Flash Mob
"You ever feel like the world revolves around you? Well for me that ain't just a feeling, it's a truth. When I stop moving so does everyone else. The whole world waits to see what I do next. Isn't that amazing?"

Picture Perfect possesses the strange power to spontaneously make people and things around him 'freeze' at will. Time does not stop, nor do bodily functions, but for some inexplicable reason whenever Picture Perfect chooses to stand still so does the world around him. He has some measure of control over this effect at a distance, but the closer he is to the individual or object the more total the effect can be and the more powerfully he can exert it.

One on One he can easily completely freeze an individual seemingly indefinitely if they're within arm's reach so long as he doesn't move either. In terms of limits, he struggles with moderate groups of people or objects such as cars and the effect he can exert on these things is very short lived.

To avoid lengthy descriptors for this one, his eyes possess all the capabilities of an extremely high end camera system. He can zoom his vision very far, focus on scenes and situations despite the distance, determine individual faces from a crowd or distracting background, change filters and observe the world in everything from Sepia to Monochrome, and even see through sudden glares and through low light situations with perfect clarity.

Very useful for someone going around at night trying to beat up ne'er-do-wells.

"There's a void now; it must be filled. The people are too spoiled by the true events of our modern world- they won't be satisfied by computer generated imitations and controlled explosions anymore. We need something more. Something deeper. Something that taps into the primal aspect of our consumer base and draws it to the surface. We need a new level of media. We need to raise the stakes."

The man speaking was by all appearances a young man; wealth and healthcare had taken decades off his physical age and left him with a vigor rivalling that of a man half his age. He was addressing a dark room; a conference table; his peers.

"It is fact..."

A slight trail off for dramatic effect.

"With all this news and consumption of Avengers level content, of global politics and of the end-times, it is without a doubt fact that the people have had some time to adjust to a certain level of excitement in their world. When's the last time any of you read a newspaper or checked a newsletter without hoping to hear something of a Superhero, or another world ending event? These topics have become an integral part of our culture and the collective subconscious of our society. Go ask children what they want to be when they grow up- when we were youths, the answers were 'President', 'Firefighter', 'Astronaut', 'Doctor'- and now kids everywhere just dream of being mutants like the X-men, or going out into the world armed with antique weapons, or hoping they discover some rare metal and can make a suit out of it! They dream of being Superheroes and saving the world! How can we hope to supply media for those dreams when the real world already has it all?"

A pause here, a dignified sip of water.

"This next slide is a statistical analysis of movie theater viewership, television ratings, social media clicks- you get the idea, I'll spare you the minutiae. The short end of the issue is the reason we're all gathered here today; Viewership is declining. It's noticeable. It's tangible. We all feel it. We're losing our grip on the way of things and it's all because of some costumed action stars with international contracts and no respect for the media. So we know the problem and we know the end goal- get the people back in front of the screens, get them back to having dreams that they need us to follow."

The man clicks a button on his handheld, the next slide appears depicting the city of New York.

"I believe I have a solution to our problem. We'll start small, use a control group. We'll use New York, and if in a decade the results seem to be adequate we'll expand the project to the rest of the continental states and go from there. What I am offering you, gentle men and women, is a way to get public opinion back on our side."

He smiled. He knew he had them.

"What I'm offering you, is Project Mastermind."

---

The camera pans outwards, leaving the conference room behind and escaping out the window. The tall skyscraper appears quite ominous in this lighting. Perhaps there's even a flash of lightning in the ba- yes, there's the roll of thunder now. At this point the camera gives a lingering and foreshadowing nod to the company logo; The New York Media Group (NYMG). Ah, subtlety.

The camera continues its strange obsession with going outwards and skywards until the audience is left staring at the familiar expression of New York City from above. Well, familiar to most; some people haven't seen movies. Oh, would you look at that, now a vicious day/night cycle is being emulated to render an effect as if a great deal of time were passing.

The camera now moves with a great deal of purpose, moving around the city. We witness many employees in jumpsuits and vests, clipboards and electrical tools, working around the city. This one is working on a Transformer. This one climbs a radio tower. That one is making some very important seeming phone calls and circling things on his clipboard. That woman seems important, the camera is lingering on her in the back of a limousine for quite some time isn't it? We should probably try to remember her. She had purple hair, it stood out quit a bit after all, and the camera did its best to give her an air of malice as well. Oh goodie, that one is even tinkering with the cellphone towers. Just what are they up to?

