Saving Lives a Mile High [open to all]

[applesaucemod]

Welcome to another ordinary day in Manhattan. This barely even qualifies as a dream at all, it's so like waking life. The dreamers will find that they're their own perfectly normal selves going about their perfectly normal business and thwarting perfectly normal crimes in their perfectly normal spandex outfits.




What's that? No, of course it's normal to wear spandex (or leather, for the more chic among you) and go around beating up muggers and thwarting your villainous counterparts, don't be silly. What else would you do with your afternoon, not use your superpowers to better the world? That's grossly irresponsible of you; don't you know that with great power comes great responsibility?

So get out there and make the world a better place -- and be sure not to let that disguise slip if you do make it in to work today. Wouldn't want anyone to learn your secret identity, after all.


[OOC: Characters will find themselves thrust into the role of superhero...or at least, super-powered human. Whether they'd use those powers for good or evil (or use them at all), they'll think they've always been this way (or maybe just since that time they fell in toxic waste and developed cancer telekinesis). Usual dream party rules apply: all players and characters welcome regardless of membership status. Characters will remember or forget the events of the dream at players' discretion.]

Comments

i don't have any icons for this

[postictal]

Tim Wright has been rendered utterly unrecognizable. At least to anyone who knew him.

For one, he's actually smiling.

For another, no one would be able to pay him enough money to be wearing what he's wearing, but wearing it he is. While grinning broadly. And rollerblading down the street. In bright pink rollerblades. And sunglasses.

Timman, obviously, is out and about and ready to prevent any minor distress or slight inconvenience he comes across, broad daylight or otherwise.

YES YES YES YES YES YES

[apidae]

Well, and how appropriate that he should run into Beegirl! She weighs almost nothing and flits about wildly, just like her namesake, and as soon as she sees him, she buzzes on down to this new (old?) friend.

"I like your helmet!" she says happily, lighting gently on a branch.

THIS IS THE WORST YOU'RE THE WORST

[postictal]

"Why, thank you!" Timman booms, having apparently no concept of an indoor voice. What an unusual specimen! Clearly not in need of any assistance, but he grinds to a halt regardless with what is certainly an ill-advised maneuver that sends him wobbling precariously. Being completely unaware of how perilously close he got to completely faceplanting into the concrete, Timman's enthusiasm remains cheerfully undampened.

"You are quite - small," he observes, his tone one of someone making a loud, decisive pronouncement, as all his statements invariably sound.

[fucking_ebay]

Daylight? No. When the city sleeps, that is when Stygian Shadow awakes and takes up his mantle as guardian of the night. Peter The Stygian Shadow (and you'd think reporters wouldn't need that spelled for them, but that's public education for you) is one with the shadows, one with the night, as he slips through the inky darkness of the night in search of the evil he is sworn to defeat.

[omnomnom_feels]

There will be peace!

A winged man alights on the sidewalk at a busy intersection, deigning only to glare at the people who shriek and run from his sudden appearance. Here, as everywhere, there is chaos. They mistake him for the danger, but he knows that these people are the ones who hurt each other and themselves, constantly squabbling over irrational disagreements, twisting what should be the intricate tapestry of their lives into painful knots of turmoil that tug ceaselessly at his consciousness.

No more. His gaze is steely, imperious as he spreads his golden wings against the sky and holds out a hand. They cannot feel turmoil, make turmoil if they cannot feel at all. It will be better this way; they can be as he was, and then he himself can return to the correct way of being. The people nearest him stumble and stop running, looking surprised for a moment before emotion is gone from their faces altogether. He lowers his hand, satisfied with the first effort, and turns to walk calmly after the others fleeing the scene.

[lottawork]

Not one for arcane, vaguely-defined heroics, Nicholas watches with a faint, flinted disgust.

"That's rather ill-advised," he drawls from his relatively safe point, secluded in the lip of an alleyway, arms crossed over his chest. "I'm certain none of them requested that spectacle."

