Just the one this time around. We tried two in the last game and it was a little bit controversial, so I opted to just avoid crossing that particular bridge.
Totally understandable, I can see where problems could arise!
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Totally understandable, I can see where problems could arise!
Just out of interest, how many seperate characters could someone play in this RP? Not that I want to send in another application already, just that somewhere down the line I may have an idea for a reimagined version of Adam Warlock that could work.
Foundations #1.01: Laying the Foundation
Location: Washington, D.C. — DARPA Headquarters, 7:42 AM
Before The Reach
The lobby smelled of ozone and freshly brewed coffee. Reed Richards adjusted his tie for the fourth time in two minutes. His suit fit like a badly made halloween costume. He wasn't used to clothes like these, to him they served very little purpose. It had taken a fair bit of debate from Sue, Ben, and Johnny to convince him that the DARPA review panel wouldn't take a man in a lab coat seriously, no matter how many PhD's he had stitched into it.
Beside him, Sue Storm stood perfectly upright, her powder-blue blazer tailored to perfection, hair pulled back, voice calm as a pond beneath the stress.
"You ready?" she asked quietly, sensing the unusual feeling of anxiety within her boyfriend.
"Two years. Three prototype failures. One half-built teleporter module we had to scrap. We're pitching everything, Sue."
She reached for his hand. "And we'll do great. Come on, how many lectures on quantum physics or localized wormhole generation have you aced with zero prep and a chalkboard that was falling apart?"
Reed managed the ghost of a smile. "This time the chalkboard can veto our entire budget."
They walked together down the long corridor, the echo of their footsteps swallowed by the thick carpet. Past the secured doors and the steely-eyed security personnel, past the framed photos of men and women shaking hands beside aircraft prototypes and black satellites never officially built.
They were nearing the briefing room at the heart of the Advanced Aerospace Threat and Response Command, a subdivision of DARPA most civilians didn't know existed. Reed had once called them "The Pentagon's science fiction book club with a billion-dollar allowance." and he'd meant it as a compliment.
"I still think we should've brought the module itself." he muttered, scanning the names listed outside the room: Director Mahoney (DARPA), Col. Esther Vang (USAF), Dr. Shankar (NSA), and others he didn't recognize. Probably black-budget gatekeepers.
Sue smirked. "And what? Rolled it in on a dolly like a science fair project?"
"It works better when you can show them. Equations...they don't always speak to people. Can you imagine explaining all of this to Johnny and expecting him to give us funding?"
"If Johnny managed to get a position on this board our country is in more trouble than we could imagine." She grinned. "Equations dont talk, but I do." Sue said with that unwavering confidence that made Reed fall for her the first day they met. "You just hit them with the future. I'll translate."
Reed let out a breath. "Okay. Let's go make history."
"That's more like it."
They stepped inside, the room was cold and impersonal. Bleached white walls, recessed lighting, a long, sterile conference table surrounded by seats occupied by individuals who, as far as Reed could tell, had perfected the art of looking unimpressed.
"Dr. Richards. Dr. Storm." came the clipped greeting from Director Mahoney at the head of the table, barely looking up at them from a tablet he was tapping away on. "Proceed."
No preamble. No pleasantries. The floor was theirs. Sue connected the presentation remote to the monitor while Reed unfolded his notes, just in case the projector decided to glitch. He cleared his throat and started.
"Our proposal is simple in theory. In practice, it's unprecedented." he began, pacing slowly. "We believe we can create a stable Einstein-Rosen bridge, what some might call a 'wormhole' between two fixed points in space using artificial quantum lattice structures and a layered photonic field generator."
"That's not possible." Interrupted one of the physicists said flatly. "Not without destabilizing the target zone."
Sue stepped in. "That's where the photonic lattice comes in. It's self-correcting and reactive. It folds spacetime across multiple Planck-width layers, like stitching fabric instead of punching through it."
Reed continued. "What we're proposing isn't just theoretical. We've constructed and tested miniature versions. They've held for microseconds. Enough to transmit basic particles. And we believe, given the proper shielding and energy output, we can scale this up to a manned mission."
Another voice chimed in, Dr. Shankar. "You're talking about faster-than-light travel."
"No." Reed said. "We're talking about cheating the distance. The ship never exceeds light speed. It simply skips the space in between."
"Through uncharted, potentially volatile space-time." Mahoney added.
"Yes." Reed said, "But it's not blind. The sensors we've developed map gravitational anomalies and quantum inconsistencies. We'd be piloting the bridge like threading a needle with sonar."
"You don't just want to test this." Vang said, arms crossed. "You want to launch."
Reed hesitated. Sue answered for them.
