King Cosmos

Pokémon: Rust

Timothy Thorne – Team Star Recruit

“I don’t care what it is, it’s going down!” A rock, a Roggenrola, who cared what he called the damn thing; this was a fight! So long as Storm kept that thing tied down like it was currently doing then the only thing he had to worry about was the fight between Hades and the Bagon. He was damn sure his Houndour could deal with that thing by itself so long as he didn’t have to worry about this being a double battle. “Keep biting it Storm, don’t let go.”

Speaking of which, the Bagon withstood the ember, barely, and was looking to turn things around. It leered at his Hondour to lower his defence and then lunged in to take a bite out of him, but the disadvantage with giving multiple commands at once was that it gave Tim and his Pokémon warning of what was coming. “Dodge it Hades!” The Dark-type withered under the glare of his dragon opponent, but when the bite came he was able to quickly turn his body away to pull his tail out of reach.

“Good, now hit it with another ember!” Another boosted ball of fire shot from the Houndour’s mouth towards the Bagon. Dragon or not, it would be feeling the heat of all of these attacks soon enough.

@LuckyBlackCat@Crimson Flame

Lure of the Future: My Hero Academia, AU

Shojiro Noguchi

Name: Shojiro Noguchi
Hero Name: Torakkii
Age: 16
Height: 6’ 1”
Home: Osaka, Japan

Quirk Type: Emitter

Quirk: Back swing – With every action there is an equal and opposite reaction; this is a law that most kids learn in school, if they’re paying attention. It is simple and easy to understand. It means that when you push against something, you are also pushed back by it, when you hit something, an equal amount of force is sent back your way. Shojiro has the ability to absorb and store that “opposite reaction”; the force that should come back to him when he hits something never does, instead being caught by his quirk. Then, the next time he hits something, he can add that force to his own, effectively doubling the amount of force he can dish out. But this means that the opposite reaction is also doubled and he can store that too; then his third attack has the power of the previous two added to it, the fourth the power of the previous three, and so on and so on.

Quirk Weakness: Shojiro is unable to store the accumulated energy within his own body; if he punches something with his bare hands, his quirk will not activate. Instead he needs to use an item or a weapon as a conduit, but there are also limitations on the type of item he can use; if it is not strong enough to handle the amount of kinetic energy being placed into it, it will break rather than store it, so he needs to use a weapon that it sturdy and strong enough to take a beating.

Strengths:
Hits things really hard
Confidence
Physically talented
Strong visual acuity

Weakness:
Lacking in strategy
No long range abilities
Dependent on his weapon
No defence other than offence

Background/Personality: From a young age, Shojiro knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life. His family wasn’t the most affluent; they weren’t poor exactly, nor were they struggling to get by, but they weren’t far from it and that meant that he parents had to work a lot. His father ran a newspaper stand during the day and would run deliveries in the evenings and his mother would work restaurant jobs while he was at school and take care of him in the afternoon. They were positive people, always jovial and friendly and hard-working and they instilled at least one of those qualities in Shojiro as well.
In spite of their busy schedules, they always made time to spend together as a family and the thing that always brought them together was baseball. His father loved baseball and was a huge fan of their local team the Hanshin Tigers. He would take Shojiro and his mother to as many games as he could, having a friend who worked at the stadium who could get them cheap tickets. They would watch the games and cheer and yell; even as a young kid who didn’t understand the rules Shojiro loved the energy of the whole thing and as he grew older he began to appreciate the sport itself as well. He knew what he wanted to be when he grew up; he wanted to play baseball.

He told his father this and his father encouraged him, buying him a bat and breaking out his old pitcher’s mitt and ball to teach his son the game. In return Shojiro began to work at his father’s newsstand, helping out on the weekends. Later, he joined his school’s baseball team. Everything seemed to be on track; he was fit and athletic, he had a good eye for the ball and was pretty good at swinging a bat. Even his quirk seemed perfectly suited for someone who wanted to hit them out of the park, letting him power-up his swings before sending baseballs flying. There was just one problem.

Shojiro was terrible at baseball.

Although he was able to score runs and even home runs consistently, he wasn’t able to pitch with any kind of accuracy, was horrible in both the infield and the outfield, had no sense of strategy for the game, swung at every ball even if it was a foul, kept trying to steal bases, not to mention all the times he hit a ball too hard with his quirk and destroyed it.

