Personality: “Work smarter, not harder”; that’s the motto by which Shigeuchi lives his life. He’s a man who dislikes making things complicated, one who’s always looking for the easiest option without compromising on the end result; the mark of a job well done is not exceeding expectations but by meeting expectations with time and resources to spare. That said, he also believes that a job worth doing is one worth doing well; his approach to life should not be mistaken for laziness or sloppiness.
This makes him very good at organising and leading people towards completing a task, while at the same time making him something of a nightmare to work under. He is very particular about the way things are done, can be strict and demanding of his underlings. He is quick to anger when mistakes are made but also quick to forgive and forget in the name of keeping things moving. Furthermore, Shigeuchi is also very frugal; a perennial penny-pincher who approaches purchases with a mentality of only buying what’s ‘good enough’ and nothing more. He is not one to indulge in frivolous needs.
Lastly, Shigeuchi is absurdly unambitious for a pirate. He never seeks out responsibility or power, instead finding it placed in his lap without ever looking for it and grumbling about how troublesome it makes his life the whole time. He is someone who cannot fathom how he ended up where he has, with people under his command and a heap of responsibility weighing on his shoulders; he’ll complain and lament his existence constantly, even as he works hard at his given task.
Dream/Goal: Dreams? Shigeuchi doesn’t have many right now. A life without complications would probably be his answer; money would help with that, so would power, while fame would be a detriment. Unfortunately as a pirate those things tend to go hand in hand.
For now his goal would be keeping his old captain’s son alive. Maybe work at helping him become stronger than his father someday, if the boy’s willing.
History: Where to start? Shigeuchi first became a pirate as a teenager, being recruited as a lowly deck hand in the fleet of Shiki the Golden Lion the one time the large pirate fleet docked at his home town for supplies; they were looking for new blood and Shigeuchi was looking for a way out of his current situation, seeking a life of freedom with the pirate crew. This was not a well thought out decision.
It turned out that being the lowest rung of the ladder on a fleet of cutthroats and brigands was not the easy life he had imagined it to be however and did not remotely live up to the romantic image most young idiots have of a life at sea. Shigeuchi was put hard to work by the crew, was given little freedom or pay in return and for the most part spent the next couple of years bored and tired. It was a simple life however, one that didn’t require much thought on his part and he always knew more or less what the next day would bring.
He was a hard worker however and seemed to have a talent for directing his fellow workers so as to make them more efficient and effective, something which didn’t go unnoticed. Bit by bit he was promoted up the ranks of the crew, at one point or another in his twenty years of being a pirate holding almost every position that didn’t require specialist knowledge or skills, almost always in a position to order or organise other crew members. Shigeuchi complained every step of the way, always grumbling about the complications and extra responsibilities his new role brought, but generally accepted because it was always easier to be the one giving the order than the one trying to correct the orders of others.
At some point Shigeuchi even found himself in charge of an entire division, only one of over fifty in Shiki’s fleet but a division nonetheless. As part of his new position he was even given a Devil Fruit, the Kōkan-Kōkan No Mi, both as a reward for his promotion and to make him a stronger member of Shiki’s fleet. The Devil Fruit and its associated curse was another complication he never wanted, but at least the power to move himself and his crew around the ship near instantaneously was useful for keeping things moving.
Shigeuchi worked as a division commander for a little over a year when Roger went and got himself executed and the Admiral’s eldest son got it into his head to run off and start his own crew. As a result, Shigeuchi was ordered to go after the brat and become a member of his crew, to assist him in whatever he wanted to do and to keep him alive while trying to convince him to join his father’s fleet.
His life has never felt more complicated than it did during that time. He followed Nikko on the first legs his journey, always seemingly a step behind as he tried to catch up to the aspiring writer, eventually finding him and convincing the boy to let him join his crew. In the process he managed to avoid the fate of the rest of the Gold Lion Pirates, avoiding death or imprisonment unlike the others.
He thought it would end when Nikko published his book, but now the brat has it in mind to write a new story about the new Pirate King and, of course, Shigeuchi is going to need to keep an eye on him.
Crew: The Red Lion Pirates
Ship: The Gold Lion Mark 2
Specialty/Profession: First Mate of the Red Lion Pirates
Fighting Style: As a swordsman, the way Shigeuchi fights should be obvious; to put it simply it involves getting as close to the enemy as possible and sticking his sword in them before they do the same to him. That said he’s only a semi-decent duellist, nothing special as far as swordsman go, so he needs to rely on more than just his skills to win. He uses a longer sword than most and wields it two-handed, relying on strength and technique more than speed to beat his opponents.
