Okay, so this was prompted by a couple things. Namely, many folks already have the genderbending angle covered. So I didn't wanna do that. =)
Secondly, while crossing myself with...I dunno, Superball or something might be amusing, there isn't really much personality clash there. We'd likely reach a happy medium. An unhappy medium, on the other hand...
Unfortunately, most of you haven't met this guy, but he's my oldest villain (tho admittedly, I play him so infrequently he's still L18...). EM/Fire Brute on Virtue.
It's scary how something so little can change your world. A split-second decision, a choice made on whim...and poof.
A thin stream of piss goes widdling down another leg of the trousers of time.
It could have gone better. There I was, looking at the login screen, debating what to play. Syndesis was right at the top, of course, standing there in all her green-blazing glory. Always fun. But I felt like gaining some experience, so she was out. Didn't feel like another hero, either. Not really. No Superball, no Space Mage...
All perfectly rational decisions, the sort of thing that flashes through your mind in a second. Stuff you don't give serious thought to. Because, y'know, what does it matter?
So I move the mouse over to the names of red, hover over one of those nice little spiders, swing the cursor, click...
Little things like that. They change your life. If I'd waited just a second...
Well, I hear that folks still at the character creation screen when the Deus ex Machina happened ended up as their "main" character. I could have dealt with that. Sure, my oldest and dearest character is a she and I'm most definitely male...
...but compared to the sensation of slowly losing all your morals and possibly your mind, wearing a different cut of pants isn't nearly that bad.
Syndesis. I could have lived with Syndesis. She and I, we're not so different. Not in the end.
If I'd been her, I wouldn't have woken up in disorientation, confusion, and white hot rage. I wouldn't have put a fist through my computer, wouldn't have destroyed my room in a blaze of angry fire.
Noonlighter. Dear God in Heaven, why him?
Could have been worse, though. Could have been worse. That's what I keep telling myself. I could have logged in as Obsolete...and then I'd really be up the proverbial digestive waste creek without a propulsion device. At least Noonlighter, for all his faults, is relatively sane.
Relatively, anyway. For a given value of sane.
He thought it perfectly logical, perfectly normal, as reasonable as breathing, to eliminate all witnesses before escaping the scene.
All witnesses being my family.
Yeah. That's bad. Really bad.
I stopped in time. Thank God I did. Reigned in a punch like a freight train, released the energy, about half a second before I caved Dad's head in.
They screamed.
I ran.
Noonlighter doesn't run.
But I most certainly do.
I'm not alone.
It's in the newspapers. This...whatever it is...hit all around the world. City of Heroes. City of Villains. Didn't take long for someone to make the connection. Cryptic and NCsoft have no comment for the press at this time.
Wonderful.
Most...incidents...were in America. Which makes sense. Looks like it happened all at once, and that was peak hour over there. Ain't so many of us elsewhere, due to the great wonder of time zones. But enough. A few sightings in Europe, Australia...
...and here, of course. Apparently there's enough of us City-of players in little sunny Singapore. And our copies of the game are keyed to the US servers, of course, much like our Aussie friends.
Hell, there's probably been a report of me by now.
A seven-foot man in an eye-watering yellow suit, hat, and full-face mask? That sorta thing that gets attention.
Noonlighter doesn't do subtle. He marches down the street...no, he swaggers. Like he owns the place. Like the world owes him. He's got the power, that's all that matters.
Me, I just want to run and hide.
I stole that newspaper. You'd think that'd make the petty criminal now sharing my headspace a lot happier. But no. I just nicked it off someone's driveway in the wee hours of the morning. That's not a Noonlighter crime, that's just embarrassing.
Hiding isn't a Noonlighter thing. Laying low, yeah, that's fine. But laying low entails a comfortable safehouse somewhere, not squatting in the undergrowth of a freaking forest.
Well, boo-hoo. Forests are good places to hide in. Army taught me that much, anyway.
Settling cross-legged on the grass, I look at my hands. I clench black-gloved fists, and slowly open my fingers.
These aren't my hands. My hands shouldn't look like they could strangle a gorilla.
But if they're Noonlighter's hands...
I make a gesture. An alien one, nothing I've done before, and yet so very familiar.
