Roman

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

<Snipped quote by Roman>

The only thing I'll say is that it may be a stretch for Matt to be DA right out of law school like the sheet implies. It's an elected position and there's a lot, like a lot of politics involved to get to that level in a city the size of New York. ADA would be good though. Unless he spent years as an ADA before making the leap and you planned on mentioning it in the actual posts. If that's the case then I'm good.

@Byrd Man

I’ll change it to ADA with Foggy being a friend also practicing law to make it more feasible; while this isn’t a DD origin story I’m trying to tell, it’s not one with several years on the clock either.

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

Application

Ultimate One Universe: Year One Application

▼ POWERS & ABILITIES:

---

// PEAK PHYSICAL CONDITION| Having undergone several kinds of rigorous training across his lifetime, Matthew has achieved a human body at peak physical performance, with his strength, speed, stamina, endurance, agility, and reflexes all at the absolute upper limits of human capability.

// PEAK MENTAL ABILITY | Matthew is incredibly gifted, having studied hard and achieved great academic success in his civilian life, and honed that intellect into some more practical talents for his vigilantism. Skilled in detection and problem-solving, Matthew also has a fantastic working knowledge of criminology and psychology. Furthermore, Matthew is able to detach himself from emotional response when necessary, able to turn to logic and rationality and focus entirely on his goals, suppressing emotion completely.

// SUPERHUMAN SENSORY SYSTEM After the accident that caused Matthew's blindness, his other senses began to compensate far past what was expected of them, and with Stick's later training, Matthew has honed these remaining senses into the superhuman, unlocking extraordinary abilities.

◼ SUPERHUMAN TOUCH | Matthew's sense of touch is so acute that his finger can feel the faint impressions of ink on a printed page, allowing him to read by touch. The rest of his skin is equally sensitive, enabling him to feel minute temperature and pressure changes in the atmosphere around him. Even with his senses of smell and hearing blocked, he can feel the presence of a person standing five feet away from him simply by his or her body heat and disturbance of air, which he can use to predict the movement of people nearby.

◼ SUPERHUMAN HEARING | Murdock's sense of hearing enables him to detect an acoustic pressure change of one decibel at a pressure level of seven decibels. He can hear a person's heartbeat at a distance of over twenty feet, or people whispering on the other side of a standard soundproofed wall. He is also able to focus on a particular sound, however quiet, and block all others out. Matthew's hearing also allows him to use incoming acoustic information to map out his environment in 360 degrees.

◼ SUPERHUMAN SMELL | Matthew's sense of smell is so acute that he can distinguish between identical twins at twenty feet by minute differences in smell. He can detect odors from even the smallest concentrations in the atmosphere. Furthermore, his ability to remember smells enables him to identify nearly any person by their natural odor alone, and he can use this to track a mark across a large distance, even through a crowd.

◼ SUPERHUMAN TASTE | Matthew's ability to identify and remember tastes in incredibly tiny quantities enables him to determine every ingredient of a food or drink he tastes, and even taste particular vapors in the air.

▼ ORIGIN & BACKSTORY:

---

Born to a nameless mother, Matthew grew up with his father, Jack Murdoch, a semi-pro underground boxer for Hell's Kitchen and its underbelly. Jack had a penchant for getting back up off the mat despite however many broken bones he'd picked up, and this trait seemed to pass to Matthew, who would treasure it in later years; for most of his childhood, however, Jack tried to keep his only family hidden from the violence that plagued the downtrodden Manhattan neighborhood and instead directed Matthew's attentions to his studies, making sure he kept up in school until Matthew started to excel by himself. Jack was proud that such a bright child could be called his, and he foresaw an escape from Hell's Kitchen for his son - an escape that would not find Matthew; at nine years old, Hell's Kitchen put in its claim to the child. A traffic accident and a courageous, reckless act, caused a truck hauling chemical waste and toxic run-off to crash and overturn, spilling its cargo across the road and onto several bystanders - including Matthew. Caught in the spill, the chemicals burnt his eyes irrevocably. Jack and Matthew's lives changed forever - Matthew bound to the abilities that would reveal themselves over the next few months and years, and Jack bound to dealing with a disabled son who displayed abnormal reflexes and sensory overload.

Matthew spent his formative years learning his new place in the world, refining the senses he had left and continuing his studies. Jack continued boxing, losing and winning when the local mob told him to, until eventually - as he realized Matthew's abilities and intelligence were beginning to pull him to greater things - he took a final stand, winning an against-all-odds boxing match in Round 9 against 'Crusher' Creel, despite being instructed to stay down in the fourth. Jack Murdock never made it home. Matthew fled Hell's Kitchen the same night, cursing the criminals that had shaped his life and ended his father's. He found refuge in an nun's orphanage for a time, until his abilities took the notice of a blind man who called himself 'Stick'; Matthew left with Stick to train his mind, senses, and body, and he never (figuratively) looked back.

