Heroes always leave a crime scene too early. The younger ones are particularly bad in this regard. They just conclude their business and say ‘well, the cops will be along soon enough to clean things up’. Maybe they think that the cops will be just waiting around the corner to start putting up police tape. How long could they take to respond? You may ask. Half an hour, give or take 5 minutes. But still, a half hour with the scene of the crime just sitting there. Of course, some heroes do stick behind for the police to come and clean up their mess. But they are few and far between.
The setting sun was just about over the horizon, shedding its last rays on the remnants of the train. Whatever the heroes did here, they did a number on just about everything around the place. Night Owl didn’t dawdle on the spectacle for too long, she had 20 minutes to get in and out.
Carefully crossing from a nearby tree line, Night Owl entered the first train car and almost immediately gagged. Sure, heroes were no ideal force in the world. But she didn’t expect the slaughter house that was left inside, and it was starting to smell like one too. She didn’t want to be longer than she had to.
The benefit of the strong smell was that her power was working on overdrive. Almost immediately the trails of everyone in the train started visualising before her.
An omnipresent white trail needlessly scattered itself around the train. It then shooting off in a thin trail outside of it, taking another trail with it. She knew the smell well enough to know it was her idiot brother. The white outline image of him gradually manifested, making it easier to tell what was what.
‘Did he know what had happened in here?’ Night Owl thought.
‘He must have. Maybe he isn’t what the selfless idiot hero chalks himself up to be? There would be no reason for all this if he wasn’t though.’ It was a curious point to be sure, but she had to move on.
There was another familiar smell, this one manifested in an orange trail that continuously splattered out into blood stains around the train. The curious thing is that there was no body to connect it. They just up and left, like the beating they had received was nothing. Another hero most likely, but it was off that she recognized the trail. She hadn’t stalked any heroes with powers like that, not yet anyway. Night Owl found it a point of concern that she couldn’t place it. But she had to move on. Time was short and there was a lot to cover.
The splatterings of ice were starting to melt now, leaving small puddles of water around them. Judging by the icy blue trail, the user had left as well. An ice wielding hero was not once she had seen before. But much like the others, none of these people were responsible for the carnage.
It was time to look closer at the bodies, as much as it disgusted her. In each body's wound, she could see a new part of the figure that had done it. A hole in the chest, that was an arm. *snap*. A crumpled head, that was a fist. *snap*. The trampled body that looked like a hopscotch mat, that was the feet and legs. *snap*. The snake looking guy that was torn apart, a chainsaw. Not the same guy but it hardly mattered. *snap*. As she began going through each corpse, she found that the mutilated ones all came from the same two people. One was the chainsaw maniac in the middle of the train car, and the other got away. Was the second one a hero? They must be. How interesting. She looked upon the now formed outline of a massive crimson figure. Night Owl couldn’t put a face on it, but how many people that size could really be at HERO. The figure of crimson could be a big help in this all.
Amelia cracked a smile, before quickly keeping it back under control. She was proud of her accomplishment here and had plenty of directions to go. First thing was first though, she double checked her camera to see if those pictures went through.
The first stage was to throw some mud at HERO and she had the ammunition she needed for that. To see all this be covered up and swept under the rug like nothing happened, that would be a mighty shame.
In the early hours of the Brookside and Watervale morning, well before the sun rises, a figure could be seen hanging up posters. From the silhouette, one might mistake this as a girl hanging up missing pet posters if it wasn’t for the absurd time. Then, before the majority of people woke up, she had been out of sight for at least an hour.
On the main streets of Brookside and Watervale, posters were placed everywhere.
“This is how your heroes protect you.”“Trust in the Night Owl.”Followed by pictures of the N-Train massacre.
After everything that had happened, Lucas had a lot to think about. It had been a matter of days since the N-Train mission and his arm had been fully healed. But the effect it had on him had still remained. He was glad to have a therapist he could talk to. When he heard about what happened on the train, he felt overwhelming guilt for not being able to stop it. Particularly the gas weapon that was used when he left, he could have saved them. Who ‘them’ was, he wasn’t so sure. But he could have.
Lucas thought about home and the Vandermon manor. What was his sister up to? He hoped that his parents hadn’t had too much influence over her while he was away.
Whenever Lucas thought about his father, he always remembered the image of his bust statue. For generations, each head of the Vandermon family had a bust statue made of them. As a kid, he looked up to the image of it and his father. But as he grew into his teens he started to realise that his father always looked like that. The expression on the bust was how his father always looked. His mother also had the same expression on her face. No matter what day of the year, they always had that cold, lifeless look on them. In his mind, he would have a statue in that main hall one day and he too would gradually have his face mirror its expression.
Lucas knew he had no choice but to stay at the Foundation. He just couldn’t go back and become like his parents. Whenever he thinks about his sister, he dreads the thought that he will come back home one day and she will have a face of stone, just like them. But what could he do about that? He couldn’t just march back to the manor and tell her to desert her aspirations just because he was bothered by it.
