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Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG Season 2- New Horizons (Closed)

Here is the Season 3 Character Sheet. For those waiting for Season 3 to start, please start updating your character sheets.

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Character you have created: Character's Real Name

Alias: Name other than their real name

Speech Color (Actually say what you're using, don't go "Like this", or what not): See either the "Formatting Cheatsheet" (for convenience during posting) or the Guild's Color Guide (for a preview of what the colors will look like in a post) for possible colors, see CSes to note what's currently in use and what is still available.

Character Alignment: Three different alignments.

-Hero- Enjoy helping others, following the rules, and preventing the suffering of innocents? Ex: (Superman, Spider-Man, Iron Man)
-Walking the Line- Liking keeping a distinct balance between good and evil by living by your own set of morals, never answering to anyone but your sense of right? Ex: (Punisher, Deadpool)
-Villain- Want to create some havoc, live for only your morals and needs, and take what you want or have while enjoying the fall from the aftermath? Ex: (Joker, Green Goblin, Magneto)

Identity: Is your real name a Secret or Known to the public?

Character Personality: Give information on how your character acts, what they believe in, how they handle situations, how they socialize and more.

Uniform/costume: Briefly describe or post a picture of what your character's costume looks like.

Origin Info/Details: How did they gain their powers, where did they originate and end up where they are now? What experiences do they have and events in life turned them into the people they are today?

Season 1/2 Summary: Please describe what your character has done and in what events they have participated in the prior seasons of this game. If you character is new to this season, please omit this section.

Hero Type (Select one):

Normal- Average human or Non-powered characters
Brick/Muscle- Strongman or Brute type character
Elemental- Select: Water, Wind, or Earth.
Energy-What kind of energy? Ex. Electricity, Fire, Spirit, etc.
Psychic- Use your mind to toss or bend items, read minds, or even just cast illusions to make people think they're crazy!
Acrobat- Balance on great heights, twist into interesting ways and always land on your feet.
Speedster- Duck and weave, you can't catch me because I'm too fast for you.
Gray Matter- Who needs fancy powers or extreme weapons when I fully can and will out smart you.
Shape Shifter- I was a little lady once, then a young boy, and now a supermodel. What shape next, I wonder, should I take?
Mystic- Spell casters and magic users, if you're using any sort of magic then it goes here.
Supernatural- Divine agents, vampires, werewolves, zombies, angels, demons, and the list goes on...
Other- if you managed, somehow, to create something that doesn't belong in any of the above list then please put it here.

Power Level (Select one below):

A. Street Level (Ex. Punisher, Daredevil)
B. City Level (Ex. Spider-Man, Cyclops)
C. World Level (Ex. Flash, Superman)
D. Cosmic (Ex. Silver Surfer, Green Lantern)

Powers (Be Specific):

Attributes (Please provide a short description for each category):

Height:
Weight:
Strength: How strong is your character? You may represent this attribute with tons, if your character's strength is superhuman.
Mobility: How fast can your character travel on their own? This is not just limited to running (e.g. swimming, flying, etc.).
Intelligence: How intelligent is your character? This could be education level, street smarts, or pure natural intelligence.
Fighting Skill: Has your character been training in fighting styles? If so, how proficient are they?
Resources: What resources does your character have access to?

Weaknesses:

Supporting Characters: Does your character have a significant other? A mother? Friend? Who are they, what do they have to do with your character?

Do you know how to post pictures on RPG boards?:

Sample Post (Minimum Four paragraphs containing dialogue. As this is an Advanced Level game, Sample must also meet the RPG forum's minimum requirement of 12 lines. Only for first time applicants.)

Character Sheet Template

[b]Character you have created:[/b]
[b]Alias:[/b]
[b]Speech Color:[/b]
[b]Character Alignment:[/b]
[b]Identity:[/b]
[b]Character Personality[/b]:
[b]Uniform/costume:[/b]
[b]Origin Info/Details:[/b]
[b]Season 1/2 Summary:[/b]
[b]Hero Type:[/b]
[b]Power Level:[/b]
[b]Powers:[/b]
[b]Attributes (Select one at each category):[/b]
[indent]
Height:
Weight:
Strength:
Mobility:
Intelligence:
Fighting Skill:
Resources:[/indent]
[b]Weaknesses:[/b]
[b]Supporting Characters:[/b]
[b]Do you know how to post pictures on RPG boards?:[/b]
[b]Sample Post:[/b]

Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG Season 2- New Horizons (Closed)

The Mandela Effect: Part 13

Previously On Create-A-Hero

Will Grant

Pacific Point, CA

The orange glow of the morning’s first light shown through the windows of the abandoned factory where Will and Aubrey had spent the night. The silky web that the young couple lay upon sparkled in the sunrise’s rays. With each passing second, the light creeped up across the room until it had reached the two slumbering metahumans.

Once the morning rays struck Will’s eyes, he began to rouse from his slumber. As he pried open his eyes, it took him a moment to remember where he and Aubrey had spent the night. Aubrey still had him in a vice grip while she continued to slumber off her caffeine overdose. For a few more moments, Will just lay there as he contemplated how he would wiggle out of her embrace without waking her up. He had to contact the Immortals about turning her back to normal, at least mentally. After what had happened last night, he had to get this done as soon as possible. Plus, since she expressed her anxiety over ceasing to exist, Will thought it would be better to fix his girlfriend before she woke up.

After Will had ran everything through his head, he began his attempt to free himself. Every movement he made felt painfully slow. Yet this was how he had to make his escape, as any sudden movement might wake Aubrey up. Although it took Will quite some time to pull himself out of her clutches, he was finally able to free himself. Yet, even once free, he also had to be careful while moving around the web, as the vibrations could rock his sleeping girlfriend enough to stir her awake.

But before Will could escape from Aubrey’s giant web and call the Immortals, he had to first the parts of his costume that his girlfriend had pulled off his body. Luckily, she had only gotten to his mask and the part of his costume that covered his torso. Otherwise, there would have been one awkward meeting if the rest of his costume had fallen through the gaps of the web and lost in the darkness below. He found his mask stuck to the web next to Aubrey. His costume’s top was just hanging by a thread and he barely caught it before it fell.

Once dressed, Will was about ready to make is way outside, but he peered back at his little sleeping beauty. Even though he was only going to be outside only long enough to contact the Immortals, he knew he could not leave him in her current state of dress. As he looked around for something to drape over Aubrey’s body, Will discovered that the pieces of her costume had not been as lucky as his. He managed to find the bomber jacket she had been wearing and he laid it over her torso. He also stumbled upon the part of her costume that covered her spider half, although that was not such a difficult task due to how much fabric made up that part of her costume.

Now that Will had covered up his girlfriend, he crawled away from the center of the web, where Aubrey was sleeping, to the edge of the silk structure, while trying not to create too many vibrations over the web. After he had reached the wall, he carefully lifted himself off the web and began to scale the interior wall of the abandoned factory. Exiting through the same window, through which Aubrey had first pushed him, he reached the roof and retrieved the small communicator that the Immortals had given him when he had visited them two nights before.

“Do you know what time it is?” Will heard a robotic voice speak through the communicator.

“I’m sorry about the early call, but I think we need to get Arachne back to normal,” Will first responded. However, after what Talus had said registered in his head, he spoke again. “Wait, do you even need to sleep?”

There was a long pause over the communicator before Talus made his answer.

“Touché. Anyways, we’re be over as soon as I can get in contact with some of the others. They, unfortunately, have to sleep. Anything else you need?”

“If you guys have a spare of Arachne’s normal costume, I would recommend you bringing it. She’ not going to be happy with her current one.”

“That’s such a shame. Vol looks great it her new one!”

“You’re lucky she’s didn’t hear that or she would knock your head off,” Will responded. But then he realized something. He had not seen the costume that belonged to the Aubrey from the parallel reality until that night. “Wait, how do you know what it looks like?”

“The paparazzi can be brutal! Although they weren’t able to get any close-ups, the few pictures they did snatch up have made the rounds on the news cycle.”

