In the year 2220 the world is a grim and dark place, filled with crime-riddled urban sprawl and barren wasteland, swamped with pollution. What's left of the U.S. government is ineffective and corrupt, and the mega-corporations and criminal cartels have by and large taken its place. In the near-apocalyptic aftermath of WW3, global climate change, and economic collapse, technology has advanced to heights unimaginable to those of the past, but the knowledge of its manufacture remains in the hands of a mysterious few.
Little over forty years ago, a blindingly bright light hit worldwide and in its glow, the first supers emerged. In the confusion that followed, many tried to use their powers for good, but many more used them to further their own ends and for years, anarchy reigned. In time, society recovered and in the interest of preserving order, the government established the Meta Reform Initiative, (MRI), a federal agency dedicated to gathering supers, training them, equipping them, and enlisting their aid in quelling the new wave of crime and terrorism, ostensibly to prevent another bright war, but in reality, to keep supers under surveillance and control.
At the moment, there are three super classifications, Villians are supers that use their powers to defy the law for personal profit or philosophy, Heroes are supers that have joined the MRI and use their powers to enforce the law and stop rogue Metas with a minimum of collateral damage, and Vigilantes are supers that have taken the law into their own hands, and dole out their own, often brutal version of justice on the streets.
You are a teenager in the USA's northeastern mega-metropolitan sprawl's slums, and only yesterday, you manifested superpowers of your own. Whether you embrace Villiany, Heroism, Vigilantism, or go Rogue is up to you but remember, the world is a dangerous place, and your survival isn't guaranteed.
Orion Schulz18
You can hardly believe it. You've Triggered, and now you're one of
Them. A Meta, Para, Post-human, no bullshit or beating around the bush, you're a genuine, honest-to-god, bona-fide Super. A Changer to be exact. You dig deep inside for half a minute, and slowly but surely, your arms and legs split into the powerful slippery and spiked tentacles you still haven't gotten quite used to. Another thirty seconds, and they're back to the way they were. Damn, you don't know if you're ever gonna get used to this, but you guess you've got to.
Recently, you've been doing well for yourself. The time you spent with the
Slick-Steppers street gang has left you with little over
$800 dollars, untraceable, in cash, and by some miracle, a clean criminal record. Whew. At the moment, you're sitting in room 636 of one of Green Rose Tenement's establishments in the
Eastside district by the coast, it's got a bedroom, a bathroom, a closet, and best of all, as long as you can pay the
$300 dollar rent every four weeks, the Land Lady doesn't ask any questions. You're a super, and the world is your oyster.
What do you do?Status:
Healthy
Traits:
Changer- Can shift arms and legs into obsidian-black, bladed, strong, and precise tentacles with half a minute's effort.
Residence:
Green Rose Tenements, Room 636- $300 rent every month, (3 weeks remaining)
Equipment:
$800 in cash
Street Clothes
7
You've Triggered. T-R-I-G-G-E-R-E-D, you say the word, Triggered. TRIGGERED. Triggered. Crazy, but now your words have power, and as long as they're none the wiser, you can influence anyone listening with a sentence at most. Of course, the standard restrictions mostly apply, you can't have someone outright shoot themselves, but you could have them say, hand you their gun and walk away with their hands on their head. Ordering someone to do your bidding without even knowing they've been commanded... It's an incredibly potent power, and you've got a hunch you'll put it to use in the coming days.
Life has not been kind to you. First, you got fired from the job you've worked six years so the manager could promote their bratty little nephew, then, you were kicked out of your own home on a fraudulent drug charge your asshole of a neighbor cooked up, and last, but certainly not least, your childhood sweetheart informed you she'd been seeing other people for months, and had been waiting for an opportunity to let you down easy. Everything you've ever known went up in smoke, and in less than a week, everything you'd spent your entire life building came tumbling down. Come to think of it, that's probably why you Triggered in the first place. You have what's left of your life savings after a foreclosed bank account,
$60 dollars, and you're out on the streets without a roof to sleep under.
What do you do?Status:
Healthy
Traits:
Master- Can command others with their voice, but only so long as they don't realize they're being influenced.