Many years later, Matthew returned to Manhattan to pick up where he had left off in his education; securing a place at Columbia, where he met Foggy Nelson, and going on to secure a Summa Cum Laude Law Degree from Harvard Law, with Foggy attaining a Cum Laude Law Degree alongside him. Taking a cue from Harvey Dent, an admired peer Murdock had met at university, Murdock moved back to Hell's Kitchen with Foggy to become New York's newest ADA, a high profile judiciary positions that gave Murdock quick access to the information he needed to start cleaning up his home. However, Matthew soon found that courtroom law was far from the 'justice' he sought for the people of Hell's Kitchen. At first, it was those in his immediate vicinity; a blindfold and dark clothes for the domestic abuser in the next building over, the cop taking bribes from the local dealer to keep him operating on student corners. Beyond that, Matthew moved his scope to the broader picture, donning padded athletic wear and a more stylized 'mask' to take on gambling rings and amateur human trafficking. Soon enough, Matthew saw too much in court to stand by without action any longer. It was time for the suit, to combat the massive crime organisation that underpinned the criminal everyday of Hell's Kitchen.

It was time for Kingpin. It was time for Daredevil.

▼ SUPPORTING CHARACTERS :

---

// ALLIES

◼ FRANKLIN 'FOGGY' NELSON | Matthew's partner in law as Assistant District Attorney and lifetime best friend, the two met at Columbia Law and have been inseparable ever since. Foggy is Matthew's walking conscience and moral compass, always there to guide Murdock back towards the light when the Devil strays too far into the dark.

◼ KAREN PAGE | A beautiful blonde hired by Foggy to be his and Matthew's assistant, Karen is tenacious, intelligent, and a little too morally upstanding to be safe in Hell's Kitchen. She enjoys a fiery chemistry with Murdock, although he refuses to let anything come of it.

◼ STICK | A martial arts master with supersensory abilities even more advanced than Murdock's, he recognized Matthew's condition at the orphanage and took him away for training. He is mysterious, stoic, and guarded, but nonetheless a strong ally of Matthew.

◼ JACK MURDOCK | Matthew's father, a semi-pro boxer in Hell's Kitchen who raised Matthew as a single father. He did well, teaching Matthew to be a kinder and better person than Jack was, and after Matthew's accident, still encouraged him to pursue his studies. Tragically, he eventually crossed the mob of Hell's Kitchen while Matthew was still young, and Matthew has been trying to do his father proud ever since.

// FRIENDS

◼ HARVEY DENT| The zealous and enthusiastic ADA of Gotham City, Murdock met Dent at Columbia Law and the two immediately formed a strong respect for each other. They rarely talk anymore, but Murdock keeps tabs - Gotham is a difficult city, and allies there are hard to come by.

// ENEMIES

◼ THE KINGPIN | The unquestioned head of nearly all organised crime in New York, with an iron grip on Murdock's neighborhood of Hell's Kitchen, and an intellect to match his physicality. Ruthless, violent, intelligent - there is no criminal in New York who would cross the Kingpin. But there is a Devil waiting to face him.

▼ SAMPLE POST:

---

Matthew followed the clacking of the metal heels deep into Hell's Kitchen, every step rippling out across the street and down the curb, lighting up the asphalt. The ripples mixed with the rain, every individual drop giving him constant flashes of the city - every sidewalk tile, every trashcan, every streetlight. A whole city as one surface, pulsing and radiating soundwaves and heat. Matthew himself spread noise, the low wet thud of his boots against rooftops feeding him information that he accepted, analysed, and discarded. Above all that was Matthew's mark, and now, despite the rain, he was picking up smells as well - wet leather, musky cologne...and the slight tinge of salt, mixed with oil and the unmistakable scent of gunpowder. The salt carried the sea with it, but Matthew already knew they were headed to the docks by their direction - but the oil and gunpowder was from the pistols Daredevil's mark carried, holstered beneath his coat around his torso. They'd been fired recently, but the man didn't carry the smell of blood with him, so Matthew assumed it was target practice or goods testing. They were drawing closer to the docks and he was learning more about his mark every step - testing pistols. Flashy fashion sense. Bald, wearing sunglasses, thin vest top. Something in his left pocket - the coat swung heavier on that side. He leaped another rooftop, putting a hand to his batons in mid-air. Something told him he'd need them.