[etherthief]

Nicholas Rush, so called for always rushing into things. Iman smirks down at him from her perch on the fire escape above him. She's been tracking the creature for several blocks now, was just readying herself for an airstrike, when who should jump in. Well, it's no trouble to see her comrade in arms.

She levers herself onto the ladder, rattling loudly as she slides down.

"Why not just turn them into stone at this rate?" she says to the winged menace. "Subtle cruelty doesn't suit you, what with your flash wings and all."

She tosses a little two finger salute to Rush. "Nick," he says pleasantly.

[johnny_truant]

Well that didn't go especially well.

True to his name Truant is absent, though not necessarily by choice - running from the crime scene, again, mistaken for the criminal, again - just his luck, isn't it, whenever he tries to help it blows up in his face, sometimes literally. He's not very good at this, is he? But he has to do it. He has to atone.

Skinny leather pants are not exactly suited for running, so he banks a sharp right at the end of the block and starts scaling the wall, straight up, up to the roof. Safer up there, generally. Of course, leather pants and studded jacket aren't really suited for this, either, but he does what he has to. Sure, he could use his powers, but that's what he's atoning for. Powers are the problem. No, he'll use those only in times of true emergency, thank you. The rest of the time it's all vaguely developed parkour and macgyver tactics. He's like Batman, if Batman were more of a sewer rat than a billionaire philanthropist.

Finally ascended to relative safety, he curls up against the little wall running around the roof and lets out a slow breath, tugging his jacket tighter around himself in meager defense against the wind. He stares dully across the empty expanse, thinking over the scene he'd had to vacate, what he might do better next time (yeah right) - then, with a weary jerk of the wrist, takes out a cigarette and lights up. He really needs a break. But he doesn't deserve one. He has to keep fighting back against everything he's done, everything he is, right down to the name he gave himself.

Johnny is Truant.

[leave it to Johnny to make this prompt a bummer. he looks approximately like this]

[has_a_horn]

It's a bird, it's a plane, it a guy in spandex landing on the roof. Gabriel, dressed as Superman, skids to a stop over the small layer of gravel covering the roof and pauses, for dramatic effect, with his hands on his hips and cape blowing in the nonexistant breeze.

"Greetings!" he booms, then addresses Johnny with a small lift of his eyebrow and an expression that's attempting detached concern but more or less slides into amusement the longer he tries to hold it. "Run into some trouble, lad?"

Finally, he grins and takes a few steps closer, then sits down next to Johnny on the roof. Normally he'd chide him for the cigarette, but let him do what he likes in a dream. Kind of goes with the whole hot punk thing, anyway. "Maybe you'd like to." He waggles his eyebrows. "I like the look. You know I like the pants, but I think the whole thing's doin it for me."

[johnny_truant]

Truant looks up, vaguely bewildered by the brightly colored interruption, but he shouldn't be surprised. He smiles faintly and raises the cigarette in a disproportionately understated greeting.

"You know it," he says, allowing himself to relax a little. "Cops are always on my ass, you know, I don't know what I gotta do to get credit but I better find it soon or I'm gonna end up in prison. Would you bail me out if I did?" He blows smoke between his teeth and looks down at himself and gives a self-deprecating chuckle and shrug.

"Same thing I always wear," he says. "Have I ever mentioned this-" he uses the cigarette like a pointer, lazily encompassing Gabriel's whole shtick with a little swirl of his wrist, "-really does it for me? I mean, you wouldn't think, loud primary colors and the underwear on the outside and all - actually, scratch that, it's hideous. I guess it's just the guy inside it." He sticks the cigarette back in his mouth and takes a nice comfortable drag. "Maybe you wanna take it off."

He could use a fucking distraction.

[apidae]

Beegirl - she's a regular girl, but she's awfully small - smaller than usual, in fact. She's about four inches high, larger than your average bee, but we all make compromises for convenience.

Fighting crime isn't so much her forte, but what she can do is bring a smile to your face - and she's quite good at spying danger! You might say she has a sixth sense for it. And if things get really rough, she does have her crossbow, though it's only got one bolt, so it's a bit of a last ditch deal.