Will began to panic. Earlier that morning, alt-Aubrey had gone into work. Even if she had somehow escaped the ever-watchful lenses of the paparazzi’s cameras, she nonetheless participated in that month’s photoshoot for the modeling contest she had been unwillingly signed up for by some shapeshifter. How long would it take for people to start connecting the dots? How long could she dodge this public outing by claiming coincidence?

Because Will was so occupied with the possibility that his girlfriend’s secret identity might have been compromised, he failed to recognize the buzzing of his spider sense that had been slowly building up in his head. By the time he did feel it, it was far too late. All of a sudden, two giant bird talons wrapped around his shoulders and lifted him off the rooftop. The shock of the unexpected ambush caused Will to drop the device that the Immortals had lent to him for contacting them.

“Are you there?” Talus asked when he heard the commotion on the other side of the communicator. After no reply was given, he sighed. “Vol is so going to kill me for this.”

---

A Few Hours Ago

While the two lovebirds were still fast asleep, an inconspicuous black van bumbled up to the abandoned factory. Once the vehicle had pulled into what would have been the factory’s main loading dock, the side door of the van slid open and a handful of men and women, all clad in black military gear. Although the arrest of Travis Murdock and the confiscation of their main cash of weapons had been a blow to the cause of the Hounds of Humanity, they nonetheless had not been eradicated. Like a horde of cockroaches, the remnants of this anti-metahuman terrorist organization had crawled back into the shadows. While the Hounds could not show their force like they could back at the height of their power, they could still wage their crusade against unnatural humans from the shadows.

Willie Tate sat in the driver’s seat. Although he was basically a glorified chauffeur, since he had only recently joined the local Pacific Point cell, he had finally felt a sense of belonging. Before then, his life had spiraled out of control once superhumans had made their presence known to the world. He had left his roots in Ohio after his brother, Doug, made the untimely decision to visit Lost Haven right when some jerk opened up an interdimensional portal to a realm inhabited by demonlike creatures. Yet, his family’s luck did not reverse with the change of scenery. The opposite, in fact, was the case. During the chaos brought about the Game Genie’s actions, Willie lost both his home and job, forcing him to take on odd jobs just to scrape by. And it would be his luck to pick the wrong horse in the battle between the Hounds and the metahumans.

While the other Hounds skittered inside to set up the explosives, Willie sat restlessly in his seat. He knew that the twilight hours were primetime for superhero patrols. If they were not careful, some unsuspecting hero could stumble upon their little operation and spoil all the fun.

Out of the corner of Willie’s eye, he thought he saw something swoop overhead. He rubbed his eyes and then tried to peer at the sky to make sure he was not seeing anything. Nothing was there, although the sky was too dark to make out anything from above. Willie therefore concluded that his eyes were just playing tricks on him.

After a few minutes had passed, Wille heard three taps against the exterior of the van. This nearly made Willie jump out of his seat, as he thought some costumed crusader had gotten the jump on him. However, when he turned his head to look at the rear of the van, he saw that all the Hounds had finished up inside and were ready to go. Willie wiped the sweat from his forehead and gave off a relieved sigh before beginning of the van’s engine. Once the van was operational, this small cell of Hounds disappeared into the darkness.

---

Back to the Present

Whoever had snatched up Will from the abandoned factory’s rooftop had already flown several blocks before she dropped him off on a nearby rooftop. At first, he was surprised that he had made a soft landing without needing the use of his alt-reality self’s spider powers. Although it took Will a few moments to figure out who the winged figure was, once she had made one circle around the rooftop before landing, things started to click in Will’s head.

While Will had never met any of the Immortals prior to his encounter with them two nights ago, he had read about them on the internet out of curiosity concerning who were the heroes his girlfriend was hanging out with. The Immortals had mentioned two nights ago that they had not heard from Firefox recently. Reckoning from the woman’s costume, Will concluded that he had finally found her, or rather, she had found him.

Will did not need to be a rocket scientist to knew something was off. As her name hinted at, Firefox should have vulpine attributes. Yet, the woman who stood before him possessed no foxlike features. Instead, her arms and feet seemed to have become hybrids of the respective appendages of birds and humans. However, because Will had been so preoccupied by the mismatch of Firefox’s name and her animal characteristics, he did a doubletake when he finally realized there was something almost uncanny about what was human about her. If it were not for her Avian traits, Will would have sworn that she looked as if someone had spliced her head onto Aubrey’s non-drider body. Although everything below her neck was not identical to his girlfriend, there were not many people running around with comic book physiques, despite this being a world full of metahumans and magic.

“Thank God I was able to get you out of there before anything bad happened,” Firefox finally spoke up once she had landed.

“Wait, what kind of danger was there?”

“I don’t know what they were up to, but I do know that nothing good could come from a pack of Hounds.”

When Will heard that the Hounds could be involved, a panic immediately struck him. Although he knew that his girlfriend had already faced these creeps and came out victorious, there would not be much she could do fast asleep, let alone altered into a parallel universe version of herself. Plus, even though the Immortals were on their way, would they be able to come in time before whatever the Hounds had planned comes to fruition.

“But Arachne is still in that building. We need to go back for her!”

“You mean Black Widow? That villainess can handle herself just fine.”

While Will could have guessed that this Firefox had a different history than her counterpart from his world from her appearance, her not recognizing her own teammate sealed the deal. Although some people have mixed the two up because they both are driders, their wardrobes and general appearance was different enough for even the least observant person to tell the difference between the hero and the villain.

Will knew there was no point trying to argue the difference between his Arachne and the villainess Black Widow. Therefore, he needed a different approach to convince Firefox to get his girlfriend out of the troublesome situation she was in.

“Yet, aren’t we the good guys? We don’t leave people behind for a gruesome fate, even if they’re villains.”

“Always the moral compass,” Firefox muttered. She reached out with her hand and ran it down the side of Will’s masked face. “I always loved that about you.”

Will was taken by surprise Firefox’s actions. While he did not want to jump to conclusions, he guessed that she believed they had a prior relationship, maybe even a romantic one. It would explain why she had snatched up him alone, or why she fled from her little scuffle with Arachne when he showed back up after he had handed over Moon Bunny to the authorities.

He then jerked his head away from Firefox’s avian hand. While he had struggled with the moral conundrum concerning his girlfriend, this was simple. He would not fall to temptation. His conscious, that had troubled him so much when trying to figure out what he should do with Aubrey, made everything oh so clear. Although Firefox was attractive, there was no way he would risk compromising his relationship with Aubrey.

“The Silver Sorceress must have done quite a number on you,” Firefox concluded aloud when she saw Will pull away from her hand. “But we’ll deal with her later. You stay here while I check to make sure Black Widow is clear from the building.”

She then placed her hand on Will’s shoulder and then dove off the building. With her feathered arms, she soared over the nearby rooftops.

“Well, this could have turned out way worse,” Will concluded as he watched Firefox fly back towards the abandoned factory.

Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG Season 2- New Horizons (Closed)

The Mandela Effect: Part 12

Previously On Create-A-Hero

"90's" Aubrey Adkins | Will Grant

Pacific Point, CA

Will sighed. How could that night have gone so wrong? It had all started long before he and Aubrey had been chasing after the bird lady, who had first mistaken Aubrey as the villainess, Black Widow and then fled the scene. Deep down, Will knew something was up as this pursuit turned into a wild goose chase, but he did not want to say anything.

Eventually, Aubrey pointed towards an old, abandoned warehouse and claimed she thought she saw the bird lady duck inside. Whether because Will was getting tired because of how late it was or Aubrey had promised that they would head back home once they had checked out this last building, Will just followed along. After the two of them had scoped out the place, they found one of the windows, just large enough for a person to fit through, had its glass knocked out if.

Aubrey insisted that Will take a quick look inside, as she claimed that her spider half could not fit through the window. Despite knowing that a spider’s abdomen was far more malleable than the rest of its exoskeleton, Will nonetheless stepped into the window to do a quick scan, just so they could head back home. And that’s when he was shoved from behind. He was shocked when he discovered that a giant, spider web had been spun inside the factory.