"We believe in showing, not telling." she said. "The mission would launch from the edge of Earth's magnetosphere and target a stable region near Proxima Centauri. The ship would deploy with a four-person crew, remain tethered via quantum relay, and return with data from outside our solar system."
"And the test crew?"
Sue met the colonel’s eyes. "Us." She folded her arms. "Johnny Storm's completed every simulator run twice. Ben Grimm is a decorated pilot. I've mastered every technical subsystem. And as for Reed, he built the damn thing."
A silence fell. Reed continued. "We're not asking for blind faith. We're asking for partnership. Funding. Access to launch facilities. We'll bring everything else. The mission is ready. All it needs is clearance."
Mahoney tapped a pen against her tablet. "We'll deliberate." She looked finally looked up at them, catching their eyes. "If we agree to this, there is one thing we want though." Reed gulped quietly. "We understand that there is a Latverian at that Think-Tank of yours, Von Doom was it?" The two of them wanted to scream out. Of all the things they could ask for this was the worst. "I'm sure you've heard of the situation in the Latverian region. We think it would be great for our international relations to have a Latverian on your crew. Please wait in the lobby, we'll let you know when we've made our decision."
And just like that, it was over. No applause. No objections. Just the quiet hum of uncertainty. Back in the lobby, Reed sat down harder than he meant to. His suit jacket wrinkled like wet paper.
"That could've gone better." He muttered.
Sue stood in front of him, arms folded. "It could've gone worse."
"You think they'll say yes?"
"I think," she said, offering him a coffee from the machine, "you just told a room full of people who don't believe in miracles that you plan to build one. And I think some of them wanted to believe you."
He took the coffee, blinking behind his glasses. "You were amazing in there."
"Obviously."
He chuckled. "Once we're back...when it's all done...we should finally do it."
"Do what?" she teased.
"You know. The thing. The vows. Marriage."
She smiled but didn’t immediately answer. Instead, she stepped close, and took his free hand in hers. "Let's wait until we come back. That way we’ll have stories to tell our guests."
He nodded. "Okay. After the mission."
They never got the chance.
Present day
The Baxter Annex
Manhattan
The ring still fit. Funny how some things didn't change, even after the universe ended and tried to put itself back together. Sue Storm stared at the little velvet box sitting open in front of her on the desk, the ring glinting faintly in the low afternoon light filtering through the small, dust-smeared windows of the Baxter Annex.
It was Reed's. The one he'd offered her before they left. The one she said she'd wear when they got back. But in a world like this the right time never came. They got engaged before the Fantastic Four split, but without Johnny and Ben it just didn't feel right to have the wedding.
She reached out slowly, almost absentmindedly, and closed the box with a soft snap. Footsteps echoed down the metal walkway outside the lab. She recognized the gait before he even reached the door.
"Coffee!" Reed announced, pushing it open with a shoulder, balancing two mugs and a crumpled paper bag with his free hand. "Still lukewarm. Barely. But I tried to sweet-talk the barista into throwing in a muffin after I told her it was for a colleague saving the world."
Sue arched an eyebrow as she took the cup. "Did it work?"
He sank into the chair across from her, setting the bag between them. "I can't say it did. She said if you were really saving the world, you'd deserve two muffins."
Sue smiled despite herself, wrapping both hands around the cup. "Probably for the best."
Reed moved over to the workbench, grabbing his goggles and pulling them over his eyes. "HERBIE Junior's motors were drifting again." he muttered, already elbow-deep in a tangle of circuit boards and spare servos. "He tried to sweep the floor last night and vacuumed up half of my notes." He gestured to a squat little robot parked in the corner with one eye-light blinking apologetically. "I think he's developing guilt."
Sue yawned. "Don't scare me. The last thing we need is to build a sentient robot and then give it daddy issues."
Reed smiled for a moment, but then turned to her. "You didn't sleep, did you?" he asked.
"I did."
"Not long."
"Reed..."
"I'm not judging. Just concerned."
She sipped the coffee, eyes flicking back to her tablet, then the connected console. A quiet warning ping had triggered in the background several minutes ago, low-priority, probably nothing. She brought it forward anyway. The diagnostics were running on one of the residual scans from their last attempt to stabilize the failed Reach-drive prototype. Most of the data was corrupted, and what wasn't corrupted was inconclusive. Even for Reed deciphering Reach tech was proving complicated. But something was nagging her. A pattern that shouldn't have been there. She opened the waveform analysis module, keyed in a few adjustments, and watched the output realign.
"Reed."
He looked up, eyes narrowing behind his smudged goggles.
"Look at this." She spun the tablet around.