It appears in my palm, golden fire swirling to solid form, chain spooling out from beneath the jacket. The metal is hot, but quickly cools to the touch.
I thumb the stud, and the watch flips open.
An antique pocket-watch. Beautiful, ornate. Except for the fact the face is cracked, and the hands are frozen at twelve.
The watch still works, though. I think. It has to. The magic's in me.
Which means I can turn it off. Right?
I shudder.
Never speculated that far. I'd established, in vague statements, that the watch no longer works the same as it did...when Noonlighter was a hero. A simple throwaway line to explain why his powers changed when I remade him as a Brute, not Tanker. To explain why he had a gargantuan build in the Rogue Isles, when the Paragon version was normal in stature.
But...
Restarting the watch, making it tick again, simply moving the hands away from that fateful frozen hour...it should stop the magic, right? That was the point. Always the point. That's why he's Noonlighter.
What would happen, though?
With a start, I realise...I really don't know.
Will I become me? The real me? With my own face, my own body, everything?
Or will I become the real Noonlighter, some guy named Roger Carver?
I...don't know.
I've never established how Carver looks like. I'm not even sure how old he is. Anywhere from his mid-20s to 40s. Probably Caucasian...but that's it. I didn't make a civvie costume for him when he was a Tank. And when I made him a Brute, I planned on never doing so. He's Noonlighter now, you see? Let his real face remain eternally lost.
That last line, in retrospect, gives me the shivers. Not sure I like the symbolism.
But...
All I have to do is reach out, twist the dial...
Carver says no. No, no, no. I've got the power, so why the hell do I need anything else?
But me, the real me...says yes yes yes.
I close the pocket-watch, snapping it shut. It vanishes from my fingers in a whisper of flame.
Yeah, I'm a coward. Some things never change.
It's kind of sad, really.
We've told so many stories about real-life superheroes entering the world. Mostly telling us how it could go so terribly, utterly, and completely wrong.
So now, we've got a chance to do it right.
Except...
It's a bunch of geeks with the power. A horde of gamers. Not necessarily the most well-adjusted of people. To say nothing of us RPers, stuck with freaking personas overlapping our thoughts.
I mean, look at me. I've just been hiding out, trying to sort through the wreckage of my head. That's not exactly constructive behaviour beneficial to society.
Granted, the only powers I have revolve around punching things, and soaking up damage like...I dunno, something big and on fire. Not exactly the kind of thing suitable for charity work and nation building.
I suppose I could join the fire brigade, being mostly immune to hot things that go 'whoomph'. But I don't think I could fit in their usual stations. Lord knows what would happen if I tried to slide down a pole.
Bah.
I'm just wool-gathering, though. Trying to distract myself from the task at hand. If there's a task to be done, anyway. I still...haven't decided.
Kinda surprised nobody has noticed me yet, but I guess most people don't look up. Not fifteen storeys worth of up, anyway. Especially when there's so much stuff going on at street level.
The police are doing a pretty good job of cordoning off the area. I think, anyway. I've never seen that kind of thing in real life, but Noonlighter certainly has.
I've always respected the police. Noonlighter's feelings...are rather more mixed. All the innate corruption, petty abuses of power, yada-yada-yada. Well. It's not like that's incompatible with my own experience. In the Army, I briefly reported to a security guy who used to be a cop, and he told me some incredible stories...enh. Doesn't matter.
Honest or not, the cops are doing a decent job. Pity they're woefully unequipped to handle what's really going on.
It's inevitable, really. Ain't just roleplayers in City-of. There's powergamers, too. Kiddies with daddy's credit card and way too little parental supervision. Adults with even less maturity than the kiddies. PvP gankers, griefers, general pains in the rear.
And the cosmic dice being what they are, I guess it's sorta inevitable that some of those types would get yanked along for the ride.
So, one of those guys gets a bright idea:
He'll rob a bank.
A bank.
Just like in the game. And with all his amazing powers and stuff, who's gonna stop him?
Right.
I'm fairly sure he's not a roleplayer, just an idiot with less sense than God gave lemmings. I doubt very many roleplayers have their characters swear in Singlish - that's Singapore pidgin slang, for you uneducated foreign readers...
