breakingamber

Name: Mason Filmore

Appearance: 30-ish looking white male with brown hair. About 6 feet tall with a long somewhat gangly body. Wears a 'cool' looking cowboy hat, biker jacket, and blue jeans. He has a semi-automatic pistol holstered at his side.

Epic Name: Downfall

Primary Ability: He can swap two equally-sized portions of space that he can perceive, either through sight or through his secondary ability, as long as they don't contain living things. If he tries, the swap just warps around them and he gets a vague headache. These things preserve their momentum and shape. (so he's technically not a teleporter.) Mover/Shaker, in Worm terms.

Secondary Ability: He has short-range clairvoyance, up to about 20 feet in every direction. He can only perceive objects, not sounds, colour, smell, etc. 

Tertiary Ability: He has enhanced reflexes, enough to react to a bullet being fired at him at point blank range. This grants him a form of prime invincibility, as he can perceive threats coming from all directions, and can react to them in time to swap them or block them.

MO: He's petty, cruel, confrontational and always looking for an excuse to fight. This makes him pretty reckless when it comes to antagonizing other Epics, and really terrible for the wellbeing of nearby vanillas. He doesn't think much of them and will kill them if they or something else irritate him, sometimes by switching the ground that's underneath them to be on top of them or by switching something heavy on top of their head and snapping their spine, or just encasing them in solid rock. However, he hates Epics who can actually harm him or pose a danger to him more, as he's really kind of a coward at heart. He'll put on a big blustery bravado, but, in the end, however, if he's actually in danger of dying, he tends to bail.

Backstory: He was about 19 when Calamity first rose and he get his powers. He'd just arrived at his biology class when he had his Rending, where he left a pile of suspiciously rectangular rubble behind. As time passed, he practiced more and gained more control over his ability and was able to make more specific shapes. Travelling some of the most Epic-filled cities, he left behind a trail of murder and cruel and unusual deaths before he would always inevitably be forced to flee for his life, having drawn the ire of the local Epic overlord. He's been heading north for some time now, and figured he might as well visit Edmonton while he's in the area; maybe he'd even try claiming some territory. How hard could it be?

Weakness: Just about any living thing or something can't be blocked or penetrated can kill him. Something like Phytomagnet's trees, most invulnerable Epics, most incorporeal Epics. Essentially, he's Manton-limited in the harshest way possible.

 

Name: Shane Liu

Appearance: About average height, athletically bulky around the waist and shoulders. Black hair, kind of a scrunchy face - typical Asian, sumo wrestler but without the fat. Typically wears a large sweater and jeans.

Personality: Brusque, but caring. Kind of a stereotype, but what can you do? He's not particularly altruistic, but he'd go to hell and back for the people that are 'his', so to speak. He enjoys football and drawing. Good at thinking on his feet, but not amazing at long-term planning. Is kind of a jerk jock, except with less jerk nowadays. He's not particularly welcome to 'outsiders', but if he feels like he knows someone he'll treat them like family.

Backstory: He used to wrestle pre-Calamity and was kind of a stereotypical jock, with the bullying and everything. When Calamity came, an Epic razed the school, causing Edmonton to fall into chaos. He responded to this by taking all of his friends from wrestling, as well as as many of their siblings and parents as possible, his own little brother included (his parents died in the initial Epic takeovers) and running for the last vestige of government around: the Albertan one. They didn't quite have the resources to take care of him and all of his people, so he's been working constantly to keep them alive, doing some extremely basic farming, looting, rationing, bartering, etc. People have died, he's lost a couple to the Storm and Epoch, but he's done a surprisingly good job of keeping them all alive and mostly healthy. 

Skills: He's got pretty good stats all around. His dump(s) are probably INT and WIS, but even then they're slightly above average. He's particularly good at hand to hand combat.

I imagine he gets involved in 'plot', so to speak, when he finds a random motivator on the corpse of the other character I played, takes it back, and someone realizes who it is and how valuable it is, at which point he tries to sell it. That goes spectacularly.

Yellow Trailer

"There will come a time when your heart will lay shattered and everything that you are falls apart. Your darkest hour, if I may, though it won't necessarily last an hour. It could be days, weeks, months, even years. By the end of it, however, you will have an important choice to make: How will you put yourself back together? This choice will be the most important of your life, the one that determines who you are and who you want to be.