Matthew kept on the mark's trail. They went a couple more blocks and then buildings gave way to warehouses and Matthew had to hit the ground if he wanted to follow. Warehouses were noisy and involved a lot of glass - in the rain, he didn't want to slip. Or put his foot through a pane. The guy carried guns, and bulletproof armour was hard to move in. Instead, he dropped carefully, leaping from the rooftop to the indent of a window a few stories down on the opposite building, landing with the balls of his feet on the outcropping and springing back, flipping backwards from the window and reaching out to grab a steel cable that was strung between the buildings another few stories down. His orientation didn't matter; he kept track of himself through proprioception and the buildings through sound, air pressure, the smell of brick and concrete. The cable flexed as it took his weight and he dropped the last few metres, rolling as he hit the ground and unsheathing his batons. He spun them in his hand and tested the retracting cable that strung them together, and then, satisfied, re-centered his hearing. The footsteps were still there, still his mark's. They'd been alone for a while now, and he hadn't changed his gait. Matthew slunk across walls and behind shipping containers, still in pursuit. They were by the sea's edge now, and the docks had turned into massive corridors of corrogated metal, walled off by cargo.

He whistled. A simple four-note tune, but it was clear in its purpose. A woman appeared from behind one of the containers. Matthew had heard her heartbeat as they'd approached - it remained calm. His mark's did not. He cleared his throat, and spoke:
"The guns are good. I'll take more pistols, and I want to add the assaults and the sniper. It'll all be useful." His heart rate was rapid, but his breathing and words remained steady. He was about to do something stupid.
"You sound like you're takin' a crew. He doesn't like supplying crews. They might get stupid and think they're competition." She replied, voice calm, heartbeat to match. She seemed to anticipate it.
"No crew. Just what's needed for the target. High-risk."
"If you're going after who I think you're going after you're going to need a crew. Not like you'd lose much on the split."
"I don't need the money." It wasn't a boast - his heartrate hadn't faltered, so he believed it. Either he was well-off or didn't care. "I'm not doing it because someone paid me to do it." Still telling his truth. "I'm doing it because it can be done. And everyone's going to know my name when I do it." He seemed proud in himself, puffed up on his own stupid ego. The woman just shrugged.
"Whatever. Just make sure you keep whatever trouble you stir up to yourself. He doesn't need egos bringing trouble back to him. You know what he wants for the goods. You can wire it direct."
"I know what he wants." Muttered the man, voice low - trying to be threatening. Matthew primed himself, every muscle wound tight, ready to spring. His fist clenched around his batons. The man unholstered his pistols, arm stretching out to hold it in front of him. "But only I get what I want."

The woman would have begun to laugh, had Matthew not loosened his body and launched from the corner, already raising his arm to strike with the baton - but the woman had seen his fast movement and the man had noticed her, throwing his arm out behind him to the left without looking and pulling the trigger. Matthew felt the arm's movement through the air, the heat from the muzzle and the sound of the gun telling him the exact path of the bullet and he was able to throw himself backwards to the ground immediately, feeling the air ripple and vibrate above him as the bullet slammed into a shipping container and ricocheted away. Matt barely had time to register the good shot before he flicked the top of his baton as he fell, releasing the cable that tied the two together and whipping his arm out as he hit the floor, hitting the man's inside wrist, nearly breaking it with the force of the throw and forcing him to drop the pistol. He slid in the rain, pitching forward and pushing up on his feet as the mark drew his other pistol in his remaining hand. He barely had to time to wrap his finger around the trigger before Matt brought his stick straight down on the arm, cleanly breaking the ulna as the shooter yelled out in pain, silenced by a boot to the chest as the other pistol clattered to the ground. The woman was pissed - at the mark.

"You brought the fucking Devil with you? You let him follow you? You're a fuck-up and a nobody! After threatening me? He'll come see you soon, don't you worry about that. Then, people are going to know who you are."

She was gone before Matt could stop her - not that it would have been useful to do so. He took a deep breath through his nose, analysing all the scents he could find before isolating one that would be easy to follow up on - fish, variety of, from the nearby market she obviously frequented - before he delivered a sharp heel-kick to the skull of his mark. Extorting an arms-dealer to get weapons so he could go after the very same vigilante that had already surreptitiously followed him to said dealer. He probably wasn't doing much damage that hadn't been done already.

It didn't take long to deliver the no-name to the PD, and Matt wondered if he'd see him later in court. Probably not - he didn't see much of his handiwork. He usually got them on the streets before he needed to defend their victims in the courtroom. He spent the rest of the night on more patrol, thinking over his new lead through the arms dealer and listening to his city. Matt had his own problems; but Hell's Kitchen wouldn't see anymore trouble tonight.

▼ WHAT MAKES DAREDEVIL 'ULTIMATE'?:

---

This is a Matthew Murdock who, instead of helping bleeding hearts and the unfortunate, still has dreams of being a big city lawyer. He's high profile and works high class cases, directly taking on the mob on both his civilian guise and during the night when he dons the horns to become Daredevil. It is more important than ever to keep his dual life secret, as he becomes a bright target to the underworld on both sides of the law.

