EPISODE VII
L'exercice du matin avait été un peu plus qu'un pur ennui pour Lara. Ted a affirmé qu'il y avait des choses à gagner en courant autre que la masse musculaire. Des choses comme l'équilibre et la patience et d'autres mots qu'elle pensait appartenir aux cookies de fortune.
Le petit déjeuner, cependant, il y avait un vrai défi moyen, et la phase "Peut-on peut-être obtenir une tranche de bacon sur le côté?" n'a pas reçu de réponse.
Maintenant Lara regardait dans la bouche tordue de quelque chose d'un cauchemar.
Wau, le lycée a dû être dur pour ce type, Lara a pensé regarder Parasite. Avec de légères nausées, elle s'est tournée vers son équipe et a dégagé sa gorge. Elle a crié et s'est évanouie avec sa vision laser, frappant les planchers, les murs, le plafond et n'importe quoi devant, sauf ses adversaires.
Tous ceux-là se sont étendus instantanément et se sont approchés avec calme et hâte, tandis que Lara a tourné la tête en haut et en bas, à gauche et à droite dans l'espoir d'avoir de la chance.
Dans une seconde de pompage d'adrénaline, elle a presque cherché des conseils auprès de son équipe, avant de réussir à éteindre le laser peu de temps après. Des idées, n'importe qui?Lara a demandé et si elle avait su que sa voix tremblerait, elle aurait gardé sa bouche fermée.
Rookie, pour sa part, se tenait là en silence muet alors que le jeune demi-alien libérait un torrent dévastateur de tir laser de toutes les façons (y compris, brièvement le sien, ayant été le plus proche d'elle quoi avec être son partenaire d'éparpillement jusqu'à il y a une minute) et frappait... absolument rien.
Peut-être qu'il commençait à s'engourdir dans les tours insensés que sa vie avait pris ces dernières semaines, peut-être que toute cette formation pour lui faire s'habituer aux rigueurs du super-héros commençait à l'acclimater à des choses comme ça... ou peut-être que tous ces poings super-alimentés à la tête qu'il avait pris récemment avait brisé quelque chose d'important. Quelle que soit la cause, ce n'était pas la peur, l'excitation ou même la colère qui se manifestait sur le visage du jeune homme à ce moment-là, mais une expression comiquement vide et profondément fatiguée.
Vraiment?
Rétrospectivement, il aurait probablement dû prêter plus d'attention au robot géant, de l'apparence zombie en train de s'emparer de lui en récitant des rimes de nursery vieux temps, buuuuut le Grundy-bot a veillé à cela de toute façon. Manuellement. Pendant pas même une seconde après que le mot avait quitté la bouche de Duncan, a fait la chose damnée lui arracher par les chevilles et commencer à le fouetter dans le sol dur comme un jouet démenti d'enfants, creuser des divots dans les tuiles de béton et envoyer de la poussière et des débris volant tous les sens.
"Je me suis marié un mardi, je me suis marié un mercredi!" Ce mi-sang, à moitié crié alors qu'il a finalement frappé le garçon directement dans le sol et livré un foin tonnerre qui l'a creusé encore plus loin dans elle pour le bien de la postérité "Traité malade un jeudi! Grêve pire vendredi! »
Simulée salive moussant librement hors de sa mâchoire simulée, la machine a alors brusquement commencé à s'écraser sur le garçon canadien comme un enfant en colère, agitant toute la pièce comme il l'a fait.
"mort un samedi! BRUITE LE DIMANCHE!"
"Oh, voudrais-tu juste que tu fasses le feu à l'envers!?" La réponse de Duncan s'est étouffée car, soudain, un coup de poing sorti du cratère et intercepté le pied du robot, renversant la machine et l'envoyant à l'envers s'éloigne dangereusement du trou et de l'homme maintenant très, très en colère à l'intérieur.
Très clairement, absolument cent pour cent fait avec cette merde, le Rookie a tiré droit à une position assise avant d'escalader sur ses pieds et de s'envoler vers le bot qui l'avait offensé ainsi, les yeux scintillent de colère et une veine s'enflamma dangereusement dans son temple alors qu'il s'empare d'une jambe de Grundy-bot, encore tendue.
"Va te faire voir. FUCK VOS RHYMES..." Le Canuck en t-shirt rugissait alors que sa poignée resserrait sur l'appendice holographique et il tournait vers le Pseudo-Parasite avec une lueur presque dérangée dans les yeux, avant de jeter l'adversaire droit dedans avec une balançoire titanique "...ET FUCK! Ton courage! FACE!"