I pray that you'll make a good one."
- King Obi-Wan, the Wise

It was a cold, cloudless night. The full moon shone brightly in the sky, its light unblocked by anything but the slightest wisps of strata. A nightclub on a street corner blared dance music into the otherwise silent night, and red light flashed out the windows to join the light of the moon.

In another world, the moon might have been shattered, and the roaring of a motorcycle might have been heard, followed by the screaming of dozens of patrons, and finally finishing with the sound of glass breaking. But that is another world, and this is this one.

It would’ve taken state-of-the-art security systems or an extraordinarily acute sense of hearing to notice the soft brush of feet on the ground as the person to whom they belonged ceased their flight and landed on the sidewalk.
  
She stomped towards the doors of the club. This too went largely unnoticed. The patrons of the club tended to party quite loudly, and it was nearly impossible to hear the girl’s footsteps on the ground even though she put enough force into each step to crack the concrete.
  
When she got to the entrance of the club, she tested the metal doors. They were heavy, but still manageable for someone of normal strength. There were probably hydraulics making them easier to open, not that she needed them.
  
Grasping the handles, she flew upwards, hovering about a foot off the ground. Her golden-blonde hair suddenly flew backward, along with the rest of her. The doors screeched with the sound of tearing metal, and then they came right off. She let them go then, and they loudly clanged on the ground.
  
Everybody noticed that. The entire club went silent from shock, and even the loud dance music seemed to be in suspense.
  
The girl landed back on the ground, then spoke loudly and clearly. “Everybody out. I don’t want to have to beat up more people than I have to.”
  
A second passed, then, as one, the dancers and drinkers and all the other attendees rushed out the door, making sure to give the person standing in the middle of the doorway a wide berth. Even some of the staff ran out, cowed by the otherworldly show of strength.
  
Half a dozen people remained. Well-dressed men with red-tinted sunglasses and black suits wielding pistols and axes, glancing between themselves and the teenage girl standing in the doorway. Gangsters. The bright flashing lights inside the club had changed to fluorescent lights one might see in an office building, properly illuminating the foe that had just ripped the heavy steel doors off the building like they were paper.
  
Frankly, she didn’t look like much. She wore a black leather jacket and a short green skirt. Her blonde hair was let down and it fell down to her waist. She looked like some random, if rather attractive, girl one might meet on the street, or run into at the mall.
  
Some of the thugs were emboldened by the relatively normal appearance of their aggressor and advanced on her. One even made a misogynistic comment. Most stayed back, however, not willing to get ripped in half or pounded into a fine paste by the young parahuman.
  
They were the smart ones.
  
The first guy to get near her was a tall fellow wielding an ax. He wasn’t the most experienced fighter, but he was strong and figured he could overpower the pipsqueak of a girl in front of him. He raised his ax overhead and brought it down with a shout, and felt the blade slam into her shoulder… and bounce off. She didn’t react, taking advantage of his stunned state by simply rearing back for a punch that slammed into the unfortunate fellow’s chest, sending him flying into the back wall.
  
Another goon aimed and fired his pistol at the girl, but she was already moving, and she slammed into the man, only letting him get a single shot off and sending him sprawling to the ground. Another bone-shattering punch and he fell unconscious. She picked something up off the ground, throwing it at one of the nearby gangsters. He dropped his ax to catch it, then gulped when he realized that it was a flattened, still hot bullet. A bullet he could’ve sworn had just hit their foe.
  
The entire group suddenly felt much less willing to fight.
  
She spoke up again. “I’m pretty sure you know who I’m here for.”
  
A couple of the goons shared glances, then one who was deemed to have been unlucky enough to be chosen to respond replied nervously, “Actually, um, no, we don’t. Sorry; could you, er, elaborate for us… miss?”, he corrected as one of his fellow goons elbowed him in the side.
  
The blonde blinked once or twice, then grimaced. “Ah, sorry. I’m looking for your boss. Xander Waxon, Jack Candlestick, Will Naxle. Any of those ring a bell?” She looked almost embarrassed. It would’ve been funny, had the gangsters not been so scared.
  
“Uh, yeah, that second one does,” a different goon spoke up. “He’s not here now, actually. He doesn’t come ‘round here often. Sorry?” A couple of his companions looked at him oddly.
  
