Current
I feel sorry for you if you let AI generate ANY of your prose. Real hack work. That goes for images too.
6
likes
16 days ago
They should give me the power to blow up homophobes with my mind, I think
6
likes
24 days ago
Dead internet theory doesn't really feel like a theory sometimes
2
likes
1 mo ago
Walked along the sand dunes of the Sahara desert for 40 days and 40 nights with nothing but a pack of Newports and a fifth of Henny. I really do this shit
4
likes
8 mos ago
These cops are interrogating me about an ounce of weed as if I didn't kill an Applebee's hostess two miles away
C H A R A C T E R S U M M A R Y C H A R A C T E R S U M M A R Y
_________________________________________________________ Francis David Castle _________________________________________________________ 41 | Widower _________________________________________________________ Ex-Marine, Ex-NYPD | American
N O T A B L E A B I L I T I E S & T O O L S N O T A B L E A B I L I T I E S & T O O L S
A B I L I T I E S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ ENHANCED PHYSICALS Even without Ven'ahm fully deployed, all of Frank's physical abilities have dramatically improved. He is stronger, faster, more durable, and with greater stamina than ever, on top of an enhanced healing factor. These abilities only improve with the entire symbiote in play, especially if the creature has been allowed to eat.
◼ LIQUID SKIN The symbiote's skin seems to be a sort of non-Newtonian fluid that can be controlled at will. This leads to a incredible number of applications, including the suits ability to configure into various specifications of armor or disguise at will, as well as the ability to deploy pseudopods that can fire weapons, operate machinery, and even attack on their own. -
T O O L (S) ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ EXPANSIVE ARMORY Over the years, Frank has built up an incredible collection of eclectic firearms of every type for just about every situation. Small arms, long arms, explosives, launchers, and more. Now, thanks to the symbiote, Frank is able to carry more of it on his person than ever. -
N O T A B L E S K I L L S & T A L E N T S N O T A B L E S K I L L S & T A L E N T S
S K I L L (S) ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ WEAPONS EXPERTISE Frank is an expert in the care and use of a plethora of weapons, favoring traditional firearms, though he does have some experience with close quarters combat. -
T A L E N T (S) ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ PAIN TOLERANCE Frank was born with a naturally dulled sense of pain. Even before his bond with the symbiote, he was able to take unbelievable amounts of punishment without faltering. -
T H E S T O R Y S O F A R... T H E S T O R Y S O F A R...
My name is Frank Castle, and before The Reach, I was a lot like you. Stable career. Loving Wife. Ugly dog. Pair of beautiful kids. Living the dream. It can change in an instant at the end of a gun. We were innocent, having a picnic in the park. But we were in the way. Drug deal gone wrong. They died like animals. Sometimes I wish I died, too. Instead I woke up in a hospital a year later.
Next is the part you’ve heard. I had to hurt the men who hurt me. Open and shut revenge. Simple. Except for the part where it didn’t stop. Every door I kicked down, I expected to die on the other side of. Live like that long enough, without anything else to live for, and it quickly becomes all you know. At the beginning I would plan obsessively. Every weapon, every angle, every perp checked meticulously so that I knew, without doubt, that these were the men that deserved punishment. By the end, it was as simple as running into the next room and putting two between the eyes of the next gangbanger I saw. Simple revenge. Haha.
Only reason I figure I got away with it -- being The Punisher, wearing that skull-lookin’ armor, announcing my presence everywhere I went with a burst of machinegun fire -- was on account of the war. The PD and the Feds were spread thin, which gave every scumbag in the city license to do as they pleased. They needed support, and I was all that was coming. Maybe they thought I was helping hold the city together, even as I burned it down.
Next is the part you haven’t. My last weeks of it are the haziest of all. I remember the chug of the gun and seeing, for the first time, the colors of human and Reach blood swirling and mixing on the cracked concrete. I remember that they got me, hit me with some new weapon. I thought when I finally ran into The Reach, I’d die on the spot. Get a plasma hole bored through my guts or become a denatured pile of slime. Instead, I woke up in a cell.
I knew The Reach was experimenting on humans, we all did, but I didn’t think that meant they’d have a gene lab buried under Manhattan. Nothing they did to me seemed to take. I think they only kept me around as a control, a tough old bastard to measure their successes against. Even then, I expected to get binned fast. I know what happens to test animals. But their new subjects were few and far between. Fewer and fewer as the weeks and months dragged on. The Reach scientists spent more time in the facility than ever. They seemed cut off… But they were holding on.
This was the pattern for almost five years -- until last month. An asset transfer from another facility, a rare occasion. A thing sealed in a glass tube, running and shifting inside in inky black detail. The scientists were excited. They tried it on all kinds of things. Poured it over blocks, rocks, technology, weapons, even a few houseplants. No change. Until they started trying the animals. It would sink into their flesh, like it was disappearing against their skin. Then the shaking, the vomiting, the screaming. Then the sleep. You could watch, over an hour, as each strip of muscle and skin and sinew receded and faded until there was nothing left of the animal but a bleached skeleton and a quivering black mass sheltering in its ribcage.
They tried it on us next. There weren’t many of us human prisoners left. Only the hardest and the toughest. But it was the same for each of them. Bleached bones and a grinning skull staring at me from across the lab. Until me. It was almost natural coming onto my skin, pushing its tendrils through the gaps between my cells. It was destroying me. But it was rebuilding me. It spoke to me. There was a voice in my head. It needed to know only one thing. Was I ready to slaughter its captors? Or would it eat me like the rest, and try another?
My name is Frank Castle. Its name is Venom.
Together, we are The Punisher.
P L O T ( S ) & G O A L ( S ) P L O T ( S ) & G O A L ( S )
One of the fundamental tensions of the Punisher when held up against the rest of a superhero universe is: how justified can his actions really be? Here’s a mass murderer presenting himself as a necessary, brutal, bloody solution to problems a dopey teen in spandex could solve in seconds. You can handwave it to some extent with the scope of crime in a comic book universe, but you’ll always be asking yourself why any of a hundred heroes don’t put a stop to the madness. By giving him access to the symbiote, I think I can expose Frank to problems he is more of a justified solution for, especially in the context of Lord’s regime.
More importantly, the most interesting part of The Punisher, at least when talking about a game like this, is whether there could be a good person hiding somewhere in the depths of Frank’s blackened soul. We’ve seen Frank broken down a million times, what if he could be built up? What if he has a chance to grow or change or do something actually positive with his life? To set him on this path, he’s had a long time to think in that cell. Now he’s forced into a role he could never predict, as the adoptive father of a weird alien that lives on his skin that might be the one creature on the planet more naturally hateful than he is.
Initially, I was working on a Punisher team concept, all about a pair of clashing personalities at the head as Frank and Joe Garrison navigated the complex political realities of Lord's America. Then, and I sat down to write it, I realized the enormity of research it would require to make it remotely credible was quite daunting. Then I would also need to worry about not using the whole run as a big ol' political soapbox. On top, there have already been a bunch of team apps in this thread and I don't think I want to throw in another.
So I went back to the drawing board, looking for something fun and maybe similarly shaped, and I came up with this cringe. Blame Uni for it, I asked him to talk me out of it and he told me to embrace the cringe. So here I am, embracing it. But first, some music.
Question for my fellow roleplayers to get some discussion going. Do any of you associate specific songs to your characters?
P U N I S H E R P U N I S H E R
"THE WAR ON CRIME HAS CHANGED. WILL YOU CHANGE WITH IT?"