Se tenant là, aspirant autant d'oxygène qu'il le pouvait et essayant de se calmer pendant qu'il regardait les deux droïdes qui étaient maintenant maladroitement empilés l'un sur l'autre et essayant de se remettre sur leurs pieds, la tête de Duncan tourna lentement vers le demi-alien résident alors qu'il laissait sortir une longue exhalation. Enfin obtenir sa colère (un peu) en contrôle.
"Supergirl..." Il a commencé par un ton et une expression qui essayait d'être amical, mais est sorti juste un petit peu menaçant "Est-ce que tu voudrais tirer plus de lasers sur eux, s'il te plaît?"
Deux faisceaux laser arrivent, bon monsieur.Lara a clignoté sur Rookie et a pointé ce même regard sur Parasite et Grundy. Elle se souciait que ce soient des robots, pour elle ils étaient Parasite et Grundy et il fallait les faire tomber. Avec toute la force de la volonté, elle pouvait rassembler, Lara concentrée, mais tout ce qu'elle pouvait charger était une paire d'yeux étincelants.
Merde, pas maintenant! Elle pensait, désespérée de prouver elle-même, pendant que deux centrales se réveillaient.
D'une seconde à l'autre, les représailles viendraient à elle. Grundy était presque déjà en position droite.
Ce seul fait a suffi à faire regarder le feu, au moins à l'intérieur de Lara. Il a brûlé pour sortir et avant qu'elle le laisse intentionnellement, deux faisceaux concentrés ont tiré. Au début, ils ont dessiné un canyon flamboyant dans le sol, jusqu'à ce qu'elle dirige le rayon dévastateur de destruction vers l'avant.
Parasite illuminé comme un arbre de Noël, alors qu'il a été frappé puis a commencé à tourner vers l'arrière, illuminant tout dans une lumière violette.
Grundy, cependant, était juste là, grand et large, quand la punition s'est évanouie à son visage. Solomon Grundy. Né sur un – Rahhhouuuuu!!La surface brute en cuir, c'était son visage, commença à se dissoudre et à se transformer en une apparence froide en crâne.
Quel jour était-ce? Lara n'a pas pris la dernière partie! » Lara applaudit, et regarda le géant tomber en arrière et secouer le sol pendant qu'il atterrissait. Sentant un peu hors de jus, elle agita pendant une seconde, puis sentit une force énorme lui souffler à travers la pièce en un éclair de lumière.
Le coup provenait de Parasite, qui semblait plus intimidant que jamais.
Il absorbe l'énergie, y compris votre vision laser. Si c'était le vrai Parasite, son explosion aurait été le double de l'intensité.
Sans aider, Lara bourdonnait à travers ses dents. Presque sur l'instinct, elle vola latéralement et vit une main violette s'enfoncer dans le mur où sa tête avait été il y a une seconde. Maintenant dans l'air, elle a gardé l'élan et a volé sur le côté de Rookie, qui avait prouvé sans aucun doute, il pouvait prendre un coup de poing. Un vrai coup de poing.
Name: Duncan MacAodhan
Alias: (He hasn't quite gotten that far ahead yet. Simply referred to as "New Guy" or "Rookie" when on assignment, for now.)
Age: 23
Personality: Clever, Genre-savvy, Frank, Stubborn, Cynical, Big-hearted (even if he's hilariously ignorant of it)
Archetype: Metahuman
Powers:
Immense Physical Prowess- Duncan is, for lack of a better way of putting it, really goddamn strong... and fast... and pretty tough to boot, if the fact that he went toe-to-toe with freaking Metallo (who, in case we've all forgotten, is a super-powered murder-bot powered by magic space rocks strong enough to make Superman bleed) and was able to hold his own for a short while actually somehow doing some damage while being absolutely rag-dolled across the ground and through several buildings.
All that being said, it should be noted that though his metahuman genes put him roughly in the range of Kryptonian physical ability (while falling dramatically short of Superman, who is an absolute beast, even among his own kind), Duncan... is a chainsmoking, borderline alcoholic who has never worked out or trained a single day in his entire goddamn life and as a result, is about as out of shape and weak as he can possibly be. It's anyone's guess what he'd be capable of if he got his shit together and actually trained.
Weaknesses: While Duncan possesses roughly the same physical abilities of a Kryptonian, he is still very much human; He can't fly, he still needs to breathe, possesses no form of crazy eye-lasers or freezing breath and can't survive solely off sunlight. In fact, for simplicity's sake, here's a comprehensive list of examples of things that can hurt and/or kill him just like any other guy.
-Drowning.
-Poison Gas.
-Regular poison.
-Electrocution.