Just like a cat, Will landed safely on all fours. Although the web seemed stable enough to Will, due to its malleability and slanted angle, Will still had difficulties standing upright. Therefore, he would have to crawl to move around on the web. Because this web did not have many blemishes and imperfections, Will surmised that Aubrey must have planned this. In her current over-caffeinated state, there would have been far more holes and irregularities in the web if this were a whim of the moment. He was kicking himself for not trying harder to convince her to head home. He was just too much of a push over.

“Aubrey?” Will called out, “We should be heading home.”

There was no response. As the factory had been long abandoned, none of the lights inside were working. Besides the faint glow of the streetlights outside and the occasional passing-by automobile, the inside was shrouded in darkness. The little light that did reach inside gleamed off of the silky strands that composed the web Will was stuck in.

Will took a deep breath and sighed.

He then felt a sudden vibration from the web, originating from behind him. He immediately spun himself around to face in the direction of the vibration. As he squinted his eyes, he saw the silhouette of a giant spider crawling towards him. Once the spider had approached a little further towards Will, he recognized who it was from the human torso grafted to the spider body and he therefore lowered his guard.

“Aubrey?”

She gave no response. Instead, he saw her doff her bomber jacket and tossed it to the side. She then lay down on the web, reclining on her side. She patted a spot on the web just a foot away from her, as if she were indicating to Will to take a seat next to her. It took a moment for everything to register in Will’s head, but he finally crawled over and took a seat next to Aubrey.

“This has been an amazing night, Will,” Aubrey finally spoke while she pulled off her mask. “But do you know what would make even better?”

“What?”

Aubrey then lurched up and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. With one swift motion, she pulled off his mask and planted a kiss on his lips. At first, he was surprised by Aubrey’s sudden movement, but once the initial shock wore off, his hands instinctively found their way to her hips, or at least what should have been her hips, considering her drider physique. For a few more seconds, they continued to kiss. Yet when Will realized what he was doing, he abruptly broke it off.

“This isn’t right,” Will finally admitted.

“What’s wrong?”

“I can’t cheat on her!”

“But didn’t you say that I am her? I just look and think differently from her.”

“Of course, but it feels wrong. I don’t know how I could ever look her in the eyes again if I—” Will paused for a moment, almost as if he could not muster the courage to say it. “If I did this!.”

After Will voiced his protests, tears began to pour from Aubrey’s eyes. This turn of events caught Will by surprise, as he did not believe she would break into tears after he had rejected her advances.

“Was it something I said?” Will tried to uncover what had caused this outburst of tears.

“Yes,” she finally replied, temporarily putting a stop to the waterworks.

“Hey, this isn’t a you problem. This is a me problem. I just don’t think I could live with myself knowing that I screwed my girlfriend without her knowing.”

“That’s not it.”

“Then what is?”

“It was when you explained your Aubrey’s situation. There’s no magical portal with which we could crossover into our home realities. There’s no mind swapping machine that will return us to our proper bodies. Do you know what that means for me?”

“What?”

“Whenever you will restore your Aubrey, I’ll be erased from existence!”

“Aubrey—"

“I mean, am I even real or is my persona based on false memories that make me think I’m a different version of your girlfriend.”

“I—I haven’t thought of this in that way. I—"

“The irony. Ever since I received my powers, I thought I was invincible. Yet, once this realization had dawned upon me, that I don’t have much time left to exist, it caused this paralyzing fear to penetrate my entire core. I don’t want to go out without spending one last special moment with you.”

As Aubrey was speaking, she had been slowly closing the gap between her face and Will’s, as if she were intending to kiss him again. She had also been running her hand up the inside of his thigh. Yet, when she was mere inches from his lips, she pulled her head and hand away from his body.

“Yet, you’re right that I should try to see things from your Aubrey’s view. I don’t know how I would feel if my Will’s first time was with an Aubrey from a parallel universe. I feel so conflicted.”

The waterworks began once again after Aubrey had finished speaking. Seeing that her inner conflict was eating away at her, Will inched toward her and wrapped his arms around her in a comforting embrace.

“Aubrey—"

“If you don’t want to have sex, I’ll respect your wishes. But—” When she looked up into Will’s eyes, he saw how her tears had reddened her eyes. He just could not resist the puppy-dog eyes she was giving him. He then used his hand to rotate her head towards him and held his lips just inches away from hers. Aubrey, in turn, pressed her lips against his and held the kiss for a few seconds before they parted.

“Okay,” he whispered into her ear.

“Are you sure?”

He paused for a moment before he confirmed his decision again. Aubrey could tell that his hesitation signaled that he was not one hundred percent sure about this decision. She wanted to reiterate the way out she had offered just seconds ago. However, she, too, was conflicted inside. She so wanted to go through with this. Yet she didn’t want to force Will into doing anything he did not really want to do.

Once they had come to an agreement, they tried to pull off each other’s shirts. Yet, when they realized that they were trying to do this at the same time and, as a result, were getting in each other’s way, they each paused and gave off a short, awkward laugh.

“I’ll go first,” Aubrey took the initiative and volunteered. “This top had been giving you a sneak peek all night. It’s only fair.”

With this decided, the two of them tugged on the bottom of Aubrey’s top and pulled up. After they had pulled the top over her head and past her full locks of hair, Aubrey proudly displayed the highly-ornate, spider web pattern bra that had already been partially visible through the spider-shaped cutout on the front of her 90’s era costume. Then it was Will’s turn. He fidgeted a bit as his girlfriend helped pull off the skintight top of his costume, as he was not used to this sort of attention.

“Could you help unzipping the back of my costume on my abdomen?” Aubrey asked as she reached back for the hooks on her bra. Will, on the other hand, gave a puzzled look as he glanced back and forth between her face and her arachnid abdomen. He took a deep breath before answering to calm his nerves.

“Alright.” He crawled over on the web. Once he was positioned next to her abdomen, he found the zipper at the base of where her back transitioned into her cephelothorax.

“Wait, how do you usually get into this?” Will asked as he realized that the zipper would have been out of Aubrey’s normal reach when entirely unzipped.

“Oh, you have no idea how much it sucked getting into this for the first time,” Aubrey answered as she looked over her shoulders. She had already pulled off the straps of her bra over her shoulders and discarded it. “I don’t know what I would do without my power nullifier being able to almost instantaneously swap me into my costume.”

After hearing her answer, Will turned his attention back to the zipper. Once he had passed over her cephelothorax, he pressed his hand against her abdomen to help him continue to unzip the costume. Her abdomen had a weird consistency that lay somewhere between firm and malleable.

“You need help getting out of the rest of this?”

“I’ve got this,” Aubrey stated as she flipped herself on her back. She curled up her eight arachnid legs and tugged up on the fabric that rested on the underbelly of her cephelothorax. Because they had loosened her costume by unzipping its back, there was enough slack to allow Aubrey to get at least one pair of her curled legs underneath the fabric. With each leg underneath, it made it that much easier to pull her other legs inside. Once all eight legs had been withdrawn under the fabric of her costume, she began to straighten out her legs slowly and repeatedly. With each push, she made progress towards removing this portion of her costume. Eventually, her legs were entirely free and she easily used them to toss off the remaining fabric on her abdomen to the side.

“So, what do you think?” Aubrey asked as she rolled onto her side.

“Interesting,” Will replied, “you took off your costume just like a spider would remove its exoskeleton during molting.”

“You’re such a nerd,” Aubrey rolled her eyes before shooting a webline from her wrists at her boyfriend and dragging Will towards her. “But that’s why I love you.”

Will was taken by surprise by Aubrey’s move, partially because he was nerding out about his knowledge about spiders, and partially because he just was not expecting it. Before he knew it, his body was smashed up against hers.

“Ready?” She whispered into his ear while she slowly wrapped her arachnid legs around his body. Will’s heart raced as he gazed into his girlfriend’s eyes. His hands awkwardly ran up and down her body. Despite the numerous physical differences between his Aubrey and this one, her face looked identical, as if he was looking at a split image of hers. Yet, as he peered at such a familiar face, the guilt that had initially warned him not to do this crept back into his head.