She sighed exasperatedly. Before she could respond, the loud screech of tires on asphalt came from outside. She turned around, and some of the gangsters contemplated shooting her in the back while she was distracted, but quickly decided otherwise. What if it ticked her off? She seemed pretty calm and composed for someone who could probably slaughter the lot of them without breaking a sweat, but who knew? Maybe she was concealing a roiling inferno beneath that calm exterior just waiting for an excuse to let loose, like an attempted murder attempt.

Also, it would have been mildly unsporting.

The car that had just pulled up outside was a fancy black Mercedes, and the blonde could just make out the number on the vanity plate: GAM8LR. The passenger side door opened up, and another teenage girl popped out and skated over to the discarded doors. On roller blades, no less.

Both girls looked about the same age and both girls wore a skirt, but that’s where the similarities ended. While one girl was conservatively dressed, the other was dressed colorfully, skimpily, even outlandishly in pink, red, and blue. The first girl’s hair was long and blonde, while the other girl’s hair was short, a shocking pink, and tied up in two almost-adorable pigtails. Her skin was an almost comically pale white. Her face was just as pale as the rest of her, save for her eyes, which shone like the rainbow, her nose, which was bright red and round, and her mouth, which seemed to be filled with razor-sharp shark teeth, grinning widely. She looked like a sexy creepy clown, and wasn’t that a sentence nobody ever wanted to think?

The clown finished her inspection of the jagged steel and turned to face the girl who was tensing her shoulders and preparing for a fight, then let out a disarmingly loud cackle, causing the other girl to fly up in shock. “Ha! Gotcha! Anyway, d’you mind me asking why ya trashed Mista J’s club? It’s gonna be pretty expensive to replace those doors!”

The other girl’s face had a hint of red in the cheeks as she replied, “Well… I wanted to get all the civilians out and I was expecting a fight. Thought that making them panic and run would work best.”

The clown girl chuckled and twirled around, eventually falling to the ground as her chuckles grew into a full belly-laugh. “Ha! ‘Preciate it, but really, you can kill the poor innocent civvies all you like, darling. No one cares about them! ‘Cept their families, their friends, and prolly loads of other people, but otherwise, no one cares!”

She shot to her feet and sped over to where the blonde was uncomfortably hovering over the ground. “You got yourself Name, sweetheart?”. She grinned.

“Uh, it’s Tori Co- “

She somehow leaped up ten feet in the air and booped the blonde on the nose with her finger, and Tori recoiled back. “No no no, silly! Not yer real name, yer Name! I don’t got one, but you can call me Harlequin anyway!” Her grin grew slightly less wide. “Actually, ya know what. You seem the heroic sort. Dang. Prolly shoulda guessed, really.”

Harlequin skated aimlessly in circles on the ground, conversation seemingly forgotten. Tori waited for her to continue, and visibly grew more and more irritated when she didn’t. “Look, I’m looking for Jack Candlestick, and you aren’t him, so - “

The clown girl stopped skating and screamed, “WOOHOO!”, startling Tori yet again and causing her to float even higher in the air. “Just realized something! Let’s fight! Right here right now! I finally get a good fight, and you get to test yer hero skills! Win-win! Let’s go!” She paused for a second, then, in a voice almost a whisper, continued, “You don’t mind, do you?”

The floating blonde’s face flipped between shock, confusion, and anger before finally settling back on irritation. “You’re joking,” she tried.

Harlequin replied. “Nope!” She smiled conspiratorially. “That’s the other Mista J’s job, and he’s better at it! Let’s get on with this, and then maybe I’ll take ya to see the man yer looking for, mkay?” Then, she reached her arm behind her back and grabbed her weapon, which turned out to be a giant silver-colored hammer that couldn’t have possibly fit behind her - just the head was wider than the clown was tall, yet she somehow pulled the whole thing out from behind her anyway.

She twirled it with one hand like a cheerleader’s baton then slammed the thing onto the ground, and the impact cracked the concrete.

Tori’s eyes widened, but she readied for a fight regardless, shoulders tensing and hands clenched. “Look, I’m really not looking for a fight, can we just talk -”

The answer seemed to be a very large and vehement “NO” as Harlequin, cackling loudly, leaped straight at the blonde flier almost faster than the eye could see, swinging her hammer wildly. Tori barely had time to dodge out of the way of the gargantuan weapon, and it slammed into the club behind her. The whole building shook from the impact, and the men remaining inside the club decided that, no, they were not getting paid enough to deal with superpowered teenagers, and made their rapid exit through the back door.