Currently she's flitting around the park, light as air, looking for someone to help or just to talk to. Feel free to say hi, if you can spot her!

[deadeyedchild]

[I'm granting Jay immunity from the dream's effects since he's still pretty dead and just floating haplessly around in riftspace, sort of accidentally stumbling into dreams (appropriate icon keywords are appropriate). So if your villain needs a victim or your hero needs a damsel, he's your guy.]

He feels himself getting pulled into a dream again, but this one pulls a lot harder than most. This one is big. For a moment it tries to push him into some ill-fitting slot, it feels like a rippling of static over his skin - clothes and body chemistry shift and blur before there's a metaphysical sort of throwing up hands and saying fuck it, and he lands, Jaylike and normal, on the ground.

He shivers, feeling like he needs a good dirt bath or something after that bizarre sensation, and takes a moment to look around, trying to assess whose dream this is. But it doesn't belong to anyone, that becomes quickly apparent. It's one of the big ones. The group ones.

Shit. Fuck. He has to get out of here. He shuffles along the sidewalk quickly, trying not to look around or make eye contact.

[singthesong]

He may not be making eye contact, but he might notice when a man walking in the opposite direction suddenly stops up short. If he looks up, he'll see that the guy's staring at him, eyes wide.

What is he hearing here?

"Oh god, you're not friends with Johnny, are you?" It just sort of slips out and he curses himself a second later, but at least he didn't refer to the kid as Truant.

[deadeyedchild]

"Who?" Jay blurts, too startled by the abrupt address to pretend he didn't hear it. He lifts his head and blinks at the stranger, who is just staring at him. What kind of weird way to introduce yourself is this?

"Johnny?" he says slowly. There's a lot about this he does not like, but he falls into tired conversational patterns on reflex. "Uh, no. I mean - I know a Johnny." Probably the same one. It's not like it's an uncommon name, but rifties are a smaller sample size and he's learned not to ignore hunches or trust coincidence. "I wouldn't say we're friends. Whyyy are you asking?"

[lottawork]

Categorically, Nicholas is not what he would refer to as a 'visionary'. Concepts of destiny, fate, inextricably entangled in and around him notwithstanding.

Didn't he say it would always end this way.

We'll never be done.

Surveying the vast metropolitan sprawl of whatever nebulous city in which he's stationed himself is far from immediately rewarding, regardless of technological ameliorations. Cameras only reveal so much, even those bolstered by subtle modernizations of the generally imperceptible variety, unobstructed by the shadowed silhouettes of skyscrapers printed against the starlit, liquid dark. A high vantage point becomes axiom.

Wind whips over the dark fringe of his hair, clear and intemerate and vaguely fatidic, as if the herald of some dark subset of events beyond his control. How uninspired. How typical.

Nicholas straightens and retreats from the building's unprotected edge and prepares to commence the long process of descending to ground-level.

[powerdealer]

For a moment there's just a faint ripple in the air, a gentle buzz of something quite not like it should be.

Then suddenly, with the sound of velcro being pulled apart, it widens into a full-blown tear, a rip in the fabric of spacetime, suspended in midair on top of the building.

With barely a second passed, the body of a man launches headfirst through it, preceded only by a few lasergun blast that shoot off in different directions, including towards Nick. The man - Seth - lands in a roll, finding his footing in a crouch immediately and throws out a hand towards the tear, which closes immediately, preventing anything else to follow, whether more lasers or some of his actual pursuers.

He straightens a little and looks around. Seth isn't wearing spandex, but he's taken a leaf out of Simon's book and adopted the Superhoodie outfit. Not like he's using it anymore, and there's always gotta be one, right? A title and an outfit passed down. Though he's not quite as good at the parkour as the original Superhoodie, he's got plenty powers to make up for it.

[lottawork]

The hiss of two aspects of reality coming apart is not lost on him, and Nicholas pivots and dives smoothly in avoidance of the light streaking over dark. Being fired upon by heat- or plasma-based projectiles is not what he would consider a conventional noctivagant activity, even for him - his nighttime habits are somewhat more atypical compared to most. The warm blaze of the bright bolts sear past, charging the air with the stench of ozone.

