Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3

A shimmer, like a moment of bad reception on an old TV, and they’re closer. Their expression is practically the opposite of hers, their dull, blank stare contrasting her snarl. They’re still in the way of her gun, but with a flash of green light they shift to the side, another figure next to them. This one is much more familiar, the same little menace who’d carved her up last time. Oh she was going to enjoy this. Fate’s aim drifted over to Lark, a pout forming on her face as they spoke.

“So rude, Lark. You should consider yourself lucky. Most people meet me once and forget. You’re lucky enough to meet me twice. Well, maybe. Let’s see how this fucks with things.”
The pout shifted to a smirk as Fate’s finger squeezed on the trigger. An effervescent sour and sweet smell filled the air, black smoke and crimson light rolling out of the revolver as a glowing red projectile launched itself at Lark. Just before it hit, however, the projectile split into four, and wrapped around them, looking to strike at the younger figure behind them. The shots splashed against the floor as the emerald light flashed and the younger Lark had disappeared.

“Well shit. Guess that’s child murder out of the picture. Can’t we just do that? It’d be so much easier.”
Fate laughed as the chamber spun, another bullet ready.
“I’ve got some special ones. I can make it quick.”
She knew they wouldn’t take it. Good. She wanted things to be interesting. Lark lashed out, shuriken filling their fingers. Their expression finally shifts into a grin, as hollow as hers is malicious. Fate squeezed the trigger three more times, not bothering to aim as she dropped to the floor, the wide array of shurikens still managing to graze her in several places. Crimson darts swirl through the air, eleven in total, streaking towards Lark regardless of Fate’s aim.

Her deck was nearby, as always, she could quickly use it, get the Emperor up for some protection against the shurikens. Then she’d only need to deal with a time traveler. But that was the boring way out. This was much more exciting.
 
Last edited:
Himiko didn’t fail to notice that the receptionist needed to look twice at Masami’s ID, while hers simply needed a single glance. No doubt because she actually looked the part of someone who belonged in DDC, whereas Masami should be dozing in the back of a classroom somewhere. She beamed at the receptionist as she stood and led them down the hallway to their training room.

"Thank you!" Himiko bubbled, eagerly stepping inside the training room, only slightly annoyed that she had to go after Masami. “I will, if you don’t mind.”

Himiko untucked the prism necklace from her shirt and brought it to her lips before letting it fall back down. Small splashes of rainbow clung to her lips and fingertips, spreading out from where the necklace fell against her chest. She ran her hands up over her face, bright blue skin trailing in their wake. They ran through her hair, shortening it and filling it with color before flicking the rest out.

“Iris.” she introduced herself with a little bow, basking in the glow of her transformation. She didn’t have the wings out yet, those would come later.

“Go ahead,” Iris gestured towards Masami. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
 

Janis was mortified. She felt a flush creep into her cheeks as her wife’s familiar made a giant robotic heart and blew her a kiss. Fortunately she didn’t have a ton of time to be embarrassed as the Circle was cast, the swirling fog of the Nightmare solidifying into a thick sludge that coalesced further into gross shapes. She registered the Salamanders and winced as the piercing crow of the Cockatrice reached her ears.

The others were already springing into action, and Janis wasn’t going to let herself be caught gawking. She pressed a few buttons on her console and grinned to herself as music started filtering in through some speakers she’d put up. They weren’t exactly regulation, but if they thought she’d be able to kick Nightmare ass without something playing, they were sorely mistaken.

As she felt the drums and guitar fill the space, a grin crept on Janis’s face as she pushed Medusa forward. Aphrodite and Brig appeared to be handling the Salamanders, with her wife providing backup. That was good, as long as Meena was safe things would be a lot easier.

“I’ve got the other leg!” Medusa surged forward, skirting the edge of the fight before abruptly shifting focus, darting in to mirror Echo, slashing at the Cockatrice’s other ankle. Any of her hair snakes that got in range lashed out too, intent on making this thing sluggish and slow. They’d show this fucking overgrown chicken not to mess with them.
 


Mari had weathered this storm before. Spork was a firework, bright and loud, but their anger usually burned out pretty quick. And while they had never intentionally hurt her, there were a handful of times where they’d gotten physical. Despite that, Mari had never truly been scared of Spork, knowing that they would never actually hurt her. However, as Spork stormed forward, lightning in their eyes and thunder in their voice, Mari felt something fearful tighten in her throat as their fist tightened in her shirt.

Their words crashed over her as she was yanked to her feet before they just as abruptly let her drop, pushing her away in both senses. She hit the railing of the fire escape with a dull clang, and Mari fell to the ground, her ego bruising worse than her shoulder. Spork’s words rang in her ears, a dull whine that was only cut through by the noise they made; one of frustration, anger, and pain.

