Tag Archive | superheroes

Reformed?

Okay, this was supposed to be short.  It is not short.  It is a riff off of a comment from a request for dark fic prompts from like 2 months ago. 

It took a while.

Superhero on Twitter Twemoji 12.0

Damon Rudd had not meant to reform. He had been living a perfectly happy life destroying anything at that pissed him off, thwarting people who got his way (heroes with overdeveloped moral senses usually, Golden Hawk and Wise Ibis and the like), being amazingly rich and getting richer, and more or less doing whatever he wanted to do. This had been working fine, until, walking behind one of his businesses, he found a woman and two children digging for food in his dumpster.  This, Damon found, pissed him off.  But because he was not an idiot, he was able to see that what pissed him off was not the woman.  Continue reading

Bad Fight

Written to a prompt I found here

Superhero on Google Android 9.0

Red wasn’t supposed to be out on his own yet.  He was supposed to be a sidekick.  He was supposed to be following Blue around still, maybe cracking wise and maybe just mopping up the henchmen that got away.

But that wasn’t what he’d signed up for.  That wasn’t what he’d been training until all hours of the night for, sneaking out of study hall for, spending every minute he could in the lab for.  No.  No, he was a meta, a shining new example of the Modern Superhero – that h Continue reading

Me, Myself, and Only I

The headline reads 100,000th “Multiple” Power registered.

I hadn’t realized I’d let myself get so big.  I might have to pull things in a bit.

***

I always wanted to be a shape-changer. I guess, in a way, I have, even if all I can change into was myself.

It was the Golden Age of Superheros, back then, when the comet hit and many of us turned into something a bit different.

Me? I turned into several of me.  Four, at first.  There’s still a few stories of that first me around, The Quartet.

We sang four-part harmony pretty well.

But then I figured out how to replicate – or not – changes done to my body when I multiplied.  And I figured out how to choose where the damage went.

The Quartet died.  They died kind of old, and rather heroic.

I lived.  Dyed hair and a change of costume.  People don’t look too deeply.

There was Multiple Man – that one was a trick.  Then there was Quantum Lass.

I can get old.  But aging is damage, and there are ten of me in a nursing home, cheerfully playing cribbage with each other.

I wonder who was number 100,000.  What was her name?  Her schtick?

I’ve lost track, you see.  I don’t even think I’m the original anymore.

And if I called them all back into me, I don’t even know what would happen.

But that’s all right.  Because three of me are billionaires, and I can live in comfortable semi-retirement as Plurality, playing chess with myself and

never

ever

alone.

 


Written to WritingPrompts’s prompt:

In a universe of superheroes and sidekicks, Multiples are one of the most common powers, with roughly 100,000 individuals in possession. But the truth is, there has only ever been one Multiple. You.

Help me create a meta-fictional fandom & female super-hero

Okay!

Imagine a world very much like ours, except, through some twist of fate, a major comic book publisher managed to create a female super-hero whose path followed something like Batman’s/Superman’s in our world.

She got a long-running TV show in the 60’s, movies in the 70’s, then a reboot in the early 90’s and another reboot around 2010. The comic strip has spawned dozens of side-lines. There have been animated shows and even a brief musical. Fanfiction abounds. Fan wars abound.

She would have first appeared in a Wonder Worlds Comics (Often called, because of its logo, V4 or V4C) in the mid-30’s.

So:

She needs a name. It needs to be a woman or lady or anything that isn’t girl, please.
It also needs to be not something that already shows up on a Google search, ’cause this is showing up in to-be-published work. <.<

I would like for her to have a super-power of some sort, and a secret identity.

edited to add: now I have two! Waterwoman/Liquid Lady and the Aerialist!

I’m leaning more towards Bruce Wayne than Clark Kent in this secret identity, even though such heros don’t usually have superpowers.

She needs at least 2 sidekicks, pref. with catchphrases, one male and one female.

A trademark villain or two wouldn’t be bad, either.

And anything else you can think of!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/948837.html. You can comment here or there.

Unless you see the Body, a story for the Giraffe Call (@InspectrCaracal)

Written to [personal profile] inventrix‘s prompt here to my Giraffe Call!

This is at least in part due to watching Far Too Much Venture Brothers and contemplating a semi-Venture-Brothers-style webserial recently.

“Well?” Dragonfly looked around her minions. “Did you do it right this time?”