Residence:
N/A
Equipment:
$60 in cash
Street Clothes
16
5
You're sitting in room 485 of
Eastside's Green Rose Tenements, staring at a pile of junk and the chrome bracelet sitting on-top of it. You don't know what came over you, actually you do, you just can't believe it. After months, no, years of being left in the dark, your endless efforts to try and learn everything there is to learn paid dividends and you Triggered. You didn't set out expecting or even trying to Trigger but the concept always lingered in the back of your mind, and sometimes, late at night, you'd imagine what it'd be like. And now it's happened, and you're a Tinker.
Honestly, you'd thought you'd end up a Thinker if anything, but you can't complain, this is even better. Slightly worried someone might walk in, you take a minute to make sure you're the only soul in your three room apartment, and once you're satisfied no-one's eavesdropping, you grit your teeth and slide the bracelet on your wrist. The relief when it doesn't explode is palpable and as you examine the Tinker-tech, it all comes flooding back. Hours in a semi-conscious haze, calculating, analyzing, slowly coming to an
understanding, and this is the result.
Unnamed Tinker-tech Bracelet: It's made of a strange metallic plastic, and appears to passively monitor your vitals and display them on a nifty screen. Not the most useful thing in the world, but it doubles as a wrist-watch and proof of concept.You get the impression if you want to build something more complicated, you're going to need some material, a workshop, and a power source. There's enough scrap from the pillaged guts of your refrigerator to tide your material needs for a few more days, and you figure a common tool-set and bench should be enough for simpler experiments, but you're going to have to get creative for electricity. Maybe the
$400 dollars in your wallet could help...
What do you do?Status:
Healthy
Traits:
Tinker- Can build futuristic technology, specializing in Information Acquisition and Adaption.
Residence:
Green Rose Tenements, Room 485- $300 rent every month, (3 weeks remaining)
Equipment:
$400 in cash
Unnamed Tinker-tech Bracelet
Street Clothes
17
They've always called you tiny, little, bitchy, and they might've been right but now no-one'll ever say it to your face. No, not after you Triggered. You remember what went down in vivid, flawless detail. Almost a decade ago, you joined the
Alleyway Reavers, a minor street gang in the
Eastside district to survive. At first, it was hard and you had to do a lot of things you aren't proud of, but over the years, you managed to build a connection with the rest of the gang, and eventually, they became your family, and you, theirs. For a while, life was good, as good as it could be for a homeless street thug. It would've stayed that way if it wasn't for the
Cargo 290, a much larger, much more organized gang.
Little by little, the
Cargo 290 muscled in on the
Alleyway Reaver's turf, and bit by bit, they disrupted the black market. The
Alleyway Reavers fought them tooth-and-nail under the city's flickering lights, and they put up a good showing, but they were outnumbered, outgunned, and no matter how motivated they were, they didn't stand a chance against the
Cargo 290's team of Metas. Eventually, the
Cargo 290 started doing hits on crack-houses and abandoned businesses, trying to pin down the
Alleyway Reaver's headquarters, and after two months of digging, they found it. The
Alleyway Reavers were gunned down by the dozen and for every
Cargo 290 thug that went down, three more took their place.
When the night was over, your brothers-and-sisters in crime were dead or scattered to the winds, and an unlucky few, yourself included, were captured. They tied you in a dark room somewhere no-one could hear you scream, and then, they went to work. They demanded you tell them where the rest of your gang was, but you didn't know and even if you did, you wouldn't have told them. They thought you were lying, so they tortured you, and as minutes turned to hours turned to days, something inside you snapped, and broke loose in a fit of vengeful, furious rage. They'd tried to break you, but you didn't give in, and in your deepest darkest hour, your inner strength awakened and in your rage, the pain they inflicted on you was their undoing.
That happened yesterday, you don't have any idea how many goons you tore apart, and you've got nothing to show for it but a new set of scars, a pistol you pinched from a corpse, and little over
$600 dollars in cash. You honestly don't know where to go from here. At least a dozen, maybe two, maybe three of their men are dead, and the
Cargo 290 will be hunting you, but you don't care, you're ready for them and nothing they do can hurt you anymore than they already have. There's still a few
Alleyway Reavers left, maybe you could get them back together and start a new gang. Maybe you could sign up for the MRI, you never really liked them, but they'd protect you, give you a place to sleep, and train and equip you to use your newfound strength. Of course, you could always take things into your own hands, and handle their whole gang yourself.
Status:
Healthy
Traits:
Brute- Their strength and durability scales with the pain they're suffering.
