Where were you when the bombs started falling (open)

[Gabriel Templar]

((This is an open RP thread for scenelets of your character first realizing that paragon is under attack. Feel free to post anything relevant))

[Gabriel Templar]

Gabe's Dad had blown him off again. On his birthday, no less. Gabe had gotten a furlough from school, dressed in his best uniform and headed out, only to be greeted by a note saying that his work had called and he wouldn't be back.

So he left.

And now he and Kalie were curled up on the couch together, watching movies. They were tangled up together, perfectly platonically, in a position that could only be achieved when one of you is a cat and the other has powers over static electricity: her head perched over his shoulder, butt in his lap and legs hooked underneath him to keep them from toppling over. It was his movie playing, she'd picked "The Princess Bride," he'd picked "A Clockwork Orange."

And as Singing in the Rain played in the background, Gabe stared up at the constellation of raised bumps on the plaster ceiling, each casting shadows of moonlight and the grey smear of light off the TV.

Then he felt something, a distant nova on his empathic RADAR, a shockwave, hot and flaring brilliant in the cool, calm night. His heart nearly skipped a beat, and he was running for the window, dumping Kalie unceremoniously to the floor.

"mmmm?" she said, shaking herself out of sleep and stretching.

The sky was black, serene and calm, and Gabe relaxed, until there was a terrible and cold realization. The reason he could see Orion so clearly in the cloudless sky was that the War Walls no longer obscured it behind a tie-die kalidoscope.

And he felt another empathic shockwave, a high keening sound resonating up his spine. On the distant horizon, ion engines seared, spewing contrails of phosphorescent gas.

"Kalie," Gabe said, backing away from the window slowly. And with that he was firing into the window, shattering it outward. "We've got to go, now." He wasn't even thinking about what he was doing as he picked her up and his static field snapped up, and then they were moving, through the window and into the moist night air.

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[Tornado]

Kara was studying spatial relationships in 4-dimensional spaces when she first felt...something. She was used to the background of noise from the city, and since her powers had expanded so that she felt more than mere pain, she had also learned to tune the emotions and sensations to a background hum.

But this...this was like a shout cutting through the static. She frowned and looked up, but nothing else happened, and she went back to her book. It was a shame that four-dimensional space was so poorly understood by three-dimensional beings as to force them to try to represent it in a two-dimensional medium, but some things couldn't be helped.

The next wave took her by surprise, doubling her over the book and driving all non-euclidian geometry from her mind. She gasped at the sudden influx of shock, fear, and yes, pain. All over the city, people were hurting...and dying in pain and fear.

The worst part was that her gifts did not include telepathy. She could FEEL the rising sensations and emotions, but she couldn't tell the cause. She didn't have time to wonder, however, because the pain doubled suddenly, and then doubled again. The sun shone gently on the green outside as she writhed in sympathetic agony on the floor of her room.

A child died, and she was finally able to express it all with a long, drawn-out scream. By the time Mike was holding on to her, she had already started pulling in her breath for another, and he had her in the sick bay before she was able to let it out.

That was the last thing she remembered that day...the day the Rikti returned.

[MoonTide]

Jake was on his way back from lunch. “Man, I love days with tests. Do the test, skip out for an early lunch!” He held the bag close as he used his super speed to dash back to the dorms.

The week had been uneventful, with so much studying for the test, he had been holed up in either class, the dorm, or the library. He had been enjoying his break from his “hero” duties.

He ran around to the back of the school. Here was the football field, and the bleachers. While Jake wasn't much of a sports guy, he liked to sit and watch on days like this when he had some extra time.

He had just drained the last of his drink, and was tossing the bag and cup into the trash when he heard a loud whine. Unsure what it was at first, he looked around. Was some kid with a loud voice having some sort of joke? Looking down at the field, the kids at practice had stopped and were also looking around in confusion.

A door near where he was standing burst open, a nun holding up her skirt and running as fast as she could towards him and the field. All she said as she sprinted past was “Get inside!” Jake was stunned at first, the siren still wailing in his ears. The nun had made her way to the field and was yelling and motioning everyone inside.

With all the possibilities of what was happening running through his head, none of them good, he made his way inside to the building.