“I can’t do this,” Will suddenly blurted out before wiggling his way out of Aubrey’s eight-legged embrace.

“I shouldn’t have pushed you so hard,” Aubrey admitted in response as she wrapped her arms around her chest and pivoted her human half towards Will.

“What the hell was I thinking?”

“Will, you can’t be so hard on yourself. These are extraordinary circumstances!”

“Yet I still feel like an utter trash boyfriend.”

“Then will you at least let me rest in your arms, if this will be our last night together,” Aubrey requested as she patted the web stranded beside her. Will paused for a moment as his mind debated whether doing so would betray the relationship he had with his Aubrey. Eventually, he crawled back over to her. Once he was reclined on the web, Aubrey rolled on her side and rested her head against Will's torso. He, in turn, wrapped his arms around her body.

“If the relationship you have with your Aubrey is anything like the one I have with my Will, I know she truly loves you.”

Although he knew that she was trying to make him feel better, her words merely fanned the flames of his guilt.

Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG Season 2- New Horizons (Closed)

The Mandela Effect: Part 11

Kyra Muller

Columbus, OH, Earth-201

October, 22nd, 2011

It was three days before the third anniversary of the events of that fateful Halloween night. Kyra sat at her desk in her apartment’s bedroom. She was intently studying the notes and the pages of her Calculus textbook. She twirled her pencil between her fingers on one of her hands, while she rubbed the side of her temple.

“You coming?” Kyra looked up from her textbook and saw her roommate standing in her bedroom’s doorway. She was dressed as if she were ready for a night on the town.

“Sorry, I have a big exam on Monday,” Kyra declined the offer as she flipped to the next page in her textbook.

“Your loss, bookworm,” Kyra’s roommate sighed before turning to leave.

Kyra waited until she heard the front door of their apartment clicked, signaling that her roommate had left before she slammed her textbook shut. Even if Kyra had told the truth, she would not have been in the mood for clubbing or whatever her friends had in mind. Just the memory of what had happened that night three years ago spoiled any desire to do anything fun this weekend.

She then scooted her desk chair back and slipped out of her room. After checking that the coast was clear, Kyra snuck into the apartment bathroom. There, she opened up the medicine cabinet and revealed two orange, prescription bottles one would normally receive from the pharmacy. Although the label on the bottle was correctly prescribed to Kyra, the capsules within did not match what was originally prescribed, not that the average person could tell the difference.

The first bottle contained a blue capsule. Although she still had her power nullifier to cancel her fire powers, the events from three years ago had replaced her kitsune appearance with something else and the power nullifier did not work on this new look like it did on her old kitsune form. Therefore, the only thing Kyra found that would act as a proper substitute were these blue capsules. Because these pills did not have an on and off switch like her power nullifier, Kyra either had to wait until the effects of the blue pills ended or use the green pills from the other bottle.

Kyra grabbed the second pill bottle and emptied out several of the green capsules into her palm. After she then set the bottle on the bathroom counter, she picked one of the pills from her palm and poured the rest back into the bottle. She took several deep breaths through her nose before filling a glass with tap water and swallowed the green pill.

Normally, Kyra would never take one of these green pills unless there was an emergency that required some superheroics. That is why the second bottle was still well stocked, while the first only had maybe a couple of weeks’ worth of supply left. Fortunately, she procured some intel that the Shroud Syndicate would be moving a shipment of illegal pharmaceuticals, including these experimental metahuman suppressants, that night. If Kyra did not want her secret to out herself, she needed her powers, all of them, to acquire some more of these pills. She only was stealing from the bad guys. There was no harm from that. Right?

After a few seconds from when Kyra had swallowed the green capsule, she began to feel a burning sensation in her hands, feet, and lower arms and legs. This signaled to Kyra that the green capsule was already starting to kick in. Knowing that she only had less than an hour before her powers had resurfaced, she collected herself, despite the pain, and hurried out of her apartment.

---

Doug Tate had just shut the truck’s latch door and attached a padlock to seal the precious cargo within. His brother, Willie, and Doug had fallen on some hard times and, when they had found themselves in a deep, deep hole, the only way out they saw was taking hold of the hand offered by the Shroud Syndicate.

This was the Tate brothers’ first real gig. Their job was simple: just transport some drugs out of the city and across the state border into Pennsylvania. Doug’s brother used to be a trucker until he was laid off. In his mind, this would not be that much different from his brother’s old job, only with a smaller vehicle and some cargo that they definitely did not want to get caught with.

“Alright, Willie, everything is secured back here,” Doug alerted his brother. But he did not hear a response from his brother.

“Willie?” he asked again.

Doug almost leapt out of his pants when he heard a loud bang smash against the side of the truck and a thud against the pavement. He immediately reached for the gun stashed away behind his back, but he fumbled it and struggled to get a grip of the firearm because his hands were shaking profusely. Even when he had the gun in his hands, the barrel wiggled all over the place.

When Doug peered around the corner of the truck, he at once noticed the giant dent in the side of the truck. His eyes then glanced down from the dent to the body on the ground; it was his brother Willie.

“Willie!” Doug yelled as he hurled himself to the ground next to his brother’s body. His gun dropped from Doug’s hand even before he rushed towards his brother. At first, he feared the worse, but his brother was only unconscious.

Doug scanned the area, but he did not see anyone other than his unconscious brother. What could have done this to Willie? People do not randomly hurl themselves so violently against a wall to knock themselves out, and Doug knew that his brother Willie was not hopped on drugs. Their job was too important for them to screw up. The only evidence he found were a couple giant feathers. They were way too big for even the largest predatory birds.

While Doug was entirely focused on his downed brother, he did not notice something was swooping from above. Before he knew it, something had grasped his shoulders and began to lift him off of the ground. He only got a brief look at one of the giant bird talons wrapped around his shoulder before fainting out of sheer fright.

Once Doug was out cold, whatever had snatched him off the ground descended from the sky. The moonlight illuminated the figure of what had took out the two men. It revealed the silhouette of a slender and fit woman. While she was about to land, this woman beat the feathered wings that were sprouted from her arms, stretching out from right before her elbow to her wrists.

When the harpy woman landed, she handed towards the back of the truck. Because she had purposefully avoided allowing her metahuman powers from arising with power suppressants, each step would have looked a little awkward to an onlooker, as she was dealing with the additional joint at the exact transition from her human shin and her avian talons and feet. One could almost describe her movement like a little songbird hopping about.

The costumed birdlady found the padlock attached to the door’s latch, but this impediment would not be difficult for her to overcome. She placed her large hands, covered by the same scaly skin on her avian feet, over the padlock. A yellow glow began to shine through the small crevices between her clasped hands. The light transitioned from a yellow tint to an orange until finally settling with a red shine. Once she separated her hands, her palms still glowed red, while the metal that had just a few seconds ago been the foundation of the padlock dripped to the ground in a liquid form.

Once she had opened the truck’s rear door, she hopped into the cargo space and began to rummage through the concealed contraband. The Shroud Syndicate was a competent enough not to leave out their goods in plain sight, even when hidden in their transport vehicles. This time they used generic brand candy packaging as their cover.

“Where are those blue capsules?” Kyra muttered as she went through the various boxes stored within the truck.

Because Kyra was so focused on finding the power suppressants, she failed to notice the noise of someone else also climbing into the back of the truck. With one fell swoop, a crowbar smacked the back of Kyra’s skull and knocked her out cold. Whoever had snuck up on her dragged her unconscious body to the edge of the truck’s cargo space.

“I can’t believe that worked,” another shady fellow told the other man, indicating that this was a setup. Doug and Willie were unknowing decoys.

“Well, Catherine is going to have some fun with this toothpick,” the other man said.

“She won’t stay a twig after Catherine is done with her.”