Harlequin spun around with her hammer, catching the blonde flier with her backswing and sending her soaring higher into the air. It didn’t seem to affect her at all, but she was quite worried nonetheless, her brow furrowed and her frown deepened. She took a moment to straighten herself, then charged straight at her opponent, fist forward. Harlequin barely had time to swing her hammer in the way, and the whole street shook from the impact between the unstoppable force and the… hammer.

The clown remained largely unharmed, but the sheer force sent her tumbling head over heels backward. She somehow managed to turn it into a cartwheel and eventually ended up in a handstand, hammer vanished into the wherever it went when she wasn’t using it.

She flipped into the air and landed back on her feet, a cocky grin still on her face. “Ohh, I like you! We’re going to have so much fun together!” She reached behind her back again and pulled out a different weapon: a rainbow-colored assault rifle, this time of reasonable (if still impossible) proportions. Tori’s eyes widened in panic, and she quickly flew down to street level behind a different building, out of sight.

Harlequin giggled loudly and then dropped her voice into a faux-whisper. “Come out, come out, wherever you are… I have cookies!” As she said this, she somehow pulled out a tray of chocolate chip cookies from behind her back.

They smelled delicious, but Tori didn’t show herself. The clown waited a couple more moments, then sighed. The cookies vanished back into the ether, and a thought visibly went across her face, causing her to perk up again, smiling evilly. “Welp. If you don’t wanna play with me, then I’m gonna go off and play with some civvies now, and you know how I feel ‘bout those!”

She skated down the street, looking for targets, but she didn’t get more than a couple of yards when the parahuman, previously hiding under a car, charged into her before she could react, sending Harlequin flying back into the club. Glass shattered as the clown girl smashed through the window, and the club rumbled again as she impacted the back wall.

Tori, hoping to incapacitate her foe at least temporarily, grabbed the discarded steel doors on the street and hurled them after her foe. She expected them to keep her down for a couple of seconds at most; she had clearly displayed superhuman strength in their fight, and that hammer was likely much heavier than a mere set of steel doors.

She did not expect the girl to scream loudly and painfully as soon as the steel impacted her body. Screaming and cursing rang through the night as the clown girl disappeared below the metal, and then the noise stopped abruptly. Tori winced, then flew into the club to throw the doors aside. Confusedly, she stared at the location where she had last seen Harlequin.

All she could see was a puddle of some kind of green slime.

Her face contorted with guilt, but the sound of a car door slamming outside drew Tori’s attention. As she looked outside, she only felt a sense of exasperation at the sight greeting her. “You’re kidding me. Did you just wait in the car that whole time?”

A young man in a white suit and black bowler hat stood next to the driver’s side door of the car that had pulled up next to the club not long ago. A red ribbon wrapped around his bowler cap to match his obnoxious orange hair, of which a good bit fell down onto his face, covering one of his eyes. One of his black-gloved hands loosely held a still-smoking cigar and the other one held a fancy black iPhone, which his lone visible eye, a dark gray one with dark eyeliner beneath, looked down at amusedly.

He hmmed briefly, still looking at the phone, then shoved it into a pocket on his coat. He looked up at Tori, taking in her appearance and facial expressions, and hmmed again. She growled.

“Did you hear my question?” she bit out. Her emotions were wavering between exasperated and furious now, and the man noticed. He smirked condescendingly.

“Ah, yes. I was distracted. Apologies for not paying you the attention you clearly deserve.” His voice was so saturated with sarcasm Tori thought it might drip out onto the street.

“I go by many names, but you probably already know that.” He grabbed a cane leaning against the side of the black car and started trekking forward, expertly twirling it in his free hand. “I suppose you could call me Jack. Jack Candlestick. Professional thief, crime lord, and ladies’ man.” He took an elaborate and theatrical bow, sweeping his bowler hat to the side.

“Now, I’m going to ask you a question, and I expect you to answer it honestly.” His voice grew menacing and cold as he re-doffed his hat and resumed walking. He gave off the vibe that he would shoot you dead without hesitation if he didn’t like your answer.

“Why did you wreck my club?” He positioned himself in the entranceway of the club, where the blonde had been floating less than a minute earlier. He leaned on his cane casually with one hand and took a deep drag of his cigar with his other. Exhaling smoke, he locked his one eye with Tori’s two and stared.