Residence:
N/A
Equipment:
$600 in cash
9mm Pistol, (13 rounds)
Street Clothes
1
Your last name is Lexis, and as a slum-raised orphan, that's the only thing you know about your real family. The kids on the street always called you Jackie, and Amie did too, and Amie always knew what he was doing, so you did too. Amie's the boss and father figure of near two dozen street urchins just like you, and ever since you could walk, you've been pan-handling for spare change and scavenging for scrap to sell to keep everyone's bellies full. You're good at it, too, the best in the whole Gang. Every time you bring in a nice haul, Amie gives you that smile, the one that says he's proud of you, and that sense of approval, that's what you live for. You're not really a kid anymore and you're starting to wonder and worry about how things are gonna be once you're all grown up. Or even, once the whole Gang's all grown up. Amie's almost thirty, and he's different from when he was when he raised you, but deep down, he's still the same kid.
His thirtieth birthday's in a week, and you wanted to get him something special for the occasion, so you went a bit deeper in the slums than you usually do. You're out of the
Northside streets, into
Eastside gangster territory, and you've made a mistake. You found a mint-condition antique set of X-Acto knives some rich kid or someone stupid had left in a dumpster, and you knew they'd be the perfect gift for Amie, but, then it got shot. Blown to pieces by a shotgun blast, ripped apart, bent, broken, and ruined. Half a dozen men in black pants and green shirts walked into the alleyway, toting guns, knives, and baseball bats, and when they saw the look on your face, they laughed and for the first time since you were a kid throwing tantrums, you got pissed.
Something deep inside you broke, and running on berserk instinct, you glare at the dumpster and everyone's jaws dropped as a light blue energy wraps around it, shatters it, and levitates the scraps to weld them onto your skin. With a wave of a hand, the bits and pieces of the knife set fuse into a single blade, leap up, and stab into your arm, but it doesn't hurt, and as you realize you can shift it in and out, you begin to put the pieces together. You've Triggered, you're a Meta, and now you can make these bastards pay for ruining Amie's birthday. One of the gangsters panics and shoots you straight in the heart, but your rusty chest-piece deflects it and all they did was chip the paint. The rest are getting ready to brawl and now it's your turn to strike.
What do you do?Status:
Healthy
Traits:
Striker- Can form nearby inanimate objects into weapons and armor.
Changer- Can harmlessly incorporate inanimate objects into their body.
Brute- Can unleash an energy blast that devastates inorganic matter but only concusses organic matter.
Brute- Can release an energy aura that rapidly corrodes inorganic matter they're not currently using.
Residence:
Amie's Place- No rent
Equipment:
X-Acto Arm Blade
Street Clothes
9
You're a little exasperated, because recently, your life's been a train-wreck. Last week, a Meta Villain tried to strangle you with a telekinetically-controlled length of wire for your wallet and as you suffocated, you screamed for help and the choking stopped. The wire fell to the concrete with a clatter and after staring at you like you were a ghost in the flesh, they ran away faster than you've ever seen someone move. You felt a bit of pressure in the back of your head, and it was giving you a headache, so you willed it to go away and the wire slid up into the air to follow the fleeing Villain. That was a week ago, and after a metric shitload of deep thought on the matter, you've come to the conclusion that you've Triggered as a Trump, and gained the power to cancel out powers.
It's a bit strange, to have the power to deny supers their powers, and the more you think, the more you realize the only way you're putting it to use is if you fight Metas. But how would you do that? Vigilantism in these streets is near-suicidal, and you don't know if you have what it takes to be a Villain. If you went Rogue, there's no way your power could make money, you'd be indistinguishable from an average citizen, not to mention how much trouble you'd have keeping it all under wraps. If nothing else, the MRI would be ecstatic to have someone with your abilities among them, but do you really want to sell-out to the government? Do you even care that you're a super? The bank you had your life savings in has foreclosed without compensation, you've barely got
$90 in your wallet, and sooner or later, you've got to pay rent!
What do you do?Status:
Healthy
Traits:
Trump- Can cancel the powers of other supers within a radius of themselves, and temporarily strip a super of their powers with a touch at the cost of their radius.
Residence:
Green Rose Tenements, Room 512- $300 rent, (3 weeks remaining)
Equipment:
$90 in cash
Street Clothes
Author
Topic: Near-Future Street Level Super (6/6) IC Thread (Read 2289 times)