One of the more nervous minions stepped forward. Faceless in her smooth mask, featureless in her robe-and-loose-pants, the minion’s glove held her only identification. Seventy-two.

It had been a very bad year for henchwomen.

“She fell off the edge of Tanaron Cliff, ma’am. She doesn’t have flight powers, she doesn’t have super-science. She’s dead.”

Dragonfly sighed. “Take me there.” When they hesitated, she raised her voice. “Take me there!” The problem with henchwomen was that you either ended up with smart ones that betrayed you or loyal ones that just weren’t fast enough. “Come on. Let me see the place where she fell off the cliff.”

She was going to have to run Henchwoman Training School again, she could see. If this particular group survived their own mistakes.

~

“She’s gone! That blight on the face of femininity is dead!” The Matriarch did not often engage in ranting or raving, but she felt the situation deserved it this time. “She will never survive the death trap; nobody ever has.”

“Um, ma’am?” One of her perfectly-clad minions bowed cautiously. “The death trap is empty, ma’am.”

The Matriarch hissed. “Well, then, fix the problem! What happened to her?

“I, ah, I’m not certain, ma’am. But we did find three of your Techniors naked and unconscious in the observation room by the death trap.”

The Matriarch hissed. “Next time, next time I’m going to put a bullet through her myself. No matter how male that might be.”

~

The Firebrand brought up the giant fireball that was her namesake power and most favorite trick. She flooded the room – the room which had one exit, which she was blocking – with her superheated flame.

When the flames died away, the room was empty, without even a charred bone remaining. She was gone. Dead. Eliminated.

~

“Well.” She pulled another, identical, super-suit from the closet and dusted off the charred remains of her last one. “Note to self,” she called to her computer. “Check up on the Matriarch next week. That death trap has to be completely dismantled before some other schmoe falls into it. And then send Dragonfly a sympathy card. She really ought to have better henchwomen.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/943402.html. You can comment here or there.

Blame Game, a story of Superheros (or possibly Science!) for the Giraffe Call

This is to ellenmillion‘s prompt here to my February Giraffe Call.

It is either in my Science! verse or Superheroes, possibly both.

Names from <a href="http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=superheronameorg
“>Seventh Sanctum.


“Hurry up. The cops are going to be here soon.”

The three safebreakers were professionals, but they were the sort of professionals you hired fifty percent for their discretion. Austin – Dr. Lawrence – had gotten them in, Dr. Lawrence would get them back out, and in between they just needed to break the safe and not ask questions.

Hurry up counted as questions.

“I am going as quickly as is feasible. This isn’t a snatch-and-grab, you realize.” Dr. Lawrence was hanging upside-down from a very thin wire, using tweezers to move very tiny components. She was almost done. But the safebreakers were getting nervous.

“They’re going to know we were here. They’re really going to know we were here if they catch us.”

“They will know that someone was here. They will blame it, as they have done the last seven events, on either Cold Chase or Hurricane Deluder.”

The doctor ignored them, then; there were three more parts to move, and it was the most sensitive part of the operation. Not being complete dunces – the other fifty percent of their hiring requirement – the safecrackers waited until they had hauled Dr. Lawrence back to the hallway, and, being very smart, actually waited until they were all in the getaway van and several blocks away.

Then their leader turned to stare at the doctor. “Wait. ‘The last seven events.'”

Dr. Lawrence nodded. “Yes.”

“Including that one they blamed Cold Chase and, what’s his name, Monster Truck for?”

“Including that one, although that was a bit of a botch, sadly.”

“Yeah, well, that’s why Monster Truck got blamed. Look, I don’t know what you’re up to…”

“That was part of our agreement, yes.”

“But Hurricane Deluder is my cousin. So look, if you’ve got to peg stuff on the criminals…”

The doctor nodded slowly. “That is fair. Tell me, do you have any relation to Venom Pacer?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/665290.html. You can comment here or there.

Bad Dialogue and Other Problems, a story of Superheroes for the Giraffe Call

This is to [personal profile] skjam‘s prompt here to my February Giraffe Call.

My Superheroes verse has a landing page here.


Raven Sapphire was protecting the Stony Coast again. It was what the blue-black superhero did, from a fortress in the mountains that nobody had ever found.