With his athletic aspirations dead, Shojiro needed something else to work towards, another goal. It was from hearing some of his classmates talking about taking an exam for a hero school that he made his mind up; if he couldn’t be an athlete then he would just be a hero instead.

How did you get into UA?: Exam

What was a fateful moment in the exam?: Shojiro arrived at the exam site with a bag full of baseball bats and not much of a plan other than to just tackle whatever was put in front of him head on. The beginning of the exam was slow for Shojiro as he had not yet gathered enough kinetic energy with his quirk to be able to defeat the villains and was instead forced to run from them and bide his time. Once he was able to build up some steam he was able to start taking out villains left and right, only to be held back by the fact that the bats he had brought with him kept breaking after just a few swings.

Knowing that once he ran out he wouldn’t be able to do anything else he spent his time defeating any villain he could get his hands on, which included stealing kills from a number of exam participants nearby. The end result was that he finished with a good score for combat and, surprisingly, a decent score for support due to the number of other people he “assisted” in taking down their villains.

HEROIC

omg are we making secondary characters but they're a pack of animals raised in the sewers by a talking rat??

@Blazion

The legally distinct Adolescent Variant Samurai Terrapins?

HEROIC

Aaaaand, we're dead.

HEROIC

Kitsune

The city had become a warzone and Akeno had no idea what she was going to do about it.

Over the past hour, from the moment the first… thing appeared and started attacking people to now, she had done nothing but fight. Oversized men with steam-powered muscled who boiled themselves from the inside, enraged people dressed like hospital patients who bite and scratch and flailed at anyone who got close, weird human-animal hybrids and cyborgs and a few unique looking individuals who she refused to approach. A few days ago she had never even seen, let alone fought another person with powers; now it was like a mad scientist had upended the entire contents of their lab onto the streets and she was having to deal with all of it herself.

Up ahead a car rolled past the intersection, completely ablaze and with no one inside that she could see. Overhead, a pair of people with jetpacks roared past, one of them banking around the corner while the other clipped a lamppost and spiralled into the ground. Gunfire, sirens and even the occasional explosion sounded from adjacent streets.

It was chaos.

It was hell.

It was, allegedly, the kind of situation heroes were supposed to deal with, but so far she hadn’t seen any; police, paramedics and a lone fire engine, but no heroes. Well, she had seen a couple of drones flying around that looked like the ones that Grim guy had used, so maybe there was someone else out there.

The sound of metal being dragged along tarmac caught her attention and she turned around to see a group of men wearing the same outfit and masks approaching her; five of them in total, the one in the middle dragging a steel pipe while the others were unarmed. They’d seen her and were clearly looking for a fight; normally she wouldn’t oblige, five was more than she was usually willing to deal with by herself, but there was nowhere safe out here tonight and running would just take her to another threat. Besides, these guys didn’t looked too bad, tall and thin unlike the thugs she usually dealt with; the only thing worrying about them was the strange uniformity they had with each other.

Probably nothing.

They started to split up, spreading out to surround her, and rather than let them do so she rushed forward and attacked the one furthest to the right. A jumping, spinning back kick, the same one she used to knock out the telepath a couple nights ago, and the guy hit the ground even easier than she had expected. Then she was on to the next, kicking his lower leg to unbalance him before throwing a series of punches at his head; he blocked by throwing his arms over his head and she knocked him away with a kick to his chest instead.

She had a brief second to wonder about how easily they went down before the remaining three, no four, all rushed her at once and forced her to back away. Fights against groups didn’t often go the way they did in the movies, with the henchmen forming a circle and taking turns getting knocked out one or two at a time; if they were smart they all rushed in a once, overwhelmed the opponent with numbers and bringing them to the ground. What usually followed after that couldn’t be called a fight. It was the same now, four people all bearing down on her as she retreated and sought to keep them from surrounding or reaching her, hoping to split them up again.