---

"90's" Aubrey Adkins | Will Grant

Pacific Point, CA, Prime Create-A-Hero RPG universe

Present Day

Almost home free, Moon Bunny thought as she dashed across the rooftops of Pacific Point. When she was about ready to reach the edge of the room, a silver light, similar to the color given off by the moon, began to gleam from her legs. With once bounce from her feet, which were a weird human-rabbit hybrid, the bunny girl easily hurdled across the gap between the two buildings.

When she landed, she continued her run. However, because it had become dusk, she failed to see the spider silk trip line stretched out across the floor of the roof. As soon as Moon Bunny’s foot got tripped up over the spider silk, she stumbled and faceplanted straight into the floor. Once she hit the ground, she continued to tumble forward until coming to a standstill.

Even before Moon Bunny could pull herself onto a single knee, she knew exactly whom she was dealing with. Technically, there was a small chance that that one furry spider girl could have been messing with her, but that was unlikely.

When Moon Bunny looked around to see where her opponent was hiding, she finally spotted a silhouette crouched on the roof access enclosure. Although it was still a bit too dark to make out any specific details, even with the lights below, she could still tell that the figure was wearing a scarlet and gray costume, just the colors of Arachne. Without a moment to spare, the same silver light she had used to jump between rooftops surrounded her arm. She then thrust her arm towards the figure, sending out an energy projectile made of the silver light.

However, the figure easily dodged out of the way and allowed the projectile to harmlessly pass right by. Moon Bunny hoped her moonblast would be enough of a distraction for her to cross over to the next roof. For a moment, she had thought she had made her escape, as she was able to become airborne. But to her disappointment, she felt herself being yanked backwards, no doubt by a webline.

The whole whiplash and impact with the roof had disorientated Moon Bunny. Once she had regained her senses, she found that she had already been wrapped up with spider silk. When she glanced up to see who had apprehended her, she was surprised that a drider was not towering over her, but rather there was a man. He was wearing a costume very similar to Arachne’s, but it was not her. Or was it?

“So, I guess the rumors were true that you’ve become a dude,” Moon Bunny finally spoke up to the spider-themed hero standing next to her.

“Um—not quite,” the man responded.

Almost as if on cue, Arachne pulled herself from the side of the wall onto the rooftop where her boyfriend had restrained the villainess.

“Sorry about that. I mistimed that last jump,” Arachne provided as her excuse before realizing that Moon Bunny had been restrained. “I guess you handled her perfectly fine.”

“Oh my God! You two are wearing matching costumes! That is, like, so adorkable!” Moon Bunny blurt out when she saw Arachne arrive on the scene. Once she got a better look of the drider heroine, Moon Bunny continued with her prattle. “Oh, and I dig the costume change. If you got the goods, flaunt them, girl.”

“Alright, it’s time to find the nearest police officer,” Will interrupted as he pulled Moon Bunny off the ground and onto her feet.

“Go ahead without me. I think I just need a short break while you *hiccup* turn her in,” Arachne told Will.

“Care to share your thought on your squeeze’s new look?” Moon Bunny whispered to Will. “Great views, right?”

“Are you okay? I did lose you back there.” Will asked his girlfriend while ignoring Moon Bunny’s colorful commentary.

“There’s nothing to *hiccup* worry about,” Arachne poorly tried to convince her boyfriend.

“Are you sure you’re fine?” Will asked again.

“She sure is,” Moon Bunny quipped with a smile on her face, knowing her comment would bug Will.

“Don’t make me push you off this ledge,” Will threatened before he propelled down the side of the building with the bunny villainess in hand. However, before he went, he turned towards Arachne for a brief moment. “After I turn her in, we better head back home.”

“Fine,” Arachne yielded as she watched her boyfriend descend down the building.

Once Arachne knew that her boyfriend was out of sight, she reached into the inside of her bomber jacket and pulled out an almost empty pop bottle. She unscrewed the bottle’s cap and drained the last gulp of the caffeinated beverage.

Maybe I should make a quick pitstop for a refill, Arachne thought as she held the now empty bottle. However, before she could even make a single step, she heard something land on the roof access enclosure.

Why didn’t my spider sense warn me? Have I really consumed too much caffeine?

When Arachne turned, she saw a costumed woman crouching on the roof access enclosure. This woman had pointy, elf-like ears. If it were not for her avian arms and feet, she would have had a modelesque physique. Although she was not as well-endowed as Arachne was, she could still give the drider heroine a run for her money.

“Should I know who you are? I feel I should, but I’m drawing a blank.”

“Black Widow,” the harpy lady finally spoke, “I didn’t know the bottle was your vice, though I am not quite surprised.”

“How can you get us confused? Besides being driders, we have nothing in common. I’m blonde and she has black hair, for crying out load!” Arachne responded, “Plus, I’m only drinking pop!”

“A rose by any other name would still be a rose,” the bird woman quipped back. Arachne was not sure whether she was double downing that she’s really Black Widow or she somehow knew overdosing on caffeine was like getting drunk for her. There’s the possibility that it’s both.

“You obviously don’t have eagle eyes, because you need your eyes checked.”

“I’m not surprised by the ad hominem attack. That’s what a villain would do.”

A standoff ensued, as the two women prepared for the other to pounce. But something felt so wrong to Arachne. If she were really facing a villain, her spider sense would have been blaring like the worst headache in the world. But it wasn’t.

“Hey Aubrey, I’m—” Will finally broke the tension in the air after he crawled back up the side of the building and onto the roof top, “back?”

Both women immediately turned their attention towards Will after he had spoken up. Then, almost as soon as the harpy lady seemed to recognize who Will was, she turned and dove off the side of the roof. After several beats of the wings on her arms, she soared away and disappeared into the nighttime sky.

“Who was she?” Will then asked after he saw the harpy woman had flown away.

“She felt so familiar, like I should know her.”

“Her costume reminds me of Firefox, but she has fox ears and nine tails.”

“Maybe we should follow her, just in case.”

Will paused for a moment. He knew they should really head home, since he could recognize the signs of caffeine overdose in his girlfriend. Heck, she was still holding an empty bottle of pop in her hand that she probably just finished. Yet, at the same time, Odysseus had mentioned to both him and his girlfriend’s friend, Emily, that he had not seen Firefox ever since all of the parallel universe doppelgangers began popping up and replacing their counterparts. If they had a lead on Firefox’s whereabouts, they needed to follow up on them.

“Alright, here’s the plan. We’ll try to follow her for a little bit longer. But after that, we have to head back to your apartment.”

Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG Season 2- New Horizons (Closed)

Character you have created: Ricardo “Rick” Martinez

Alias: Hometown Hero or Collateral.

Speech Color (Actually say what you're using, don't go "Like this", or what not): Goldenrod: DAA520

Character Alignment: Hero. He tries.

Identity: Secret. Thank God.

@Kaithas

Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG Season 2- New Horizons (Closed)

The Mandela Effect: Part 10

"90's" Aubrey Adkins | Will Grant

Pacific Point, CA

Aubrey splashed a handful of water into her face. She did not know whether she was trying to snap herself out of her sleepy grogginess or out of the bizarre dreams she had experienced the past night. When she looked up at the mirror, she saw the water running down her face, along with her long locks of blonde hair that were curling around her head in every direction. How much caffeine did she have last night? Was what she saw in her dream some sort of caffeine-induced nightmare? But why did the lives of those other Aubreys feel so real?

She filled her palms again with water and splashed her face again. After Aubrey wiped down her face with a hand towel, she turned her attention to taming her hair. She first ran her fingers through her hair and pulled it back into one, long ponytail. Then, with one hand holding the ponytail together, Aubrey transferred scrunchie from wrist onto her hair with her free hand. Her hair still looked like a mess, but she could fix it later.

Once Aubrey was through with fixing her hair and trying to snap herself out of the haze of just waking up, she exited to the bathroom and headed towards the kitchen, although fitting through the doorway with her arachnid physique was not simple task, as the frame was not designed with her frame in mind. She managed it, but it was not as simple as walking through the threshold.