And the Silk Beast, Rip-damn the Unspeakable, was terrorizing small children at the beach. He had one in each huge primary arm and was using his secondary arms to fold a third into a belly compartment. “Stay there until you’re digested, ha, ha, h-“

Now, why would I say that?

“Halt, evil-doer!”

“Never! Not while I have plans left to plot!” He stood, hands on hips and one child still under each arm.

What a silly thing to say. What a silly thing to do. It’s not as if she doesn’t have that… The Silk Beast launched himself into the air before he’d finished the thought. …blast ray that always fries my suit.

Right on cue, Raven Sapphire’s blast ray shot out. But the Silk Beast wasn’t where he was supposed to be, and the ray caught him on his ankle.

Plates fell off and something stung, but it wasn’t enough to keep him from fleeing. “You’ll never catch-” No, that was stupid. He shut his mouth and diverted the speaker power to the blasters.

“Come back here and fight me like a man!” The superhero looked silly, Silk Beast mused. Of course, he probably looked pretty ridiculous, too, with three children squirming around.

What was he going to do with them? He’d been picking up children… been picking up children for…

“Your ankle’s fizzing, Mister.”

“Thanks, kid.” When he didn’t put any power into declaiming, the jets worked a lot faster. He was already halfway to his mountain hideout. And then he would… “Why was I grabbing you, again?”

“Something about soup?”

“Well, that’s silly. I don’t even eat.” He landed on a relatively smooth piece of ground and set the children down. He used his secondary arms to let the third one out of the belly-chamber of his suit while he leaned his chin on a main arm.

Rip-damn the Unspeakable had a lot to think about.

Buy an Extension
500 words $5.00 USD
750 words $7.50 USD
1000 words $10.00 USD
1250 words $12.50 USD
1500 words $15.00 USD
1750 words $17.50 USD
2000 words $20.00 USD
100 words $1.00 USD
More of What?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/664640.html. You can comment here or there.

A week of Settings – Day Four: Superheros

Super-heroes, super-villains, aliens, altered beings, mutants; this story has it all… even reincarnation.

These stronger, tougher, faster metahumans live their lives on the stage, living out the stories they have created for themselves.

These aren’t those stories. These aren’t the high-flying exploits, these aren’t the daring rescues, these are the lies they tell the press nor the lies the press tells about them.

These stories are the superheros at home. Uncloaked, unmasked. These stories about about humanity… no matter the planet of origin.

<a href="http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/tag/verse:+superheroes
“>Superheroes
is a tongue-in-cheek look at the super-powered genre.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/582135.html. You can comment here or there.

Paradox and… a story of Superheroes

For [personal profile] imaginaryfiend‘s commissioned continuation of Returned Paradox

I was born to death.

I was born to the memory of a dead woman, forty weeks to the day after Paradox Maverick died, and I was told so, in whispers and glances and blasted macaroni and cheese on my birthday every year. I was born, it seemed when I was younger, to echo her back to my mother’s companions, to look like her in every way I could.

Sometimes I think that she did it on purpose, Paradox, tinkered with my genetics in the womb to put them off the scent, as it were, to make them keep looking in the wrong place and never think to look where they should have. I wonder, if she did that, if she had any idea how well she would succeed?

Here I am, now, exactly what they created, exactly what I created, and not what they would have had me be. Nothing, nothing, I might add, like Paradox Maverick, may she rot in a cold cell in the darkest corner of Hell.

I am Order. And today is my eighteenth birthday.

There will be macaroni and cheese. There will always be macaroni and cheese. And my mother will buy me a pretty dress, and I will wear it. It will be the last thing I wear that I did not choose myself. And it will be the last time I eat macaroni and cheese. Today, I am going to start my plans. Today, I am going to begin my empire.

~

“Bit serious, are you?”

The window was open. The window was not supposed to be open. Marciana looked up, frowned, and then felt her frown deepen from mere irritation to true anger.

“You don’t belong here.”

“Oh, but let’s be honest, neither do you.” The girl in the window was green, her hair blue, her wings – she had wings, humans did not have nor need wings – purple. She looked like she’d been dropped in a tye-dye pot. “You know it. All those tidy little notes in your journal. Didn’t anyone tell you that the primary flaw of villains is monologuing? Get in the habit and they’ll never stop. I’m Arsenic, by the way.”

“Lovely villain name. And I’m not a villain. I’m a hero. See,” she gestured at the tower they were in. “The Tower of Truth? Heroes live here.”