...well, except maybe XW. But I don't think that's one of his characters. He has better fashion sense than that, and he'd probably have told me if he made Singaporean Salvation Army Bin Man.
If my eyes weren't sealed behind my mask, I think they'd bleed.
I can hear him yelling to the cops, warning 'em to back off. Well, at least I assume that's what he's asking. Hard to make out most words from up here, but the profanity's surprisingly clear. Guy's got a set of lungs on him.
So, now, the big question. What should I do? Part of me just wants to kick back, laugh, and maybe find some popcorn. Because altruism? Heroism? Pfft.
The rest of me? Well, this isn't a game....
Aw, hell with it.
I jump.
People scream, cops freak. I hit the pavement. Shattered concrete cascades off my feet as I rise and stride forward.
A few handguns clear holsters, but none of the officers fire. Good. Not sure how I'd react if they did.
One of them shouts for me to stop. I ignore him. A few more steps...
...and I'm in the bank, walking through the wreckage that once was doors.
There aren't any hostages, just one spandex-clad twit standing in the middle of the lobby. Figures, he couldn't even get the tellers to sit still. Bank robbery's an art. Not for amateurs.
The erstwhile thief goggles at me, eyes wide behind his stupid, stupid mask.
"Jeez," I sigh, "never seen a proper costume before? Hmph. Guess not, if that's what you're wearing. There's stuff besides the 'Random' button, you know?"
He raises his hands, purple gloves igniting.
I throw my shield up.
Fire meets fire.
The impact rocks me back a step, but when the smoke fades, I'm still standing...surrounded in tame mystic flame. Domesticated magic is a wonderful thing.
People wonder why the Noonlighter mask has inch-thick eyeplates, nigh-opaque lenses. It's simple.
I need to see through my own glare. Sunglasses don't cut it.
Overhead, the bank's sprinklers go off. It's kinda funny, really. The water just hisses to steam as it meets my aura, but random-idiot over there just gets completely soaked.
"CHEE BAI," robber-boy screams, "I'M A FIFTY BLASTER, OK?!"
"Fifty, shmefity," I mutter, marching steadily forward.
It's a gamble, but from what I've figured out, I've got all of Noonlighter's powers. If this guy's just playing with a standard powerset...
He shoots. Again. His flame meets my flame, the dancing inferno circling my body, casting my yellow suit into even starker relief. The combined effect is blinding. I know that. 's what I'm counting on.
With a little spark of extra magic, it's suddenly really searing, really bright, the kind of light that punches straight through your retinas and through the back of your eye sockets.
Ever stare at the sun? At Noon?
My would-be opponent staggers, clawing at his face.
Too bad. He can't see me smile.
"I'm a concept character," I retort.
Another step, two, and I'm right up to him, gripping his ridiculous mismatched costume by the scruff of the neck. Black and purple? Blech. Not with that pattern, buddy.
He screams.
It must hurt. Being hauled up by a burning man. And all that water coming from the bank's fire sprinklers is hitting my aura, hissing into scalding steam.
"Huh," I observe, clinically, "didn't pick any heat resistance in your build? Sorry, friend. Should have taken the Flame Mastery pool. Too bad."
I place a hand flat against his chest, and summon my power. Kicking it right past pretty little fire and all the way into superheated plasma.
People laugh at how energy melee looks. They say it's glowing pom-poms of doom - and pink, besides.
I don't know. That look's always given me ideas.
A faint whimper escapes my captive. I drop him.
He's alive, interestingly enough, though his ribs aren't looking too good. I'm not really an expert on anatomy, but I think I can actually see a couple in that mass of cauterised red. Hm...
I crouch, pry open his jaw, and stick two fingers all the way to the back of his mouth. One more ought to do it. Quick and relatively painless---
---no.
No, no, no.
What the HELL am I doing?
Dear God.
I get up, shuddering, and run. Out of the bank, into the horde of cops. I'm still on fire, they don't get to close. I think. I jump, literally rocketing myself into the air, arcing as high as I can go. Up. Away. Anywhere, just away.
Noonlighter doesn't run.
But I do.
I do.
...
There. Somewhat darker than the other pieces so far, but I wanted to do something different. And beat the crap out of a l33t gamer. =)
Comments? I figured that Noon's violence and mindset would make for a terrible clash with my real personality. Then there's his whole nature as a magically transformed being...