But maybe he wasn’t remembering them right. Maybe with him being more grown up he could understand and relate to his parents more. The self doubt had certainly crossed his mind. Maybe he was being stupid, maybe he should have just stayed home.
This was Lucas’ first real taste of action and he didn’t know how to feel about it. Maybe this whole thing wasn’t for him. The Foundation would have put so much time and effort into him, just for him to give it up. He at least owed them a couple of weeks to think it out.
In the end, he knew he had to stick it out. This couldn’t be every mission, just some really bad luck. Plus it only showed that he had room to improve. He needed to keep his chin up and push through it. But that still didn’t stop him from feeling bad about it. Dawnbreaker was supposed to be an unbeatable paragon and yet a single bullet had stopped any notion of that. He wasn’t naive enough to think the costume would actually make him immune to bullets, but to have the illusion shatter so abruptly was demoralizing. Lucas just hoped no one other than the villain lady saw it.
Mentions (briefly): Gateway
@Zoey BoeyStarbright hadn’t come into the Foundation building too much within the last month. Things had been going smoothly, so he thought he would give himself a small vacation. He learned to appreciate those in his later years, as opposed to his younger self.
The trip to the Foundation building was a smooth one. His personal driver was expensive, so that much was certainly an expectation. This left him to read over some final documents before his meeting.
Today’s meeting was a personal one with Dawnbreaker. Reading the mission debrief and then the therapists report, this did not go very well. Certainly HERO main missions were always a gamble on whether they actually went well or not. Looks like the kid rolled snake eyes for his debut.
It was certainly a bummer. Starbright wanted to come back with the good news. Dawnbreaker had locked in a big sponsorship and a movie deal which starts filming at the end of the year. While he was at it, he could say hi to that new Irish import. What was her name again? It was slipping his mind but she had sponsors lining up the wood works already too... None of that seemed tasteful given the circumstances.
Starbright needed to cheer his main star up and there was only one way he knew how to do that. With something expensive.
“How is my favourite star?” Starbright announced with gusto as he entered the room. The doors swung open with immense force as Starbright posed in the entryway. Yep, he still had it.
Dawnbreaker was initially just eating a sandwich with a slight hunch in his shoulders. Upon the Starbright entry, he jumped and rushed to bring his shoulders back for better posture.
“Hey, I’m just eating up a sandwich. Got to keep my strength up for the hero stuff today.” Lucas tried to get his ‘hero smile’ up but his heart wasn’t in it.
Starbright could tell. Plus Dawnbreaker had no ‘hero stuff’ scheduled for the rest of the week. The therapist had recommended a hero leave, which Dawnbreaker protested as expected. But in the end, Starbright had final say. After reading the report, he took the side of the therapist.
“You don’t have to keep that act up. I bought you a present.” Starbright handed Dawnbreaker the present, it was clearly a sword of some kind. But it had been wrapped in tacky wrapping paper.
“What is it?”“Well after reading up on your therapists report. I thought this could be of use to you.”Dawnbreaker furrowed his brow sceptically.
“Hang on, are you allowed to d-”“Just open it up already.” Starbright interrupted cheerfully.
“Besides, it was more just a recounting of events, not personal details.”Dawnbreaker starts unwrapping.
“Alright I guess, but couldn’t you get that from the mission debrief.”“The mission debrief and what you personally saw are two different things. I am more interested in the latter.”Dawnbreaker finished unwrapping to reveal a katana in an expensive looking sheath. It looked really cool, but how was this supposed to help him?
“You know I don’t know the first thing about sword fighting right.” He swung it around a little in its sheath.
Starbright remained silent.
Dawnbreaker finally went to unsheath it. But as he did so, some sparks came flying out. Thinking back to the N-Train mission, the implication is clear.
“Reading up on the events, I was impressed with your oxygen trick. However, you should never leave the choice to a villain. Take this as a very... ornamental lighter, and you can swing that thing around some if you feel the need.”“Thank you.”“But! There’s one more thing I want to address.”Dawnbreaker looked up in curiosity.
“The whole appeal to justice and truth. Look, it's a great thing for the cameras. Fantastic really, a good look. You can really say that sort of thing like you believe it-”“I do believe i-”“Yes, exactly, that's good too. But that sort of thing is not going to work on a villain, is it? Hell, it won’t even work on half of the heroes with the moral standards HERO has.”“...”“Either way, my point is there are other ways to appeal to people. You don’t need to fight someone to make them see reason, but ‘truth and justice’ isn’t going to cut it either.”“I think you are ready to learn my ultimate technique.”“Your ultimate technique?”“That’s what I said. This weekend, I’m teaching it to you. Afterward, you’ll be ready for your actual debut.” Starbright then left without another word leaving Dawnbreaker alone in the room.
What could that ultimate technique be? Something cool, Dawnbreaker hoped.
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