When she opened the refrigerator door and reached in for some orange juice, she paused when she noticed that there was a six pack of bottled pop sitting inside the refrigerator. For a moment, Aubrey was befuddled by the presence of these drinks, as she knew that she was all out of the caffeinated beverage when she checked earlier that morning. But she soon jumped to a relatively safe conclusion: Will must have picked some up from the store while he was out, as she did not see him on the couch when she had gotten up in the middle of the night a few hours ago.

Aubrey then reached towards the six pack and pulled one of the bottles off from the plastic that held the six containers together as a unit. While she twisted the bottle cap on her beverage, she then turned to view the couch to see if her boyfriend had finally returned.

And indeed, he was there, sprawled out over the couch with a single blanket covering his body. However, Aubrey also noticed that Will was wearing a certain scarlet and gray costume, minus the mask, a costume that she recognized from the news report she had seen on her phone just a few hours ago. Plus, now that she had seen in close up, the costume did look awfully similar to hers in design. It was just a bit more modest than her own costume, but that made sense because of the sort of guy Will was.

For a moment, a thought crept into Aubrey’s head: was Will wearing this costume a sign that this place’s Aubrey knew about his alter-ego?

Wait, I’m the real Aubrey. She thought as she realized this internal contradiction. She knew for sure that her Will was just a regular person, no powers and all. Yet the news reports and the costume he was wearing said otherwise. But Will had the worse poker face in the world. There was no way he could have hidden anything this ground shaking from her.

As her head ached with these inconsistencies in her memories, Aubrey drew the curtains back just enough to let some light into her living room, but not enough where he drider physique would be visible from outside. As the small sliver of light rushed into the room and struck her sleeping boyfriend, Aubrey heard his rustling from his slumber.

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” Aubrey greeted Will as she leaned over the back of the couch. “Looks like you had a busy night.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Will groggily replied while he was attempting to wake up. He clutched his forehead and began to rub it, as if it would somehow help wake him up.

“You want to talk about it?”

“Actually, we do have something we need to talk about,” he answered as he began to sit up. “You might want to take a seat.”

A sudden fear crept into the back of her mind. What could he possibly have to say? Possibilities started to fly around in her head. Could he be breaking up with her? No, that’s impossible; she was his dream girl. Something horrible had to have happened for him to want out of their relationship. But what else could he want to talk about?

While these thoughts were running through Aubrey’s mind, Will had sat up and scooted over to the far edge of the couch to allow as much room for Aubrey next to him. In turn, when she noticed there was a spot for her on the couch, Aubrey crawled over the back of the couch and rested her spider-half on the couch’s cushions, draping her right arachnid legs over the couch’s back.

“So, what do you want to talk about?”

“I don’t know how to quite say it,” Will began to say as he ran his fingers through his hair.

“Just say it.” Aubrey scooted closer towards her boyfriend and placed her hand on his thigh.

“Well, um, the me whom you hung out with yesterday was an alternate version of myself from a parallel universe,” he finally admitted to Aubrey. There was a brief moment of silence before Aubrey broke into laughter. Will, however, still wore a stunned expression on his face.

“I’m so stupid,” Aubrey exclaimed, “I thought you were about ready to break up with me or something.

“Aren’t you at all concerned about the whole parallel reality thing?”

“Will, this is just another Tuesday in the life of a superhero. The bizarre should be expected.”

“I’m not the only one. There’s your friend, Emily. Your teammates, the Immortals. From what I have heard, there are people across the country who have been replaced by a parallel reality doppelganger.”

Teammates? Aubrey thought before images of these so-called teammates flashed before her eyes. She had an inkling that she should know who these people were, but the memories of these events that played out in her head felt like they belonged to someone else. The costumes she was wearing in these memories reminded her of the dream just had last night. Or was it a dream?

“I knew something was up with Emily ever since that Hounds attack,” Aubrey claimed as she tried to hide the distress she was experiencing from these varying memories.

“And although the Immortals have not yet tested you yet, I’m pretty sure you’re also been affected.”

“What makes you think that?” Aubrey asked, although in the back of her mind she knew that there was some truth in his statement.

“Well—” Will replied as he pointed at Aubrey’s shirt, which was the same Super Bowl XLIII t-shirt she had been wearing yesterday. Aubrey, in turn, tilted her head down to see what exactly he was pointing at. Her face immediately blushed when she thought she knew what he meant.

“Well, that would explain why almost none of my bras fit.”

When Will heard what Aubrey had just said, he wore a confused expression on his face. It took a moment for her words to register in his head.

“What? No, that’s not what I mean. Sure, you’re not wrong, but—” Will tried to explain, although he was stumbling over himself because he was flustered, “Anyways—the point is that the Cardinals lost Super Bowl XLIII and, unless you found that shirt in some third world country, there is no way you could possibly have that shirt.

“Well, that also could be an explanation.”

A silence settled into the room, as neither Will nor Aubrey knew what to say once the probable possibility that Aubrey was not herself had been suggested. What were you supposed to say to someone who looked so similar to a loved one, but whom you knew was not them.

“So, is there a portal or something I need to jump through for your Aubrey to come back?” Aubrey finally broke the silence.

“Err—not quite,” Will began to explain in turn. Because he knew what he was going to say was pretty loopy, he took ahold of her hands before continuing. “Technically speaking, you are my Aubrey.”

“But didn’t you say I was a parallel version of your Aubrey?”

“Yes, but—” Will paused as he tried to figure out how best to explain what had been going on. Once he thought he knew how to explain everything, he started speaking again. “You and my Aubrey have not been stranded in each other’s universe. Whoever, or whatever, is causing all of this has somehow made you think and look like a different version of yourself. Your superhero friends have figured out a way to return the minds of effected individuals back to normal, but they’re still trying to figure out how to revert physical changes. Does that make sense?”

Aubrey then sat there in silence, as the revelation that Will had revealed to her was registering in her mind. Was the dream she had last night her mind’s way of cooping with whatever the heck was going on. But which version of herself from that dream, if any, was the one native to this reality? What would happen to her current personality after her original consciousness had been restored? Will said it himself: she would not be magically teleported back to her own reality. Would she just cease to exist? Would she in all intents and purposes die? Although she knew that the right thing to do was to give back the real Aubrey her life, the fear of oblivion paralyzed her.

“Aubrey? Are you okay?” Will’s voice snapped Aubrey out of her deep reflection of her current predicament.

“I’m fine,” Aubrey lied, although her face and voice betrayed her inner feelings.

“Are you sure?”

“You know what. Let’s do something fun tonight,” Aubrey immediately changed the subject of their conversation. This time, she did a far better job repressing her fears.

“Like—what?” Will asked his girlfriend. He suddenly remembered the conversation he had with this version of Aubrey last night. His heart was starting to pound. He just hoped she was thinking about something other than what he promised last night.

“Why don’t we go on patrol tonight? My Will doesn’t have superpowers. I don’t know if this world’s you normally have spider powers, but I think it would be a fun experience. Think of it as a crime-fighting date.”

“Sure. That’s a great idea.” Will answered, giving off an internal sigh of relief. “I only have powers because my parallel-self had them. So this would be something new for me, too.”

“Great! Let’s make it a date.”

She then lifted her arachnid body off the couch and started to walk towards the apartment’s bathroom. However, she stopped after taking a few steps (at least for an eight-legged person) and twisted her torso so she could see her boyfriend.

“Since you’ve been up all night, you can sleep in a little longer.”

“Are you sure?”

“You need to rest up for our little date tonight. Plus, I can keep myself busy until you get your beauty sleep.”

“Alright,” Will reluctantly agreed to Aubrey’s suggestion, “but let me change into my pajamas first.”

“I’ll be in the shower if you need me,” Aubrey told him before continuing into the bathroom and shutting the door behind her. She then turned the shower knob to warm up the water.

Now that she was isolated from Will and the sound of the water beating against the basin of the water would mask her voice to a degree, Aubrey began to break out into tears. What was she to do? She knew it was wrong to rob Will of his real girlfriend. But how could she sacrifice herself to do justice for him? As these thoughts raced through her head, she unscrewed the cap of the pop bottle that she had been holding onto since she opened up the refrigerator and took a gulp of the caffeinated beverage to took off the edge of the pain she felt.