She took a deep breath and attempted to appear confident, though internally she was starting to wonder if pissing off the second or third biggest stick in Chicago was the great idea she’d previously thought it was. “Well, considering it’s a front for your criminal activity, I didn’t think anyone but you and a couple other people would miss it. Also, I really wanted to talk to you. I want your help in finding my sister.”

The crime lord appeared to take in her answer for a couple of moments, enough to make the other girl slightly uncomfortable, then smirked. “Okay. Sure. What’s her name? And yours, ideally.”

She started to answer, then paused, taken aback. “Wait, seriously? You’re just going to help me, just like that? After I wrecked your club and did… something… to your… henchwoman? Who was she, anyway?”

Jack chuckled. “Yeah, I’m going to help you. I’m pretty sure I know both who you and your sister are, and I’m inclined to help given how she’s been screwing with my people. Also, don’t worry about Harlequin. She’ll probably hate you forever now, but she’s fine.” Seeing Tori’s befuddled expression, he continued. “She’s one of the Fair Folk. Mercenary, specifically. She, in particular, is easy to hire, fairly professional, and has a cripplingly painful weakness to cold iron. She's fine though, just sent back to the NeverNever. I’m surprised you don’t know who she is; didn’t you hear about the WayneTech train heist a couple of weeks ago?”

Tori’s face entered one of concentration, then realization. “With the Joker, right?”

The other man flashed a grin. “That’s the ticket. Figured a smart girl like you would pick that up.”

Tori scowled, then sighed in resignation.

Jack tossed his cigar in a nearby undamaged trash can and pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Let’s see… Name, please? Again, I’m pretty sure - you’re a blonde bombshell with flying brick powers, pretty hard to miss - but I’d like to make sure.”

“My name is Tori College.”

He hmmed again. “Alright, here’s what I got. Tori College, twin sister of Molly College. Raised in a good Christian household, age 17, sister went missing about two weeks ago. Sound right?”

Tori nodded.

Jack continued, “Good news for you. I know exactly where she is. You won’t like it though. She’s running with the Mad Prin - I mean, the Joker’s gang of bozos. You got an email address, Goldie?”

She rattled off a list of characters and after a couple of seconds of him putting in keystrokes, he nodded and put his phone back in his pocket. “You’ll find her in the general area of that address I sent you, give or take a couple blocks.”

Tori flashed a real, genuine smile at the other man. It was an attractive smile, she clearly took good care of her pearly whites. “Thank you so much! When I catch up with my sister, I’m going to give her a piece of my mind…” she trailed off as Jack held his hand up, palm facing her.

“I’m sure you will, but I wouldn’t thank me yet if I were you.” He took several steps further into the club, and his face darkened. “I’m going to tell you a story, Goldie.” His deftly twirling cane suddenly seemed a lot less playful and a lot more menacing.

“Once, there were these kids. Smart fellows, worked hard, maybe weren’t the most talented, but they were loyal to their employer and more than made up for their flaws with their effort.” He glanced at the two unconscious bodies still lying around, almost forgotten.

“Then, some random person with superpowers busts in and threatens them, they defend themselves and end up beaten black and blue for their trouble, unlike the rest of the guys who fled as soon as things started looking bad.” He raised his voice during that last part, and Tori flinched, realizing where this was going.

“Now, I honestly had nothing against the poor guy. Actually sympathized with him, if you can believe it. But. When it comes to this kind of thing, it’s not about whether you sympathize with or dislike someone. If someone comes in and beats up your guys simply because they were there, just to send a message…” he locked eyes with the blonde, “...it stops being a trivial thing you can just ignore and move on from, and it starts being a matter of a little thing called disrespect. Frankly, I liked the guy. But he disrespected me by beating up my men, so I returned the favor. Put him six feet under.”

“I know these fellows you got laid out on the floor here.” He pointed at the ax-wielding one with his cane. “That’s Terry. Single father with two kids to look after. Planned to run the Chicago Marathon in a month or two. Looks like you broke his ribs and gave him a concussion.” He pointed towards the other one. “Manny. He’s kind of a jerk, but his girlfriend likes him and vice versa. You broke his arm, probably more ribs and another concussion.”

Jack smirked lazily. “I sympathize with you, I really do. But. You still crushed my men like tin foil. To me, this is a matter of... Well. You’re a smart girl. You’ve probably figured it out.”
  
Tori nodded warily, looking closely at the crime lord for any signs of rapid movement, waiting for him to make the first move. He didn’t miss her attempts at analysis, and he smirked.
  
