Enarr — Roleplayer Guild

Lightning in a Bottle
"Sometimes things have to go wrong in order to go right." -Sherrilyn Kenyon

The Historical District, Empire City
3:30 PM

Huffing: The sound of a man pressing his legs down on a bike's pedals like a frenzied mother stomping out a cockroach. With sweat glueing his T-Shirt to his back, a muscular bike courier wipes his left hand over his shortly cut hair and then scrubs the moisture onto the front of his shirt. Placing his hand back onto the handlebar, he tightened his grip before arching his back and crouching forward and pumping his legs even faster.

Almost there, he'd thought to himself as he rode his back down the sidewalks of Empire City.
*******
Empire City
12:45 PM

"Is it possible to request a specific courier?" asked a man over the phone, a raspy voice delivering the question. "Well, I understand the need for privacy, but there is only one that I trust. Is Cole Macgrath available?"
*******
The Historical District, Empire City
3:35 PM

He'd been biking since One o'clock.

Cole Macgrath felt his calves stiffen as he swept his left leg across the pavement that made up Empire City's sidewalks. Sweat was saturating his shirt and his pants, to the point where everything in his pockets felt like an anvil tugging on his thighs. With a small box in his grasp, Cole lumbered towards a short set of stairs.

Three steps and a wooden door were all that stood between him and a finished job. It was almost fateful that he paused and looked up at the door because that was the moment that fundamentally changed his life.

Without any warning, Cole felt his clothes rip apart and a wall of kinetic force rammed right through his body, traveling as a wall of sudden deafness and destruction. As soon as it hit, Cole was thrown thirty feet through the air, arcing far away from the doorstep he'd been in front of, instead placed across a street that had been busy seconds before.

Though no one in the vicinity could possibly hear them, car alarms were ringing out like dogs barking at their neighbor. Bikers were instantly flipped on their sides and cars ceased to function momentarily as their motors were assaulted by what may as well have been the wrath of god.

Farther away from the blast zone, countless accidents and instant tragedies spawned. The area closest to the blast zone was instantly without power and gas lines were ruptured. Mighty towers were toppled by forces that they never could have been prepared for.

Where there wasn't the sound of alarms or mechanical alerts, the chaos caused by the tragedy was made just as loud by the sound of gunshots and cries of terror.

Away from the blast zone, pangs of distress were still felt. The city's tallest building, Abstergo Tower quickly evacuated it's publicly designated sections while locking down its private sectors. Criminals took advantage of the carnage by raiding establishments that were usually well-protected like banks with many policemen were in hiding, injured, or otherwise occupied. At the center of it all lay Cole Macgrath's body, still and cold.

[Independent _Comics Universe_RPG_Character_Sheet]

Player Name:

Nightrunner

Character:

Cole Macgrath

Power and Abilities:
General Physique

Agility - Practiced and far above average, regardless of absorption
Endurance - Superhuman, enhanced by absorption
Healing - Superhuman, electric absorption causes his cells to reproduce extremely fast
Strength - Slightly superhuman, enhanced by absorption

Electrokinesis

Lightning Bolts - Cole can send blasts of electricity that lurch off of his fingertips and surging down his forearms. He has a certain degree of control over their voltage, wattage, and amperes. They are about 18 inches long and, depending entirely upon his mood, range in color.
Arc Lightning - One continuous bolt runs off of Cole's body before jumping between selected targets and electrocuting them all in the process.
Tesla Missile - Standing at a transformer at an electric substation or another source of extremely high wattage, Cole can cause a humongous bolt of lightning to take flight before causing massive concussive and electric damage upon landing.
Electric Drain - Cole can suck the electricity out of any nearby source in order to fuel his other abilities.
Bio-Leech - Cole can willfully suck the life out of anyone he touches by absorbing the electrons from their brain and heart.
Lightning Storm - On occasion, Cole can summon bolts of lightning to come down from the sky. He can usually only maintain this for about five seconds or so, gathering a total of about twelve strikes before feeling entirely exhausted, but it is much easier during a storm and can enable him to not only summon them more easily, but more often as well.
Radar Pulse - By sending out a low level wave of static electricity, Cole can detect any notable source of energy with great ease.

Electromagnetism

Shockwave - By forcefully waving his arm, Cole can send a wave of electromagnetic force that can toss and raise nearby objects, including heavy metals or stationary items. With concentration, he can also cause items to hover above the ground before carrying them, launching them with another wave, or dropping them.
Grenades - Using a small field of magnetic energy, Cole can condense vast clusters of electrons before tossing them as a semi-solid object, and releasing them in a blast by negating the field.
Gigawatt Blades - Using the same basic technique as the grenades, Cole can wrap semi-solid 'blades' of condensed electrons around his arms and use them as swords, claws, or clubs.
Polarity Wall - Cole can erect an electromagnetic wall that repels any objects that attempt to pass through it.
Thunder Drop - When landing from great heights, Cole can release the kinetic energy as a shockwave of arcing lightning and a magnetic pulses.
Electro-Armor - A small field surrounds his skin that decelerates and slightly repels projectiles or objects that approach Cole, making it difficult to puncture his flesh with a bullet.
Grinding - To travel in urban environments, Cole can magnetize his feet to telephone or power cables before zipping across them, drug along by the energy being transferred within.
Levitation - Cole can slow his descents from great heights or he can give himself a slight boost by inverting the polarity of the air surrounding him, contrary to that of his own body.

