[centre] [img]https://i.imgur.com/czPip88.png[/img] [b]Detroit, 15:30pm, July 7th[/b] [b]A Spark of Golden Hope: Episode 1[/b] [/centre] The day had felt uncomfortably long, the hot sunshine on the bleak pavement seeming to bounce back ten times as strong, a furnace to his thick and sweat-soaked clothes - vest, shirt, coat, wide-brimmed hat. Beard, technically, though only for lack of less conspicuous disguises. The smell of smoke lingered in his nose and the smell of vomit lingered in his clothes, and he'd kept to the alleyways with a hurried pace, head down and out of sight as much as possible despite his feet and belly begging him to take a break. He feared much more than the police right now, so close to his goal... In his left hand he clutched the tattered paper - a shoddy pamphlet, dry and decaying at the edges from anyone's guess how long of drifting on the wind or clinging to awkward corners of roof-tops or tree branches. On its reverse side was a map to the district, a cramped and over-developed area north of Midtown. It seemed like an okay sort of place to live, but in that dense and unyielding way that was so common to city residences. [i][color=#9f7d2e]Will these people show you the way, Mansa?[/color][/i] whispered the spider, its voice echoing in his mind in time with the constant, uneasy quiet of the place, [i][color=#9f7d2e]Or will you show them?[/color][/i] [i]They promise prosperity... but they wouldn't be holding a rally if they didn't need a little help, after all.[/i] The meeting place of the rally itself was a humble street corner, a rummaged together black and silver stage like some sort of street band, aluminium pipes linked up to low-cost stage equipment. The pizza joint opposite seemed empty, as people avoided lingering too long in the area aside from those attending the rally... And all around, steadily increasing as he got closer, was a number of posters and graffiti - both in support and violent opposition - discussing metahumans or magic. He'd noticed a slight uptick in the number of police cars on the main roads, but he had steadily practiced the art of remaining unnoticed through sheer quality of unlikable smallness. "Bum dressed in decaying beige" was not exactly a fashionable look, and the thick, matted stubble around his chin was constantly itchy. It was hardly a fitting look for the title the spider claimed was his, but the greatest kings had come from nothing, hadn't they? As he approached the crowd, his mind wandered to that morning, and the line between charity and pragmatism. ---- That morning he had rested in the blasted out shell of a building, the place he'd called camp, until eleven. The warnings of the spider from the night before had been for nothing more than a lost soul called "Jack", and through the night and morning they'd developed a quiet, sudden sort of bond, even sharing his last few snacks with the man. Jack had been in even worse shape then he was, drunk out of his mind and clad in a spit-laden old bomber's jacket, the last remnant of a Jack Daniel's gripped in his hand and ever more stale at the inside of the bottle. "Y'all awful sweet," he'd whispered, "Us nobodies gotta, uh-" The majority of Jack's Daniels came back up in a stinking torrent, staining the base of Everett's trousers as his breathing laboured, his eyes deteriorating somewhat, trying to maintain consciousness. Everett's eyes went wide, panicking at the sad, yellowing sockets where the man's own eyes still barely remained, diluted and dazed. [i][color=#9f7d2e]Will you watch him die?[/color][/i] whispered the spider, [i][color=#9f7d2e]You need not choose prosperity.[/color][/i] But Everett knew there was no danger here. Only dust, and despair. Desperately, Everett reached into his bag, pulling out the last water bottle, carefully bracing Jack's head against his knee, leaning him forward to raise the bottle to his lips. Everett's nose curled and he wanted to vomit, the man's acrid breath close to his, though he quickly reprimanded himself, bottling the instinct and reining in his focus. [i]"Not worth worrying about. Prosperity or ruin my ass! Right now it's just two guys in hell."[/i] Most of it dribbled down his matted beard, but it didn't matter. Everett watched as the man's lips curled around the bottle, sipping it slowly. Trace by trace the man's thirst took over, his body's survival instinct kicking in strongly enough to overcome the terrible desire for death that his conscious mind had clung to. As the last of it ran out, and Everett slowly reached down to take the mostly empty whiskey bottle from Jack, he was comforted to feel the slow and rhythmic breathing against his knee. Snoring loudly but soundly, Everett took the towel from his bag - for the most part a ragged and dirty thing, unwashed for longer than he liked to think about - and curled it, a makeshift pillow. Breathing a sigh of relief, Everett suddenly realized that he could feel his own chest pounding. The same sensation as when the secret service had been pursuing him, but now... This relief, this energy of survival, was stronger than before. There was a meaning to it. Something bigger than himself. He looked down at the empty glass bottle in his hand, and pondered what awful circumstances had led Jack to this situation. The point at which wealth was but one of the problems, something deeper and more wicked than gold could fix alone. ... [i]But I can't leave him with nothing.[/i] [i][color=#9f7d2e]Your hands hold prosperity, but freedom's gift is still theirs' to choose.[/color][/i] Jack would wake up the next morning alone, still alive, with a vaguely bottle shaped lump of gold in his hand. Next to it was a note, with the address for a pawn broker - one of the few in the city who hadn’t yet had a stranger pay them a visit in gold. … Now if only the police weren’t on the lookout for reports of a bum with golden hands. ---- At the rally he lingered at the back, unnoticed by all except those who stood closest to him. He got a few grubby looks and one guy’s expression read like a bulldog staring at its own vomit, but he tried to avoid getting too down about it. Their focus was drawn, after all, by the scene of the stage - the person about to speak was a [i]someone[/i], and a someone who would change the world forever.