C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T
C H A R A C T E R S U M M A R Y C H A R A C T E R S U M M A R Y
_________________________________________________________ Francis David Castle _________________________________________________________ 41 | Widower _________________________________________________________ Ex-Marine, Ex-NYPD | American
N O T A B L E A B I L I T I E S & T O O L S N O T A B L E A B I L I T I E S & T O O L S
A B I L I T I E S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ ENHANCED PHYSICALS Even without Ven'ahm fully deployed, all of Frank's physical abilities have dramatically improved. He is stronger, faster, more durable, and with greater stamina than ever, on top of an enhanced healing factor. These abilities only improve with the entire symbiote in play, especially if the creature has been allowed to eat.
◼ LIQUID SKIN The symbiote's skin seems to be a sort of non-Newtonian fluid that can be controlled at will. This leads to a incredible number of applications, including the suits ability to configure into various specifications of armor or disguise at will, as well as the ability to deploy pseudopods that can fire weapons, operate machinery, and even attack on their own. -
T O O L (S) ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ EXPANSIVE ARMORY Over the years, Frank has built up an incredible collection of eclectic firearms of every type for just about every situation. Small arms, long arms, explosives, launchers, and more. Now, thanks to the symbiote, Frank is able to carry more of it on his person than ever. -
N O T A B L E S K I L L S & T A L E N T S N O T A B L E S K I L L S & T A L E N T S
S K I L L (S) ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ WEAPONS EXPERTISE Frank is an expert in the care and use of a plethora of weapons, favoring traditional firearms, though he does have some experience with close quarters combat. -
T A L E N T (S) ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ PAIN TOLERANCE Frank was born with a naturally dulled sense of pain. Even before his bond with the symbiote, he was able to take unbelievable amounts of punishment without faltering. -
T H E S T O R Y S O F A R... T H E S T O R Y S O F A R...
My name is Frank Castle, and before The Reach, I was a lot like you. Stable career. Loving Wife. Ugly dog. Pair of beautiful kids. Living the dream. It can change in an instant at the end of a gun. We were innocent, having a picnic in the park. But we were in the way. Drug deal gone wrong. They died like animals. Sometimes I wish I died, too. Instead I woke up in a hospital a year later.
Next is the part you’ve heard. I had to hurt the men who hurt me. Open and shut revenge. Simple. Except for the part where it didn’t stop. Every door I kicked down, I expected to die on the other side of. Live like that long enough, without anything else to live for, and it quickly becomes all you know. At the beginning I would plan obsessively. Every weapon, every angle, every perp checked meticulously so that I knew, without doubt, that these were the men that deserved punishment. By the end, it was as simple as running into the next room and putting two between the eyes of the next gangbanger I saw. Simple revenge. Haha.
Only reason I figure I got away with it -- being The Punisher, wearing that skull-lookin’ armor, announcing my presence everywhere I went with a burst of machinegun fire -- was on account of the war. The PD and the Feds were spread thin, which gave every scumbag in the city license to do as they pleased. They needed support, and I was all that was coming. Maybe they thought I was helping hold the city together, even as I burned it down.
Next is the part you haven’t. My last weeks of it are the haziest of all. I remember the chug of the gun and seeing, for the first time, the colors of human and Reach blood swirling and mixing on the cracked concrete. I remember that they got me, hit me with some new weapon. I thought when I finally ran into The Reach, I’d die on the spot. Get a plasma hole bored through my guts or become a denatured pile of slime. Instead, I woke up in a cell.
I knew The Reach was experimenting on humans, we all did, but I didn’t think that meant they’d have a gene lab buried under Manhattan. Nothing they did to me seemed to take. I think they only kept me around as a control, a tough old bastard to measure their successes against. Even then, I expected to get binned fast. I know what happens to test animals. But their new subjects were few and far between. Fewer and fewer as the weeks and months dragged on. The Reach scientists spent more time in the facility than ever. They seemed cut off… But they were holding on.
This was the pattern for almost five years -- until last month. An asset transfer from another facility, a rare occasion. A thing sealed in a glass tube, running and shifting inside in inky black detail. The scientists were excited. They tried it on all kinds of things. Poured it over blocks, rocks, technology, weapons, even a few houseplants. No change. Until they started trying the animals. It would sink into their flesh, like it was disappearing against their skin. Then the shaking, the vomiting, the screaming. Then the sleep. You could watch, over an hour, as each strip of muscle and skin and sinew receded and faded until there was nothing left of the animal but a bleached skeleton and a quivering black mass sheltering in its ribcage.
They tried it on us next. There weren’t many of us human prisoners left. Only the hardest and the toughest. But it was the same for each of them. Bleached bones and a grinning skull staring at me from across the lab. Until me. It was almost natural coming onto my skin, pushing its tendrils through the gaps between my cells. It was destroying me. But it was rebuilding me. It spoke to me. There was a voice in my head. It needed to know only one thing. Was I ready to slaughter its captors? Or would it eat me like the rest, and try another?
My name is Frank Castle. Its name is Ven’ahm.
Together, we are The Punisher.
P L O T ( S ) & G O A L ( S ) P L O T ( S ) & G O A L ( S )
One of the fundamental tensions of the Punisher when held up against the rest of a superhero universe is: how justified can his actions really be? Here’s a mass murderer presenting himself as a necessary, brutal, bloody solution to problems a dopey teen in spandex could solve in seconds. You can handwave it to some extent with the scope of crime in a comic book universe, but you’ll always be asking yourself why any of a hundred heroes don’t put a stop to the madness. By giving him access to the symbiote, I think I can expose Frank to problems he is more of a justified solution for, especially in the context of Lord’s regime.
More importantly, the most interesting part of The Punisher, at least when talking about a game like this, is whether there could be a good person hiding somewhere in the depths of Frank’s blackened soul. We’ve seen Frank broken down a million times, what if he could be built up? What if he has a chance to grow or change or do something actually positive with his life? To set him on this path, he’s had a long time to think in that cell. Now he’s forced into a role he could never predict, as the adoptive father of a weird alien that lives on his skin that might be the one creature on the planet more naturally hateful than he is.
J O E G A R R I S O N ♦ K I L L E R ♦ N E W Y O R K C I T Y ♦ E X - S H I E L D
C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T:
"And they shall know no fear!"
The man once called SHIELD's 'Gravedigger' has reforged himself as the all-new Punisher. Framed for the murder of his wife and children, Joe Garrison began a campaign of carnage against New York's criminal element, slaughtering dozens of mobsters and a handful of fledgling supervillains, including JIGSAW, the architect behind the murder of Joe's family. Joe discovered it wasn't him who was targeted, but his wife, for her work as a human rights lawyer.
In the aftermath, Joe was dead, officially, and the identity of the new Punisher remains a mystery to the city at large. All Joe can do is continue his wife's mission of fighting for the needy -- the only way he knows how.
C H A R A C T E R M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S:
but why tho
C H A R A C T E R N O T E S:
Triple-A: A SHIELD affiliated hacker and equipment specialist who was Joe's handler, once upon a time.
Bushwhacker: Leader of the Night Shift, a squad of super mercenaries. When they last crossed Joe, he killed half their number.
Finesse: The other surviving member of the Night Shift. Supposedly, she's Taskmaster's daughter.
S A M P L E P O S T:
sample
P U N I S H E R P U N I S H E R
"THE WAR ON CRIME HAS CHANGED. WILL YOU CHANGE WITH IT?"