With a fluid pull, Nicholas draws his sidearm which opens with the high electrical whine of a building charge, unfurling into a sinuous weapon that somehow approximates a snake. The intruder is well within his sights but he refrains from opening direct fire, holding rigid in a low crouch.

[bloodsprice]

He wasn't actually a villain. It was just what people who tended to find him in the wrong time and place assumed upon seeing some of the things he did.

If you didn't understand the reasons behind his actions, didn't know why he was doing what he did. Perhaps then, yes, he might appear to be something of a villain. Sometimes it was easier to get something done in embracing that title even. Usually however, he was more...an anti-hero one could say. He ended wars, he helped people out, but those were either for his own motives or done for a price.

Course now he needs help himself, so he's come to someone he thinks might be capable of finding the one he needs found. The trick is to get the man to agree to listen to him and then to grant him what he desires.

He steps out of the shadows as Nicholas heads for the door that would lead inside and down. "Headed home?"

[etherthief]

[Iman is basically a slightly cleaner, hijab-wearing Imperator Furiosa, minus the rifle but including the prosthetic, now a visibly robotic arm. Superpowers are limited to what her arm used to be able to do, and also punching. She prefers punching.]


It's a fine day for street cleaning.

Iman grins, vicious and predatory, as she drops down from a balcony onto a would-be mugger, drop-kicking him right in the face. He's a big boy, sturdy, too - bounces right back, turning all his aggression on her, where it belongs. Her boots scrape the sidewalk as she lands, smirking at him, flexing her metal fingers.

"I'll bet you whatever's in my wallet you can't land a hit," she says, right before she cold-cocks him, bare-knuckled, like the good old days. She's not above punching with the pros', but that wouldn't be fair.


[feel free to be the mugged party (who may or may not have TOTALLY HAD THIS SITUATION, THANK YOU), a helpful bystander, or even the mugger if you want - I can edit the tag as needed if you wanna do that!]

WHY NOT

[andhiswife]

Greta understands the way this world works, because it's the same way that every world works. There are people who are normal, like her, and there are people who are more. And whatever wistful fantasies she might privately entertain, she knows what she can reasonably expect from the mores. They'll go about their exciting lives, and she'll go about her less exciting life, and their paths will never cross.

To say that she is surprised when a full-fledged superhero drops from the sky (or a balcony, which is close enough by her reckoning) to save her from something as pedestrian as a mugging is an understatement.

"Um," Greta stammers, eyes wide and knuckles white as she grips onto her bag and stumbles back against the nearest wall. It's Iman Asadi. With the metal arm and everything! She's not sure if she should be thrilled by the rescue or mortified that a hero as famous as Iman is--is stooping to this, and in her uncertainty, lets out a completely ridiculous, "Be careful!"

As if she won't. As if she hasn't got this completely under control.

[singthesong]

Sorry, were you looking for a superhero?

That's very silly, because there's no superheroes here. Just a completely normal, good-natured guitarist, practically a fixture of the park and the local music scene. He's never even met any superheroes before, despite the abundance of them in town - he's just simply never around when crimes happen. He's never even been so much as mugged, and he plays in dangerous neighborhoods pretty frequently. Good luck, he tells his friends with a laugh, and maybe just good people skills.

Wherever he goes, heroes in the area tend to receive anonymous tips a few days later regarding crimes recently or about to be committed. These come in a number of ways: notes slid under doors or into mailboxes, texts from unknown numbers, very rarely a garbled message left on an answering machine. But the phones, if tracked, are always burners long-since disposed of, the notes can never quite be traced, and don't even think about setting up cameras if you want a return visit. They're also fairly likely to be left at a hero's civilian home or workplace; alarming, if you have a secret identity. But B - the tips are always signed B - has never once provided bad info, and to all appearances hasn't revealed any hero's personal information to anyone. Whoever they are, maybe it's better to just let them operate in peace.