-Starvation.
-Asphyxiation.
-Dehydration.
-Bleeding out.
-Bleeding internally.
-Food poisoning.
-Heart-failure.
-Liver-failure.
-Kidney-failure.
-Cancer.
-Hypothermia.
-Being thrown into the sun.
-Being thrown into space in general.
-Tameranean Cooking.
In addition to that, the exact minute he woke up in the Metro Tower, Batman informed that he'd be quitting smoking and drinking cold turkey and going on a new diet. In addition to running The Dark Knight's daily balls-to-the-wall exercise routine at increased gravity (In Bruce's own words; "...And you'll go until I'm tired of watching.") and sparring with Ajax, an old robot companion Superman built in the 60's and general ass-whoopin' enthusiast.
Long story short, at game start, a week after getting his ass handed to him by Metallo and three days into Batman's insane work out routine and getting punched in the face a few times a day by Ajax, Duncan is battered, bloodied, bruised, sore, outright exhausted and severely craving smokes, booze and greasy food. He's not going to be at his best.
Appearance: To read what Duncan is physically capable of, you might picture some sort of hulking mountain of a man with bulging muscles and a jawline chiseled from granite... to actually meet the man however, you'd be disappointed and maybe a little confused- MacAodhan is not a large man. In fact, compared to most in the League he is downright tiny, standing at only 5'6" on a good day and lacking the bulging, musclebound physique of proper superheroes in favour of a lean, though dense physique closer to that of an Olympic swimmer if anything, though his broad shoulders and calloused hands make a fairly decent indicator of his blue-collar background, to which he also owes the habit of shaving his brown hair into a buzzcut, to cut deal with the heat in his workplace.
Lacking much in the way of an actual superhero costume, when in the field, Duncan simply throws on his workboots, gloves, jeans and a denim jacket over either some plain wifebeater or t-shirt, topping it all off by tying a simple black rag over his face, leaving only his hazel eyes and a bit of skin exposed and putting on an old ballcap he got from some Halifax pub or another. When at JLU Headquarters, however, he is almost only ever seen in old JLA-issued gym-wear as he goes about his daily routine of attempting to survive whatever new insanity Batman has concocted for him that day.
Character Evolution: I'd like to see Duncan come into his own as a member of the JLU, growing in power and renown with time but still keeping true to his modest origins, perhaps even taking on a real alias and costume at some point and becoming an honest-to-God Superhero... though only after a long series of painful and hilarious misadventures. And If he forms some buddy-cop relationship with another player or npc and maybe finds a bit of romance along the way, all the better.
Basically, a good old-fashioned coming of age story... Only with a lot more explosions and occasionally saving the whole damned planet.
BRIEF Bio: Despite what one might might assume when encountering literally anyone even remotely associated with superpowers and tights, Duncan's tale is... rather mundane. Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia with a Fisherman for a father and a mother who ran a local diner, the boy in question up grew extraordinarily normally; playing videogames, staying at his grandparents' when his mom was busy at the shop and his dad was out at sea and helping his granddad out in the garage fixing cars and the occasional boat.
And then one day when he was fifteen, he got hit by a truck.
After about a good ten seconds of screaming and another thirty spent wondering why he wasn't dead, he extricated himself from the big-rig's engine-block that had wrapped around both him and the streetlight he'd been leaning against only to find that not only was he not dead, he was perfectly intact. All things considered, that's some pretty heavy shit to lay on a fifteen year old. So it's not all that surprising that when the (very) drunk trucker half staggered, half fell out of his truck at the sight of him, and sirens began echoing in the distance, the kid ran the hell out of there. A few days of trial, error and a lot of Wikipedia later, and the boy had a pretty good idea what all that was about: He was a Metahuman, a one-in-a-million carrier of a superhuman gene that may or may not activate under extreme stress (Like, for instance, getting hit by a truck while waiting for the bus). Frankly, it sounded a lot like a bunch of pseudo-science crap you'd find in an old comic book, but lacking any other explanation for his sudden... talents... it was one he'd have to accept.
Now, usually, when someone finds out they've got crazy superpowers, things usually go in one of two predictable ways; one, they become a spandex-clad boy-scout that dedicates every moment of every day to having the brightest smile, rescuing cats from trees and giving lectures about the dangers of "The Reefer" and sex before marriage or two; going full ham, burning orphanages, kicking puppies and generally being real goddamn edgy just for the sake of it. Duncan to his credit, chose the rarely considered, often forgotten third option-
"Yeah... No. Fuck that."