[Yuki Ookami]

The night before Yuki celebrated. "I'm me again!" she kept on shouting. Standing in front of her mirror wearing her Hello Kitty pajamas and fluffy slippers she danced and laughed. She couldn't wait to surprise all her close friends with the great news of her new found freedom. It was like a huge weight was lifted off her shoulders for the first time in so very long.
With her Ipod in tow she settled down to write in her frayed well used diary. Yuki wanted to capture the moment in all it's details. While bobbing her head to the music in her ears she wrote feaverishly, smiling more at every word she writes. Before long she falls asleep while 'The Pillows' plays on repeat on her earphones.

She slept in the next morning. Resting comfortably and sleeping soundly. She slept through her alarm. She slept through her cell phone ringing. She slept all morning with a slight grin on her face. It had been a very long time since she slept so well and she needed it.

Yuki's dreams suddenly turns dark. Her head shook with gruesome images flashing through her dream now nightmare. Screams fill her mind and her closed eyes filled with tears. Her soft pale skin turned callused and grey while internally her vains turn back and spread across her body. Yuki's face sinks in as darkness seeps out of every pour. He mouth opens in a muted scream of terror. Absorbing all the pain, all the horror, all the death from a huge radius from her dorm room. Finally overwhelmed, Hell takes over her mind. Her body lunges forward out of bed so violently the mp3 player and book that was resting gently next to her flies across the room crashing into the wall. With out movement her eyes open wide. Black glass, her eyes have no detail and no emotion.
It's 12:53 pm the invasion has begun. She fleas the room as her phone rings.

"Hello, Yuki's not here at the moment. Please leave a message after the beep."

[Psyrift]

"So, where are we going for lunch?" Hannah looked over at her mom as they left Target. "I can't believe it's already lunch time, but I'm starving."

"Me too. I only had a piece of toast before Simon rushed us out the door. He really seems to like that day camp." Toby turned to Hannah, a teasing gleam in his eye. "So how about El Super Mexicano, sis? We can collect a few more wrappers."

"Toby! I don't collect them and you know it. Be nice!" She shot her brother a stern look. She'd made the mistake of mentioning that the guy in their advertisements was really cute one time when she and Toby were eating there. Normally, that'd be a pretty safe thing to do around Toby. Unfortunately, the guy turned out to be one of Toby's classmates, Bryan Baxter. Toby'd been teasing her about it since.

"Toby, stop teasing your sister." Their mother looked around the parking lot. "I was thinking we'd go to the Olive Garden. Now where did we park?"

"Over there, Mom. By the black Navigator." Hannah pointed off into the parking lot, and they started walking.

A moment later, Hannah realized that Toby wasn't walking with them any more. She turned, intending to tease him back a bit, but stopped herself when she saw his expression. He was standing there as though listening to something, with a worried, confused expression on his face. "Toby? What is it?"

"I..." He started, then paused. His eyes widened in fear. "Run!"

But there was no time to run. The world around them exploded as bombs began to fall from the sky. A blast sent her flying through the air, and she felt her leg crack sickeningly beneath her as she landed.

In the distance, the emergency sirens started to wail. She heard her mother screaming her name. One screaming voice among many.

Looking around, Hannah spotted her mother. Toby was with her. The air around him glowed green for a moment, and she saw a wound on her mother's face heal. She looked down at her own leg, twisted at an unnatural angle, then concentrated, willing her body to move, to shift, to change. It hurt, god did it hurt to shapeshift an injury away.

"Hannah, are you okay?" She looked back up. Mom and Toby were with her now. The air went green again, and she felt Toby's powers energizing her.

"Yeah, my leg broke but I fixed it." Another volley of bombs started shaking the parking lot again. "Come on, let's go!"

"I know where a bomb shelter is from the war." Her mother's face was pale and had fear written all over it. "We have to hurry."

She scampered to her feet, and they began to run for their lives.