“Brave of you to try and fight, but you’re a little out of your league here, Goldie.”
  
And as he pronounced the final syllable, he moved, leaping backward towards the exit. Tori, caught off guard, put her hands up in front of her face to defend against a vicious attack from his cane, seemingly his only weapon. When it didn’t come, she peeked out between her fingers, just in time to see a flaming red flare explode in her face.
  
She was knocked back into the wall, and smoke obscured everything in the club. It didn’t stop Jack from immediately leaping forwards into the smoke and landing a lightning-fast blow on Tori’s outstretched arm. Instead of bouncing off like all the other attacks on the girl, a meaty thud rang out, and she cried out in pain.
  
When the smoke cleared, Jack was standing back in the middle of the club, leaning forward with both hands on his cane. Tori was near the wall, pain etched across her features as she caressed her left arm.

Taking advantage of the brief pause in the action, she bit out, “How… how did you -,” hoping to draw her opponent into a monologue. He did not disappoint.
  
“Well, it’s fairly obvious, honestly. You can take one big hit, then you’re vulnerable until your invincibility comes back up. I was watching your fight with Harlequin, and I noticed you tried to pause after every time she hit you with that oversized hammer of hers. If you were truly invincible, you would’ve just bull-rushed her and taken her out instantly; she’s not that tough. You also -”

She interrupted him as she accelerated a fist towards him at a furious pace, but his reflexes were good enough to deflect her punch with his cane. Tori sent a flurry of punches and kicks propelled by supernatural strength towards the crime lord, but he dodged, deflected, or blocked each one with seemingly contemptuous ease.

It was almost as if he was toying with her.

Eventually, he jumped back and fired another flare at her, but she was ready for it this time and managed to dodge. It exploded as it impacted one of the three still-standing pillars of the club, and the pillar crumbled.

Tori saw this, and then looked at the other two pillars, the only things holding up the ceiling, out of the corner of her eye, and quickly formulated a plan while the smoke cleared again. Fortunately, Candlestick either hadn’t noticed the club’s lack of structural integrity or didn’t care and continued blasting away at her with his cane.

The blonde estimated Jack’s current position and lined herself up with one of the remaining pillars accordingly. Sure enough, another flare blasted out of the smoke. She dodged it fairly easily, and it impacted the other pillar, destroying it as well.

The crime lord leaped out of the smoke while Tori was watching the pillar and silently rejoicing and struck her with a series of lightning-quick blows. The first couple did nothing, but eventually, her invincibility went down and she started feeling the hits. And wow did Jack Candlestick hit hard. A series of jabs hit her in the stomach, leaving bruises that she was sure would last for days before an arcing swing slammed her to the side, and she felt a rib crack.

She flew up unsteadily and watched Jack slowly approach her, cane tapping on the ground. Tori glanced to her left, and saw the last pillar standing right there, chipped and slightly damaged from the night’s… festivities, but unbroken. She considered just smashing it as soon as her invincibility came back, but decided against the idea - that would alert her foe as to what her plan was, and give him plenty of time to simply dash outside, something his tremendous speed would easily allow him to do.

She’d have to be subtle about this.

She looked Jack in the eye and tried to speak confidently, even as the pain in her… almost everything, really lanced up and down her skin like a million bee stings.

“Aren’t you a little young to be beating a girl like you are now? For that matter, aren’t you a bit young to be running a criminal empire? Did your parents raise you right?” she asked, with what she hoped was a cocky, annoying tone of voice.

Candlestick frowned, as one of the insults apparently struck home. He slammed his cane into Tori again, knocking her into the last pillar. She slumped down, pretending exhaustion. Her invincibility went down from the massive impact, and her opponent spoke.
  
“End of the line, Goldie. It was nice meeting you.”

He raised his cane and pointed it directly at her forehead, allowing her to get a closer look. It shared many similarities with a rifle, with a long barrel and a red pop-up scope centered directly on her. She watched his finger pull the trigger.

Just before the flare hit her, she frantically pulled away towards the exit to the club, and yet she still felt the powerful explosion of the flare as it struck the pillar, scorching her backside and her hair. Like a sunburn, but a thousand times worse. Fortunately, the force of the detonation launched her closer to the exit, and as she reached the threshold, she couldn’t help but make one last quip.

Turning back to the figure of Jack Candlestick standing back in the middle of the club in the smoke, she retorted, “Sure about that? Seems like it’s more of the end of the line for you, Jack.”