C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T
C H A R A C T E R S U M M A R Y C H A R A C T E R S U M M A R Y
_________________________________________________________ Francis David Castle _________________________________________________________ 41 | Widower _________________________________________________________ Ex-Marine, Ex-NYPD | American
N O T A B L E A B I L I T I E S & T O O L S N O T A B L E A B I L I T I E S & T O O L S
A B I L I T I E S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ ENHANCED PHYSICALS Even without Ven'ahm fully deployed, all of Frank's physical abilities have dramatically improved. He is stronger, faster, more durable, and with greater stamina than ever, on top of an enhanced healing factor. These abilities only improve with the entire symbiote in play, especially if the creature has been allowed to eat.
◼ LIQUID SKIN The symbiote's skin seems to be a sort of non-Newtonian fluid that can be controlled at will. This leads to a incredible number of applications, including the suits ability to configure into various specifications of armor or disguise at will, as well as the ability to deploy pseudopods that can fire weapons, operate machinery, and even attack on their own. -
T O O L (S) ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ EXPANSIVE ARMORY Over the years, Frank has built up an incredible collection of eclectic firearms of every type for just about every situation. Small arms, long arms, explosives, launchers, and more. Now, thanks to the symbiote, Frank is able to carry more of it on his person than ever. -
N O T A B L E S K I L L S & T A L E N T S N O T A B L E S K I L L S & T A L E N T S
S K I L L (S) ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ WEAPONS EXPERTISE Frank is an expert in the care and use of a plethora of weapons, favoring traditional firearms, though he does have some experience with close quarters combat. -
T A L E N T (S) ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ PAIN TOLERANCE Frank was born with a naturally dulled sense of pain. Even before his bond with the symbiote, he was able to take unbelievable amounts of punishment without faltering. -
T H E S T O R Y S O F A R... T H E S T O R Y S O F A R...
My name is Frank Castle, and before The Reach, I was a lot like you. Stable career. Loving Wife. Ugly dog. Pair of beautiful kids. Living the dream. It can change in an instant at the end of a gun. We were innocent, having a picnic in the park. But we were in the way. Drug deal gone wrong. They died like animals. Sometimes I wish I died, too. Instead I woke up in a hospital a year later.
Next is the part you’ve heard. I had to hurt the men who hurt me. Open and shut revenge. Simple. Except for the part where it didn’t stop. Every door I kicked down, I expected to die on the other side of. Live like that long enough, without anything else to live for, and it quickly becomes all you know. At the beginning I would plan obsessively. Every weapon, every angle, every perp checked meticulously so that I knew, without doubt, that these were the men that deserved punishment. By the end, it was as simple as running into the next room and putting two between the eyes of the next gangbanger I saw. Simple revenge. Haha.
Only reason I figure I got away with it -- being The Punisher, wearing that skull-lookin’ armor, announcing my presence everywhere I went with a burst of machinegun fire -- was on account of the war. The PD and the Feds were spread thin, which gave every scumbag in the city license to do as they pleased. They needed support, and I was all that was coming. Maybe they thought I was helping hold the city together, even as I burned it down.
Next is the part you haven’t. My last weeks of it are the haziest of all. I remember the chug of the gun and seeing, for the first time, the colors of human and Reach blood swirling and mixing on the cracked concrete. I remember that they got me, hit me with some new weapon. I thought when I finally ran into The Reach, I’d die on the spot. Get a plasma hole bored through my guts or become a denatured pile of slime. Instead, I woke up in a cell.
I knew The Reach was experimenting on humans, we all did, but I didn’t think that meant they’d have a gene lab buried under Manhattan. Nothing they did to me seemed to take. I think they only kept me around as a control, a tough old bastard to measure their successes against. Even then, I expected to get binned fast. I know what happens to test animals. But their new subjects were few and far between. Fewer and fewer as the weeks and months dragged on. The Reach scientists spent more time in the facility than ever. They seemed cut off… But they were holding on.
This was the pattern for almost five years -- until last month. An asset transfer from another facility, a rare occasion. A thing sealed in a glass tube, running and shifting inside in inky black detail. The scientists were excited. They tried it on all kinds of things. Poured it over blocks, rocks, technology, weapons, even a few houseplants. No change. Until they started trying the animals. It would sink into their flesh, like it was disappearing against their skin. Then the shaking, the vomiting, the screaming. Then the sleep. You could watch, over an hour, as each strip of muscle and skin and sinew receded and faded until there was nothing left of the animal but a bleached skeleton and a quivering black mass sheltering in its ribcage.
They tried it on us next. There weren’t many of us human prisoners left. Only the hardest and the toughest. But it was the same for each of them. Bleached bones and a grinning skull staring at me from across the lab. Until me. It was almost natural coming onto my skin, pushing its tendrils through the gaps between my cells. It was destroying me. But it was rebuilding me. It spoke to me. There was a voice in my head. It needed to know only one thing. Was I ready to slaughter its captors? Or would it eat me like the rest, and try another?
My name is Frank Castle. Its name is Ven’ahm.
Together, we are The Punisher.
P L O T ( S ) & G O A L ( S ) P L O T ( S ) & G O A L ( S )
One of the fundamental tensions of the Punisher when held up against the rest of a superhero universe is: how justified can his actions really be? Here’s a mass murderer presenting himself as a necessary, brutal, bloody solution to problems a dopey teen in spandex could solve in seconds. You can handwave it to some extent with the scope of crime in a comic book universe, but you’ll always be asking yourself why any of a hundred heroes don’t put a stop to the madness. By giving him access to the symbiote, I think I can expose Frank to problems he is more of a justified solution for, especially in the context of Lord’s regime.
More importantly, the most interesting part of The Punisher, at least when talking about a game like this, is whether there could be a good person hiding somewhere in the depths of Frank’s blackened soul. We’ve seen Frank broken down a million times, what if he could be built up? What if he has a chance to grow or change or do something actually positive with his life. To set him on this path, he’s had a long time to think in that cell. Now he’s forced into a role he could never predict, as the adoptive father of a weird alien that lives on his skin that might be the one creature on the planet more naturally hateful than he is.
Issue 01
There are over eight million people in New York City, mashed in together and desperate for their own little slice of foxhole. Tonight there might as well be two: me and it. I thought once I got back out into the city I’d have a second to breathe and be home again. I’d take a couple big gulps of that shitty, polluted, delicious New York air and my head would be set straight. The fog would disappear and so would I into the streets I knew better than my own face.
Instead all I could think about was the thing clinging to my skin and the sweat running off every part of my body. It was finally asleep, or something like it. In the lab, in that cell, it latched onto me with its sick darkness and spread until it covered me, molded to me. It was everywhere, forcing its tendrils through my body, evaluating, tasting. I’ve done terrible things to my body -- been slashed, shot, filled with shrapnel. I’ve pulled bullets out of my chest without anesthetic, feeling the long metal tweezer deep in my flesh every inch of the way. I could handle this, the burrowing feeling around my heart and liver, the waves of tension and pain radiating across my skull, even the way my sinuses filled with ooze and threatened to burst. Then the voice.
It sounded like someone was whispering to me from the space between my ears. Its speech barely held together, made up of sickening moist slaps and grinding, guttural consonants. It sounded like a still-bleeding pile of offal had found a way to speak. It called itself Venom, and it needed to get out. I was the only one it had found that seemed strong enough. It said the others broke before they could try. How long would it take me to break, it wondered?
I didn’t answer it with my words. I couldn’t, suffocating on darkness. I remembered a time from out on deployment, when the rain was coming down harder than the bullets and the wind screamed and begged like a dying man. A bolt of lightning darted over camp and detonated the biggest, oldest cypress around and covered the whole platoon in wood chips and embers. The core of the tree became an inferno, blazing and roiling inside like a portal to Hell itself while its outsides hissed and spat at the oncoming rain. The next morning, all that was left of the tree was a glassy, obsidian-black stump that radiated heat like a furnace. You could feel that heat, standing by that stump, for weeks and months. I think it still burns today. It still does, inside me.