---

Enter: Sullivan O'Toole.

A young man. Scrappy. Hungry. Looking for a chance to take his shot; yearning to be the diamond in the rough; the one in a million; the Next Big Thing. The world was primed for it, he felt; all the excitement over superheroes and the hole in everyone's hearts with the dissolvement of the Avengers? It was a market ripe for Branding and rife with detritus...

All he needed to do was build his Brand.

A man with big dreams- but no knowledge of the steps needed to realize them. A man in his position does one thing; takes shortcuts. Sullivan O'Toole was a minor internet sensation. A daredevil to be precise, operating on sensationalism and a personality that was approachable and networkable. His earliest videos are of basejumping, skydiving, deep sea snorkeling, extreme paintball combat scenarios, and even some experimental cooking vlogs. He was scraping by to achieve these goals, putting his all into building an identity of social presence.

One fateful day his career had a turning point; his long time girlfriend, who had been prominent in his skydiving videos as the owner and pilot of the plane he used, broke up with him. The reason was, allegedly, she felt he was wasting his potential with this personal endeavor instead of pursuing a...

"Real Career."

His videos began to take a bit of a reckless edge, and some vlog posts included him talking about how things were hard these days but he wasn't giving up on the dream or on his fans. He'd prove her wrong with success instead of holding onto the event as an excuse for vindictive behavior and let it tear him down from what he'd built so far.

The next video to go up was titled 'The Day I Almost Died'

---

Sullivan was climbing a cellphone tower. A new one, recently installed for the new generation of phone networks. He was wearing a GoPro camera and every so often he looked down to check his progress, which revealed he was climbing this tower A) Freehand and B) on the roof of an already quite tall building. The same kinds of stunts he'd been pulling for years. When he reaches the apex of the tower, he crosses his legs into the railings and holds onto the antenna array as he leans out and extends a Selfie-Stick outwards from his person. The video has a rather unique perspective on the Neighborhood in Queens he was surveilling, and the crispness and clarity of the video was impressive. He was quite good at this.

But suddenly the camera goes fuzzy. The image becomes blurry. Distortion lines warp the image. Sullivan can be heard;

"What the he-"

Then the world spins. The camera falling. The next cut is back to the GoPro, which is also spinning. Heavy distortion and interference in the video revealing that Sullivan was falling and tumbling down the structure. Intermittent contact and scrabbling grabs with metal beams interrupted what otherwise would have been a plummet to the rooftop below. His landing was hard. He wasn't moving. the camera feed distorts totally at this point, its unblinking gaze upwards rendering the cellphone tower a strange and bending thing before the distortion lessens and soon the video returns to normal.

The video was almost hypnotic.

This is where the video ends; other voices crying out in concern for Sullivan.

---

Sullivan's next few days were a blur. His ex girlfriend, whose name was Sally, came to visit him in the hospital and dictated a standard-issue 'I Told You So' as well as a bouquet of get well flowers. He has a hazy memory of some strange men and women in suits coming to question him about the tower, claiming they were checking into damages with its structure. Eventually his belligerent responses and unhelpful demeanor warranted the suit-wearing-schmucks to pass the problem up their chain of command.

Sullivan has hazy memories of the visit, he can barely remember what happened, but he knows that a woman with purple hair came to visit him on behalf of the Suits. He only remembers three things concretely;

1) Damn she fine.

2) She was satisfied by his answers and concluded that his skull was thick, but not thick enough to have damaged the tower in any way.

3) When it was time to leave the hospital, his bills were miraculously already paid.

Some people just get all the luck.

---

This incident turned out to be the defining point in Sullivan O'Toole's life. Upon leaving the hospital the world just looked... Different. Everything had a glossy appeal to it. Everything was...Filtered. Edited. Photoshopped. He could see its potential at a glance. He could shift those filters and see the world in a new lens. He could stop the movie and inspect the frame.

He could make sure that everything turned out Picture Perfect.

At first this fledgling power was used scarcely, to ensure quality footage and whatnot, but eventually as his body fully recovered and his health returned so did that daredevil's edge and that hungry ambition to do more. He could up his game; take the Brand to the next level. He could fill the void. He could be a Superhero.