-- Acyl
Secondly, while crossing myself with...I dunno, Superball or something might be amusing, there isn't really much personality clash there. We'd likely reach a happy medium. An unhappy medium, on the other hand...
Unfortunately, most of you haven't met this guy, but he's my oldest villain (tho admittedly, I play him so infrequently he's still L18...). EM/Fire Brute on Virtue.
It's scary how something so little can change your world. A split-second decision, a choice made on whim...and poof.
A thin stream of piss goes widdling down another leg of the trousers of time.
It could have gone better. There I was, looking at the login screen, debating what to play. Syndesis was right at the top, of course, standing there in all her green-blazing glory. Always fun. But I felt like gaining some experience, so she was out. Didn't feel like another hero, either. Not really. No Superball, no Space Mage...
All perfectly rational decisions, the sort of thing that flashes through your mind in a second. Stuff you don't give serious thought to. Because, y'know, what does it matter?
So I move the mouse over to the names of red, hover over one of those nice little spiders, swing the cursor, click...
Little things like that. They change your life. If I'd waited just a second...
Well, I hear that folks still at the character creation screen when the Deus ex Machina happened ended up as their "main" character. I could have dealt with that. Sure, my oldest and dearest character is a she and I'm most definitely male...
...but compared to the sensation of slowly losing all your morals and possibly your mind, wearing a different cut of pants isn't nearly that bad.
Syndesis. I could have lived with Syndesis. She and I, we're not so different. Not in the end.
If I'd been her, I wouldn't have woken up in disorientation, confusion, and white hot rage. I wouldn't have put a fist through my computer, wouldn't have destroyed my room in a blaze of angry fire.
Noonlighter. Dear God in Heaven, why him?
Could have been worse, though. Could have been worse. That's what I keep telling myself. I could have logged in as Obsolete...and then I'd really be up the proverbial digestive waste creek without a propulsion device. At least Noonlighter, for all his faults, is relatively sane.
Relatively, anyway. For a given value of sane.
He thought it perfectly logical, perfectly normal, as reasonable as breathing, to eliminate all witnesses before escaping the scene.
All witnesses being my family.
Yeah. That's bad. Really bad.
I stopped in time. Thank God I did. Reigned in a punch like a freight train, released the energy, about half a second before I caved Dad's head in.
They screamed.
I ran.
Noonlighter doesn't run.
But I most certainly do.
I'm not alone.
It's in the newspapers. This...whatever it is...hit all around the world. City of Heroes. City of Villains. Didn't take long for someone to make the connection. Cryptic and NCsoft have no comment for the press at this time.
Wonderful.
Most...incidents...were in America. Which makes sense. Looks like it happened all at once, and that was peak hour over there. Ain't so many of us elsewhere, due to the great wonder of time zones. But enough. A few sightings in Europe, Australia...
...and here, of course. Apparently there's enough of us City-of players in little sunny Singapore. And our copies of the game are keyed to the US servers, of course, much like our Aussie friends.
Hell, there's probably been a report of me by now.
A seven-foot man in an eye-watering yellow suit, hat, and full-face mask? That sorta thing that gets attention.
Noonlighter doesn't do subtle. He marches down the street...no, he swaggers. Like he owns the place. Like the world owes him. He's got the power, that's all that matters.
Me, I just want to run and hide.
I stole that newspaper. You'd think that'd make the petty criminal now sharing my headspace a lot happier. But no. I just nicked it off someone's driveway in the wee hours of the morning. That's not a Noonlighter crime, that's just embarrassing.
Hiding isn't a Noonlighter thing. Laying low, yeah, that's fine. But laying low entails a comfortable safehouse somewhere, not squatting in the undergrowth of a freaking forest.
Well, boo-hoo. Forests are good places to hide in. Army taught me that much, anyway.
Settling cross-legged on the grass, I look at my hands. I clench black-gloved fists, and slowly open my fingers.
These aren't my hands. My hands shouldn't look like they could strangle a gorilla.
But if they're Noonlighter's hands...
I make a gesture. An alien one, nothing I've done before, and yet so very familiar.
It appears in my palm, golden fire swirling to solid form, chain spooling out from beneath the jacket. The metal is hot, but quickly cools to the touch.