She’d misjudged this. She’d severely misjudged the situation here. Mari assumed that Spork was still upset that she had died, that they still thought she was fragile from death and was heavily recovering. They were still upset about her not telling them about her ability in the first place, true, but it went deeper than that. Spork felt that they owed Mari their life. They weren’t just upset that she had died, it was because they saw themselves as something expendable, someone who was living on borrowed time and was angry that a new debt had been made instead of Mari calling theirs in.

It wasn’t hard to figure out why. Spork had been in pretty bad shape when they’d turned up on Mari’s doorstep, claiming her spare room as their temporary domain. To say they spent the next month or so slowly circling the drain would be doing Spork a disservice; they’d dived headfirst into it. Mari had to begrudgingly give them credit, she’d never seen someone so quickly or so thoroughly attempt to destroy themselves.

She’d only interfered when she couldn’t stand it anymore. She couldn’t stand to see her friend drink, smoke, and fuck themselves into an early grave. So she helped them. She got them to clean, to sober up for more than an hour, to eat food that wasn’t just whatever you could get in a bar. And slowly but surely, they had gotten better. Mari knew that if she hadn’t intervened, Spork probably would have been dead by now. And apparently, Spork was all too aware of this.

As Mari pulled herself out of her thoughts, Spork had almost finished pulling themselves back through the window. Some dim part of her wondered if they would slam it shut and lock her out on the fire escape. Before they could even try, Mari climbed out of the nest of blankets and pushed herself towards the window, awkwardly clambering through and wrapping her arms around them. She managed to catch Spork off-balance and they both tumbled and crashed onto their bed, Mari taking great pains to avoid their injured side.

“I’m sorry.” Mari said, her voice low and rough. She expected them to fight, to try and shake her off, but she clung to them like a lifeline. “I fucked up. I thought it was better to keep it from you, and I was wrong. I should have told you once we started doing this together.”

“Your life is valuable, Spork. I don’t want you throwing it away because you think that you owe it to me. I helped you get things together when we started sharing an apartment, but I didn’t do it so you could throw yourself on whatever grenades land at our feet when we could just throw them back.” She let out a shaky breath. Mari meant everything she said, but she was bad at this. She didn’t apologize, hadn’t really needed to apologize much since they became roommates, and her rustiness showed.

“You don’t get a do over, not like me. And I’m not saying I want to keep dying,” She added hastily, before they could explode again. “I’m just saying that you shouldn’t be so ready to trade your life for mine. We’re a team, Spork. Your life isn’t worth any less than mine simply because of how you chose to live it.”

 
Last edited:


On a quiet street in downtown Pittsburgh, deep in the heart of the shopping district, there lies an unassuming store. Above the doors to the store, as with all of the other shops around it, there is a sign. “Dual Flame Outfitters,” the sign proclaims, clarifying in smaller text, “Handcrafted Weapons & Apparel.” As if to emphasize this point, a smaller sign hangs down beneath it, depicting a sewing needle and a hammer crossed in front of a flame.

The inside is comfortable, with wooden beams, high ceilings, and a couple of small stained glass windows casting rainbow light along the floor. Half of the store is lined with colorful clothing and accessories, the other half with glinting weaponry. The two seem to mix in some areas, with chainmail accessories arrayed beside colorful weapon wraps in bins by the counter.

There is one central counter, behind which sits an old, matronly woman, humming to herself as she sews, knits, or crochets. From somewhere behind her, beyond the half door and curtain demarcating the employees only area, the faint ringing of a hammer against metal emerges, keeping time like an unorthodox clock.

The store itself seems normal enough, if a bit eccentric in its offerings. The woman tending the counter certainly seems to treat customers with the cheerful hospitality of any shopkeep. But there are whispers of a different side to the store. Rumors about how the light stays on long past dark, after the other shops on the lane have locked their doors and turned their cameras inwards. Rumors about cloaked figures, masked figures, people with strange silhouettes coming and going at odd hours.

The Seamstress does her best to fuel these rumors, saving pages in her sketchbook and room in her schedule for any metahumans who may require a more specialized outfit. She does love to see her designs out on the streets, be that fighting crime, causing it, or simply existing. And she’s well aware that the Blacksmith enjoys swaying the younger generation towards blades and blunt objects rather than bullets, when she can be pried from her forge.

Alas, attitudes towards metahumans change with the tides of popular opinion, and so the rumors remain relatively quiet. But with any luck, they’ll reach the right ears. The proprietors of Dual Flame are always willing to strike a deal with a young meta who needs equipment. They may even offer a heavy discount in exchange for help with the materials and labor.