[Glowing Vigilance]

Summer pored over a pile of newspapers from around the Metropolitan Area. She was lacking anything to get her journalistic juices flowing. It'd been months sine the last Vigilante. On top of that, the rate at which they were coming to her was at an all time low. It made her sick that such a great idea lay abandoned by its master. She wondered if Victor Frankenstein felt like that. She looked through the sections, the comics, the sports, the local news. She ran over a Vanguard mention on the B-side under the fold. It probably cost some money to get that hushed up. She flipped past it looking for something, anything to fuel that engine in her head to get the words flowing again.

Li was on her mind, "You should write something." She said. Summer knew Li didn't say that, but she kept thinking she needed too. It did push a thought through her skull. She needed to cover more events, she'd totally skipped that dance on her trip with Li to her parents house. Crying out loud, that was so different. She didn't want to embarrass Li but Summer admitted to herself she was shocked and amazed at how Li's family situation. She was set for life, her family was understanding, and here was Summer, refugee from the Isles, daughter of a notorious super villain. She was just lucky that Freedom Corps and Longbow along with all the other factions battling in the Rogue Isles were more occupied with Recluse's forces on foreign soil than here at home. Summer shoved the idea out of her head. The last thing she needed was some stupid paranoid delusion that Longbow would figure out the ruses, the pay offs, the forges that covered her tracks.

She looked outside, guilt hanging on her shoulder about the whole matter of it. The guilt lost its grip and hit the floor along with Summer as a pulse of plasma laser blew the window out of the cafe`. She rolled off to the side, a table was flipped onto its side. Summer pulled herself to the safety of it and curled up. She didn't get a good look at the attacker but it wasn't caring about causalities. The smell of fire, coffee and smoke filled the tiny cafe`.

She peaked her head over the smoke and looked through the window. The hum of an all to familiar plasma blaster lingered over the roar of the fire and screams from around the building. Her eyes fell on the attacker. It was clad in armor, six, maybe six and a half feet tall. The plasma gun attached to its right arm and the shape of the head were the giveaway. Rikti. Cold and Emotionless. Summer pulled her head back down. She swept her hair back and got her head into the game. She balled her fist, the ever familiar glowing force circled it. Without provocation, Summer jumped from the table, ran low at the fastest speed she could accelerate to in the short distance and took her shot.

The cafe` was lit up like a Christmas tree. The Rikti Gunman flew out through the blown out window and crashed into the street. Summer flew out after it and rolled to her feet. The smoke was pouring out of the window now and the glow of the fire was becoming visible. Summer stood up, the Gunman didn't have back up. It lay there lifeless, probably dazed out of it's skull from the impact. Summer finally got to look around. Her blood in her face ran out. Up above, pock marks were eclipsing the sun. On and off, on and off, the ships were flipping on the darkness they carried in their hulls, the Sun's rays unable to breach the ship. It was like War of Worlds, but there were no fancy signs, no big budget effects. The sirens began to wail immediately. People were pouring outside looking up, their televisions had given them the news. The news that today the world would stop turning and the next 24 hours would be forever carved into Human history as the worst attack on humanity since the last World War.

Summer's mind revolved back to real time events. Her mind frantically searched through everything it cared about falling on the one thing Summer would find dear. Li flashed in front of her. She needed to find Li. Li was her greatest treasure and if she lost Li, she'd have nothing but the darkness to keep her company. She balled up her fists. Her body divorced itself from the fear that'd previously held it in it's vice. She didn't feel pain, she just had worry in her heart, everything else was secondary to finding Li who would be scared to death. The whistle was like a far off memory. Summer looked back at the burning cafe`. The explosion that ensued knocked her off her feet, two cars were caught on fire, the fire hydrant was blasted off its base and the cafe` itself was blown into pieces of ash. Summer hit the ground on her back, the fire hydrant embedded itself into the side of a brick building across the street. The two cars next to the cafe` exploded in a twin ball of flame. The injured moaned on the ground. Summer pushed herself to her knees and looked around.

The world had officially stopped turning at 12:53 in the afternoon. It was going to be the longest day in history, one that would be retold to the children's children's children's children. The very magnitude of this invasion wasn't even going to be known until communications were verified among all the major countries. In the small section of the world, simply known as Paragon city, Summer was standing over a man with an arterial wound and saving his life. She was no longer from the Rogue Islands. She wasn't worried if Longbow was going to try and deport her, or find her or anything of that sort. She was worried about Li. She was worried about nothing but finding her. The man gasped and shot back up from his position, on the ground. He grabbed onto Summer who showed nothing to him besides a pat on the back. He thanked her endless but she ignored him and moved to the next wounded person she could find. Nothing but finding saving the victims and Li mattered to her at that moment forward.