Roman's Scrapbin

Ultimate One Universe: Year One Application

▼ POWERS & ABILITIES:

---

// PEAK PHYSICAL CONDITION| Having undergone several kinds of rigorous training across his lifetime, Matthew has achieved a human body at peak physical performance, with his strength, speed, stamina, endurance, agility, and reflexes all at the absolute upper limits of human capability.

// PEAK MENTAL ABILITY | Matthew is incredibly gifted, having studied hard and achieved great academic success in his civilian life, and honed that intellect into some more practical talents for his vigilantism. Skilled in detection and problem-solving, Matthew also has a fantastic working knowledge of criminology and psychology. Furthermore, Matthew is able to detach himself from emotional response when necessary, able to turn to logic and rationality and focus entirely on his goals, suppressing emotion completely.

// SUPERHUMAN SENSORY SYSTEM After the accident that caused Matthew's blindness, his other senses began to compensate far past what was expected of them, and with Stick's later training, Matthew has honed these remaining senses into the superhuman, unlocking extraordinary abilities.

◼ SUPERHUMAN TOUCH | Matthew's sense of touch is so acute that his finger can feel the faint impressions of ink on a printed page, allowing him to read by touch. The rest of his skin is equally sensitive, enabling him to feel minute temperature and pressure changes in the atmosphere around him. Even with his senses of smell and hearing blocked, he can feel the presence of a person standing five feet away from him simply by his or her body heat and disturbance of air, which he can use to predict the movement of people nearby.

◼ SUPERHUMAN HEARING | Murdock's sense of hearing enables him to detect an acoustic pressure change of one decibel at a pressure level of seven decibels. He can hear a person's heartbeat at a distance of over twenty feet, or people whispering on the other side of a standard soundproofed wall. He is also able to focus on a particular sound, however quiet, and block all others out. Matthew's hearing also allows him to use incoming acoustic information to map out his environment in 360 degrees.

◼ SUPERHUMAN SMELL | Matthew's sense of smell is so acute that he can distinguish between identical twins at twenty feet by minute differences in smell. He can detect odors from even the smallest concentrations in the atmosphere. Furthermore, his ability to remember smells enables him to identify nearly any person by their natural odor alone, and he can use this to track a mark across a large distance, even through a crowd.

◼ SUPERHUMAN TASTE | Matthew's ability to identify and remember tastes in incredibly tiny quantities enables him to determine every ingredient of a food or drink he tastes, and even taste particular vapors in the air.

▼ ORIGIN & BACKSTORY:

---

Born to a nameless mother, Matthew grew up with his father, Jack Murdoch, a semi-pro underground boxer for Hell's Kitchen and its underbelly. Jack had a penchant for getting back up off the mat despite however many broken bones he'd picked up, and this trait seemed to pass to Matthew, who would treasure it in later years; for most of his childhood, however, Jack tried to keep his only family hidden from the violence that plagued the downtrodden Manhattan neighborhood and instead directed Matthew's attentions to his studies, making sure he kept up in school until Matthew started to excel by himself. Jack was proud that such a bright child could be called his, and he foresaw an escape from Hell's Kitchen for his son - an escape that would not find Matthew; at nine years old, Hell's Kitchen put in its claim to the child. A traffic accident and a courageous, reckless act, caused a truck hauling chemical waste and toxic run-off to crash and overturn, spilling its cargo across the road and onto several bystanders - including Matthew. Caught in the spill, the chemicals burnt his eyes irrevocably. Jack and Matthew's lives changed forever - Matthew bound to the abilities that would reveal themselves over the next few months and years, and Jack bound to dealing with a disabled son who displayed abnormal reflexes and sensory overload.

Matthew spent his formative years learning his new place in the world, refining the senses he had left and continuing his studies. Jack continued boxing, losing and winning when the local mob told him to, until eventually - as he realized Matthew's abilities and intelligence were beginning to pull him to greater things - he took a final stand, winning an against-all-odds boxing match in Round 9 against 'Crusher' Creel, despite being instructed to stay down in the fourth. Jack Murdock never made it home. Matthew fled Hell's Kitchen the same night, cursing the criminals that had shaped his life and ended his father's. He found refuge in an nun's orphanage for a time, until his abilities took the notice of a blind man who called himself 'Stick'; Matthew left with Stick to train his mind, senses, and body, and he never (figuratively) looked back.

Many years later, Matthew returned to Manhattan to pick up where he had left off in his education; securing a place at Columbia, where he met Foggy Nelson, and going on to secure a Summa Cum Laude Law Degree from Harvard Law, with Foggy attaining a Cum Laude Law Degree alongside him. Taking a cue from Harvey Dent, an admired peer Murdock had met at university, Murdock moved back to Hell's Kitchen with Foggy to become New York's newest ADA, a high profile judiciary position that gave Murdock quick access to the information he needed to start cleaning up his home. However, Matthew soon found that courtroom law was far from the 'justice' he sought for the people of Hell's Kitchen. At first, it was those in his immediate vicinity; a blindfold and dark clothes for the domestic abuser in the next building over, the cop taking bribes from the local dealer to keep him operating on student corners. Beyond that, Matthew moved his scope to the broader picture, donning padded athletic wear and a more stylized 'mask' to take on gambling rings and amateur human trafficking. Soon enough, Matthew saw too much in court to stand by without action any longer. It was time for the suit, to combat the massive crime organisation that underpinned the criminal everyday of Hell's Kitchen.