 
Last edited:


div snatched 1

golly gee i sure do love crime

 
Last edited:


The Blacksmith

Name: Myrna Turei
Alias: Vulkan None.
Power Level: Low
Alignment: Retired Hero, now Neutral
Age: 62
Alliances: Dual Flame Outfitters, the weapons/clothing shop that she runs with her wife, Florian.
Appearance: A heavy-set older woman with volcanic gray skin, dark eyes, and gray hair. Volcanic cracks peek through her skin, glowing faintly in red, orange, and yellow. She dyes her hair red sometimes, but it’s grown out and faded. She wears a wedding ring; a simple gold band that she takes off when blacksmithing.
​
Powers:
Heat-Resistance & Durability: Myrna is heat-resistant up to 5000 degrees Fahrenheit. This means that she can handle objects of this temperature or be exposed to this temperature without any negative effects. She can still feel the temperature and be aware that it is quite hot, but objects below this threshold will never burn her. As a result, her skin is tougher than average. While it won’t stop bullets or knives, splinters are a non-issue, and doctors have a tough time getting her blood.
Enhanced Endurance: Perhaps another side effect of the heat resistance, Myrna can keep going long after others have stopped. It comes in particularly handy around the holidays when the Christmas orders flood the shop, and her anvil rings well past midnight.

Skills: Myrna is a highly skilled blacksmith and woodworker. All of the inventory in her store is her own handiwork, and she does take commissions as well. She takes pride in her work, and ensures that every weapon she makes is balanced, sharpened, and ready to be put to work.

Equipment: In her shop, Myrna has access to a wide variety of both melee and ranged medieval-style weapons, all of which were made by her own hand. She knows how to wield them all with deadly efficacy, if not finesse. She has a soft spot for spears and an unexplained bitterness towards swords. She keeps her favorite spear under the counter along with a crossbow loaded with a bolas for any attempted robbers.

 
Last edited:


“Clothing is my wife’s specialty, not mine.” Myrna raised an eyebrow as she took another look at the kid. Because he was a kid, at least to her eyes. She couldn’t get a proper bead on him, whether he was metahuman or not. If he was, she couldn’t even be sure whether he was a hero or a villain. Cheerfulness was not the indicator of one’s alignment, her wife was a reminder of that. The way he spoke about their shop, plus the hour of his visit, made it seem like he was most likely one of their “unique” clientele.

Myrna let out a hmph as he set down his bag of something heavy. Her curiosity was piqued, slightly. Outfitted could mean weaponry, and that was her specialty. But a person who came to her with ideas was worth about as much as using a rubber mallet as a forge hammer, especially if his ideas were shit.

“She’s on her break right now, but I can field ideas. What’ve you got?” She eyed the bag suspiciously. “What’s in the bag?”

 
Last edited:


​
Name: Erin Mercury
Alias: Fortuna
Media Titles: Soup Slinger, Bat Girl
Gender: Female (she/her)
Age: 16
Height: 5'7"
Hair Color: Erin has naturally straight hair that she curls and dyes blonde (although the black roots have grown out quite a bit). For heroing purposes, she straightens her hair as best she can with as little effort as possible (usually by dunking her head in a bucket of water).
Eye Color: Green

Powers: Erin has an internal stockpile of luck that she uses to fuel various abilities, primarily using it to make herself more lucky in various ways. These can include dodging incoming attacks, landing difficult hits, and generally doing things that are tricky for the average person to do. The only caveat is that the more impossible a feat is, the more luck it drains. However, she can manifest minor impossibilities freely, such as flipping a coin and having it land on the same side repeatedly or always managing to throw trash into a can on the first try.

She can also teleport at will, drawing on her luck reserves in accordance with the distance and visibility of the space. She usually ends up where she wants, although that only works when she's awake. Erin almost never wakes up in her own bed, instead teleporting to a random location upon waking. This teleportation doesn't drain luck, but the emptier her luck stockpile when she falls asleep, the further away she wakes up and the more difficult it is to get back.

Everyone person's luck stockpile naturally replenishes over time, except for Erin's. The only way she can add luck to her stockpile is to take it from others, from at most a few feet away. She never takes luck from those who can't spare it, and tries to give some of her own to people who need it.


Equipment:
  • Baseball Bat: Wooden and durable, ready to go to work. If it breaks or she loses it, Erin has a knack for finding another one or something close enough to it. She also is usually able to find objects to hit towards her targets (usually soup cans when dealing with gas station robberies).
  • Visor: Keeps stuff out of her eyes and slightly obscures her face, meaning her powers don't have to work as hard.

Trivia:
  • She is a Scorpio, and her birthday is on Halloween.
  • Erin tries to sleep as little as possible in order to minimize her unwitting teleportation. This has resulted in a caffeine habit that means she's never far from a cup of coffee.
  • Fortuna doesn't wear a mask, instead relying on her power to innately obscure her face in any pictures through natural phenomena. When she's not in costume, she tends to put a lot of effort into her makeup and hair, meaning that if anyone had seen Fortuna's face before and then met Erin, they'd have no idea they were the same person.

​
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top