[Dr1v35haft]

The hellish fucking frustration of it. The impact tremors were harder now, threatening to knock loose the thin scrim of asphalt where his father stood, hands dirty half-buried in the loose dry earth and gravel, struggling for purchase, the crevasse below a tangle of darkness and metal like the grave yawning to eat him. And he just couldn't quite reach.

"Hold on, Dad," Billy said, in a calm, conversational tone of voice, carrying through the insanity on the streets, voice pitched for his father alone. Clumsily, he unbuckled his belt, drew it serpentine out the loops of his jeans, and slipped it through the eyelets of his metal arms, making a long, low noose. He bent his back over the edge, perched there like a swimmer about to dive, or a man about to pray... and felt his father grab and hold on to the improvised harness. Slowly, with a grunt, he shoehorned his father against the earth, heard him grunt with the effort, saw his shirtbuttons pop off against the broken jaw of the asphalt.

His father helped him remove the leather noose, tucked it in his back pocket, and hugged his son. The air raid siren moaned franically, like the mating call of some angry hooved mammal.

The panic in the streets as people jammed against each other, like a herd of beasts, trampling each other, following and flocking where the others were running, not because it promised safety but because panic told them that where there was more than one, there was purpose.

"We gotta get to the post office, Dad. Can you run?" He looked at his Dad. He knew his dad couldn't run.

Someone had left a bicycle chained to a street sign. Billy looked, saw the bolt that connected the crossframe, and pinched it, squeezing it open and apart as easily as a sticky pickle jar. He got on, patted the handlebars in front of him. "Get on, Daddy." Hunched over, his butt drooping low over the bars, his father's broad shoulders resting against his own, Billy pedaled like mad to Center Street like a two-headed man going to the post office, the place he'd noticed last week labeled with a yellow-on-black radiation sign, the placard saying "Fallout Shelter" with an arrow pointing down mysteriously broad steps. Federal building. Old. Solid. Built to withstand nuclear attack. That's where they would go. That was the closest place he could think of that offered anything like safety.

More panicked people, milling around. They'd been flocking west but now they fluttered south, like potato-chip bags blown on the wind, against them. They looked like escapees from the Inferno. Some had burned faces, some had no hair. Some were limping. Some were even screaming. But their faces had all the calm impassivity of an Oriental god. They were terrified. They were burning. But their expressions hinted at, at the most, a vague confusion. Some he almost ran over, attempting to swerve. A few, more nervy than others, attempted to reach out and grab the bike, or perhaps just simply pull them down, make everyone equitable in the land of Hell. He dodged where he could, lashed out with his steel-toed workboots where he couldn't.

Big lions in the front guarded the entrance, and people were flocking with them now. Billy looked up and spared a moment to think how pretty the sky looked, like the countryside right before a thunderstorm in the summer. He saw the ships then and knew he was almost too late.

With a burst of power he didn't even know he had, legs insensitive now from frantic pedalling, numb, he picked his father up, held his long frame against his own body, feeling like, at this moment, since it was necssary, that he could carry any weight, he ran up the steps, into the post office, and down the steps, into the bomb shelter built in the 1950s, to survive nuclear attack. There were many, many other people, more streamed in all the time. The ground shook. The lights went out, and people screamed, then. Then they went back on.

He eased his father to the floor, sitting him up against a wall. His father's face was black with dirt, teeth caked in it, blood running from a few shallow cuts on his chest and arms.

"Yer mom'd kill em, Billy, if she knew what they'd done to the good china." He smiled once, and clutched his left arm as if it hurt him. Billy laughed once, beginning to feel the pain in his own back, feeling the hundreds of cuts and bruises to his own back. He'd shielded his father from the glass when the bomb went off. But his father's next words sent him off on that flimsy opaque high again, the high of panic and a near absolute despair.

"I think I'm havin' a heart attack, Bill."