One pulled to far ahead and she reversed direction, charging back in and slamming an elbow into their chest that doubled them over. She pushed them towards a pair, forcing them to catch their friend or trip over him as she went after the third and chopped down on their neck with a forearm strike. They fell like a puppet with their strings cut and she spun towards the pair and launched another back kick at the first as they untangled themselves. Behind them she could see the others she had already dealt with picking themselves up or being picked up by others. The two she had knocked down had become four and she only just now noticed the one with the pipe was still back there, watching the whole fight while leaning on their weapon like a walking stick. Things began to click into place right as a hand grabbed her ankle and she reacted by wrenching her foot free and then stomping on the grasping hand; turning to look over her shoulder she saw two people lying there were before there had only been one.

Backing away again, she put distance between herself and the now twelve-strong group that was approaching her. Clones maybe, duplicates or even illusions; they felt real enough when she hit them, but if they were all in her head why wouldn’t they. Either way, she decided to activate her power, cranking up the heat all across her body and adding a slight shimmer to the air around her. If all of this was fake, or if they were fake then she could afford to be a little less careful with how she dealt with them. When the next one reached her and threw a sloppy punch her way she grabbed its wrist, skin immediately beginning to sizzle under her fingers, and drove her other forearm into the back of their elbow to snap it backwards.

It had… less than the desired effect as the man simple lunged for her with his other arm and forced her to kick him away.

“They don’t feel pain.” She glanced towards the voice and saw the one with the pipe had drawn closer, walking towards her with the weapon hefted over his shoulder. “They don’t feel… anything.”

The distraction was enough that she didn’t react quickly enough when the rest, more than twelve now, rushed her. The first she fended off with a hand shoved in their face, mask and skin burning from the contact and the second she tripped and shoved back into the rest of the pack, but the weight of so many bodies was too much and she was pushed back against a parked car. Each of her arm, still blazingly hot, were grabbed and pulled to the side while the press of bodies prevented her from getting any leverage with her legs. Only her head was left clear, the copies, clones or whatever else ducking down or standing off to the side so that she had a clear view of what must have been the original.

“No pain… no anger… no joy or sadness… no remorse… no guilt…” She tried to throw the copies off of her, straining her arms as hard as she could, but there was no way she was throwing a dozen or more people off of her. “They did… at first… they each had… a little of everything… from me… but when they disappeared… I never… got it back…” They gripped the pipe with both hands, holding it like a baseball bat as they turned their shoulders away from her. “And now we… don’t feel… anything.”

The pipe came down and everything went black.

HEROIC

Wait, so what's the plan here? Should Akeno be knocked out as well or should she go after the others?

HEROIC

love that they all got to win their fights, that's nice

@druidquest

We all put an equal amount of effort into our wins as well, against equally tough opponents; definitely no one had their opponents explode or die on their own due to shoddy workmanship.

HEROIC

Kitsune

The attacker charged her again, screaming an incoherent roar of pain and rage as he tried to put his over-sized fist through her skull. She dodged the first swing, barely, then the second and the third, each one by less than a hair. By the fourth swing the attacks had slowed down to something more reasonable and she was able to knock the arm aside and back away entirely.

No fifth attack came as her assailant seemed to run out of steam; literally out of steam, as small vents opened along the man’s biceps and shoulders to vent clouds of the stuff, the cool night air shimmering with heat and the skin around the vents audibly sizzling even over the sound of more screaming.

Just pain this time.

Kitsune hadn’t made it very far from the parking lot and her run in with Bouncer before getting caught up in something else, something as equally out of her league as a mass human trafficking ring was, on her way home. Three men with oversized torsos and arms, all wearing equally non-descript clothing and all shouting at the top of their lungs as they threw themselves randomly at passers-by and tore into nearby cars and buildings; their hands punched through metal and brick and pavement with ease and they were faster than the average thug she usually dealt with, though not by much. They could tear through a human to, as some unfortunate people had found out before she had a chance to get their attentions.

Two of those men now lay motionless on the street behind her, not due to anything she had done but instead simply collapsing after venting steam a couple of times while she ran rings around them; their faces were a reddish purple and the skin around their upper arms where the hidden vents were looked bruised and possibly even necrotic. Whatever it was that gave them their strength, it came with a cost.