Shigeuchi’s epithet of ‘Trickster’ comes from the way in which he uses his Devil Fruit power as he fights. His Devil Fruit allows him to swap places with another object of similar size, including his opponent; he uses this power to instantly chance his or his opponent’s position on the battlefield, confusing them and using that to his advantage.
Weapons: A tachi; like a katana but with a longer blade and a deeper curve, for those of you who don’t know. He also carries a tanto as a backup weapon.
Devil Fruit: Kōkan-Kōkan No Mi – A Paramecia type fruit known as the Exchange-Exchange Fruit. It allows the user to exchange two objects of roughly equal size, having them trade places instantaneously with each other. At the moment Shigeuchi is only able to use his Devil Fruit power on himself, trading places with another object within his range so long as that object is about the same size as himself, but eventually he’ll be able to exchange an object he is holding or touching with another and maybe even swapping any two objects or people he can see.
Items: Aside from his weapons, the clothes on his back and a bag with a few basic supplies, Shigeuchi doesn’t have much in the way of possessions.
Bounty: 5,000,000 Beli. It’s not often a first mate has a higher bounty that their captain, but Shigeuchi is still wanted for his time as part of The Gold Lion Pirates on top of being a member of Nikko’s crew.
Para Category: Omega Threat Level: 4 Powers/Abilities: As an Omega class Parahuman Robert has two distinct abilities; Extended Tactile Senses – A kind of extrasensory ability which allows Robert to feel things using any surface within 100 feet of him. If nothing is happening he does not have a sense of what those surfaces are or what they are currently in contact with, it does not give him a 3D map of his surrounding environments or give him any clues as to its layout. However, if something comes into contact with a surface within his range he will have a sense of where that contact occurred in relation to his current location, i.e. direction and distance. He will also be given a sense of what the surface is and what the object that came into contact with it looks like and how forceful the contact was; all information he does not have when things are still.
It is a complicated sensation; one that Robert is still growing accustomed to and one that he has difficulty explaining to others.
Imbuement – Robert has the ability to empower items that he touches with a variety of different Parahuman-like abilities, expending a limited amount of energy in the process. The abilities are varied but usually take the form of different Beta or Gamma class powers such as elemental control or enhanced attributes. The item is usually given a number of charges or a set duration for the power, depending on if the ability needs to be activated or is passive; once the charges or duration is expended the item returns to normal.
The activation of the power is something only Robert can do, meaning that the empowered items cannot be handed to another Parahuman or non-Parahuman to use unless the ability is passive in nature. Once Robert of expended his daily allowance of energy he can no longer imbue any other items with abilities until he has next slept, which seems to recharge whatever internal battery this power works on. At the same time, any items that have been empowered by Robert lose whatever power they had when Robert falls asleep or otherwise loses consciousness.
Skills: • Leadership – Robert has been a leading figure in both the anti-Lorne groups he used to be a part of and the Parahuman Protection Society he has since joined for over fifteen years at this point. He is very well acquainted with being in a leadership position both at an operational and at a strategic level. • Urban warfare tactics – For years Robert was a member in what could easily be described as an insurgency within Marlon, taking part in and leading operations that often brought him into conflict with the police and with Lorne’s private security. He has a good understanding of urban fighting and the tactics it requires. • Weapons training – Robert’s experience with the group Citizen has given him ample opportunity to learn how to use a number of firearms in the field.
Weaknesses: • Wanted man – Seen as the successor of William Grace, once the most wanted man in Marlon, Robert is also highly wanted by both the authorities and Lorne. This would already be a problem were it not for his prosthetic arm making it very difficult for him to blend into a crowd in any meaningful way. • Power-induced headaches – With the large amount of information it can provide him, Robert’s sensory ability can at times overwhelm him. If he focuses on what it is telling him rather than pushing it to the back of his mind as he usually does it can lead to painful, even debilitating, migraines. • Age – To put it bluntly, Robert is too old to be a rebel any longer. He is slower than he used to be, weaker, and tires more easily. Rebelling is a young man’s game and it seems like every fight is another reminder of why this is the case.
Brief History: There was a time, before Lorne moved in and took over everything, when Robert was a normal guy. He was an only child growing up in a bad neighbourhood, poor, but his parents were good, hardworking people who raised him to be the same; his dad taught him how to fix things, how to drive, how to fight and things like that while his mom taught him morals and ethic and life lessons and helped him with school work. He was luckier than most.