[Primal Element]

((This is written in the first person, but it's not something he's communicating to anybody in particular. Think of it more as a narrative of the event he's assembling in his own mind to make sense of it.))

I was at home when the first bombs fell.

I was in my room. I was at my computer, working on my website, putting up a link for a state-funded mutant registration program. I didn't get to finish.

I heard a rumble outside. I thought it was a truck, or maybe an airplane. Then my sister screamed.

Chloe doesn't scream easily. She's a mutant, like me. At thirteen she's almost impervious to physical harm and can lift incredible amounts of weight. If that wasn't enough, she can talk to animals. It takes a lot to make her scream.

“Marshall!” She yelled, her feet pounding on the stairs up to my room. “It's on the news! The Rikti are back! There's a ship! It's outside!”

I looked out my window. I couldn't tell if it was a function of its great altitude, maybe, but the ship lumbered slowly through the air, leaving a trail of green discs dropping from it. Nuclear lime slices. I recognized the sleek, sharp curves of the ship, the unearthly green glow, the sinister, oily black metal, the architecture of murder.

And we were right below its trajectory.

“Chloe, we have to go, now!” I said, wishing I had more time to pack. I grabbed my MedCom badge and my cell phone off the table. My hero ID card was in my wallet. “Get down the stairs, hurry!”

Chloe called for our cat, Mop, who flew into her arms with unnatural obedience as she ran down the stairs. I was right behind her.

I thought about my parents, working in their office tower, and hoped that they had the good sense to run.

I thought about my brother, Slipstream, and hoped he wouldn't do anything reckless. Knowing he would, I hoped against hope that he would bring his MedCom badge.

“Go, Chloe! Go!”

The explosion followed us out the door. We made it behind a concrete building in time to feel the bomb searing the air, sucking out the oxygen. I folded my wings around Chloe, as much to shield her eyes as her body. Shards of glass, a destroyed book, my melted camera, bits of my old life screamed like rockets around the corner we hid behind. The sound was deafening.

When the rushing sound had passed I looked at the place where my house used to be. It was gone, except for a pile of still-burning, blackened stuff, and strips of wood leaning tenuously on one another. Half of the house had been blown entirely away. My room was in that half. I unfolded my wings.

“Are you okay?” She nodded, visibly shaken but unharmed. It would take more than a bomb to hurt her, thankfully.

“Can you run?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“We need to get to a shelter. I know where one is. We have to go, fast. Stay close to me.”

We started running. The dropship had passed overhead, leaving a trail of decimation behind it. I hadn't seen a dead body before that day, other than a Vahzilok minion. This was somehow worse. The air smelled like ash and ozone. We joined the blackened, screaming masses running through the streets.

I heard a fwip-fwip from behind me, and I saw Chloe fall. The crowd poured around us. I turned around. I smelled something like hamburger cooking, and tried not to think of the source. I saw five Rikti, four aliens in powered armor and a drone raising their plasma cannons at us. I didn't know what was happening. My arms went up as if by reflex. I thought they killed my sister. Something broke inside me.

It just kind of happened. First came the wind, howling and shrieking in front of me, disrupting their aim and blowing rubble at them. It intensified. Their thrusters and gravity-assist boots struggled to hold them in place. My mind went blank of everything but a sense of mission.

Hail started to pepper them, making hard, plinking sounds off of their armor and eroding their stable footing. The air shook with crackling energy. A black cloud floated ominously overhead, anvil-shaped. Flecks of mire swarmed the Rikti squadron, my chaos energy manifesting itself around them, slashing them, burning them, falling on them like a tree. Was it the rain making my face damp? If there was anything left of Chloe, I had to protect her.

A long, slender finger of air dropped from the sky, roaring like a jet engine. It picked up the Rikti and scattered them like leaves, then slipped gracefully back into the sky.

The smoke and clouds blotted out the sun.

It felt like a storm almost befitting the end of the world.

Chloe moved slightly underneath me, holding her arm, shaken and burned but okay, and we ran.

[Angelica Rain]

Hi, I don't think we've met before, my names Rain. I just wanted to tell you about our friend Angelique Marceau (aka Angelic Flame), and why she's been missing the last few weeks.