The third was now done screaming and was charging her again, gritting his teeth and reaching out for her with a desperate look in his eye. Kitsune stepped to the side and ducked under the grasping arms, moving behind the juggernaut and stamping foot into the back of his knee to drive him into a crouch. He swung at her, arm like a tree trunk flying over her head as she ducked under it and moved out of his range. They stood again, slowly, clumsily and had to catch themselves on a nearby car and crushing the hood in the process. One step towards her was as far as they got before the vents opened again and the screaming started again and their legs gave out. It was happening more and more frequently as the fight dragged on.

Kitsune approached, cautiously, and stopped just aside of their reach. Even from here she could feel the heat emanating from their body, which meant they must have been giving off enough heat for it to be near unbearable for a normal person; almost as much heat as she felt standing outside the burning building earlier. The man was panting for breath, face as red as those who had already collapsed and presumably died and was probably about to meet the same fate.

“Why do this?” Whether she meant the attack or the modifications she didn’t know. The man didn’t answer right away, all of his energy being put towards taking laboured breaths as he lay there.

“They said… they’d let us go… if we… killed… ma-nngh.” Their words cut off as the vents opened again, more steam pouring out without him even needing to exert himself first now. Kitsune didn’t move out of the way, just letting the scaling blast wash over her to no effect.

“Who?”

No answer through the steam. No screams either.

“Who sent you? Who did this?”

The steam cleared and she could see that the man was gone. Leaving just another red and brutalised body behind.

Pokemon: Ascendancy

Sebastien Tomas

A circus indeed.

Sebastien wasn’t sure how to respond to those comments; whether he should play along with the banter or not. In the end he merely smiled along, thanking Nordrin for the welcome and raising his glass towards Hestia in the same spirit. From there things became livelier as more people arrived and he was allowed to fall back into the background as an observer; the Ground-type trainer Mika showed up with what was apparently a rare Pokémon, a Raichu but in looking for attention. There were more Pokémon here than he had expected, but even he knew he was somewhat of a rarity for a trainer in terms of how much time he spent with his Pokémon just hanging out.

The young champion was coerced into giving a speech and all things told it wasn’t a bad one; a little saccharine, a little safe, but good. You wouldn’t know the kid was terrifying in a battle to look at him know, being bullied by people who had tried and failed to take his title last year.

If the goal of inviting him here was for him to make friends, then so far he was doing a poor job, but if it was for him to have a chance to get to know these people who was ostensibly going to be working with from now on, he thought he was doing fine.

He was learning a lot.

Up until today his only interactions with these people had either been through a TV screen or brief meetings before and after his battles against them; in other words, the kind of interactions someone in the general public would have with a celebrity. Short, scripted, pre-planned to an extent; their pre-battle taunts were things they’d likely said to a hundred challengers before him, their congratulations or commiserations when he won or lost the same. The Galar gym leaders were a colourful bunch, practically by design; they were media personalities and he had always assumed that most, if not all of those personalities were deliberate. The hot-headed Dragon-type trainer, the cantankerous chef, the space-case Electric gym leader and so on. Now that he had had a chance to peer behind the curtains as it were, he could see that he was only a little bit right; some of the people he had seen so far fit their onscreen personas while others did not.

Like the woman who had just clapped him on the back a lot harder than was probably warranted; he hadn’t remembered her being quite so crass in their short interactions in the past. Maybe it was just the influence of the alcohol, or maybe she toned down when she was dealing with the public. Either way she seemed to recognise him, as a challenger rather than just as the new face, which made her the first to do so. He smiled along with her congratulations, as he had with the others, but something she said prompted him to say more this time.

“I haven’t made it anywhere yet. I’m not stopping until I make it all the way to the top.” He clinked his pint glass against the drink she had raised, before gesturing with it towards where Ryker was still standing. “Even if that means beating him before the rest of you get the chance.”

@Psyker Landshark@Ambra

HEROIC

Aight so idea: Its the crack of dawn, like 5ish am, our heroes are probably about ready to pack it in for the night. But our mad scientists are aware that the heroes are onto to them, so they decide to run some distractions while they try to pack up and move deeper into hiding. This distraction is some of their "successful" experiments, half brainwashed and half out of their minds, released into the streets to cause utter chaos. Our heroes, exhausted as they are, have to push through and try to round these maniacs up.

Thots?

@ThisIsFine

That sounds fine to me. But what kind of "successful experiments" are we talking about? These guys are trying to create superpowers or something, right?