It was time for Kingpin. It was time for Daredevil.

▼ SUPPORTING CHARACTERS :

---

// ALLIES

◼ FRANKLIN 'FOGGY' NELSON | Matthew's partner in law as Assistant District Attorney and lifetime best friend, the two met at Columbia Law and have been inseparable ever since. Foggy is Matthew's walking conscience and moral compass, always there to guide Murdock back towards the light when the Devil strays too far into the dark.

◼ KAREN PAGE | A beautiful blonde hired by Foggy to be his and Matthew's assistant, Karen is tenacious, intelligent, and a little too morally upstanding to be safe in Hell's Kitchen. She enjoys a fiery chemistry with Murdock, although he refuses to let anything come of it.

◼ STICK | A martial arts master with supersensory abilities even more advanced than Murdock's, he recognized Matthew's condition at the orphanage and took him away for training. He is mysterious, stoic, and guarded, but nonetheless a strong ally of Matthew.

◼ JACK MURDOCK | Matthew's father, a semi-pro boxer in Hell's Kitchen who raised Matthew as a single father. He did well, teaching Matthew to be a kinder and better person than Jack was, and after Matthew's accident, still encouraged him to pursue his studies. Tragically, he eventually crossed the mob of Hell's Kitchen while Matthew was still young, and Matthew has been trying to do his father proud ever since.

// FRIENDS

◼ HARVEY DENT| The zealous and enthusiastic ADA of Gotham City, Murdock met Dent at Columbia Law and the two immediately formed a strong respect for each other. They rarely talk anymore, but Murdock keeps tabs - Gotham is a difficult city, and allies there are hard to come by.

// ENEMIES

◼ THE KINGPIN | The unquestioned head of nearly all organised crime in New York, with an iron grip on Murdock's neighborhood of Hell's Kitchen, and an intellect to match his physicality. Ruthless, violent, intelligent - there is no criminal in New York who would cross the Kingpin. But there is a Devil waiting to face him.

▼ SAMPLE POST:

---

Matthew followed the clacking of the metal heels deep into Hell's Kitchen, every step rippling out across the street and down the curb, lighting up the asphalt. The ripples mixed with the rain, every individual drop giving him constant flashes of the city - every sidewalk tile, every trashcan, every streetlight. A whole city as one surface, pulsing and radiating soundwaves and heat. Matthew himself spread noise, the low wet thud of his boots against rooftops feeding him information that he accepted, analysed, and discarded. Above all that was Matthew's mark, and now, despite the rain, he was picking up smells as well - wet leather, musky cologne...and the slight tinge of salt, mixed with oil and the unmistakable scent of gunpowder. The salt carried the sea with it, but Matthew already knew they were headed to the docks by their direction - but the oil and gunpowder was from the pistols Daredevil's mark carried, holstered beneath his coat around his torso. They'd been fired recently, but the man didn't carry the smell of blood with him, so Matthew assumed it was target practice or goods testing. They were drawing closer to the docks and he was learning more about his mark every step - testing pistols. Flashy fashion sense. Bald, wearing sunglasses, thin vest top. Something in his left pocket - the coat swung heavier on that side. He leaped another rooftop, putting a hand to his batons in mid-air. Something told him he'd need them.

Matthew kept on the mark's trail. They went a couple more blocks and then buildings gave way to warehouses and Matthew had to hit the ground if he wanted to follow. Warehouses were noisy and involved a lot of glass - in the rain, he didn't want to slip. Or put his foot through a pane. The guy carried guns, and bulletproof armour was hard to move in. Instead, he dropped carefully, leaping from the rooftop to the indent of a window a few stories down on the opposite building, landing with the balls of his feet on the outcropping and springing back, flipping backwards from the window and reaching out to grab a steel cable that was strung between the buildings another few stories down. His orientation didn't matter; he kept track of himself through proprioception and the buildings through sound, air pressure, the smell of brick and concrete. The cable flexed as it took his weight and he dropped the last few metres, rolling as he hit the ground and unsheathing his batons. He spun them in his hand and tested the retracting cable that strung them together, and then, satisfied, re-centered his hearing. The footsteps were still there, still his mark's. They'd been alone for a while now, and he hadn't changed his gait. Matthew slunk across walls and behind shipping containers, still in pursuit. They were by the sea's edge now, and the docks had turned into massive corridors of corrogated metal, walled off by cargo.