Meanwhile, here's this random civilian, possibly busking where he ought not to be. You might want to clear him out before shit goes down. Or, if you're really curious, rumor has it that return notes or a quick text back to the mysterious B can actually garner a response from time to time.



(( Sorry I tl;dr'd a whole AU ))

[etherthief]

Now, no one would argue that B wasn't an amazing resource - the fabled 100% accuracy rate is surely nothing to sneeze at - but just the same, Iman likes to know who she's doing business with. It's not a preservation thing - her identity is her vigilante self, who needs that 'regular life' shitshow? - it's a simple matter of ideology. And possibly some trust issues.

She wipes some blood off her nose with the back of her hand as she considers her phone and the text she received a short while ago. She's about as good at tracing as anyone in town, not including Nick, but it never leads anywhere. Somehow B always knows she's coming. Even if a text has only just been answered, somehow, she always finds the phone ditched. It's impressive. She'd just like to know whose hand to shake.

Well, what the hell. Can't hurt to try.

After some brief consideration she punches in hey what's the hip-haps bro and sends it.

Yeah, a serious message might be better but she has a hunch that lying to B wouldn't get her very far.

ill-advised trip tagging aww yiss

[full_metal]

(tw: suicide)

Here is how it doesn't happen.

She doesn't stumble upon some crime in progress or hear about a murder on the six o'clock news. She doesn't consider whether she should involve herself, or whether she should just keep her head down and go about her business like a normal citizen. Or, if she does, she always lands squarely on the 'act normal' side of the debate. Because that's what she is: normal. Nobody. Just a face in the crowd. Not some obnoxious asshole in bright spandex and a cape, her image blown up on billboards and splashed on public transport.

She doesn't calmly step in front of said public transport to an aborted cacophony of squealing tires and screeching brakes. She doesn't open her eyes to find herself back in her bed at the start of that day, with the cries of any unfortunate observers still echoing in her ears. She doesn't have a new mission.

She doesn't stake out the scene of the crime. She doesn't watch it happen from afar, taking note of where people are and when, storing facts and calculating variables, memorizing the scene. She doesn't try to dissuade the criminal in some subtle way. She doesn't lose. She doesn't fuck up. She doesn't die as many times as she has to to get it right, to get it perfect.

Here is how it happens.

Someone starts to commit a crime (she has to let them start, if only so everyone else will know what she's stopping), and a lithe, deceptively small figure in a metal mask slips out of the crowd and lays them out with practiced, brutal efficiency. And then the figure is gone, ducking down an alley or deftly weaving between vehicles, before anyone can fully register the extent of what has just happened.

And Rita tucks the mask away and goes about her business.

Here is another thing that doesn't happen: someone doesn't text her the site of a crime before it happens.

She goes, because she's curious, and because she has a get-out-of-shit-free card that never seems to expire. And she watches it happen, the man running off with some distraught woman's purse. Her own face is impassive, though there's a muscle working in her jaw, and her eyes are distinctly cold. She doesn't even try to stop the crime, because it can wait. The question of who's fucking with her takes precedence, and she pulls out her phone to text back this... samaritan.

Who is this?

[has_a_horn]

Gabriel arrives in the dream as he usually does, in his usual clothes as his usual self. However, it doesn't take him long to take stock of the situation and come to the conclusion that he's not interested in any of this dark and gritty superhero shit. WHat fun is all that angst and desaturated clothing? He's got enough of that in his waking life.

With that in mind, he dresses himself up like Superman and wanders off down the street to see if he can find anyone he knows.

so how about this

[theoldgirl]

The TARDIS tends to expect rather more interesting communal telepathic experiences than the one she finds this time; this construct has very nearly the same structure as the waking world, and most of the same emotions in it. Though there's a few subtly different tastes too; more confidence and concern for others than she typically sees in the minds of people, and more arrogance. It's a strange enough mix to hold her attention for a moment, and that's all it takes for her to sense Gabriel, and that is reason enough to stay.

She manifests by his side in one of her usual fairly plain blue dresses, giving his mind a fond nudge and his awfully bright appearance a dubiously amused look. "Is there some sort of costume party I missed in this dream?"