He went to school and worked hard, even though he felt it wasn’t his thing, because that was what he was taught to do and because he wanted to rise up out of his humble beginnings and he needed an education for that. After graduation he tried college for the same reasons only to drop out after a year and a half and enrol in a trade school instead; his parents were a little disappointed and he felt like he was disappointing them, but working with his hands just suited him better than books or exams ever would. After that he went to work in a factory, repairing machines and equipment and helping to keep the place running smoothly.
Five years later the building he worked in and the company that owned it were bought out; Lorne moving in a taking over like they did with everything. People were apprehensive about a large corporation buying the company they worked for, but there were no layoffs and assurances were made that no major changes were to be made. For a while at least business continued as normal, with the only difference being the name that appeared on Robert’s bank statement when his pay came in.
Over time however, Lorne made their presence known. New management and oversight was brought in, a Human Resources department established and filled with corporate suits, people were fired and no replacements brought in as work crews were stripped down and corners cut in important areas in the name of profit. Where before they were judged for the quality of their work, they were now being judged for their quantity; people that weren’t productive enough were fired and more pressure was put on those left to pick up the slack. Accidents and injuries became more common, as did repairs as the number of breakdowns rose and Robert and his colleagues were having trouble keeping up.
People complained of course. Overworked production line men and mechanics and shift managers who predated the takeover, they all voiced their own concerns and made their own stink about what going on and every time they received the same generic response about how they were being heard and that this was just a transitional period and how things would get better. Things never got better of course and anyone who made too much of a nuisance of themselves or who tried to get others involved, especially anyone who spoke of a strike, would coincidentally fail their next review and find themselves out the door.
Robert wished he was one of those people. He should have made more noise when he could.
He was twenty eight when a routine repair finally went wrong. He was repairing a machine that should have been replaced years ago, that had been pushed too hard, when a safety mechanism failed while he was elbow deep in its inner workings. His forearm was crushed, the limb barely recognisable as anything other than ground meat by the time they managed to free him. Of course the investigation found that he was the one at fault and the corporation denied him medical costs or compensation, instead firing him for negligence and leaving him crippled and unemployed. He blew through his savings covering the costs of his amputation and recovery and only managed to avoid homelessness by moving back in with his parents.
He next few years were a blur of short lived jobs, alcohol and becoming increasingly depressed at his current situation. Lorne, the company that drove him towards his current state and then kicked him to the curb, seemed like an ever growing presence in the city; their fingers reached into every facet of his life and the more he cared to look the more he could see their influence and their wealth. It disgusted him. It was at this point that he found other like-minded people who had similar reasons to dislike or even hate the Lorne Corporation; protesters, activists and other outspoken individuals who objected to Lorne for any number of reasons, whether they were personal like his own or simply objecting to any entity growing as powerful as Lorne had.
Robert took part in the protests from that moment on, joining the marches and waving the signs and telling his story to people who would listen, but in the face of the juggernaut they were trying to fight it was pointless. They were too few in number, their voices too small, to deal a significant blow what Lorne had become. They had entire PR departments working to drown them out and counter their message, while telling the same lies and handing out the same false promises they had always given; activism could only do so much when Lorne’s influence had reach the levels of local government, the police and even the courts.
At some point a small minority of those in the anti-Lorne group began to take more direct action. Otherwise peaceful protests would erupt into violence against the police or Lorne’s private security, vandalism and destruction of Lorne property and buildings became more prevalent and even attacks against Lorne employees weren’t unheard of as some people grew dissatisfied with the lack of progress they were making. There was one man in particular who was the loudest voice calling for greater action against Lorne, one man who stirred up the anger into violence and who organised the angriest and most hateful into a pseudo-rebellion; William Grace.
Robert was one of the people caught up in William’s growing movement, as his personal loss at the hands of Lorne made him especially vengeful towards them, and the two struck up a quick friendship. With his arm there was little Robert could do to help take action, but his story was an easy way to demonstrate how ruthless the Corporation could be at times and Robert used this to help recruit people to William’s cause. There numbers grew and with the increased manpower their actions escalated, organising themselves and planning larger attacks against Lorne’s holdings in the city, while continuing the riots and disruptive actions from before. More people meant more funding, money that they put towards weapons and equipment that they could use to further their cause. Things were growing at a dangerous pace and soon William Grace was the leader of a fully-fledged militia within the anti-Lorne factions of the city.
This did not go unnoticed of course and the group, which had yet to be named, soon became public enemy number one under the less than subtle influence Lorne exerted over the police and the mayor. William and the other leaders of the group were wanted criminals and any affiliation with the group at all became a crime in and of itself. All the while Robert remained a close friend of William’s, helping him organise his people and plan the group’s efforts. Somewhere in the middle of all this William got Robert the prosthetic arm that Lorne had denied him almost a decade ago, so that he could finally take part in the growing rebellion.