“Heroes and their kids. And Arsenic isn’t my villain name, it’s my given name.”

“Who names their kid Arsenic?” Because she was a kid, as much as Marciana was, maybe-eighteen, probably-less.

“Who names the daughter of two heroes Marsha?”

“It’s Marciana.”

“It’s Marsha with a flourish. Seriously. They knew they were going to let you grow up in the public eye. They knew they were already thinking of little Parry when you were born. Why in the world would they name you Marsha? Did they want you to turn evil?”

It was too much like her own thoughts. She squinted at the tye-dyed fairy. “Are you another one like Szec Mzip Wrisverhmersl?”

“Szeccie? Little pink goblin? No, Marsha, I’m not reading your mind. I’m not a mirror of your conscience – not like that, at least.”

“Then what are you? I mean, other than a green intruder.” She should be hitting the panic button. She should be calling in the Truth Troops. But she wasn’t panicked, and she didn’t want to see the Troops. Not now. Not with what she was planning.

“I’m you.” She waved both hands, making a blur and whirring noise like a flying bug. “Not like that. Not like Szeccie or any of the mirror-universe imposters.”

“Imposters, what?”

“Nevermind that. You people in the Truth Tower are awfully bad at telling truth, that’s all I have to say on the matter. No, I’m what you were supposed to be.”

It only took a second. Marciana was bright, after all, and her entire life had been haunted by the specter of what she was supposed to be. “You’re Paradox Maverick.” Her hand was on her blaster before she finished the sentence.

“I was. I’m Arsenic right now.” The green girl shrugged, looking entirely undisturbed. “Did you get any powers?”

“I did.” She didn’t want to admit that. “You know I haven’t told anyone else?”

“Neither have I. Of course, I haven’t told anyone I’m their enemies’ favorite troublemaker, either. You think I ought to?”

“Will they believe you? Nobody believes that I’m not.”

“Which is funny, all things considered. They think I’m…well, half of them think I’m Szeccie’s kid. Including my mother.”

“Wait, your mother thinks you’re a world-shifter’s kid? Your mother…?”

“I might be. It would suit my other me. Look, are you going to shoot me or what?”

“Your other you, what?” She set the blaster down but kept her hand on it.

“I’m not all Peri. I’m Arsenic, but there’s this little voice in the back of my head that is, or used to be, Paradox. I mean, sometimes it’s the other way around and she takes over. But for the most part, I’m me. Sennie.”

“Sennie?”

“Well, ‘Arse’ is a stupid nickname, isn’t it? Marsha?”

“Marciana. Yeah.” She was smiling. When was the last time that had happened? “So… why are you here?” Quick, think about business.

“Well.” She sat down on Marciana’s clean desk, one foot on the journal, leaving a smudge of dirt over Marciana’s declaration of self-hood. “Half of me was homesick. The rest of me was sick of being there, not being what they wanted. Watching their confused faces…”

“While they try to figure out who this cuckoo in their nest is, what she’s planning, why she doesn’t fit in.” The words tumbled out. She was half-standing. She sat down again, mortified. “Oh, Fillzbot.”

“No, no, you’re right. Exactly. They know about you. They think you’re me, too. Or sometimes they think you’re her, one of theirs, that died.” She paused. “Are you?”

“As far as anyone can tell – and everyone has looked – there’s nobody in here but me. It might have been easier if I really was the enemy.”

“Well… my folks are the agents of world domination, and yours want to protect truth and light. How do we go about being enemies of both?”

“We?”

“Well, who else have we got?” The green girl’ smile was pink, very, very pink. “And maybe if you have someone to talk to, you’ll stop monologuing.”

“So we become…” She thought about it for a moment. “Chaos and order. Paradox and reason. We’re monkeywrenchers. We’re the ones who tell them when they’re all being stupid. We crash wild schemes and stupid plans and bad press conferences.”

“Awesome.” She held out one long-fingered hand. “You have a deal, partner.”

~

I was born to defy expectations.

We were. We were born to be nothing our parents wanted. We were born to be trouble in their sides. We were born to legends we didn’t ask for, habits we didn’t have. We were born to ask questions. All the questions.

We are Order and Chaos. We are Madness and Reason. We are the Wrench in the Machine, and today is our eighteenth birthday.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/363365.html. You can comment here or there.