It took the lead. It fought like an unchained bull, rushing through and goring everything in its path with unbelievable strength. It took the form of a massive man, all tooth and muscle, sealed around me like a coffin as it did its work. It smashed out of our cell and killed everything left in the lab within an hour. Then it ate. It took us to their bodies like a keen vulture, picked out the morsels it found most interesting and slurped them into its bizarre gullet. Then, as quickly as it formed, it faded away. The coffin opened and receded beneath my skin. The voice went quiet.
I had hope it spent itself in the killing. Maybe after all was said and done I could piss the fucker out like I’ve done a hundred other poisons I’ve put in me. I found the way to open the door to the lab after an hour of searching and got out into the sewers. The rot and garbage smelled like home. Then the shakes started. Figured I might die like the others -- they went pretty quick. ‘Venom’ must have had his use of me. It would devour me and attach itself to the next chump who didn’t expire on contact. Maybe it had eaten enough to stand on its own. It felt like a thousand beetles swarmed through my insides, devouring my muscles and my organs, and every step I took made them angrier.
I managed to trudge my way out to the streets and into the ruins of some smashed up homeless camp. Not unusual in this city. I was used to the law overstepping their bounds. But this one looked bad. The burn marks on the trodden-on tent vinyl did not tell a happy story. Neither did the dried, anonymous blood that I found myself hoping was very old. That part hoping was the same part that still raged against the madness that plagued this city. It was the part that knew all the drug dealers and the dirty cops, the human traffickers, the suits, the scum were all still out there, rampant, begging for punishment. It was the part I learned to quiet in the cell. I had enough of raging and breaking my knuckles on the walls. I already doled out plenty of punishment. I remembered David Lieberman, my oldest friend. He was with me from the beginning, my eyes and ears on the web. After that first year of being the Punisher, he would always ask why we had to keep going. We had long since killed the men from that day in the park. I always had some justification for him. Something about drugs or guns proliferating, gangs, cops, The Reach, or about anything else within reach. Could I look him in the eye and tell him the same now? I still felt the alien eating away at me, but maybe I had enough time left to find out.
I fished a set of holey jeans and a shredded coat from the camp and made my way to Lieberman’s. It looked the same on the outside, a ramshackle converted tenement held together mostly by hope and Dave’s shitty DIY jobs. As I got closer, I realized it wasn’t the usual spit-and-span look. His door was hanging half off its hinges. Like someone had broken it down. I saw a chair in the doorway, propped up feebly as if it would give the door any of its stability back. Dave was still living there, alright. I pushed my way inside and found him in his living room.
“Frank!?” Lieberman was on his knees, stuffing a hurricane of clothes and what had to be every electronic he owned into a too-small suitcase. What hair he had left was as much of a mess as his house. Lieberman dropped an L-pad on the hardwood as soon as he saw me. He put his head in his hands. “This is the craziest fucking night of my life…”
“Finally moving to Florida?” I asked. Half a joke. He always talked about the problems in his neighborhood, how it was no place to start a family. But his eyes were bloodshot, his whole pudgy frame shaking. Even on the worst nights of the Punisher, when the gangs and the cops were all out for blood, he was sat in here behind his desk without worry, chaining his nicotine patches and staying in touch all night. Now I saw there was a packet of the cigarettes he tried so hard to quit wedged into his shirt pocket.
“What did you get into? I thought you were all about laying low.” I asked. Lieberman was always the careful one. While I ran around on my crusade with no mask and no concern for myself, he erased digital trails and security footage. He would sabotage security measures and detections, and had even wiped himself from multiple government databases.
“A man broke in here tonight and managed to spill everything I was stupid enough to keep over the years…” Dave shook his head. “They’re going to come down on me like the hammer of God.”
“We’ve gotten around the cops before.” I said. The NYPD was almost as slow as it was greedy. They could have reformed since I was away, but if I knew anything about the Police union in the city, I doubted it.
“It’s not the cops I’m worried about. It’s The Agency.” Lieberman said. He bit his thumbnail that was already bitten down. He looked ready to tear it off.
“Agency?” I grunted out the question. I could feel the creature around what I was sure was my heart, plucking it like some crude instrument. But still I stood.
“You don’t know?” Dave struggled for a moment, saw the faraway look on my face. “They’re… They’re ‘the Punisher’ for guys like us.” I could almost laugh. Spend five years in a cell, and get out only to find they’re coming harder than ever. It figured. But if anyone was asking for it, it was me.
“Don’t we deserve it, Lieberman? The things we’ve done?” I rasped. I’ve killed too many men for either of us to remember. Every street corner around held the memory of that bloodshed. Did they all deserve it? I thought so. But the more I thought about it, the more it became ‘hope so’.
“We’re not the only ones who will eat shit for this, Frank. I’ve got -- I’ve got --” Lieberman stammered. As he spoke, the door to his basement swung wide and a pair of little feet padded in.
“Dad? What’s going on?” There was a little boy at the top of Dave’s stairs, wearing a Knicks t-shirt a size too big. He looked a lot like Frank Jr. used to, the dark hair and the big, mysterious eyes. Except for the scales in neon colors that ran all over his body, peeking out at his neck and all over the backs of his hands.
“David Jr! Back downstairs. Finish packing, now,” Lieberman said. The boy yelped and fled back into the dark of the basement. Guilt sat in my throat. Dave managed to make a life for himself, and I already ruined it. Now I was exposing them to the thing soon to eat me inside out. I had to go.
“He’s a mutant, Frank,” Dave said, like I couldn’t tell, “they’ll kill him.” Mutant bigotry was nothing new, especially on the force. I’d seen a lot of young officers drummed out on trumped up violations for trying to fight against it. There was no telling how rampant it was in this ‘Agency’, but Dave’s look gave me a pretty good impression.
Before I could say anything, move to go, I heard a scratch and crackle outside. The telltale sound of a bullhorn turning on. Dave had run out of time. In my earlier days I would have heard the approach, the wheels crunching on the gravel or the hum of an overtuned cruiser engine. Instead, our new arrivals got the first word:
“David Lieberman! We have you surrounded! Come out with your hands up!” It was some overeager trooper, excited to make his first big bust. They showed fast. It didn’t sound like they were expecting me. I had to stay to give Lieberman a chance, as much of one as I could give him dying on his living room floor.
“You still keep the pump in the same spot, Dave?” I forced myself over to his mantle, ignoring the feeling of alien fibers worming through my muscles.
Dave’s jaw dropped. “You’re not armed?”
“Get downstairs. You two need to get out in the confusion. Go to the old spot. I’ll hold them as long as I can.” I hoped it would be long enough. I only had so many shells, and there was no telling how long I could resist the alien once the shots started coming. As long as Dave could get out, everything would be alright.
Lieberman nodded too many times and scurried to the basement door. I reached up inside the fireplace and closed my hands around a wooden stock. It was the same sawn off pump-action shotgun I’d stashed with him since I became the Punisher. So he could better protect himself, I told him. I just hope he maintained the damn thing.
“Frank? When did you change?” It was Lieberman, looking back at me from the top of the stairs.
“We’ll catch up later, Lieberman,” I said. We wouldn’t. This would be the Punisher’s last dance.
“Your clothes, Frank,” Dave said.
“What?” I looked down at myself and beheld the skull I had worn for five years, the one that now lived in my dreams and the nightmares of countless others.