There is not much to say about the next few years other than that the group continued to operate as they had, damaging Lorne properties and assets and attempting to disrupt their operation as much as they could. Lorne continued to grow larger and more powerful and William and Robert’s group did the same as the Corporation continued to make more enemies during their expansion and how their at times heavy handed approach to quashing protests and riots was viewed by the public. It was during this time that the group finally adopted a name; Citizen, to reflect their goal of championing the rights of the common citizens of Marlon over the greed of a private entity.
In 2046, William Grace was killed during a raid on Citizen’s headquarters in which many of their more senior members were either killed or arrested. The remaining leadership of the group, Robert included, were torn on how to continue, whether to pull back to avoid further retaliation or to step up their attacks in revenge, or to continue as they had been doing. The disagreements eventually turned into a schism that split Citizen into smaller factions with Robert becoming the new leader of what was probably the closest to his and William’s vision.
Three years later the incident at the Tower occurred and Robert became a Parahuman. Lorne established themselves as a staunchly anti-Parahuman entity, even convincing the government and police to crack down on them and a new faction arose in the city in retaliation. Robert allied what was left of his group with the Parahuman Protection Society, becoming a member of its leading council and a figurehead among the more militant members of the group.
“Tell me again how it works?”
Robert peered over the rim of his cup of coffee, the acrid scent attacking his senses as the young man sat across from him caught his eye. It was just the two of them in the room at the moment, sitting together in what passed for a lounge in what passed for their headquarters; most of the others had better things to be doing in the middle of the day than sit around and passing the time. “How what works?”
“Your power.” The other man leaned forward on his elbows as Robert let out a groan. It would be that, it was always that. “The… what did you call it, ‘tactile extension’?”
Letting out a weary sigh, Robert lowered the cup in his hand onto the table. He looked across the table, staring at the other man in silence and receiving only eager curiosity in return as he weighed up the pros and cons of going through this again. The young man, who wasn’t so young in truth, was someone who had joined Citizen some five or six years ago; in his early thirties by now, but Robert’s threshold for ‘young’ seemed to get lower by the day, and someone who had avoided being caught up in this whole Parahuman mess until Robert had dragged him and the others who followed him into the ranks of the PPS. His name was Tom if Robert’s memory wasn’t failing him.
Robert leaned back, hands lifting from the table and waving through the air as if trying to conjure the right words into existence only to give up and let his hands drop back down with a thud. “It’s hard to explain.”
“You said it was like echolocation, right? But with touch? You see people when they touch things, instead of by the sounds they make. I just want to know what it looks like when it happens.”
“Something like that.” Robert ran a hand, his real hand, through his beard as he tried to put his expanded senses into terms that made sense to someone who didn’t have them. It wasn’t an easy task, especially when he didn’t fully understand them himself. It was like trying to explain colour to a blind person, or pitch to a deaf person. “It doesn’t look like anything. It’s like my sense of touch has been expanded outside my own body. When someone touches the floor or a wall or a table the next room over I can tell. If I close my eyes and stop thinking about it, it doesn’t feel any different than if someone tapped me on the shoulder.”
Tom nodded along, apparently understanding or at least going along with the explanation so far. He seemed like the kind of person who wished he’d gotten powers along with everyone else, one of the few who was enamoured with Parahumans rather than being scared witless of people with dangerous abilities popping up at random. Robert wasn’t sure if he was smarter or dumber than the average person for it. “So does it hurt? Or can it hurt, if someone blew a hole through a wall and you could feel it.”
Shaking his head, Robert picked his coffee back up and took another swig before continuing. “No pain. No heat, no pressure, no itches or anything like that; just a plain old sense of touch. It’s not an extension of my body, just that one sense; I can’t tell it’s there until something happens. There’s no awareness beyond that. There’s no proprioception. Do you know that word?” He got a shake of the head in response and so continued to explain. “It’s a word one of the people in the council used, when I tried to explain this to them. Proprioception is like your awareness of your own body, like how you don’t lose track of where your arms and legs are if you can’t see them or you close your eyes. You still know what your own body looks like and how it’s positioned even if you can’t see it. I don’t have that, I don’t know what the room next door looks like or where anything behind me is just because. It’s not a part of my body, but I can feel through it.”
The glazed over eyes and blank stare was a familiar response, but still a disappointing one. A shame, Robert felt like he had done a pretty good job this time. “But you said you can see things right.” A nod was enough to get Tom to continue. He looked over Robert’s shoulder towards the door behind him, seeing something through the glass and having a flash of inspiration. “Someone just walked past the door. Did you feel them?”