I guess I should start at the beginnig.

When the Rikti started their assault everyone paniced...it took all of us by surprise. Even myself. I hid in the abandoned catacombs under an old forgoten church. It was many lonely days before the sounds of the assault stoped, and I came out to see the sun, and feel it's rays on my face again. Their was so much damage to the city...my first thoughts weir of my friends...are they alright? Ange was the first person I thought of. Maybe because she was first to find me after the Seacliff accident, and nurse me to health. I've felt such a personnel bond with her since then.

Her room was untouched for weeks. My heart droped!

Was she hurt and I was hideing safe in a catacomb without her? I had to find her...calling Hospitals from her room I found a girl in emergency care that met her description. She had been severly injured and unconsciuos. They didn't have a name...but it had to be her, I just felt it.

At the Hospitals front desk I saw the head nurse..."Ecuse me Nurse". She screamed at the site of me.
"Aaaaah! What are you?"

"Yeah Yeah, girl with demon horns...real scary...did you see the tail to?"

The nurse screamed again "Aaaaaaahhh!"

I showed her a picture of Angel and asked "Just tell me were my friend is"

The Nurse answered " Down the hall ... take the stairs, she's in the last room on the left."

Going up the stairs passing several people on the way...
"Aaaaahhh!!! What Is She !!!???"

"Oh Just ... GIVE IT A REST ALREADY! "

At the end of the hall, a blue glow was coming from the room on the left. In the room was Angel, asleep, with all sorts of machines hooked up to her, and surounded by gifts of flowers. The cards all read, to my Guardian Angel. A pale blue glow was around her, which she often had when she slept.
A very young boy looked up at me, I didn't notice him when I walked in.

"Are you here to take her back to heaven now?"

Puzzled by the question I looked in the mirror on the wall, ran one finger along my horns, and switched my tail.

"Ok, that's probably the first ... and last time I'll be asked that question."
looking down at the boy.
"Why do you think that?"

"Because she's my Guardian Angel, she was hurt, so you must be here to take her back to heaven now" the boy replied.

"No, I'm just her friend."
"Can you tell me what happened to her?" I asked.

The boy replied.
I was in the playground with my friends, when the sky suddenly got dark, and spaceships filled the sky. They weir breaking all the buildings. I prayed for my Guardian Angel to protect me and just then...woosh. A bright star flew across the sky and smashed into one of them. It didn't hurt them, but they weir very angry. I herd loud sirens and people shouting to get to the emegency shelters, but I was so scared I didn't move. The spaceships shot these bright green beams of light all at once at my Guradian Angel and she fell to the ground right next to me. I ran to her side and shook her. "Are you ok, are you ok?"

she looked up at me and said with a smile,
"Thats gonna leave a mark, don't ya think."

Just then Rikti apeared out of thin air all around us. One of them tried to grab me.

"Leave the him alone Monkey boy"

She put her hands in the ground and pulled out a rock the size of a truck and lifted it over her head.

"Get in the shelter! " she said to me,
thowing the rock and knocking a couple of them dowm with it.
Now they wanted her instead.

"Got your attention now don't I, monkey boy".

She picked me up and pushed me threw the doors of the shelter just before they closed. I could see her threw the glass, she was as bright as the sun. Their was so many of them...she fought for a long time...but their was to many...
Even when her light went out, they didn't stop hiting her or shooting their green lights of death. I pounded on the glass beging them to stop...but no one could here me. When it all stoped and the doors opened, we all ran to her to help. She was so hurt. Curled up like a baby in a hole of dirt and rocks. One of the adults turned me away so I couldn't see.

(the boy bursts into tears clutching Angel's hand and covering his eyes)

(Rain goes to the boy and puts her arms around him, and sits down next to him)
"Shhhh,...it's ok...she's going to be fine...you'll see."

"See that blue light around her. Thats how she heals herself. Angel's going to be fine, just give it some time...ok. "

(A nurse enters the room)
"Gasp...!"

(Rain rolls her eyes) "Give me a break."

"It's time to go Roby" (the nurse says and then looks at Rain).

"Visiting hours are over" (in a stern voice).