HEROES UNITED
Undisclosed Location
May 14, 2018
4:00pm EST
A group of children played with their new puppy in Central Park. Sparks flew from an alien artifact as SHIELD scientists prodded it in a remote facility in the South Pacific. A bored Secret Service agent coughed into his hand as he stood at post outside the Oval Office. These images and a dozen more played out across an array of monitors, the blue electric glow of the screens the only light in the otherwise darkened room.
Watching these monitors was a solitary figure, standing at ease. Months had been spent meticulously plotting out every step of this plan, making sure every piece would be in place, and that those who could stop it would be so overwhelmed as to be rendered powerless.
Very soon, this world would fall, to be replaced with the glorious new order that was always meant to be.
"The time has come," the figure announced, a simple hand gesture changing the entire array of monitors to a single display: the crowded streets of an American metropolis. "Let us begin Phase One."
Times Square, Manhattan
Even in the mid-afternoon on a Monday, Times Square was jam-packed. Horns blared as cars, buses, and taxis shuttled people to countless destinations. Hundreds waited in line for tickets to the latest shows on Broadway. Street performers strummed guitars, danced, did their best impersonations of statues, anything to get passing tourists to throw a dollar or two their way. Overhead, the clusters of skyscrapers were clad in a jumble of billboards and LED displays, telling the public to watch new shows and movies, to buy the latest electronics, or to enjoy a refreshing ice-cold Coca-Cola. Though far removed from rustic images of apple pie and Norman Rockwell, the cacophony of consumerism was every bit as much of a slice of pure Americana at its most crass, its most commercialized, and its most exciting.
So busy, so humming with activity was this artery of the city that most didn't even notice that the ground had begun to rumble. Or that a light beige haze had wafted in, coating the area in a thin film of gritty dust.....
.....or rather, sand.
As the rumble grew strong enough that the crowds of pedestrians and motorists began to notice it, a geyser of sand erupted from a manhole in the street, the steel manhole-cover shattering the windshield of a taxi as it came down. The sand swirled about in the air, whirling into a tornado that scraped the skin and choked the lungs of screaming bystanders, before it began to take form.
An enormous sandy hammer slammed into the side of a police cruiser, sending the car tumbling. At the end of that hammer, an arm began to form, and beyond the arm, the torso and head of a burly man in a striped green shirt.
"Awright, New Yawkers!" shouted Flint "The Sandman" Marko in his honking Queens tone. "You'd betta start runnin' while ya can, 'cuz today, the Sandman's really hittin' the town!"
With that, Marko's fist formed a giant spiked wrecking ball and smashed into the facade of the Hotel Carter, knocking the historic neon sign off of its supports. With a groan of twisting metal, the sign began to give way, threatening to rain down metal, glass, and stonework on the panicked crowd below.
CRISIS: NEW YORK CITY
VILLAIN ATTACK: THE SANDMAN
Threat Level:
6
Minor Threats:
- Falling Neon Sign, falling debris
- Panicked crowd, foot and traffic
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