“Yeah it was Charlie.”
A crease of confusion formed as Tom tried to process the quick response. “But you said-“
“I don’t see everything, but I see some things. When something touches a surface I know where it happens and I can see the general outline of what it was. I know it was a person who walked past; I know their general height and weight, their build, what kind of shoes they’re wearing. That sort of thing. In this case I know where they came from and where they are going and I know they have a limp. Charlie has the same limp, he’s about the right height and build for the impression I got and he was over on that side of the building earlier, so it must have been Charlie.”
Tom was scratching his head at this point. “That sounds like a complicated power.”
Night had fallen over Tokyo once more and with it the second stage of the war had begun; and unlike last night he was in a better position to participate. Last night he had been able to do nothing but occasionally check the reports from his hounds as they scoured the city; most had an uneventful night, enjoying a run though the metropolis, but the group he had sent to the tower had seemingly found the war in its entirety. He had seen two Servant’s in action, a Lancer and a Rider fighting in the skies over a park, and had caught a glimpse of some Servant who he found it difficult to even look at. Powerful opponents for a man like himself.
And a hound had died. Killed by a foe Laelap’s, one of his best trackers and hunters, had been unable to detect until the last, fatal moment. It must have been a Servant, as he couldn’t imagine any person born in the current age being capable of something like that, and even among the heroes of this war only the Assassin class would have the ability to do something like that.
These were the opponents he would have the deal with if he or Mercedes wanted to claim the grail. This was who he was hunting. Could he do it? Was he capable of winning this war?
Archer nodded in response to his Master’s query, the only response the mute hero could or would give in the current circumstances. He was ready for that hunt. He was ready to answer that challenge.
The hunt, in fact, was already under way. They had visited the site of Laelap’s demise and found the traces of two Masters, Archer’s hounds collecting their scent and the scent of their mana before they moved on. Mercedes had a hunch as to the identity of one of those Masters and had brought them here to this small apartment opposite a pet shop somewhere not too far from the tower that had been the centre of last night’s events. It seemed a fair assumption, given that the magus was known to live in the city and was a specialist of sorts in familiarcraft, that he was a Master in this war. Given how many scents his hounds could detect in the building Laelap’s had died in, many of which seemed to belong to familiars, there was a good chance he was the Master of one of the Servant’s he had detected last night.
Archer watched the entrance to the pet shop closely. Daisuke had returned home some time ago, entering through the front entrance of the business downstairs and retreating to the apartment upstairs. The Servant had no idea if he was the one they were looking for and with another Servant potentially in the area it was too dangerous to send a hound down to check his trail. It was similarly too dangerous to attack a magus in their home without numerous precautions being taken, even if it felt like Daisuke hadn’t even set up a bounded field around his home. Destroying the building in its entirety, workshop, pet shop and every occupant together, was a possibility, but not one Archer was willing to entertain. A hunter did not catch its prey by burning down the forest it lived in.
The door to the pet shop opened and Daisuke exited the building, robe across his shoulders and crown atop his head; a strange person, but one who seemed to be on the move. Archer pulled the notebook and pencil from his pocket and wrote a note for his Master; he couldn’t see anyone with Daisuke and he couldn’t detect another Servant either, but with Assassin still presumably active in the war that didn’t mean that there wasn’t one nearby. Finishing writing he held the notebook out for Mercedes to see what he had written.
Para Category: Omega Threat Level: 4 Powers/Abilities: As an Omega class Parahuman Robert has two distinct abilities; Extended Tactile Senses – A kind of extrasensory ability which allows Robert to feel things using any surface within 100 feet of him. If nothing is happening he does not have a sense of what those surfaces are or what they are currently in contact with, it does not give him a 3D map of his surrounding environments or give him any clues as to its layout. However, if something comes into contact with a surface within his range he will have a sense of where that contact occurred in relation to his current location, i.e. direction and distance. He will also be given a sense of what the surface is and what the object that came into contact with it looks like and how forceful the contact was; all information he does not have when things are still.
It is a complicated sensation; one that Robert is still growing accustomed to and one that he has difficulty explaining to others.
Imbuement – Robert has the ability to empower items that he touches with a variety of different Parahuman-like abilities, expending a limited amount of energy in the process. The abilities are varied but usually take the form of different Beta or Gamma class powers such as elemental control or enhanced attributes. The item is usually given a number of charges or a set duration for the power, depending on if the ability needs to be activated or is passive; once the charges or duration is expended the item returns to normal.