On October 12th, twins Daniela and Dolores were born to Anastasia, a cop and Ernesto, head chef the family diner. They had a rather normal childhood, with Dolores being interested in her mother's police work while Daniela preferred to recording things, skate and cook, helping around in her dad's restaurant. Dolores was the most reckless of the two with a strong sense of justice and occasionally dragged her twin to pursue justice while Daniela made sure they didn't get into any trouble or did anything stupid, which they often still did anyways.

Things stopped being normal at age 9, when during dinner, Daniela's twin and parents disappeared into dust. The Snap changed Daniela and made her more cynical and pessimistic. She and many other children orphaned by the Snap remained under the care of other families or people willing to take them in. She was taken in by a family friend the weirdly secretive but nerdy cop Steve Grey who was besties with her mom and Daniela grew close with. Sometime during one of these years, Daniela was skating around an abandoned warehouse, just practicing some tricks and recording them when she saw a car park nearby amd out two people who carried someone into the warehouse. Following them, she found out that this was...

Just a kidnapping attempt by two people who didn’t know what they were doing.

They forgot the chloroform, kept getting kicked in the leg and nuts while tying up their victim and kept arguing over the next step. Daniela was going to do the only thing she could do as the only witness of this dastardly as she just happened to be the kid of an overprotective cop who gave her kids combat lessons and taught them gun control; record everything and call the cops, of course! But that ‘call the cops’ part of the plan was quickly thrown out the window when Steve called and Live Your Life blasted all across the warehouse at a high volume, giving away her position.

Dani found herself in a not so ideal situation but she tried to look at it through Dolores’s usual mindset; She knew how to fight! She had a skateboard! She could handle these two slightly older guys in their late teens! If she did that, she would be a hero! Not sure if that’s exactly what she wanted to be but it’s whatever. The kidnapped person looked upon this 14 year old girl with not hope but a lot of skepticism. And they were right to do so because, although she was zippy and quick on her feet, she was still promptly beaten up by these older guys. Trying to karate-chop someone while in pain didn’t work either as she got shot by a..Tranq gun? She came to tied up right beside the other very unimpressed but very concerned hostage and the two kidnappers all over her face, both literally and figuratively. Daniela did the best next thing she could do; freak the hell out. The rest was pretty much a blur. She heard things fall, she smelled dust and smoke, she tasted blood which might have been hers and saw Steve pointing a glowing finger at someone (No, not the middle finger) before passing out again.

Daniela stayed a few days at the hospital with constant Steve and Victim 1 (Who later introduced themselves as Ryder) visits and when she got checked out, she immediately asked what was going on. Steve said the kidnappers were arrested and she got shot by not an experimental, top-secret drug made by, not the police or government or some basement-dwelling science nerd desperate to have powers. Just normal tranq dart. Oh yeah and Steve was an alien disguised as a human. He and her mom had met when he crashed on Earth and they both did a bit of crime fighting together and busted their share of evil crime plans and drug rings and stuff. And he had gone a tiny bit overboard when fighting the kidnappers and might have accidentally made the warehouse collapse on her? It was okay though because he used his cosmic energy to save her life! Even though he hadn’t used his powers in forever.

The result was the couch floating.

In a world where alien attacks and huge multimillionaire evil organizations were the norm, Daniela didn’t want that kind of attention and so she kept her powers from everyone that wasn’t Steve and Ryder, who she had become friends with and had seen Steve cosmically blast their kidnappers, and secretly practiced her powers under Steve, when he could when he wasn’t constantly apologizing for almost killing her.

One year after the Snap was undone and her family returned, things were..Awkward. Atleast with her parents right after they found out she had powers. That was a whole can of worms since Papa thought her mom had cheated on him with her alien buddy but things got cleared up quickly. Dolores was he same as ever and lived up to her name and causing people head pains. The Snap had changed her dream career from being a cop to being a superhero like the people who quite literally saved half of humanity and it all started with using her twin sister’s powers. And Daniela, who had always gone along with her older(younger??) twin’s ideas, after all this character development..Still did so, because she wanted to make up for those five years they had missed. Even if it was playing superheroes.