He set down the screwdriver he was toying with and leaned in. The image was a distorted readout, a pulse-shaped fluctuation captured inside a quantum compression field. At first glance it was noise. But then, it repeated. Once, then again. Like some sort of signal, almost like a distress call.
"That shouldn't be there." he murmured.
"It doesn't look like any readouts we've had from Reach tech." Sue turned toward Reed, her eyes still fixed on the looping signal. "It's repeating every 42 seconds."
Reed nodded, scrubbing the data again. "It's showing the same data every time too. It's closer to an SOS than a power fluctuation. Our systems are tuned to pick up Reach tech, how could something like this get through?"
"It shouldn't even be possible." Sue muttered. "These systems are shielded. Tuned to a completely different wavelength"
He glanced up at her. "Unless something, or someone found our frequency." A quiet fell between them, the whirr of HERBIE Junior's idle fans the only sound. "Location?" Reed asked.
Sue hesitated, then pulled up the map overlay again. "You're not going to like it."
Reed leaned closer, his eyes narrowing as the topography data began to cascade across the screen, line by line, the coordinates aligning to a single fixed point on a map of New York.
"Is that...under the old Baxter Building?"
Sue nodded grimly. "About two miles down. Beneath what used to be the sub-basement labs. Below even the geothermal barrier you installed back in Phase One."
"That's not possible. There's nothing down there but sealed foundation, bedrock and reinforced concrete. We scanned it a dozen times before Lord's people moved in."
She tapped a key and the monitor flicked, layering thermal, seismic, and energy signatures atop one another. Reed's brow furrowed deeper with every pass.
"Except now," Sue said "there is something."
A faint spike, barely noticeable, began pulsing in sync with the 42-second loop. Deep in the earth. He whispered, almost involuntarily: "What the hell is that?"
Sue crossed her arms. "Whatever it is, it's not natural." HERBIE Junior let out a soft boop from the corner, almost sounding concerned.
Reed stood up, pacing now. "We sealed every lower chamber before we turned the site over. None of our old gear is even compatible with this kind of signal. This isn't just random tech interference, this thing is piggybacking on our old data. It has to be."
Sue pulled the signal through a decryption filter. The waveform subtly changed, but the pattern was clearer now. Still not readable, not in any language they recognized. There was a silence that followed, and shortly after Reed took his goggles off and tossed them on the workbench.
"well, Sue, I think its time to do some field work, don't you think?"
She smiled back at him, rising from her chair and moving over towards the locker that held her nanoweave suit. "I thought you'd never ask."
So that's two yeas and one nay so far.
@Courtaud @Eddie Brock @Ezekiel @Half Pint [@Patient Bean], y'all still with us?
Sorry for my late reply, I’ve had a bit of a crazy weekend! I’m still up for continuing this, albeit at a slower pace than I was previously if that’s ok? I want to focus on getting my FF storyline on its legs a bit within the Ultimate One roleplay. But I’m definitely happy I get to round out my current Morbius storyline and get a chance for more crossovers!
Does anyone have feelings about who the mayor of New York City would be? I guess technically atm it'd be between me and Priouette to decide, but I figured I'd ask the community since NYC will probably be home to so many interactions.
In terms of suggestions I was hoping for Fisk or Osborn. A tyrannical mayor seems like a fit, but I also don't know if that kind lf threat would draw focus away from Lord's administration.
The FF are also based in New York! I really like @Pirouettes idea though.
<Snipped quote by Simple Unicycle>
I don't, but now that you bring it up, I wanna start doing it. Seems like a fun way to explore different genres. How did you guys make your choice(s)?
I think that lyrically and instrumentally the song I picked matches Reed and Sue pretty accurately! The instrumentals of the song really give me a retro science adventure feeling that matches their core aesthetic. The lyrics themselves I feel could all be things that Reed would say, being that he is often blinded by his work too much to properly show his love for Sue. Also after I picked the song I realised the title is "Love's Great Adventure" rather than "Loves Great Adventure", making it actually say "Love Is Great Adventure" which I think also rings true to the both of them!