B L A D E / V I G I L A N T E B L A D E / V I G I L A N T E
"Now I don’t know, but I’ve been told, monster teeth are worth more n’ gold…"
C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T
A L L I E S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ Hannibal King ◼ Frank Drake ◼ Quincy Harker ◼ Sir Justin Arthur, Shining Knight -
A N T A G O N I S T S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ Dracula, Prince of Lies, King of Vampires ◼ Xarus, Son of Dracula ◼ Deacon Frost ◼ William Mowse, The Black Star ◼ Arcade -
I N T E R E S T E D ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ Boston Brand, Deadman ◼ Detective Chimp -
P O S T C A T A L O G U E P O S T C A T A L O G U E
I done a hundred different jobs over the years. Tending the farm with Pap, early mornings and long days, muscles aching from dragging farm equipment bigger n’ I was. Was a paperboy a little while. Became a fry cook in my teens and hated it more n’ anything. Was always more of a cow rearer than a burger flipper. Odd jobs after that, running round town like a headless chicken. I repaired shoes, was a tailor, forged a couple no-good sets of nails, sold power tools at some big box store, performed as a trickshooter, plus many more and many much less glamorous. Then, of course, there was the band.
If you’ve heard of me from anywhere, it’s there. Greg Saunders of the Prairie Troubadours, the best little rock band in Texas. Played in packed bars and talent shows and high school football games, anywhere that’d take us, and we loved it. I was the dark horse of that band. Lead gee-tar, backup vocalist, wearing a cowboy hat darker n’ the night sky. We were gettin’ bigger by the day, livin’ in high cotton. Had fans following us in the rain, screaming our names. It was plain to us that a record deal’d be coming down soon. I took a little vacation. Just a week or two away from the boys to get back to my Pap’s old farm and jaw with him about how things were going for his kid. We were worried about selling out, see, wanted to keep the music pure. I thought my Pap would know more about that than anyone. He sure did, but… That conversation seems so far away now, so fanciful. We were talking about our harvest when the field lay fallow and dead before us.
I came back to a bloodbath. I don’t remember what the cops told me. They dressed it all up in fancy language and condolences that fell on my ears like static from an unplugged amp. I begged and they let me see the pictures. Saw the whole band. Billy Gunn, Danny Leong, Bat Lash, Raph Sandoval… They were bled to death, slaughtered like farm animals. The news crushed me beneath it like a bale of agony. The officers couldn’t make heads nor tails of it. They couldn’t decide if it was some serial killer or a one off incident, some spurned fan or a random attack. Not too long before they quit looking. Don’t know if they got paid off, or if they found something too terrible, too dangerous for them to continue. Don’t matter much now. What does is that I took it into my hands.
I took up the name Vigilante. In white hat and red bandana I ran down ne’er-do-wells of every stripe, grasping for leads about anyone who coulda done this. Wasn’t no investigator. Just a kid with a pair of handguns, a lariat, and a righteous fury. Roughed up city slickers and country crooks, gangsters and mafiosos. Inching closer to the truth. Got good at it, running down leads, helping folk wherever I went. I rationalized what happened for myself as I worked. Surely it was a brutal hit or a depraved killer that took my friends from me. It took time to peel back the veil and peer at the hideous truth before me.
Dead things walk among us. Zombies, ghouls, vampires. You can deny it if you like, but I ain’t got much time for doubters. I know what I’ve seen, men falling apart as they’re walking, creatures that fly on great leathery wings. I been on this trail five years now, searching for answers for that night. Finding the suckhead sons-of-bitches that done it. It's brought me to darker places than I could dream of… Places where things aren’t just bumping in the night. Places like that are where I met him.
Near as I can tell, he’s done just one job over these years, and that’s killing vampires. He tells me that he’s had a lot of names over the years, but that Blade is the simplest. If he’s got a real name, he ain’t sharing it. He don’t share much, in fact, don’t talk too much at all. Least not to me. He’s a tall black feller who can be known by his habits of wearing heavy leather and shades absolutely everywhere he goes. Not to mention the sword hanging off his back. He’s the first professional vampire hunter I’ve ever met. He might be the best there ever was.
But he avoids me like I’m slicker than pig snot on a radiator. Some country bumpkin, ruining his hunt. But I need him. Spent five years spinning my wheels with not much to show for it besides a pile of random mobsters and toughs in chains or dead. Comes a man like him, what actually knows what he’s doing? I can’t let him pass me by.
P L O T ( S ) & G O A L ( S ) P L O T ( S ) & G O A L ( S )
Back in the saddle again. Trying to rediscover the passion that let me bang out posts like a maniac in my younger years, I'm rolling a combination of a character that has always spoken to me, and a comparatively new hotness that has captured my imagination. Blade and Vigilante will tear through the south, discovering all manner of strange places and circumstances perverted by vampiric machinations. The vampires' grip on the country and the world entire will prove deeper and more insidious than either man could ever imagine.
But to be frank I don't have much of a plan. I have some cool allies and enemies I'd like to encounter, and I'd love the chance to write alongside and cross over with my friends again, simple as. The hope is to get into a rhythm and do a little more every day, and for me, this spooky pair is the ticket.
GARTH OF SHAYERIS ♦ PRINCE OF IDYLLS ♦ ATLANTIC OCEAN
O R I G I N S:
The son of King Thar of Shayeris and Queen Berra of Crastinus, Garth represents the new hope that is the United Kingdom of Shayeris and Crastinus, one of the twelve undersea kingdoms that comprise Poseidonis. Under the tutelage of the High Mage, Vulko, Garth is coming of age in a realm of magic that stands in firm opposition to Venturia’s warmongering. This has thrust the boy into the midst of undersea politics he doesn’t yet understand, as his uncle, Slizzath, conspires to bring about events that will propel him to power at great cost to life both above and below the surface.
As the United States prepares to sink the aircraft carrier USS Trafalgar with the stated goal of creating an artificial reef, events are set into motion that will upend Garth’s royal life and ask the question of whether one boy alone can stop the tide of war with the surface.
S A M P L E P O S T:
THE UNITED KINGDOM OF SHAYERIS & CRASTINUS The Hamlet of Thierna na Oge
There was so much blood in the water.
At first, he’d thought that it was just sediment. The visibility around the tremendous impact sending hundreds of pounds up from the ocean floor to create a veritable fog in which the boy could no longer see the hand in front of his face.
It was a quick and sobering realization that debris was not the only thing floating around him. Luckily, the cold waters around him stole away his tears as quickly as they sprang.
Taking a deep breath, the youth steeled himself. Even without his sight, the boy’s sense of location could pick out each of the guards around him in turn. “What are you standing around me for?”
From the murky blackness the thoughts of the man-at-arms was quick to answer, “Your Highness, it isn’t safe!”
“Yes, and our people need your protection,”the boy charged
He could feel the guards checking in with one another. After an awkward silence, a voice finally offered, “I’ll stay with the prince.”
The boy gave a sigh of relief, releasing a breath he’d held in anticipation of being dragged back to Shayeris and thrown into a room. To wait around with tutors while others did the work that needed to be done.
Or worse, catered to him when that attention was needed elsewhere.
“With me,” the boy said, not wanting to yield for even a second when it seemed the hand had loosened on the reigns that sought to tether him to a throne that was not yet his.
N O T E S:
Tha-Korr is King of Atlantis, but I will make no references to Fen or Atlanna, so the royal family of Atlantis is free to be interpreted by anyone who may wish to pick up Arthur/Orin or Namor. Similarly, I will make no reference to Tom Curry, Amnesty Bay, Nereus, Mera, or Xebel.