Her phone then buzzed.

It was this world’s Aubrey’s work. It was their last offer for moving Aubrey’s August photoshoot to today. She stared at the message for a moment before she typed out a quick response. But even when she had finished typing, she did not press the send button, but rather paused for a moment.

Then flashes of the lives of the other Aubrey’s played before her eyes for a second time. One moment, she found herself, in her human form, standing in front of a classroom of high schoolers, with a chalkboard behind her. Everyone, including Aubrey herself, were wearing quite retro clothing, as if it was the 1930’s or 40’s. The United States flag with only 48 stars only confirmed it.

Then Aubrey’s vision became blurred, like dozens of colors and lights swirling around her. When everything came to a standstill, Aubrey found herself posing in front of a photographer. She had her feet dipped into the cool waters of a pool. As Aubrey shifted her pose after each click and flash of the photographer’s camera, she displayed the swimwear that was he new rage of the 60’s: the bikini.

In the final take, the camera’s flash was so bright that it temporarily blinded Aubrey. Once her eyes had finally recovered, she found herself standing in the Lotus, the strip club Aubrey worked at on Nautican Island. The most popular beats of the day were blaring through the air, while neon lights basked the entire club. Aubrey, being on the onlook for any potential customers, wove through the crowd that was focused on the main stage.

“Hey, Rikki. The boss wanted me to remind you that you’re next on the pole,” Aubrey heard a familiar voice say her stage name. Walking towards her was a buxom catgirl. If she was not so white, one might have thought she had been pulled straight out of a really niche manga.

“Thanks Samm—I mean, Kylie,” Aubrey almost let her real first name slip. Before heading over to the main stage, Aubrey handed over the money she had made from the past hour to the bartender for safekeeping in the envelope each girl had reserved for them.

At least, Aubrey found herself gazing into the bathroom mirror. She could once again hear the water running from the shower faucet and could even feel the steam building up. She had no idea what she had just experienced. All she knew was that it was freaking trippy. She first splashed some water from the sink faucet into her face before taking one last swish of her pop. When she peered down at her phone, the message was still there. As there was not a message that alerted her that it was too late to response, Aubrey pressed the send button

How hard could this be? she thought.

Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG Season 2- New Horizons (Closed)

That took way too long to get that post where I wanted to. As the last part of the post suggests, I've had this post in the works since last October. I don't plan using that much time on my next post. ;)

Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG Season 2- New Horizons (Closed)

The Mandela Effect: Part 9

Odysseus Laërtiades

Pacific Point, CA

Odysseus felt entirely out of place waiting in the lobby of the Pacific Point S.P.A.R.K. facility. Whenever the Immortals needed to deal with this organization, one of Odysseus’ other teammates would have come. But considering the circumstances, Odysseus was the only one available to make the drop-in visit. The Son of Osiris was out of the country in Egypt to resort his mystic powers or whatever magical mumbo jumbo he does. Neither Gajana nor Talus were fit for the task, either. Something strange had happened to them and Odysseus had a feeling that this device that Christopher Arthur had sent might help explain what had happened to them. Firefox, on the other hand, had not responded to Odysseus’ calls. Odysseus almost had tried to reach Arachne, but she specifically requested some personal time. She was going to owe him big time for this.

Even though it was well past midnight, the S.P.A.R.K. facility still had heroes filed in and out of the building. It was not as packed as it usually was during the day, but that was reasonable for the time. Odysseus could not stand seeing these heroes, walking about as if they were playing some kiddie game. He even would have wagered money that many of these rookies had never seen any series action before. None of them knew the burden of fighting the good fight.

“Hey, handsome,” a woman’s voice echoed into Odysseus’ ear.

In his annoyance, Odysseus barely tilted his head to see who was trying to annoy him. There stood a young woman dressed in a magical princess outfit. She wore this stupid grin on her face, as if she expected him to be talkative all of the sudden. She obviously did not know him well.

“Go away,” Odysseus mumbled as he tilted his head back to its upright position.

“Oh, come on! I’m looking for a partner to fight some crime tonight," she said as she threw some shadow-boxing punches to show her enthusiasm for crime fighting. "A strong man like you is just what I need!”

“Go,” Odysseus once again repeated himself, hoping the extra gruffness in his voice would make her get the message “away.”

“Party pooper!” the young girl pouted and marched off away. But as soon as she caught sight of a cute boy across the room, her peppy spirit instantly reappeared. Odysseus was just relieved that she was bouncing away from him.

“Excuse me, sir?”

Odysseus sighed before turning his scowl towards this next person. This time, however, it was not another super trying to get him to team-up with them that night, but rather one of the S.P.A.R.K. lab techs. Because of how late it was, the Pacific Point location only had a skeleton crew to man the place. As soon as the lab tech saw the annoyance on the hero’s face, he shrunk away from him, as if he thought that the grizzly man was about to beat him up.

“It’s about time,” Odysseus said once he recognized that this guy worked for S.P.A.R.K. He shifted his weight off the wall on which he had been leaning against. Odysseus towered above the lab tech. This definitely did not help the young man be any less scared of the hero.

“I assume that’s what I’m here to pick up,” Odysseus said as he pointed towards the device that the S.P.A.R.K. lab tech was holding. Yet not a single word escaped from his lips. He only could reach out the device to the hero. His arms shook as he stretched them out in front of him.

“Hey, handsome! Still looking for a partner?” Odysseus heard that magical princess girl spoke from behind his back.

“I already told you. Get the fu—” Odysseus began to say as he turned around. But when he caught sight of the girl standing behind him, he initially thought this was an entirely different person. However, he recognized her face and the design of her costume, although it was slightly different. This girl almost looked like as if someone had photoshopped her face onto a more mature woman’s body. Odysseus blinked several times as his brain tried to comprehend the situation. But he soon turned back to the lab tech and took the device out of his hands.

“I just need to press this button, right?” Odysseus asked the lab tech before turning back to the magical princess girl. The lab tech in turn merely shook his head in agreement.

When Odysseus pressed the button, the screen on the device flickered on. Three dots appeared on the screen, each representing Odysseus, the girl, and the tech. The device indicated on its interface that it was initializing a scan, which did not take long. Almost immediately did the dot representing the girl ping, indicating that the frequency of the atoms in her body did not match the rest of the matter from their universe. Although he did not have much time to dwell on it, because his dot did not change at all, Odysseus knew that at least he was normal, whatever normal was.

“You might want to have this lady checked out,” Odysseus told the lab tech after showing the results from the device. “We might also need a house visit from you guys. I don’t need this gadget to recognize that two of my teammates have been fucked up.”

Before the lab tech could make a response, Odysseus already started to walk away, device in hand. He heard the girl protested against the hapless lab tech as he tried to convince her to allow him to run some more diagnostics. A rare smirk appeared on Odysseus’ face when he heard the girl complained that Odysseus did not have a restraining order against him and the lab tech vainly tried to explain that had nothing to do with anything.

---

“You got to be kidding me,” Odysseus muttered under his breath as he came to a stop on his motorcycle. This was the exact reason why he always took the long way back to the Immortal’s base. What’s the point of a secret base when you let people follow you to the front door? If Talus and Gajana were not affected by whatever was turning people into strange versions of themselves, he probably would have given them an earful once he got inside.

Off the coast of the outskirts of Pacific Point, there lies Ithaca Island, a small, deserted isle. Before the Son of Osiris had recruited Odysseus to the Immortals, he operated his crusade against crime in Pacific Point from a base built underneath the island. Once he was recruited, the Immortals took up shop there. Since then, they instituted a dual authorization to ensure only members of the Immortals to gain access to the base. Initially, each member only required a specific id code to get inside, but once they learned from Arachne that some shapeshift had impersonated her civilian identity, the Son of Osiris incorporated what was essentially a magical identity checker.

