[CENTER][IMG]https://txt.1001fonts.net/img/txt/dHRmLjcyLmZmZmZmZi5RMGhKVEVSU1JVNGdUMFlnVEVWRi4w/alfa-slab-one.regular.png[/IMG][/CENTER]

[i]January 1st, 1992 [/i]

[hider=Auld Lang Syne- University College Dublin Choral Scholars][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_6Vs8pADrQ[/youtube][/hider]

	The night is clear and bright and cold. The small town of Leesburgh, Pennsylvania is celebrating the new year. As the ball drops in Times Square, families huddled around televisions leap into uproarious applause. Small children run onto the well-manicured lawns of the suburban homes, banging pots and pans and twirling sparklers, leaving trails of light in their wake. Bottles of champagne pop. Car horns blare. Drunken men join arm-and-arm in the streets and sing Auld Lang Syne, led along by Dick Clark’s New Year's Eve on the bar TVs. On a widow’s walk on Maple Street, two lovers share a New Year’s kiss. 

[i]Something is hurtling through space.[/i] 

	On the football field of Jack Kirby High School, a crowd has gathered. Lawn chairs sit in clusters all around the field. As the crowd leaps to their feet, husbands and wives embrace while children in heavy coats run in lines weaving between the clusters, decked out in glow sticks. The fireworks show begins: streaks of smoke ascend into the cloudless sky and erupt into a cascade of colors, painting the darkness with red and green streaks.
	If the crowd was paying attention, they’d notice another color in the sky, too- a streak of blue and red and violet hurtling down from above, a tiny point of colored light expanding as it approaches. If the booming of the fireworks and the crashing of pots and pans hadn’t taken over the night air, the people would have been able to hear a faint noise, a rumble like the tearing of paper. It is drawing nearer. 
	In other parts of the country right now, astronomers are scrambling from computer to computer, trying to pinpoint the identity of the object now soaring down towards the eastern United States. Is it a nuclear missile? No- it’s way too high in the atmosphere, even for an ICBM. Is it an asteroid? It looks like one, for sure, but it hadn’t been there just moments before, had it? How had a world with millions of antennas and satellites pointed skyward missed a gigantic glowing ball of fire bearing down upon the world? At Harrisburg International Airport, fighter jets taxi out onto the runway accompanied by frantic national guardsmen, called away from their celebrations with their families. Now, they are sitting on a runway overlooking an empty, black sky, unsure of what exactly they are about to witness, but prepared for the worst. 
	There is a boy on his father’s shoulders at Jack Kirby Field. He is holding a Sony camcorder, gleaming silver and large as his head. He just got it for Christmas, and now he has it trained on the fireworks show. Through the lens, we can see what he saw, grainy and pockmarked with static, but it’ll have to do. The boy is cheering as a sea of golden sparks rain down from a firework burst, sizzling like bacon in a pan- the crackly ones are his favorite type. All of a sudden, a rumble moves through the crowd like a wave. There is a sound in the air, that rumbling static like an enormous sheet of paper tearing in two. A nearby radio begins to blare the hair-raising screech of the Emergency Broadcast System. Before the automated voice can speak, there is a burst of color up above, a flash of blue then violet then blood red. The boy whips around, nearly falling off of his father’s shoulders. A tremendous shape is tearing through the sky, a massive projectile with a trail of red, blue, and violet streaks flying off like tendrils. The projectile streaks like a plane at low altitude. It seems to be coming straight for the town. 
	All around, chaos ensues. The boy’s father lowers him into his arms and begins to run. Chairs are abandoned and kicked over. The radio is left blaring, though no one can understand the voice on it under the stampede. The boy keeps the camera trained on the sky, the light getting larger and larger. It seems to arc, as if pulling up to avoid crashing into the ground. The tail of colors streaks across a third of the sky. Then, in a single moment, there is a burst of blinding, multicolored light, and an earth-shattering “BOOM!” A shockwave rips through the town. Car alarms blare. Glass storefronts and windshields explode. People at the stadium, just below the blast, are driven to the ground, covering their heads. The screen on the camcorder cracks as the boy dives to the ground. 
	There is a long rumble like an earthquake, the camera not moving. Beneath the rumble, though, there is another sound, one strange and electronic, like crystals shattering underwater. There are flashes of color off screen, more lights appearing after the initial blast in the sky. The boy is screaming and crying. 

“Daddy! Daddy!” the boy cries. “Where are you? Daddy!"
[hr]

[hider=The New Year by Death Cab For Cutie][youtube]youtube.com/watch?v=2MwhxdGAnic[/youtube][/hider]
 
	On January 1st, 1992, the world changed forever. In the Leesburgh Incident, as it came to be known, a cosmic object of unknown origin crashed through Earth’s atmosphere and exploded above the town of Leesburgh, Pennsylvania. While no obvious signs of harm were present in any of Leesburgh’s citizens, strange things began happening when pregnant women present in the town on the night of the incident began to give birth. Their children exhibited bizarre abilities unknown to science: glowing skin, hands erupting with flame, telekinetic force fields. These children, born with supernatural abilities, became known as Children of Lee, or CLs for short. Ever since that day, children conceived in Leesburgh are born with these powers. 
	The whole world scrambled to understand what was going on in the town of Leesburgh: scientists, reporters, and military personnel all butting up against each other. Some came to see the CLs as hope that peace could be achieved in the world through these supernatural heroes. Others came to see CLs as a threat to the lives of ordinary citizens. Still others saw them as weapons for America to use against their enemies, crushing those who oppose them under the bootheel of supernatural might.
	This story, though, takes place in the year 2010, eighteen years after the Leesburgh Incident rocked the world. The first CLs are now in their senior year of high school, preparing for an uncertain future in a world that neither understands nor trusts them. Our player characters are some of these students, supernaturally gifted but dealing with the real-world consequences of having supernatural powers: mass media, government bureaucracy, organized hatred. This RP will tell the story of these children as they navigate life and find their place in a world that wants to both reject and exploit them. 

[h2]RULES AND GUIDELINES:[/h2][hr]
[indent]
1. This is not an open RP. It is invitation-only and is designed to be a small group of people who I know and trust. Unless I’ve written with you before, asking to join is a moot point. 
2. All manner of things are allowed in this rp: blood, gore, cursing, sex (when it’s [i]not[/i] between minors), etc. That said, we are going for a slightly lighter tone than some of the dark and gritty modern renditions of the superhero concept. A good rule of thumb for this RP is that [b]if it would happen on a CW show, maybe think twice before posting it.[/b]
3. For right now, I’m going to limit players to 2 characters per person. I want the cast to be a fairly small group without too many extraneous moving parts. 
4. A big part of this RP for me is going to be building the town of Leesburgh. Every player will get to contribute to building up this small town, adding locations, businesses, and NPCs as they see fit. Remember that Leesburgh is a small town of about 13,000 people, so giant skyscrapers or enormous research labs really aren’t going to be thematically consistent. 
5. Another big part of this RP is going to be exploring life as a supernatural individual apart from the punching and kicking (though there [i]will[/i] be punching and kicking). When building your character, think of ways that people would realistically react to the invention of superheroes. Would they be bigoted? Jealous? Supportive but misunderstanding? Details like this will help build the world up and support our thematic goals, in addition to just telling a fun story. 
6. I know I said cursing is allowed, but no slurs please. Yes, I know that in 2010 f****t and r****d were more or less socially acceptable, but that kind of stuff really makes a modern audience uncomfortable even if you aren’t using it to be bigoted. 
[/indent]