I have no plans to introduce Black Manta, so if anyone wants to use him and/or introduce a version of Khaldur'am/Jackson Hyde, they're free to do so.
Planned Rogue Gallery is Slizzath and Attuma for the undersea side of the plot, and Dr. Dorcas and the Scavenger for the surface side of the plot. Future plots may also use Suma-Ket, the Dead King, and the Unforgiven Dead.
Surface side plot involves Beachrock, Massachusetts.
Support Cast: Deputy Wilson, McCaffey, Quisp (Silver Age version), Mar (Alpha Flight)
"The Brine" people refers to Marvel's Plodex race in this merged undersea-verse.
P O S T C A T A L O G:
tbd
and with apologies to the magnanimous Bounce for the delays, Garth is accepted! Excited to see what you do with Atlantis and its kingdoms.
MB may swoop in and disagree, but Sep and I are feeling we can't take Danny Phantom at this juncture. There are still plenty of Marvel and DC characters up for grabs, and we have already denied a Power Rangers concept, so we'd both feel a little weird accepting this despite that. I do really like the sheet, though, and we may be willing to reconsider once the game's possibility space is filled out a little more Or failing that app this once I gather my courage and run a Fusionfall game.
“Judo is the way to the most effective use of both physical and spiritual strength.” - Jigoro Kano
Central Park at five AM blurred past in a rush of green foliage and dark pavement. The fresh dew filled Luke’s nostrils and the early morning chirps of the park’s critters filled his ears. That, and the dulcet tones of Danny Rand’s voice.
“I don’t need your wushu chinese bullshit right now, Danny,” Luke said. The roadwork was taking its toll on him. Since Danny had turned up at Luke’s door weeks ago, they’d taken to training together. It wasn’t a smooth thing, finding a place in your new life for your childhood friend -- one who was supposed to be dead. But training was the best thing for it, to work together in silence and adjust to each other’s presence. In theory it was silence.
“It’s not wushu, it’s parapsychology. Synchronicity.” Danny’s breathing was lighter than Luke’s, but he had about fifty fewer pounds of muscle to worry about. A mile back he had mentioned something about yogic breathing and it reminded Luke of the way Danny used to brag about all the techniques he knew, because he was just so good at martial arts. Never mind the fact that it was really his parents money getting him into all those classes and teaching him all those extra things.
“Parapsych is so much better,” Luke snorted and pressed harder. Every slam of his sneakers into the concrete path rocked up through his legs, and he tried to use the sensation to drown out Danny’s droning explanation.
“When things happen soon after one another, and have no discernable connection, yet appear meaningfully related. For most people, at most times, it’s little things. You think of a song and you hear it when you next turn on the radio. You think of an old friend and soon see them unexpectedly…”
Luke laughed, and his sides stabbed at him for his trouble. “You trying to convince me we have some special connection, Rand?”
“I’m not not suggesting it, but I’m thinking bigger actually. Put it to you this way: ten days ago, some kid wrestler in a spider mask floors a three hundred pound champion with one strike. A week ago, a streak of horizontal lightning blasted through Central City. Yesterday, people saw a man in Metropolis actually flying over the skyline.”
What was Danny trying to say? That the ‘rules’ had changed? Luke knew that better than anyone. He’d known it from the moment the needles broke his skin and filled his whole body with icy fire, so that he could never be broken again. It only took part way, the change was literally only skin deep. But that was enough to smash his way through guards, prisoners, and brick walls alike until he reached freedom. In his escape he’d taken handgun shots to the chest and they had actually bounced off. It was impossible.
But he knew, from the deep bruises and the joint pain, it was real. Every blow his unblemished skin had absorbed had certainly saved his life, but ravaged the muscles beneath. By the time the adrenaline wore out he collapsed two miles from the prison. Over the next six months he recovered and rebuilt his body from the ground up, making his way back to the city in small jumps, week by week. Here, now, back in the city with Danny was near the end of his training, putting on the finishing touches and achieving his final goals. But what did Danny know?
When Luke asked what had happened to him, Danny told some story about finding some place in the mountains where the ‘old masters’ lived. Luke took that to mean, ‘I don’t want to talk about it’. It figured. Kid probably had to watch his mom die out there. Mrs. Rand was one of the good ones, if there ever were good rich people. She always brought a smile and fancy lunches for all the kids at the dojo. There was always a little extra for Luke, she’d say it was for all the ‘trouble’ Danny was giving him. It figured that even the ‘good’ ones still couldn’t help but try to make all their kid’s messes go away. Mr. Rand was a spiteful bastard whose lip would curl in disgust every time it was his turn to collect his hellion from the dojo and from all the unwashed masses inside. Mr. Rand had the good fortune to not be on the plane that took his wife’s life, and had dropped out of Luke’s attention almost entirely since then, except for the man’s habit of investment in independent fight promotions. Rand had never spoken a word about finding his son in the aftermath of the disappearance, but Danny showing up now told Luke the whole story.
Most likely, Danny got recovered by his father’s people somewhere out in the mountains while his dad milked the ‘disappearance’ for what it was worth. Probably shipped the kid around the world to whatever dojos would take his donations. But there had to have been some kind of fallout between them, and recently. Kid probably made some indiscretion in a foreign land and got left out in the cold. Danny had come to Luke with a face covered in a scraggly beard that hid most of his features. He smelled like he hadn’t showered in a year. He’d since shaven and bathed, but he still had the look of a man that had lived on the road for some time.
The first thing you noticed about Danny were his hands. Luke remembered Danny having little twigs for fingers that young Luke hoped would snap every time he hit the bag. But now his fingers and palms were thick and rough, almost as big as Luke’s. It had to be the product of hundreds or thousands of hours striking a leather coated makiwara, or from living it rough out in the sticks... Maybe Danny had learned something out there. But he had a funny way of showing it, with his endless rants about eastern philosophy garbage. Luke was about to tell Danny to can it when he saw a man down along their path.
“Sweet Christmas,” Luke said. He saw Danny almost laugh at the expression before his eyes caught the figure approaching down the concrete paved path. Carl fucking Creel. The Crusher. You could tell it was Creel from a mile away, by the way his glistening bald head seemed to come to a fine point that caught the light of the early morning sky.
“Small city, Lucas,” Creel said. He smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes. He refused to break Luke’s gaze.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Luke asked. As far as he knew, Creel was still due another few years in lockup, back down in Georgia. Creel came to a stop a dozen paces away.
“A guy can’t visit the greatest city on earth?” Creel cocked his head at Luke. He laughed. “I’ll tell you this much -- your escape made a lot of opportunities for a lot of people. I just took advantage of one of them.”
Luke caught Danny gazing back and forth between them bemusedly. This was another one of the things about new Danny, the way he’d look at you like a greened out stoner who was sure he was well beyond whatever you had to say.
“So you’re not here for me?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say that. Two fighters meet, and there’s no one around to object. What else is there to do?” Creel was right. In this part of the park, at this time of day, it was dead. The only thing around besides the three of them, the grass, and the pavement, was a bench a half dozen yards away. If Creel made this a fight, he could clobber them and get away without attracting too much attention.
Luke was gassed. They had been driving hard for the last two hours and he was about at the end of his stamina. But this was only Crusher Creel. He could have done a hundred times what Danny did for hand conditioning and it wouldn’t change the simple fact that an all out bare knuckle strike would break against Luke’s skin.
“You really want me to teach you this lesson again?” Luke said. He took a step forward and his calf tightened into a charley horse. Luke dug his fingernails into his palm and felt them crack against his skin.
“I was thinking I’d teach you one this time, actually. Six months is a long time,” Creel took a knee. Luke raised an eyebrow.