And so, despite the call to adventure literally screaming directly into his ears, Duncan carried on his life as normal; Growing up as normally as he possibly could- getting average grades, shoveling his grandparents' driveway in the wintertime, trying and failing several times at that whole romance thing and working through his apprenticeship as a diesel mechanic at the local shipyard after highschool.
Unfortunately for him, as the old trope goes, 'The Call Knows Where you Live'.
And one day while Duncan was just wrapping up his night-shift, Metallo came bursting out of one of the shipping containers at the yard and immediately began wrecking shit left and right. Despite having reservations about the whole 'Hero' thing, the one guy in town with the ability to intervene couldn't exactly sit idly by while a super-powered terminator powered by glowing space-rocks butchered his coworkers and leveled his town. So, throwing on a respirator to hide his face, the young man nutted up and went after the deranged cyborg... or, more accurately, spent the next hour on the receiving of a brutal beatdown at the hands of someone that was at least as strong, as fast and much, much more experienced than he was that was also incapable of feeling pain or fatigue, all to buy time for people to get away and call for someone who actually knew what the hell they were doing.
Luckily, they did, and the Big Blue Boy-Scout himself arrived to lay the smackdown on the now damaged Metallo.
Unluckily for Duncan, he woke up a week later on a bed in Metropolis, feeling like all hell and staring at the grimacing face of Batman, who quite candidly informed him that he very nearly got himself killed and that his car, his home and his job had all been annihilated in his little dust-up with the super-powered murderbot. Also, even if no one knew who he was, they sure as hell knew he existed, which as a rule, generally meant that there were now people looking for him; Some good, most bad. So he could either join the Justice League and maybe not die the next time this happens... or he could just go home and try his luck on his own. Suffice to say, there was really only one smart choice to be had there, and he took it.
And then, to top off this long, hilariously uncanny series of events, Superman showed up less than an hour later and dragged him out to a baseball game.
And so it was that, sitting in the stands of a stadium in a foreign city, next to the closest thing the world knew to a god and eating an overpriced and undercooked hotdog, Duncan joined the Justice League.
He honestly didn't think his life could get any weirder than this.
And he was very mistaken.
Notes:
Sample Post:
To say the least, it had been... an interesting week and a half; It had started off pretty plain, he woke up at seven at night on Monday, grabbed a donair at his mom's diner by eight and was at work by nine, swapping out the fuel lines on an old tug that probably should've been decommissioned when his dad was still a boy. And then suddenly a robot showed up, kicked his ass across town and halfway to Dartmouth, blew up his apartment, blew up his car and blew up his place of employment before being beat down by the most weirdly friendly guy he'd ever goddamn met.
So now here he was, holding a duffel bag of what little could be salvaged of his apartment and standing at the entrance to his room at the headquarters of the freaking Justice League.
It was all just a little... surreal.
"Well, shit, here goes nothing." Duncan growled under his breath, touching the key-pad and entering as the door hissed open in a way that reminded him distinctly of every episode of Star Trek he'd ever seen, half-expecting there to be yet another one of Superman's robots waiting inside to cave-in his face in the name of training, but kinda hoping it wasn't, because sleeping on the couch in the common room was starting to get a little old and he'd already had his daily recommended dose of robot boots to his ass.
To his surprise, it didn't actually look that bad- a simple looking double bed, a computer desk, chair and a laptop, a big damn window with a view of the Metropolis waterfront flanked on both sides by empty bookshelves, a little kitchenette off to the side and a bathroom past that. To be honest, after spending the past three days under Batman's balls-to-the-wall training regime, he'd anticipated something more... spartan. Something did catch his eye, however, what looked to be a big, rolled-up poster just sitting on his bed with a post-it note on it, so, dropping his bag and closing the door behind him, the young Canuck went over to give it a look.
"Just a little something to welcome you aboard...
-GL"
His brow furrowed briefly, but suddenly did a lot less of that when he unfurled the damned thing and found a pin-up of a tanned, red-headed woman with solid green eyes, a supermodel's body garbed up in a string bikini and a very... friendly look on her face as she blew a kiss toward the camera.
And another post-it note.
"They're called Tameraneans. Stick around and you might meet a few.
You're welcome.
-GL"
Whatever thoughts he had at that moment (or several, as he just stared at what he'd found) were interrupted as Batman's voice came over the intercom.
"MacAodhan, we have a situation. Kit up and meet me downstairs in five."
The words echoed in his head for a few seconds before they fully registered, and he reluctantly averted his eyes from his new-found favourite sight and gently placed it back down on the bed.
"Right... Right. I'll be down in a minute."
Duncan sighed.
It looked like his life was going to continue being interesting for the rest of the forseeable future.