The activation of the power is something only Robert can do, meaning that the empowered items cannot be handed to another Parahuman or non-Parahuman to use unless the ability is passive in nature. Once Robert of expended his daily allowance of energy he can no longer imbue any other items with abilities until he has next slept, which seems to recharge whatever internal battery this power works on. At the same time, any items that have been empowered by Robert lose whatever power they had when Robert falls asleep or otherwise loses consciousness.
Skills: • Leadership – Robert has been a leading figure in both the anti-Lorne groups he used to be a part of and the Parahuman Protection Society he has since joined for over fifteen years at this point. He is very well acquainted with being in a leadership position both at an operational and at a strategic level. • Urban warfare tactics – For years Robert was a member in what could easily be described as an insurgency within Marlon, taking part in and leading operations that often brought him into conflict with the police and with Lorne’s private security. He has a good understanding of urban fighting and the tactics it requires. • Weapons training – Robert’s experience with the group Citizen has given him ample opportunity to learn how to use a number of firearms in the field.
Weaknesses: • Wanted man – Seen as the successor of William Grace, once the most wanted man in Marlon, Robert is also highly wanted by both the authorities and Lorne. This would already be a problem were it not for his prosthetic arm making it very difficult for him to blend into a crowd in any meaningful way. • Power-induced headaches – With the large amount of information it can provide him, Robert’s sensory ability can at times overwhelm him. If he focuses on what it is telling him rather than pushing it to the back of his mind as he usually does it can lead to painful, even debilitating, migraines. • Age – To put it bluntly, Robert is too old to be a rebel any longer. He is slower than he used to be, weaker, and tires more easily. Rebelling is a young man’s game and it seems like every fight is another reminder of why this is the case.
Brief History: There was a time, before Lorne moved in and took over everything, when Robert was a normal guy. He was an only child growing up in a bad neighbourhood, poor, but his parents were good, hardworking people who raised him to be the same; his dad taught him how to fix things, how to drive, how to fight and things like that while his mom taught him morals and ethic and life lessons and helped him with school work. He was luckier than most.
He went to school and worked hard, even though he felt it wasn’t his thing, because that was what he was taught to do and because he wanted to rise up out of his humble beginnings and he needed an education for that. After graduation he tried college for the same reasons only to drop out after a year and a half and enrol in a trade school instead; his parents were a little disappointed and he felt like he was disappointing them, but working with his hands just suited him better than books or exams ever would. After that he went to work in a factory, repairing machines and equipment and helping to keep the place running smoothly.
Five years later the building he worked in and the company that owned it were bought out; Lorne moving in a taking over like they did with everything. People were apprehensive about a large corporation buying the company they worked for, but there were no layoffs and assurances were made that no major changes were to be made. For a while at least business continued as normal, with the only difference being the name that appeared on Robert’s bank statement when his pay came in.
Over time however, Lorne made their presence known. New management and oversight was brought in, a Human Resources department established and filled with corporate suits, people were fired and no replacements brought in as work crews were stripped down and corners cut in important areas in the name of profit. Where before they were judged for the quality of their work, they were now being judged for their quantity; people that weren’t productive enough were fired and more pressure was put on those left to pick up the slack. Accidents and injuries became more common, as did repairs as the number of breakdowns rose and Robert and his colleagues were having trouble keeping up.
People complained of course. Overworked production line men and mechanics and shift managers who predated the takeover, they all voiced their own concerns and made their own stink about what going on and every time they received the same generic response about how they were being heard and that this was just a transitional period and how things would get better. Things never got better of course and anyone who made too much of a nuisance of themselves or who tried to get others involved, especially anyone who spoke of a strike, would coincidentally fail their next review and find themselves out the door.
Robert wished he was one of those people. He should have made more noise when he could.
He was twenty eight when a routine repair finally went wrong. He was repairing a machine that should have been replaced years ago, that had been pushed too hard, when a safety mechanism failed while he was elbow deep in its inner workings. His forearm was crushed, the limb barely recognisable as anything other than ground meat by the time they managed to free him. Of course the investigation found that he was the one at fault and the corporation denied him medical costs or compensation, instead firing him for negligence and leaving him crippled and unemployed. He blew through his savings covering the costs of his amputation and recovery and only managed to avoid homelessness by moving back in with his parents.
He next few years were a blur of short lived jobs, alcohol and becoming increasingly depressed at his current situation. Lorne, the company that drove him towards his current state and then kicked him to the curb, seemed like an ever growing presence in the city; their fingers reached into every facet of his life and the more he cared to look the more he could see their influence and their wealth. It disgusted him. It was at this point that he found other like-minded people who had similar reasons to dislike or even hate the Lorne Corporation; protesters, activists and other outspoken individuals who objected to Lorne for any number of reasons, whether they were personal like his own or simply objecting to any entity growing as powerful as Lorne had.