He whistled. A simple four-note tune, but it was clear in its purpose. A woman appeared from behind one of the containers. Matthew had heard her heartbeat as they'd approached - it remained calm. His mark's did not. He cleared his throat, and spoke:
"The guns are good. I'll take more pistols, and I want to add the assaults and the sniper. It'll all be useful." His heart rate was rapid, but his breathing and words remained steady. He was about to do something stupid.
"You sound like you're takin' a crew. He doesn't like supplying crews. They might get stupid and think they're competition." She replied, voice calm, heartbeat to match. She seemed to anticipate it.
"No crew. Just what's needed for the target. High-risk."
"If you're going after who I think you're going after you're going to need a crew. Not like you'd lose much on the split."
"I don't need the money." It wasn't a boast - his heartrate hadn't faltered, so he believed it. Either he was well-off or didn't care. "I'm not doing it because someone paid me to do it." Still telling his truth. "I'm doing it because it can be done. And everyone's going to know my name when I do it." He seemed proud in himself, puffed up on his own stupid ego. The woman just shrugged.
"Whatever. Just make sure you keep whatever trouble you stir up to yourself. He doesn't need egos bringing trouble back to him. You know what he wants for the goods. You can wire it direct."
"I know what he wants." Muttered the man, voice low - trying to be threatening. Matthew primed himself, every muscle wound tight, ready to spring. His fist clenched around his batons. The man unholstered his pistols, arm stretching out to hold it in front of him. "But only I get what I want."

The woman would have begun to laugh, had Matthew not loosened his body and launched from the corner, already raising his arm to strike with the baton - but the woman had seen his fast movement and the man had noticed her, throwing his arm out behind him to the left without looking and pulling the trigger. Matthew felt the arm's movement through the air, the heat from the muzzle and the sound of the gun telling him the exact path of the bullet and he was able to throw himself backwards to the ground immediately, feeling the air ripple and vibrate above him as the bullet slammed into a shipping container and ricocheted away. Matt barely had time to register the good shot before he flicked the top of his baton as he fell, releasing the cable that tied the two together and whipping his arm out as he hit the floor, hitting the man's inside wrist, nearly breaking it with the force of the throw and forcing him to drop the pistol. He slid in the rain, pitching forward and pushing up on his feet as the mark drew his other pistol in his remaining hand. He barely had to time to wrap his finger around the trigger before Matt brought his stick straight down on the arm, cleanly breaking the ulna as the shooter yelled out in pain, silenced by a boot to the chest as the other pistol clattered to the ground. The woman was pissed - at the mark.

"You brought the fucking Devil with you? You let him follow you? You're a fuck-up and a nobody! After threatening me? He'll come see you soon, don't you worry about that. Then, people are going to know who you are."

She was gone before Matt could stop her - not that it would have been useful to do so. He took a deep breath through his nose, analysing all the scents he could find before isolating one that would be easy to follow up on - fish, variety of, from the nearby market she obviously frequented - before he delivered a sharp heel-kick to the skull of his mark. Extorting an arms-dealer to get weapons so he could go after the very same vigilante that had already surreptitiously followed him to said dealer. He probably wasn't doing much damage that hadn't been done already.

It didn't take long to deliver the no-name to the PD, and Matt wondered if he'd see him later in court. Probably not - he didn't see much of his handiwork. He usually got them on the streets before he needed to defend their victims in the courtroom. He spent the rest of the night on more patrol, thinking over his new lead through the arms dealer and listening to his city. Matt had his own problems; but Hell's Kitchen wouldn't see anymore trouble tonight.

▼ WHAT MAKES DAREDEVIL 'ULTIMATE'?:

---

This is a Matthew Murdock who, instead of helping bleeding hearts and the unfortunate, still has dreams of being a big city lawyer. He's high profile and works high class cases, directly taking on the mob on both his civilian guise and during the night when he dons the horns to become Daredevil. It is more important than ever to keep his dual life secret, as he becomes a bright target to the underworld on both sides of the law.

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

<Snipped quote by Byrd Man>

Never!

@Roman

@Lord Wraith

The Haunting of Crestwood Hollow - A Supernatural Thriller

Sounds good guys, so what can we do to improve posting consistency? Is it the current events in the IC holding you back or is it real life for all of you?

@Lord Wraith

'Confused' isn't the word I want to use, but it's the only one I can think of about how I feel in regards to the current pace of the game, which is currently my major barrier; Penny doesn't have her powers, doesn't know she has her powers, doesn't have any positive relationships with any characters to play off of, but we're on our second murder, and this one has undoubtedly supernatural leanings, and it's kind of lurched the game forwards in a way I wasn't prepared for.

On the other side of it I'm also running Blighted Kingdom and have recently transferred at work and am now putting some hard graft towards securing a new promotion.

I'm very much still here, though! Love the posts so far, will have one of my own up this week!