Alignment:

Chaotic Neutral

Character Notes [Established Rogues, NPCs, etc]:

Trish Daily - Cole's girlfriend, who he lives with, with a job as a nurse.
Zeke Dunbar- Cole's best friend who is comedic and slightly dishonest, who he has known for years. He works as an electrician and is somewhat selfish, though fiercely loyal to Cole.
The First Sons - A secret society dedicated to making super-humans Earth's dominant species.
Alex Mercer - A morally calloused geneticist who works at Gentek labs, where he is developing a military bioweapon. He is cold, calculating, and largely indifferent to the well-being of others. He is reclusive and has a prominent case of paranoia.
Desmond Miles - A bartender, and heretical heir to a line of assassins, who is kidnapped by Abstergo Industries, the modern day face of The Knights Templar.
The Reapers - A savage gang of drug dealers, thugs, and criminals who have a powerful grip over much of Empire City.

Background and Story So Far:

Raised in New Marais, Louisiana by his parents, Cole Macgrath was a generally well-behaved youth, though he occasionally got into trouble with authority. Since his early youth, his best friend has been Zeke Dunbar, with whom he had learned the art of urban exploration and parkour. The pair had gotten into great mischief and occasionally had been arrested for foolish antics, though never had they actually caused another person significant harm.

Immediately upon graduating High School, Zeke and Cole left New Marais and moved to Empire City in New York, where they rented a home from an apartment complex. It was there that they'd built an entirely new life for themselves. Cole got a job as a bike courier, which allowed for flexibility in his schedule as well as requiring that he stay in excellent shape, while Zeke studied up and became an electrician. Between Cole's navigational expertise and Zeke's familiarity with the city's power lines and sewer systems, they were even more involved in urban exploration than they had been in New Marais.

In his time in Empire City, Cole has become familiar with the behavior of the citizens. The fiercest gang of the city was undoubtedly The Reapers, who Cole learned to steer clear of. It become quite obvious that there was a certain degree of corruption with the ECPD, with about as many dirty cops as honest ones. The city is divided into three districts. The Neon District, which is reminiscent of any other bustling metropolis, such as Chicago. The Neon is marked with a large tower in it's center, owned and operated by Abstergo Industries. The second district is the Historical, which is where the oldest architecture is located and is the center of the city. The third district is the Warren, which is the southernmost and most impoverished region. Cole frequently travels across all three on bike, which can be quite grueling, yet profitable because of the speed created by sidestepping the issue of traffic.

Sample Post (At least 3 well thought out paragraphs as well as some dialogue):

The Neon District, Empire City
7:22 PM

The smell of ozone filled the nostrils of everyone standing in the vicinity of Cole Macgrath, The Lightning Man. With his arms spread apart, he shuffles several arcs of lightning between his two illuminated hands. As more electricity pours into the cycle, Cole raises his flattened palms in front of his torso, finally condensing the bolts into a single charge that he readily launches forward into a steel box. Everyone shudders and cries with amazement as suddenly a dark surface glows with life, revealing the image of a newscaster that had been hidden by a power outage for days.

"Yeah, buddy! Gotta love having a battery charger as a best friend. Wooh!" Zeke throws his arms up into the sky, holding a beer in one hand and a clenched, celebratory fist in the other.

The corners of Trish's lips spread into a gentle grin, enjoying the moment before loosely hanging her left arm around Cole's chest. Letting the last of the sparks dissipate, Cole reciprocates her motion with his right arm over her shoulder. He draws her close to him with a strong, one-armed hug before easing up a bit.

"Hey, Zeke. Would ya' turn it up a bit?" Cole rasps, referring to the TV.

Zeke nods his head before digging the TV remote out of the crevice between the couch cushions and tapping the volume button. The sound of the newscaster's voice is perfectly crisp and undisturbed in the openness of the rooftop loft. After a few days ago, when the power had gone out throughout much of the city, Zeke found a rooftop that was suitably high above the riff-raff on the streets, had some utilities intact, and plenty of space to live in before everything would get back to normal. In the meantime, Cole, Trish, Zeke himself, and whoever else they brought around would hang out on the rooftop lounge, unless they were out fighting 'the good fight.'

Just as a disclaimer, I am aware that my background has no information on the blast or Cole getting is super powers. I want to write that in the IC because, unlike many other superhero type stories, Cole's origin is one of the funnest parts and I don't want to skip it. Plus, having a blast and a quarantine is a great opportunity for cooperation, I think. Finally, the most major deviations from the canon storyline are going to be caused by other characters from other universes.

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