Although there were several entrances to this subterranean base, Odysseus had taken a backroad to what looked like a small, abandoned dock. In this location, the dual authorization had been hidden in one of the dock’s wooden posts that lined it. What concerned Odysseus was that the people he had stumbled upon at the dock were examining that exact post, just as if they knew about it. Something seemed familiar about these two, as if he had seen them before.

“God, it would be my luck that all this bullshit would be going down while I’m the only one here,” Odysseus said as he began to connect the dots. He had indeed seen the redhead woman. She was with Arachne back when the Hounds had unleashed those roided out metahumans upon Pacific Point. So that meant that the dude in the scarlet and gray tights was…

When the two superheroes heard Odysseus’ voice, they immediately rotated around to face him. At first, they had taken a fighting stance, just in case a villain had gotten the jump on them. However, when they saw that it was only Odysseus standing there, the two relaxed. The redhead leaned over to the man and whispered something to him. Although Odysseus was still within earshot, he was not sure he heard her right, as she mentioned something about a ‘Peter Tingle’ and why it was not working.

“I don’t know why, but the scanner isn’t recognizing me,” the guy in the scarlet and gray costume finally responded to Odysseus, who at that moment was stepping down from his motorcycle and deploying the kickstand.

“Probably because you have turned into a scrawny-ass boy,” Odysseus answered back. He marched over to the wooden post and grasped it with his hand. As he did this, he ignored the clear irritation that the guy wearing the scarlet and gray tights felt after yet again being mistaken for his girlfriend. He had zero clue how people keep confusing him for Arachne. He was not even a drider! The redhead, on the other hand, just had an amused look on her face.

“Code athanatos beta,” Odysseus uttered. Once these words escaped the hero’s lips, an eerie glow emanated from the wooden structure before vanishing just as quickly as it had appeared.

Identity confirmed. Welcome, Odysseus. A disembodied voice echoed after this small light show had finished. Then, there was movement in the water next to the dock. Out from the dark waters arose a concrete structure. Once all the water had poured back into the sea, the heavy-duty entrance doors slide open.

“You two better wait inside. Some S.P.A.R.K. techs are supposed to come soon, so they can also fix Arachne and turn her back to normal while they’re at it,” Odysseus told the two other heroes on the docks without making any eye contact. Instead, he was heading straight back to his cycle and wheeling it towards the entrance.

“For the freaking gazillionth time, I’m not Arachne!” the man in the scarlet and red costume, that happened to look awfully similar to Arachne’s, if it had been made for a normal human instead of a drider. “How the heck can people keep saying that?”

“That’s exactly what I would expect someone in your state would say,” Odysseus responded while pulling out the device that S.P.A.R.K. had provided him with. He flipped the on switch to the machine and allowed it to do its thing.

“See? This gizmo shows that whatever has been messing with people’s memories and appearances has affected you,” Odysseus remarked before peering down back at the device’s screen. “Oh, and it looks like she’s also affected, too.”

“Wait, what?” the redhead gasped at this unexpected news.

“Hey, don’t be changing the subject,” the guy totally dressed up like Arachne complained, “There’s no way that I’m some weird, gender-bent Arachne!”

“Just get inside,” Odysseus grumbled. All of this was turning out to be too much for him. Why could the Son of Osiris not be the one dealing with this fiasco? Or even Firefox? Odysseus was supposed to be crushing the skulls of the criminal underworld, not baby-sitting strange versions of his teammates from parallel universes!

“It’s impossible! She’s sound asleep back in her apartment. Something strange has also happened to her and I’ve been trying to figure it out all night,” he continued his protest.

“This just keeps getting better and better,” Odysseus sighed. “Well, you two better get inside anyways. Besides waiting for S.P.A.R.K., I need you two to distract the two others who have been fucked up like you while I drown all of this madness out with some liquor. There’s no way in hell I’m playing their Axels and Alleys game with them.”

“You mean Axis and Allies?” not-Boy-Arachne corrected Odysseus.

“And what’s wrong with your buddies?” the redhead asked.

“Besides looking like comic book caricatures of themselves, they also have developed an almost comically ridiculous bias against Communists,” Odysseus answered while continuing towards the entrance. “God damn it, why am I’m the only normal one here. Where the hell is Firefox.”

“Hey, what does the whole anti-communist thing have to do with that board game,” the redhead whispered to the spider-themed hero.

“They’re probably looking for someone to play the Soviets because neither wants to be a commie,” he whispered back with an answer.

---

A suburb of Columbus, OH, Earth-201

October, 25th, 2008

“I can’t believe you were afraid of this show when you were a kid.”

The television screen displayed the show’s end credits: a black background with white print, nothing unusual besides the green, 90’s era CGI slime slowly oozing down the screen, along with the show’s weirdly upbeat, yet creepy, theme song.

“If my parent’s generation were freaked out by the Flying Monkeys from the Wizard of Oz, I think I had every right to be a little scared of this show when I was five,” Will defended himself to his girlfriend after they had finished marathoning several episodes of the Goosebumps television series. It was almost Halloween and what better way is there to get you into the spirit of the season than the creation of R.L. Stein.

“Sure, you scaredy-cat,” Kyra told her boyfriend with a smile on her face.

The two teenage metahumans had been sitting on a couch in front of the television. Kyra had her nine fox tails wrapped around Will’s back and resting over both of their legs, like a warm, fluffy blanket. The tips of her tail even gave off a faint glow, as they were providing just enough heat to keep the two of them warm without causing the couch, or their clothes, to catch on fire.

Will then reached up with his hand and began to rub gently the back of Kyra’s head, right between her two large, fox ears.

“Stap,” Kyra complained as she recoiled to the feeling she experienced on the back of her head. “Alright, you’re not a scaredy-cat!”

Will immediately stopped and then planted a quick kiss on Kyra’s check. As that was happening, Kyra had pulled out her cell phone to check the time.

“We better get changed. We’re going to have to leave for the Halloween party soon,” Kyra told Will once she saw what time it was. She unraveled her tails that had been covering both of their legs before standing back up. Once on her feet, she tugged up on the jeans she was wearing before heading to her bedroom.

After Kyra had clicked shut her bedroom door, she activated her power nullifier, which caused her fox ears and nine tails to disappear. She then plopped down onto the side of her bed and started to brush her dyed red hair, which she had colored specifically for her costume. Whenever Kyra would switch between her kitsune appearance and her regular self, she would always have to redo her hair, as it lay differently when she has two fox ears crowning her head.

Once she had fixed her hair, she then went to her closet and retrieved yellow jump suit that would have looked awfully plain if it did not also include red gloves and boots that were tipped with orange flames. After Kyra had placed the red mask that went with this costume, she had completed her look. Once dressed, she exited her room and returned to the living room where they had been watching tv just minutes before.

“So, how do I look?”

“Like the hottest girl I know,” Will complemented Kyra, although he seemed quite amused by the pun he had just made.

“Like that one hasn’t gotten old already,” Kyra said as she rolled her eyes.

“Well, you are the girl with fire powers dressing up like a fictional superhero with fire powers,” Will replied.

“Says the boy with spider powers dressed like Spider-Man,” Kyra answered back with a smile, since he was in fact wearing a Spider-Man costume.

“Touché.”

“Thank goodness Matt doesn’t have ice power. That would totally be too obvious,” Kyra told her boyfriend.

As if it happened right on cue, the doorbell rang.

“Speak of the devil,” Will mentioned once he heard the doorbell. “I guess it’s that time.”

“This is going to be a night we’ll never forget,” Kyra muttered before the two of them headed to the front door.

Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG Season 2- New Horizons (Closed)

got some stuff in the works.

Also, we should all start thinking about wrapping up our arcs in preparation for season 3

@nitemare shape

Trying to wrap my stuff as quickly as I can. Just has been a busy week.

Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG Season 2- New Horizons (Closed)

<Snipped quote by Eddie Brock>

I hear that. I need to get a move on myself. I've got something about half written, I need to get back to work on that

@nitemare shape

I have a post that has been half finished since October.

Well, I guess I at least made two posts relatively recently. And maybe a third, soon!