The Blighted Kingdom

I have an idea for how we can leave the city, or rather, Lowe has an idea for how to leave the city.

@Liseran Thistle

Passage out of Vasilius is the only easy part of your journey; the crownguard and city watch are aware of your status with your missive from the King and will not hassle you; the other cities, however, will not be quite so welcoming, with varying degrees of resistance to your entry and/or presence.

Ideally, you guys need to get yourselves on the road - and then I can begin to...interfere.

The Blighted Kingdom

Hi guys! Sorry about the delay, I have recently been transferred at work to a new location and attended a wedding this week as well as my mother's birthday, so I've been rather busy!

Love the collab; looks like everyone is set to head out on the first step of our quest, and if I remember rightly the agreed destination was Kafaara, home to the Barbed Church. A GM post will be made to help guide you along but feel free to begin your journey out of Vasilius in the meantime!

The Blighted Kingdom

Any ETA on the collab? Excited to get you guys out of Vasilius and on to your first taste of what's been going on around the kingdom...

The Blighted Kingdom

You can use Piratepad, Googledocs, or a shared PM. The former two will allow multiple and simultaneous editing by several users; I recommend googledocs for ease of use and accessiblity.

The Haunting of Crestwood Hollow - A Supernatural Thriller

T H E B O Y L E R E S I D E N C E :

---

A familiar dull ache warmed Peneople’s body from the core as her alarm clock buzz-buzz pierced through her skull in the usual way, an irritating aide to reluctantly opening her eyes to the soft red LED glow of the digital display. 05:45. The same as the last two months. There was nothing new in the air; no original tone in the blaring alarm; no difference in Penelope herself. She hadn’t particularly expected difference, but the common insistence was that a new academic year held the potential for marvelous and radical change each and every day - though none supposedly more vital than the first, was the ever-present caveat - and it seemed that the more people who held this conviction, the more people readily believed that it was true, as if a grand enough collective mind could convince the fabric of the world itself to change according to belief. Buzz-buzz. Same old alarm. Same old bedroom. Same old Crestwood. Same old Penny Dreadful. She silenced the alarm and got up, swinging her legs over the edge of her bed and feeling the carpet with her toes, before standing and walking two short steps across to the bedroom window.

Curtains opened to newly-rising sun filtering through grey clouds. Crow-caws and pigeon-coos provided the morning ambiance through an open window. Penelope leaned on the windowsill with both hands, letting the chill of a morning breeze push past her and give way to goosebumps on her skin, the long t-shirt she’d slept in picked deliberately for its thin fabric that offered little for warmth. She’d been plenty warm these past few weeks, an uncomfortable slow-burn that made her lethargic and irritable. More irritable than usual, at least. This morning the heat was already returning, accompanied by a low, offset ache that moved and radiated around her body hour upon hour. Occasionally eating would soothe it; sometimes sugary drinks; sometimes, most rarely, simply ignoring it for an hour or so. Right now, she tried a new method she had been practicing over the last long weekend, a method she had read about in a book loaned out from Crestwood’s library, her preferred haunt outside of school hours. Penelope stood incredibly still and closed her eyes, focusing on the ache, pushing all mental faculties towards it and blocking out everything else. She chased it, wrestled it, pinned it down. It was in her left arm. Concentrate on it, compact it, squeeze and squeeze and peel away its layers. Her arm tingled, as if she were laying on it and pins-and-needles were setting in. She squeezed it more and the tingle grew to numbness, and the numbness spread, and Penelope felt as if her hand were melting over the windowsill and-
Penelope opened her eyes, suddenly fearful. Her hand was fine. She turned around and looked at the time. 06:20.
Time to start the day.

Clothes. Makeup. Cereal. Tea. Bookbag, with necessary contents. Tense '[i]good morning/[i]' to Father. Silence from Mother. Leave the house, wince against the sun that had broken the cloud-line now and streamed down upon her. Ignore the bus; she wouldn't get a seat, and Penelope preferred to start her days without the jeers, jostles, and sheer stark staring of her apparent 'peers'. The walk wasn't long enough to make her late, and the weather was fine enough to make it a pleasant one - she would have to savor it, try and ride the mildly okay mood throughout the day to avoid sinking into the miasmic, loathing hole that the stares and whispers often spiraled her into. She pushed her hands into her coat pockets and put one foot in front of the other, treading onward towards another day at Mather Memorial, her only consolation that it was another day closer to graduation.

The bus rolled past, its low rumble gently shaking Penelope out of her own head for a merciful minute - and just in time to watch Aiden Roth cycle furiously past, hot on the exhaust of the bus he'd obviously missed. King of the Ravens, and general Mather Memorial Jock Superstar. So far on the other end of the social spectrum that Penelope could see the wraparound; even his passing by her felt like a warp in the delicate pseudo-politics of High School social standing. Christ, you could already see the tear in the space-time continuum from here. Penny hope it would swallow the school whole. Or her. She wasn't picky.