I thumb the stud, and the watch flips open.
An antique pocket-watch. Beautiful, ornate. Except for the fact the face is cracked, and the hands are frozen at twelve.
The watch still works, though. I think. It has to. The magic's in me.
Which means I can turn it off. Right?
I shudder.
Never speculated that far. I'd established, in vague statements, that the watch no longer works the same as it did...when Noonlighter was a hero. A simple throwaway line to explain why his powers changed when I remade him as a Brute, not Tanker. To explain why he had a gargantuan build in the Rogue Isles, when the Paragon version was normal in stature.
But...
Restarting the watch, making it tick again, simply moving the hands away from that fateful frozen hour...it should stop the magic, right? That was the point. Always the point. That's why he's Noonlighter.
What would happen, though?
With a start, I realise...I really don't know.
Will I become me? The real me? With my own face, my own body, everything?
Or will I become the real Noonlighter, some guy named Roger Carver?
I...don't know.
I've never established how Carver looks like. I'm not even sure how old he is. Anywhere from his mid-20s to 40s. Probably Caucasian...but that's it. I didn't make a civvie costume for him when he was a Tank. And when I made him a Brute, I planned on never doing so. He's Noonlighter now, you see? Let his real face remain eternally lost.
That last line, in retrospect, gives me the shivers. Not sure I like the symbolism.
But...
All I have to do is reach out, twist the dial...
Carver says no. No, no, no. I've got the power, so why the hell do I need anything else?
But me, the real me...says yes yes yes.
I close the pocket-watch, snapping it shut. It vanishes from my fingers in a whisper of flame.
Yeah, I'm a coward. Some things never change.
It's kind of sad, really.
We've told so many stories about real-life superheroes entering the world. Mostly telling us how it could go so terribly, utterly, and completely wrong.
So now, we've got a chance to do it right.
Except...
It's a bunch of geeks with the power. A horde of gamers. Not necessarily the most well-adjusted of people. To say nothing of us RPers, stuck with freaking personas overlapping our thoughts.
I mean, look at me. I've just been hiding out, trying to sort through the wreckage of my head. That's not exactly constructive behaviour beneficial to society.
Granted, the only powers I have revolve around punching things, and soaking up damage like...I dunno, something big and on fire. Not exactly the kind of thing suitable for charity work and nation building.
I suppose I could join the fire brigade, being mostly immune to hot things that go 'whoomph'. But I don't think I could fit in their usual stations. Lord knows what would happen if I tried to slide down a pole.
Bah.
I'm just wool-gathering, though. Trying to distract myself from the task at hand. If there's a task to be done, anyway. I still...haven't decided.
Kinda surprised nobody has noticed me yet, but I guess most people don't look up. Not fifteen storeys worth of up, anyway. Especially when there's so much stuff going on at street level.
The police are doing a pretty good job of cordoning off the area. I think, anyway. I've never seen that kind of thing in real life, but Noonlighter certainly has.
I've always respected the police. Noonlighter's feelings...are rather more mixed. All the innate corruption, petty abuses of power, yada-yada-yada. Well. It's not like that's incompatible with my own experience. In the Army, I briefly reported to a security guy who used to be a cop, and he told me some incredible stories...enh. Doesn't matter.
Honest or not, the cops are doing a decent job. Pity they're woefully unequipped to handle what's really going on.
It's inevitable, really. Ain't just roleplayers in City-of. There's powergamers, too. Kiddies with daddy's credit card and way too little parental supervision. Adults with even less maturity than the kiddies. PvP gankers, griefers, general pains in the rear.
And the cosmic dice being what they are, I guess it's sorta inevitable that some of those types would get yanked along for the ride.
So, one of those guys gets a bright idea:
He'll rob a bank.
A bank.
Just like in the game. And with all his amazing powers and stuff, who's gonna stop him?
Right.
I'm fairly sure he's not a roleplayer, just an idiot with less sense than God gave lemmings. I doubt very many roleplayers have their characters swear in Singlish - that's Singapore pidgin slang, for you uneducated foreign readers...
...well, except maybe XW. But I don't think that's one of his characters. He has better fashion sense than that, and he'd probably have told me if he made Singaporean Salvation Army Bin Man.