Robert took part in the protests from that moment on, joining the marches and waving the signs and telling his story to people who would listen, but in the face of the juggernaut they were trying to fight it was pointless. They were too few in number, their voices too small, to deal a significant blow what Lorne had become. They had entire PR departments working to drown them out and counter their message, while telling the same lies and handing out the same false promises they had always given; activism could only do so much when Lorne’s influence had reach the levels of local government, the police and even the courts.
At some point a small minority of those in the anti-Lorne group began to take more direct action. Otherwise peaceful protests would erupt into violence against the police or Lorne’s private security, vandalism and destruction of Lorne property and buildings became more prevalent and even attacks against Lorne employees weren’t unheard of as some people grew dissatisfied with the lack of progress they were making. There was one man in particular who was the loudest voice calling for greater action against Lorne, one man who stirred up the anger into violence and who organised the angriest and most hateful into a pseudo-rebellion; William Grace.
Robert was one of the people caught up in William’s growing movement, as his personal loss at the hands of Lorne made him especially vengeful towards them, and the two struck up a quick friendship. With his arm there was little Robert could do to help take action, but his story was an easy way to demonstrate how ruthless the Corporation could be at times and Robert used this to help recruit people to William’s cause. There numbers grew and with the increased manpower their actions escalated, organising themselves and planning larger attacks against Lorne’s holdings in the city, while continuing the riots and disruptive actions from before. More people meant more funding, money that they put towards weapons and equipment that they could use to further their cause. Things were growing at a dangerous pace and soon William Grace was the leader of a fully-fledged militia within the anti-Lorne factions of the city.
This did not go unnoticed of course and the group, which had yet to be named, soon became public enemy number one under the less than subtle influence Lorne exerted over the police and the mayor. William and the other leaders of the group were wanted criminals and any affiliation with the group at all became a crime in and of itself. All the while Robert remained a close friend of William’s, helping him organise his people and plan the group’s efforts. Somewhere in the middle of all this William got Robert the prosthetic arm that Lorne had denied him almost a decade ago, so that he could finally take part in the growing rebellion.
There is not much to say about the next few years other than that the group continued to operate as they had, damaging Lorne properties and assets and attempting to disrupt their operation as much as they could. Lorne continued to grow larger and more powerful and William and Robert’s group did the same as the Corporation continued to make more enemies during their expansion and how their at times heavy handed approach to quashing protests and riots was viewed by the public. It was during this time that the group finally adopted a name; Citizen, to reflect their goal of championing the rights of the common citizens of Marlon over the greed of a private entity.
In 2046, William Grace was killed during a raid on Citizen’s headquarters in which many of their more senior members were either killed or arrested. The remaining leadership of the group, Robert included, were torn on how to continue, whether to pull back to avoid further retaliation or to step up their attacks in revenge, or to continue as they had been doing. The disagreements eventually turned into a schism that split Citizen into smaller factions with Robert becoming the new leader of what was probably the closest to his and William’s vision.
Three years later the incident at the Tower occurred and Robert became a Parahuman. Lorne established themselves as a staunchly anti-Parahuman entity, even convincing the government and police to crack down on them and a new faction arose in the city in retaliation. Robert allied what was left of his group with the Parahuman Protection Society, becoming a member of its leading council and a figurehead among the more militant members of the group.
“Tell me again how it works?”
Robert peered over the rim of his cup of coffee, the acrid scent attacking his senses as the young man sat across from him caught his eye. It was just the two of them in the room at the moment, sitting together in what passed for a lounge in what passed for their headquarters; most of the others had better things to be doing in the middle of the day than sit around and passing the time. “How what works?”
“Your power.” The other man leaned forward on his elbows as Robert let out a groan. It would be that, it was always that. “The… what did you call it, ‘tactile extension’?”
Letting out a weary sigh, Robert lowered the cup in his hand onto the table. He looked across the table, staring at the other man in silence and receiving only eager curiosity in return as he weighed up the pros and cons of going through this again. The young man, who wasn’t so young in truth, was someone who had joined Citizen some five or six years ago; in his early thirties by now, but Robert’s threshold for ‘young’ seemed to get lower by the day, and someone who had avoided being caught up in this whole Parahuman mess until Robert had dragged him and the others who followed him into the ranks of the PPS. His name was Tom if Robert’s memory wasn’t failing him.
