, and stopping a gang fight not even a day after helping suppress a Manhattan Class threat, certainly didn’t help matters.

“You might want to get that helmet back on.”, Shane’s reprieve was cut-short as the familiar voice of Maria reached his ears. “Now that your off patrol and not training for once, we can finally go meet your Agent.”, the DVA rep stood in the entrance to the civilian common room, clad in her usual black suit.

Shane gave a weary sigh before nodding his head in understanding and putting back on his helmet, the snug feeling around his head becoming increasingly familiar. “Alright, we going down to the garage for our ride?”, he prompted.

Maria shook her head before stepping forward and putting a hand on his shoulder, “Why bother with a car when you’ve got the ultimate ride right here?”

Thankful that his helmet muffled his soft snort of laughter, Shane mentally prepared himself as Maria took them away in a whirl of bending space.

The odd thing about Maria’s ability was that, unlike classic teleporters, she didn’t just pop in and out of space. Shane could see they were indeed traveling, although at impossible speeds, to their destination; just in a different form. He could only really describe it as being condensed down to a pin-prick and then hurled through space towards their destination before changing back, all in the matter of a second.

Destination this time being the public office building of Lenny, one of the best Hero Agents in the country. “I’m surprised that you’re familiar enough with this place to transport us straight to it.”, Shane remarked after taking a few seconds to shake off the dizziness.

“Not really familiar. I’ve just been here a couple times before and decided to set-up a waypoint.”, Maria then strides up the stone steps and through the old-fashioned looking wooden door without another word of explanation.

Shane was surprised by the sudden new information on her power, but not so much by her lack of follow up. Supers under the employ of the DVA were just as likely to hide the true nature of their powers as Heroes were.

The office was surprisingly empty and simplistic. Standard layout; a table in the middle of the room with magazines about Hero news, a row of conjoined chairs on each wall, and coat racks on either side of the door.

Both Maria and Shane skipped the pleasant accommodations and simply waited to be called on after sitting down in. The chairs were surprisingly comfy and durable, the material and design were reminiscent of the type for chairs people made to accommodate Supers of unusual size and weight.

After a few minutes of patient waiting, someone else finally walks out of the office. It was Hero, who’s costume was what looked like a navy-blue suit and matching mask, that gave them the barest of glances before striding out the door.

“Come on in, Styx.”, Lenny’s surprisingly authoritative voice reached them as soon as the door had opened.

Shane silently thanked his Agent for not using his real name before steeling himself and walking into Lenny’s office. He made sure to firmly close the door behind him before taking a seat in yet another reinforced chair.

The meeting room itself was, while not messy per se, but definitely dingier than the waiting room for clients. Abnormally large cabinets that loomed over them and a slightly off looking globe that smelled lightly of wine seemed to complete the whole image.
Though what was truly the most eye catching were the several posters all over the walls, most being of current and nationally famous Heroes, with a select few framed ones of legacy Heroes. Most of them Shane knew to be retired, while a small minority were very much still active.

The garish and clashing colors made Shane pause from the sheer contrast with the dull brown and greys he’d become use to in his new city.

“So,”, Lenny prompted once Shane had situated himself. “I hear your having some image issues.”

“Not really,”, Shane felt a tad defensive now that he’d gotten down to talky about how he’d like the world to see him, instead of just focusing entirely on the fights and training like he’d been for the past few days. “I just want to know how to handle things when my more… controversial moments are caught on camera.”

Lenny leans back and laces his fingers over his portly belly, “Well there’s your first problem; Styx the Intern isn’t supposed to handle anything except for learning how to be a Hero. Handling the media and trying to sway public perception is what I’m here for.” Lenny knew how to handle new Interns, all too often they tried to focus on both gaining experience while also trying to tango with the media; something that rarely ever ended well and almost never without undue stress. “Secondly, what you did was more inevitable than controversial. I told you before; your power would scare people, but I can work with scary.”

“Okay…”, Shane breathed out, not realizing how nervous he’d been about this. “Okay, then what are you planning on doing about this?”

“That’s a toughie because, regardless of how scary that display yesterday was, it was still damn impressive. And the poor guy surviving afterwards gives us some wiggle room to work with.”, Lenny’s was talking about this for Shane’s sake more than anything else. He’d dealt with more than a few upcoming Heroes with terrifying powers, and the solution to nicely mitigating the fear at first was almost always the same. “What we need to do is get the public more familiar with you, make you seem like more of a real person. So far, you’ve barely been waving at people during patrol, but nothing else. So, I’ve made a few small time PR options available for you to participate in with the rest of the Interns, along with one big event that’s available next month.”

The grin Lenny flashed then made Shane wary at the greed and cunning he could see in it.

“An exclusive interview with Neal Chandler with you and Spectrum; broadcasted and streamed live on every major network.”

*Subtly Heroes are notorious for having nebulous and multifaceted abilities and almost religiously hold the exact mechanics of how their powers work close to the chest.

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