“A lesson in forgiveness, I hope,” Danny chimed in. He pulled a yellow bandana out of his pocket.
“This guy isn’t someone you wanna play with, Danny,” Luke said. Over the last few weeks, Danny had shown himself to be a huge proponent of light sparring. To his mind, you avoided injury and developed all the same skills. It told Luke all he needed to know, that Danny had only ever been in ‘matches’.
In prison, it was against the rules to teach any martial system, but that didn't stop the yard fights. Luke didn't get in many, but most of the ones he was in involved Creel. They were brawls where men laid their lives on the line, but Creel went harder than most anyone. The man was a savage striker, and had cracked Luke's skull more than once. On the outside the man had been a boxer with a powerful jab cross combo. But the last time Creel tried it on Luke, he shattered his hand on Luke’s new, unbreakable face.
“I don’t need to hear from the bench. But don’t worry -- I’ll show your friend here how to give a proper apology,” Creel said to Danny. He touched his right knuckle to the bare pavement. It was the same hand Luke had broken. Traces of gray appeared on the back of his hand and for an instant Luke thought Creel was going pale. It was the same shade and texture as the concrete, leaping up Creel’s arm and across his whole body. It was like he was absorbing the concrete straight out of the sidewalk, into the pores of his skin.
“Let’s see how tough you are in a real street fight, Carl Lucas.” Creel stood and grinned at him. Even his crooked smile, still missing the teeth Luke had taken from him, was the same gray pavement. Luke swallowed. There had to be stranger things in the world, Danny had just listed some of them, but it wasn’t often that an asshole from the clink turned himself into a jersey barrier that was ready to throw hands.
“Oh, Luke…” Danny had wrapped the bandana across his face so that it hid his eyes behind white lenses. He was smiling, “he really is someone I want to play with.” He stepped in front of Luke and threw his arms wide, presenting himself. “How about trying me on for size?”
The stone faced man laughed. “Oh yeah? Fucking try it, new meat. I’ll take the warm up. Hit me a hundred times -- a thousand times -- I won’t give an inch. That’s a boxer’s guarantee. I’m unbreakable.” He thumped a fist against his chest and it sounded like a sledgehammer.
“I don’t have to hit you. I just have to throw you. I’m going to beat you,” Danny said, “with only judo.” He swayed back, his challenge accepted, and brought his arms together, fist in hand.
“You’re funny, bandana,” Creel snickered.
Danny bowed to Creel.
“What the fuck was that?”
Luke’s chest tightened. Danny was serious. Only judo. But this wasn’t a spar anymore, like all the matches Luke and Danny had. Could he tell how serious Creel was? The stone smile was disappearing from his face, and he seemed to tighten across his whole body. It was like every facet of his concrete form, down to the black specs of his eyes hidden in the mass of his flesh, was a bull prepared to charge… and Danny insisted on waving the red cape.
“My name is Danny…” Danny assumed his pose, two open hands, one in front of the other, “Danny Rand, ninth dan black belt of the K’un Lun Kōdōkan. I’m thanking you for giving me the chance to improve my technique. I hope you will take this opportunity to improve yours.”
Luke knew the power in Creel’s hands. He could have cracked Danny’s head open like an egg before his change. A ninth dan black belt or not (which sounded like more Rand flavor bullshit), Luke had seen Creel drop guys with just as much fancy martial arts training. It didn’t compare. He was about to watch Danny kill himself on Creel’s superhuman fists, and he couldn’t coax his damn leg to move.
“Danny…” was all he was able to get out before Creel charged and Danny moved. It was over. One swipe from the concrete cudgels of Creel’s hands would crush through Danny’s bones. He heard the noise before he registered what happened, the thunderous crackling of his old friend having his body shattered. He couldn’t look. Only…
Creel had hit the ground. What? Luke did a double take. He hadn’t seen it, whatever Danny had done. There he was, standing over Creel, mugging like an idiot, none the worse for wear, while the big man recovered.
“Maybe you can tell me…” Danny hopped backwards, avoiding a swipe from Creel’s forearm. “Why are you here? In New York, I mean. Sure sounds like you’ve come a long way,” Danny sidestepped an uppercut as Creel launched himself to his feet. His dodges were crisp, but Creel’s moves were only half committed. Danny was way ahead of himself, to think he could just chat Creel up. He was on the knife’s edge.
“Same reason anybody who’s anybody is here, punk. Meta-Brawl.” Creel said. His composure hadn’t shaken one measure. He was already adapting, sidling just out of Danny’s effective reach. Danny had to have gotten lucky with his first move. Creel was a professional. Luke had seen Danny try crazy things in their spars before; cede an opening, drop a block, and go for something ‘cute’ when they least expect it. They were just the kinds of things men like Creel worked day and night to iron out of their routines, to easily defend against and crush upstarts without discipline. In the professional’s world, only truly practiced techniques and refined principles mattered. Yet here Danny was, pulling another crazy stunt.
“What’s a ‘Meta-Brawl’?” Danny tilted his head and lowered his shoulder. Danny was dangling his chin, his end-it-in-one button, in front of a boxer like a shank of meat.
“One audition with powers like these, and I’m a shoe in for the big leagues. Night after night, I’ll get to face real champions in real fights. Not half rate dorks like you two,” Creel said. He saw the opening and threw a cross. Danny bobbed under it by a centimeter, grabbing Creel’s leading shoulder and wrapping a hand around his waist. Danny turned and Creel tumbled over the smaller man’s hip and crashed to the ground. Luke realized Danny lied to Creel, in a sense. Danny was relying on judo’s speciality, and he was hitting Creel -- with the earth itself.
“You’re a man after my own heart, Creel,” Danny grinned at him while Creel brought himself to one knee. The concrete had cracked across Creel’s back and chest. A spider web of lines and tumbling pebbles defined his jaw. “You can’t stop chasing the next challenge, can you?”
“And you can’t stop sticking your nose into fights that ain’t yours, huh kid?” Creel stood and adjusted his guard, now presenting his shoulder first to Danny -- the Philly shell. Creel was on the backfoot and he knew it.
“I think I already get you… You’re not here for revenge on Luke. You need to prove to yourself you can beat him. I’ve been there.”
“Get this!” Creel stepped in and threw a combination. Flicker jab, cross, straight, flicker, flicker, uppercut, no matter which move Danny weaved between them. Creel might as well have been in slow motion. Somehow Danny the punk was moving like he’d fought Creel ten thousand times. Was Danny that familiar with boxing too? Where did he find the time?
But Creel saw it too. Danny knew boxing too well. Creel turned out of his defensive stance and flicked his knee up. It wasn’t a practiced motion, totally outside the scope of boxing, but it was enough to set off Danny’s reflexes.
Danny moved to dodge the surprise knee, but it was a feint. Creel’s real straight rocked into Danny’s cheek and he stumbled backwards. Danny spat out a mouthful of blood and Luke cringed for him. Danny smiled.
“Incredible. You’re just incredible, Creel,” Danny flowed back into his stance. Creel bellowed and the dance began again.
It hit Luke like one of Creel’s crosses, just what Danny meant about synchronicity. He wasn’t talking about something as small as the pair of them, or something so insignificant as unbreakable skin or a body made of concrete. He was already thinking farther ahead than Luke could have dreamed: he was thinking about a world where people could climb again.