Robert leaned back, hands lifting from the table and waving through the air as if trying to conjure the right words into existence only to give up and let his hands drop back down with a thud. “It’s hard to explain.”
“You said it was like echolocation, right? But with touch? You see people when they touch things, instead of by the sounds they make. I just want to know what it looks like when it happens.”
“Something like that.” Robert ran a hand, his real hand, through his beard as he tried to put his expanded senses into terms that made sense to someone who didn’t have them. It wasn’t an easy task, especially when he didn’t fully understand them himself. It was like trying to explain colour to a blind person, or pitch to a deaf person. “It doesn’t look like anything. It’s like my sense of touch has been expanded outside my own body. When someone touches the floor or a wall or a table the next room over I can tell. If I close my eyes and stop thinking about it, it doesn’t feel any different than if someone tapped me on the shoulder.”
Tom nodded along, apparently understanding or at least going along with the explanation so far. He seemed like the kind of person who wished he’d gotten powers along with everyone else, one of the few who was enamoured with Parahumans rather than being scared witless of people with dangerous abilities popping up at random. Robert wasn’t sure if he was smarter or dumber than the average person for it. “So does it hurt? Or can it hurt, if someone blew a hole through a wall and you could feel it.”
Shaking his head, Robert picked his coffee back up and took another swig before continuing. “No pain. No heat, no pressure, no itches or anything like that; just a plain old sense of touch. It’s not an extension of my body, just that one sense; I can’t tell it’s there until something happens. There’s no awareness beyond that. There’s no proprioception. Do you know that word?” He got a shake of the head in response and so continued to explain. “It’s a word one of the people in the council used, when I tried to explain this to them. Proprioception is like your awareness of your own body, like how you don’t lose track of where your arms and legs are if you can’t see them or you close your eyes. You still know what your own body looks like and how it’s positioned even if you can’t see it. I don’t have that, I don’t know what the room next door looks like or where anything behind me is just because. It’s not a part of my body, but I can feel through it.”
The glazed over eyes and blank stare was a familiar response, but still a disappointing one. A shame, Robert felt like he had done a pretty good job this time. “But you said you can see things right.” A nod was enough to get Tom to continue. He looked over Robert’s shoulder towards the door behind him, seeing something through the glass and having a flash of inspiration. “Someone just walked past the door. Did you feel them?”
“Yeah it was Charlie.”
A crease of confusion formed as Tom tried to process the quick response. “But you said-“
“I don’t see everything, but I see some things. When something touches a surface I know where it happens and I can see the general outline of what it was. I know it was a person who walked past; I know their general height and weight, their build, what kind of shoes they’re wearing. That sort of thing. In this case I know where they came from and where they are going and I know they have a limp. Charlie has the same limp, he’s about the right height and build for the impression I got and he was over on that side of the building earlier, so it must have been Charlie.”
Tom was scratching his head at this point. “That sounds like a complicated power.”
@ladyonyx04 I'm surprised to see that all of the canon Devil Fruits are allowed; I would have expected more powerful ones like Whitebeard's or Blackbeard's to be banned.
Can your characters Aqua Aqua no Mi affect salt water? Because given the way Devil Fruits interact with sea water I feel like it shouldn't be able to.
“Ah.” Reiko peered over Harumi’s shoulder, standing on her toes to see over the other girl at what was currently happening on stage. “She’s being carried away.”
Ruruka’s attempt to talk to the punk rocker went about as well as expected, being punched and kicked repeatedly and somewhat ineffectively before being thrown off stage and into the waiting arms of the loyal crowd. ‘Siren’, as the singer seemed to be called, gave the order for the stuck up rich girl to be tied up so she could be interrogated later before returning to what could generously be called singing.
“Any ideas?” Reiko scoffed at the question. “I say we leave her where she is and make a break for the exit. She got herself into this mess and she can get herself out of it.” Looking down at herself and running his hands down her stomach to smooth out any creases in her new hoodie, Reiko pulled the hood over her head and stepped out the door. She had no problem with leaving Ruruka to suffer in the mess she had made for herself; her only concern right now was getting out of here before the girl did something else that might give them away.
As she made her way across the back of the stage behind the curtain, moving as quickly and quietly as she could without looking like she was trying to be sneaky, Reiko told herself that she would tell Manaka to send someone to rescue Ruruka once she was safely out of here.
Tossing up an idea between a villain with Astrokinesis named Darkspire and an ergokinetic-esque hero named Orwell. Both seem good just not sure which route I want to take.
Can I ask what both of those are? I think I know what Astrokinesis is (and it sounds broken) but I'm not sure about Ergokinesis; charging objects with energy?
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