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 Reed Nathaniel Richards Susan Storm _________________________________________________________ 34 & 32 | Engaged _________________________________________________________ Former Fantastic Four / The Future Foundation | 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 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 | 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... Reed and Sue met in a think-tank formed by Franklin Storm to nurture some of the worlds greatest young minds. It was the age old tale of unrequited love. Sue was obsessed with the slightly older and brilliant Reed, while Reed was so oblivious that it took a combination of Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm to have him realise all the times she was asking to study together, she was actually doing so to get closer to him, not to learn about thermodynamics. After their first date they knew it was love. The two of them were an inseperable team, and with Johnny and Ben at their side they were going to take the world by storm...if you'll pardon the pun. Reed's greatest idea was an interdimensional teleporter, something he had worked on from a young age, managing to send items through one end of the machine and out the other. With the resources available at the think tank, he was able to build a much bigger version of the teleporter, and after proposing his device to the US government he was given the backing to launch a space mission, using his technology to send his crew further into space than any human had ventured before. However with one condition, they were to work with the Latverian envoy to the think tank, Victor von Doom. The group had never liked Victor, but the government were insistent due to a conflict arising in the region of Latveria that the US had interests in. The publicity of sending one of their countrymen into space on a monumnetal flight was too good an opportunity to pass up. Of course, it didn't go to plan. The group that would shortly after become the Fantastic Four were altered on a chemical level by cosmic rays during their trip. They were lucky to make it back alive, and their ordeal only brought them closer together. After the space mission that changed everything, they tried to become something greater: public heroes, pioneers, an inspiration. It didn't hold. The world wasn't ready. And when the Reach arrived just as they were due to make their grand entrance, everything collapsed. They were underprepared and under-equipped. Useless against the advanced technology and might of The Reach. The team fractured quickly. Johnny wanted fame. Ben wanted stability. Reed wanted answers. Sue tried to hold it together, but after a devastating confrontation between Reed and Ben over a failed attempt to return Ben to normal, and Johnny's reckless behavior nearly exposing Sue's lab, the Four went dark. Officially? They disbanded. Unofficially? They split on bad terms. Now Reed and Sue operate as a two-person metahuman taskforce: low-profile, always moving, trying to stay one step ahead of Lord's regime. They chase down unstable Reach technology before it can be weaponized or salvaged by the government. Reed's guilt runs deep. His research, data meant to help locate emergent anomalies and map interdimensional flux was repurposed by Lord's regime to tag and hunt metahumans. Every captured mutant or vigilante with a tracker embedded beneath their skin is a reminder of what he helped build. He's made it his mission to tear it down. no matter the cost. Sue, meanwhile, has committed herself to building something new. A support structure. A resistance. The Future Foundation. She envisions it as a distributed network for young metas, fringe scientists, and refugees. She has hope that they can provide sanctuary for young Meta-Humans, a place they can escape to when they have nowhere else to turn. Together, they’ve salvaged pieces of the disbanded Baxter infrastructure, not a proper lab or base of operations, but a hidden basement server hub in Manhattan where the FF once stored early experiments. Now it's their base of operations, a barely-functioning, off-grid digital war room. They rarely see Ben or Johnny. When they do, it's tense. No one's quite ready to apologize. Maybe one day. But not yet. For now they trudge on, salvaging what they can together and reaching out to those they can. P L O T ( S ) & G O A L ( S ) P L O T ( S ) & G O A L ( S ) I was recently speaking to my partner about how as a child I never saw the appeal of the Fantastic Four, and especially not Mr. Fantastic. As an adult though, I now realise the driving force behind the best stories are the interpersonal relationships between the characters within, and I honestly can think of few groups that exemplify this dynamic than the Fantastic Four. I've had an idea in my head since the Ultimate One roleplay I was involved in for a heroic version of The Maker. One who had lost Sue, but remained hopeful, albeit jaded and was out to help people. As I wrote this application though, I realised that without Sue, Reed would have very little left if Franklin and Valeria weren't born. Sue is his driving motivation for what he does more than anything else. I decided that a version of the two of them having lost Johnny and Ben due to family problems would be far more interesting and in line with my vision of these characters than my former idea. They have each other to rely on through and through, even if they are in the shadow of an event that tore their found family apart, and in a world that refuses to accept them. I see them trying to be a source of hope within the darkness of this world. They are trying to form The Future Foundation to reach out to young meta-humans with nowhere else to turn, and to form a network that can support each other. They might be younger than their usual depiction in the comics, but I intend to write them as the parental figures they are at heart. I want them to be characters that other players can rely on and will turn to for help or advice, and vice versa. Both of them are motivated in part by guilt. Reed primarily due to his perceived failure with the space misson, during The Reach Event, and because of his work being used by Lord to track young meta-humans. Sue is a lot more hopeful, but the fact she is estranged from her brother plays on her mind. If it isn't obvious already, I would hope for the two of them to become a driving force in uniting members of the RP under a team at some point down the line. As well as researching the Reach and their technology and having direct conflict with President Lord's forces in doing so. |
Nice.
And in terms of your application clashing with the timeframe, I think it's more than fair to say that since the FF didn't get a chance to publicly announce themselves due to The Reach, it doesn't clash. The important thing is that five years ago, the first public superhero came forward to fight them. Whether more existed before then is just a matter of public perception.
Great! Glad to hear it!
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