She arrived on campus in good time, the bus that had passed her parked and empty just inside the main gates. The building seemed quiet from an outside perspective, but she could feel the hive-like buzzing of the students within from here, cloying and haunting. She had no good memories of walking through these doors - neutral at best was what Penelope dared to hope for. She pushed through the entrance, ignoring the few closed clusters of students that gestured towards her and then erupted in smirks before just as quickly quelling them, ignoring the anger and injustice that burned inside her. Her neutral expression turned to the scowl she was most recognized by as she shoved her way through towards the assignment boards, rapidly scanning down from the top before finding her name and departing. Shut them out, prepare some scathing retorts, and just survive until the last bell. Same as any other day.

M A T H E R M E M O R I A L H I G H S C H O O L :

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Homeroom was as awful as expected, social circles forming around her like venn diagrams that she was significantly not a part of; she sat back, arms crossed and brow furrowed until the class filtered out to the welcoming assembly, which, while not necessarily awful, was certainly embarassing and routine. Introductions of new faculty, poorly constructed lessons, and one sinkhole-inducing attempt at relatability of analogue media in an increasingly digital age. And yet the librarian still probably held more clout than Penelope did. She sunk low in her seat towards the back of the hall, throwing glares to silence the scattered jibes about her 'best friend' on stage. Taunts and teasing was less frequent than it used to be - a lot of people knew that bothering Penny Dreadful was more trouble than it was worth for the minor entertainment - but that didn't mean there weren't stupid, new, or cruel students.
"Psst. Psst! Dreadful! You'll have to give Macleod an extra fondle to cheer her up after this trainwreck." Snickers from behind her ceased very quickly as she turned to look at the pale freshman who thought he'd pick on bigger fish to earn some standing. He'd heard Dreadful's reputation; obviously he hadn't heard enough.
"Fuck the fuck off you pasty, pie-faced, freshman fuck. You're as funny as a blind fucking toddler bumbling towards a goddamn minefield." She hissed back, her eyes feral and full of fury. The freshman locked stares with her for a micro-second before getting significantly paler and turning his head to look straight forwards, muffled chortles and shared glances rippling out from Penelope like shockwaves after a bomb had gone off.

The rest of the assembly passed without incident, and the student body was dismissed to their first proper classes of the day to begin the new academic year in earnest. Penelope herself had Literature - possibly the highlight of the coming day - and then several sciences, mathematics, and philosophical classes, and the most mysterious 'Social Conscience' slated for the end of the day, led by the newly-inducted Mr. Lehrer who had introduced himself so politely at the Welcoming Assembly. Now that was different. With fortune's favor, she may be able to blur through the day and into this new scholarly pursuit.

M A T H E R M E M O R I A L , ' T H E L O F T ' :

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It would appear that fortune had indeed been smiling on Penelope this day; or perhaps her peers had been too busy catching up on old friendships and forging new ones to pay her much mind. Her classes passed harmlessly, Penelope able to scribble notes on entirely un-vandalized paper and listen to her teachers freely, absent of projectiles, passed notes, and snide remarks. Literature did indeed prove to be the highlight she had expected, the first piece of the semester to be the delightful Dr. Faust; everything else was a blur of the usual post-summer warm-ups, designed to gently nudge the student back into academic routine. Lunch passed by, Penelope quickly consuming her meal - she'd developed a significant appetite over the summer - and then retreating to a hidden bench for some reading before departing early for her next class. The latter half of the day passed in similar manner, and before she could really register where the classes had gone, she was sat in the back row in the oft-forgotten 'loft' classroom, the only room of the top 'floor' of the Mather Memorial main building, a room long left in disuse and disrepair; Penelope wondered which one had come first.

Jonas certainly began the class with fervor, a passion not seen in many other members of faculty; and he inspired interesting discussion immediately, moving towards the philosophical, rather than Penelope's suspected psychological leanings for the class. While Penelope tried to avoid the attentions of her classmates - this was a far smaller group than any of her other classes, and she stuck out all the more for it - she did listen to each of them in turn, and to their credit, a few of them gave interesting answers: Self-justification; Instincts; Ethics; Self-awareness. All suitable answers, if slightly navel-gazing in their nature for Penelope's cynical perspective. For her, the difference between man and animal was simple and immediate; Man was cruel. Animals had no understanding of the concept.

She had no time, nor inclination, to share this opinion however. Jonas guided the discussion, fielding each answer with various degrees of patience, and then directed them down a more active path. Language and scripture, and actual work to do on both - and then that most dreaded of assignments. Group work. Penelope felt herself go flush with anxiety, and again she found herself sinking in her seat, trying to fall below the eye-line of her classmates. She wouldn't be picked, she already knew - she never was - all she had was to wait until Jonas assigned her. And then survive the group itself.