A word, spoken with nearly otherworldly power. “Wreck.”

Jack confusedly protested, “What?” before he heard cracking sounds from directly above him. He looked up and saw the spider web of cracks slowly spreading across the ceiling. A piece of plaster fell right in front of him, and then he understood. “Oh,” was all he could say.

Then he was bolting for the entrance as the ceiling collapsed on top of him. It almost seemed like he would make it out before the metal and wood and plaster and stone would crush him - the club was large, but his speed was that great - and he just managed to make it to the threshold before his eyes widened and he managed, in disbelief, to spit out three final words.

“Son of a -”

His sleek black Mercedes slammed into him, front impacting his middle, and he was hurled back into the collapsing building. Rubble fell from above, burying him, the car, and just about everything else, forming a tomb for Jack Candlestick like the graves of the emperors of old.

Tori watched the rubble and dust settle, watching and listening for any signs of the infamous crime lord. After a couple of minutes had passed and she’d decided he wasn’t coming back, she sat down on the street and sighed, wincing in pain from the injuries he’d inflicted on her as well as the strain on her muscles caused by lifting and throwing the Mercedes - cars were heavy! A couple more minutes later, she heard sirens, and, not wanting to get involved with the police, flew off to recover some more.
  
When the police arrived, they managed to drag out two bodies, unidentified, one fancy car with an unregistered license plate, and one set of damaged steel doors.

***
  
Elsewhere, a young man sat at a table and brushed the dust off his white suit and black pants. He held his phone - slightly cracked - to his ear while he tried to light a cigar with the only hand he had available. Eventually giving up, he sighed and stood up, putting his cane aside as he waited for someone to pick up their damned cell phone.
  
Eventually, she did.
  
“Hello, Alex. How’d the fight go?”
  
He shrugged, not caring that the gesture wouldn’t be picked up by the phone. “As well as can be expected. The club is wrecked, she revealed an Aspect, and I’m not dead. Nor did I reveal my Aspects. Pretty sure we’ve just set up a Pattern of Three, so we’ll have a guaranteed win against Ms. College in the future.”
  
“Ms. College?”
  
“Ah, she’s the new Hero in town. Her Aspect is Wreck. Not sure if she had it before the fight or if she unlocked it during. Pretty sure it was her only Aspect though. Something to do with, well, wrecking things. More of a large-scale demolition aspect than, say, Shatter though. Also, I got a pretty good sense of what her Name is. Something like Golden Girl.” He cut himself off when he realized he might have been rambling a bit.
  
There was a short pause. “Can I speak to Roman, please?”
  
The man sighed. “Sure.” His eyes flashed green, and his demeanor changed slightly - not a lot, but a little. His smirk was slightly meaner, his eyes slightly colder.
  
“Hey, Cat. How’s it going on your end? Anything to share?”
  
His voice was different too. More abrasive.
  
“Nothing much going on with me, but there’s some bad news. I’m pretty sure the White Knight is coming to Chicago soon, but we don’t need to worry about that right now. What I want to know is how powerful and skilled this new ‘Golden Girl’ is. Also, some measure of her emotional stuff and things. You know how this goes.”
  
He grimaced when he heard the news about the White Knight. “Yeah, that murderous lady is going to be a problem. As for our less murderous lady, she’s… unskilled, but strong. Leave her alone too long, and she’ll be a major problem. Actually, come to think of it, that’s true of basically all heroes, right?”
  
“Yeah.”
  
The man continued. “As for her abilities, she’s like one of those annoying video game bosses - seemingly invincible at first glance, but fairly easy to take out if you know what you’re doing. Also, I don’t think she knows anything about Namelore, as she didn’t try to look for me after the club caved in. She’s fairly clever and reserved, but also has a major emotional weak point in the form of her sister. If we can get our hands on her, we could probably make her dance to our tune.”
  
“You know what I think about kidnapping, Roman.”
  
“Yes, you and your morals. I get the point. Also, it’d probably be pretty hard, considering she’s running with the Mad Prince.”
  
“Can we get the Black Knight on him? We may not have the best relations, but… ”
  
He paused, thinking heavily. “Maybe. I don’t think we’re up to it right now.”
  
“Alright. I have a meeting with Anna soon, so I’ve got to hang up. See you later, Vandal.”

“Goodbye, Black Queen.”