Creel was the biggest guy on the prison yard by almost a full head, rippling with muscle and bristling with a decade of experience. He didn’t need to train any harder, he was already the best. Until Luke arrived, a man almost as large and with a mountain more technique. Formal martial instruction of any kind was banned, but that didn’t stop the muscle shearing workouts and the breathless, whispered discussions of anything that could give a man an edge. Soon it spread beyond Creel and Luke, even the inmates who had never seen their fights knew what was possible. The ceiling had been raised.
It was a truth well beyond the scope of one prison. In the world of sprinters it was the ten second barrier, in the history of high jumpers it was the two meter mark. One person achieves something thought impossible, and dozens come out of the woodwork with the talent to claim the same achievement. What would happen in a world where the ceiling wasn’t raised by a tenth of a second or a handful of centimeters, but to the dizzying height of a Superman?
Danny was living proof that a man, a lone judoka, could climb in that world, and knock on the ceiling alongside the titans. And he was climbing fast. Creel hit the pavement again and split the air with a sickening ‘CRUNCH’.
Creel had to be at his limit. He was actually dragging himself along the ground now, arms shaking. But his focus hadn’t dropped, his bullish brow stayed firm as he clawed across the concrete, hardened fingers leaving furrows in their wake. The man was beaten, but he didn’t know it yet. Danny just had to… The bench. Luke had forgotten about it, but now it was only a foot away from Creel, metallic surface gleaming in the early morning sun.
Luke couldn’t move. His legs wailed at him, but there was no way he could make it to the bench and heave it away before Creel could get there. If Creel could coat his body with metal, just like the pavement, the fight really would be over. But Danny saw it coming.
“No.” Danny grabbed Creel’s wrist an inch from the bench and twisted. Creel’s determination dropped and he scurried along like a panicked animal with Danny’s flowing motions, around and away from the bench.
Danny laughed and released him, the concrete beast flopped on the ground, rock on rock cracking together in a drum roll. “I’ll admit, Creel, you made me break my promise. You made me use aikido, and you surprised me again. You’re a clever guy! Most people who haven’t seen that move before would end up letting me break their arms. But let’s finish this, huh? I’ve got one last judo doozy for ya, I think you’ll like it.”
As Creel staggered to his feet for the last time, all Luke could think about was how small the big man was before Danny. Luke wasn’t looking at the brash boy from Pop’s anymore, he wasn’t a spoiled bullshido brat, and he wasn’t just a judoka. Judo, boxing, aikido, and more besides… He was a weapon.
Danny danced inside Creel’s guard and hooked his left leg around the concrete man’s right ankle. His left hand found its place under Creel’s chin, and he tripped the titan over his calf. Danny jerked and brought his whole weight up and through his palm as soon as Creel’s feet left the ground, the sheer impact shattered a whole slab of sidewalk as Creel’s head smashed into the dirt beneath.
Creel looked like his face had been in the oven too long, puffed up and cracked open all over to reveal the punished, bruised skin beneath. The man was out cold, and the concrete armor was beginning to fade away, dropping off from his skin in chunks.
“Yeah…” Danny nodded to himself, “he’d like to learn that one for sure. If he remembers it when he wakes up.” He wiped blood away from his mouth with the back of his hand, and then went fishing in his pocket. He pulled out a business card, one from Pop’s, and threw it onto Creel’s slowly rising and falling chest.
“Do you have a death wish? You’re giving our address to a guy who wants to kick both our asses?”
“I want to know more about this ‘Meta-Brawl’ thing…” Danny pointed at the card, “and that’s a way to find out.”
“There have got to be easier ways to find out than inviting this guy to our place.”
“Yeah. But our gym needs more students if we want to make rent. He has potential.”
“The potential to kill us both.”
“Or, the potential to be one of the best sparring partners we’ve ever had. With the proper application of will and kindness, a great enemy can become a great friend.”
“Okay, that sounds like wushu chinese bullshit.”
A bonus section, dear readers! I thought it would be neat to include these.
-My Luke swears. I know its not vanilla, but its just the voice I found for him. I tried a couple times to remove them but it never felt right. And anyway, I think it reflects his changed origin a touch better. He's still a pastor's son, but a born-and-raised Georgia boy he ain't.
-Danny’s initial synchronicity rant is in part a reference to the start of the 2018 Baki anime, but I thought it would also be a nice way to lampshade the emergence. The back half of it, Luke’s part, is also a bit of a reference to Kengan Omega.
-In both this post and my sample I’ve had Danny using Japanese martial arts. This is in part because I’m more familiar with those systems, and in part because I’m still thinking about what the precise components of the K’un Lun style are. I think Danny knows all kinds of martial arts, but I want to pin down what’s special stylistically about K’un Lun’s particular permutation of kung fu. Plus, its one of my goals to try and have this story show as many unique styles as possible.
-Judo nerds will know that the Kōdōkan is the name of the oldest Judo dojo, founded by Jigoro Kano, founder of Judo. In this case, I imagine several of his students (if not Kano himself) have wound up in K’un Lun over the years, and established their own branch of the Kōdōkan within.
-And martial arts nerds will also know that a 9th dan is kind of ridiculous, especially on a man cross training so many arts. A dan is typically only given after a fairly extreme amount of time once already at the black belt level, but I figured I could handwave and give Danny this achievement because he’s supposed to be a special martial arts wizard or whatever.
In which CLARK KENT extolls the virtues of his morning commute and gleans some details from passersby about the mysterious hacker known as the ‘TOYMAN’. After a heated all-hands meeting with PERRY WHITE, Clark joins fellow press LOIS LANE and JIMMY OLSEN in the field to investigate an explosion at a Luthorcorp facility.
In which a mister KEITH KINCAID struggles to service a communications array in the bitter Alaskan cold, seeming to lose his friend Wilford along the way, all while a mysterious voice croons from the radio. Meanwhile, THOR himself grapples with the cold and his exile, only to see his faithful hammer Mjolnir crash beside him -- and that he is no longer worthy to wield it.
In which FRANK CASTLE has a polite little interrogation with one Nicky Francesco. Francesco spills the beans on a club called The Stardust Lounge where Frank can find one of his targets, a capo called BILLY ‘THE BEAUT’ RUSSO. Francesco adds to Frank’s body count.
In which hotshot JOHNNY STORM gets (rightfully) chewed out by his sister SUSAN STORM. We get filled in on the Fantastic family’s particular and peculiar circumstances and hear about Johnny’s fiery night on the town that ends with him stark nude.
In which BARRY ALLEN gives IRIS WEST her brand new supersuit. Flirting is attempted by both, and understood by neither. Finally, Iris races off on her first adventure as The Flash!
In which THE QUESTION tries to use his position in the Hub City Gazette as a cudgel of justice against the new Mayor Fermin, and gets dumped and thrown out of his job on his ass for his trouble. He manages to find a new gig to keep his head above water, but time for VIC SAGE is running out. Every violent night as The Question brings him closer to his goal, and closer to his own funeral. A fateful encounter with the martial assassin LADY SHIVA finally brings him to his watery grave, but the butterfly’s wings still beat.
In which VIC SAGE remembers his first time watching a man die, and struggles in the darkness to grapple with the death of his own ego. Half dead and fished out from the deep by LADY SHIVA and TOT RODOR, Vic is placed into the care of the legendary martial artist RICHARD DRAGON. After a year of training, Vic reforms himself into a new man, one ready to ask all the right Questions.
In which Vic begins his journey to Hub City, and takes his first stop at the home of a kindly, queer old man. Charmed and heartened by stories of the man’s late husband, another Victor, Vic reflects on all the people he’s left behind, from Tot to his new boss, and most especially his ex-girlfriend Myra Fermin.
Captain Uni
RPM
Sep
Ducksworth
xVampire3go
Antlers
Kaithe Dame