If my eyes weren't sealed behind my mask, I think they'd bleed.
I can hear him yelling to the cops, warning 'em to back off. Well, at least I assume that's what he's asking. Hard to make out most words from up here, but the profanity's surprisingly clear. Guy's got a set of lungs on him.
So, now, the big question. What should I do? Part of me just wants to kick back, laugh, and maybe find some popcorn. Because altruism? Heroism? Pfft.
The rest of me? Well, this isn't a game....
Aw, hell with it.
I jump.
People scream, cops freak. I hit the pavement. Shattered concrete cascades off my feet as I rise and stride forward.
A few handguns clear holsters, but none of the officers fire. Good. Not sure how I'd react if they did.
One of them shouts for me to stop. I ignore him. A few more steps...
...and I'm in the bank, walking through the wreckage that once was doors.
There aren't any hostages, just one spandex-clad twit standing in the middle of the lobby. Figures, he couldn't even get the tellers to sit still. Bank robbery's an art. Not for amateurs.
The erstwhile thief goggles at me, eyes wide behind his stupid, stupid mask.
"Jeez," I sigh, "never seen a proper costume before? Hmph. Guess not, if that's what you're wearing. There's stuff besides the 'Random' button, you know?"
He raises his hands, purple gloves igniting.
I throw my shield up.
Fire meets fire.
The impact rocks me back a step, but when the smoke fades, I'm still standing...surrounded in tame mystic flame. Domesticated magic is a wonderful thing.
People wonder why the Noonlighter mask has inch-thick eyeplates, nigh-opaque lenses. It's simple.
I need to see through my own glare. Sunglasses don't cut it.
Overhead, the bank's sprinklers go off. It's kinda funny, really. The water just hisses to steam as it meets my aura, but random-idiot over there just gets completely soaked.
"CHEE BAI," robber-boy screams, "I'M A FIFTY BLASTER, OK?!"
"Fifty, shmefity," I mutter, marching steadily forward.
It's a gamble, but from what I've figured out, I've got all of Noonlighter's powers. If this guy's just playing with a standard powerset...
He shoots. Again. His flame meets my flame, the dancing inferno circling my body, casting my yellow suit into even starker relief. The combined effect is blinding. I know that. 's what I'm counting on.
With a little spark of extra magic, it's suddenly really searing, really bright, the kind of light that punches straight through your retinas and through the back of your eye sockets.
Ever stare at the sun? At Noon?
My would-be opponent staggers, clawing at his face.
Too bad. He can't see me smile.
"I'm a concept character," I retort.
Another step, two, and I'm right up to him, gripping his ridiculous mismatched costume by the scruff of the neck. Black and purple? Blech. Not with that pattern, buddy.
He screams.
It must hurt. Being hauled up by a burning man. And all that water coming from the bank's fire sprinklers is hitting my aura, hissing into scalding steam.
"Huh," I observe, clinically, "didn't pick any heat resistance in your build? Sorry, friend. Should have taken the Flame Mastery pool. Too bad."
I place a hand flat against his chest, and summon my power. Kicking it right past pretty little fire and all the way into superheated plasma.
People laugh at how energy melee looks. They say it's glowing pom-poms of doom - and pink, besides.
I don't know. That look's always given me ideas.
A faint whimper escapes my captive. I drop him.
He's alive, interestingly enough, though his ribs aren't looking too good. I'm not really an expert on anatomy, but I think I can actually see a couple in that mass of cauterised red. Hm...
I crouch, pry open his jaw, and stick two fingers all the way to the back of his mouth. One more ought to do it. Quick and relatively painless---
---no.
No, no, no.
What the HELL am I doing?
Dear God.
I get up, shuddering, and run. Out of the bank, into the horde of cops. I'm still on fire, they don't get to close. I think. I jump, literally rocketing myself into the air, arcing as high as I can go. Up. Away. Anywhere, just away.
Noonlighter doesn't run.
But I do.
I do.
...
There. Somewhat darker than the other pieces so far, but I wanted to do something different. And beat the crap out of a l33t gamer. =)
Comments? I figured that Noon's violence and mindset would make for a terrible clash with my real personality. Then there's his whole nature as a magically transformed being...
-- Acyl