It was Mickey's last day. As soon as the minute hand finished making its 4 o'clock revolution, his retirement would begin. The big clock on the front face of Atlas City Bank would ring out five times, millions of people would gather their coats and hats, their briefcases and purses, and they would find their vehicles to begin the weekend. But not Mickey; he would gather his coat and hat, his briefcase, and he would find his vehicle to begin the rest of his life. A bank manager for the past twelve years, he would be retiring to a cushy lifestyle filled with RVs and cruises. Brenda was already looking into cruises.

The minute hand ticked to land on the Roman numeral IX, and one of the new young women stepped into Mickey's office with a tray of neatly organized bills in her hand. If they were already counting down the cash drawers, that meant business wasn't too bad, despite its being a Friday. He might even get a chance to leave early. Mickey loosened his tie, eyeing the last minute bank crowd from his big mahogany desk situated distantly behind the tellers. He would miss that desk--O'Connor was already eying it--but it was worth the retirement. No need for a desk where he was going. The old man smiled to himself a contented smile of satisfaction.

Mickey died with that smile on his face.

The explosion rang from the safe door not five feet from the old man's chair, causing the heavy leaded door to flatten the bank manager in its flight trajectory. A hole was simultaneously blasted in the side of the office as half a dozen men in the bank lobby drew weapons from under raincoats. A tall dark man, swarthy, with twinkling blue eyes, stepped through the ragged rubble and immediately began scooping loose bills into a heavy canvas sack. A shrill scream sounded from the bank lobby, followed by gunfire and a number of whimpers and low, terrified voices. From there, the holdup progressed fairly smoothly--no alarms (silent or otherwise) were triggered, and none of the bank customers made any heroic effort--until the Supers arrived.

And arrive they did...

"Has anyone seen Rizzoli?", came an Irish brogue carried by a gravelly voice, followed by heavy footsteps.
"Hey kid, you think you can take these rebar to the construction site? The new guy sliced his arm pretty bad on a piece of sheet metal, so I gotta take over the loader while Josh takes him to the hospital".
"Sure thing, Mike", Damien responded without looking up, tossing a piece of scrap metal into a heap. "When do you want me to take them down there?".
"When you get off work, the site is on your street".
"Okay, no problem". Damien responded.
Suddenly the whistle went off for the yard to go on lunch break, and a few moments later, Damien's cell phone began vibrating.
Right on time, he thought to himself as he smiled and slid the phone out of his pocket. He slid his thumb horizontally across the screen and lifted it up to his ear.
"Hey babe", he said.
"Hey there handsome!", came a cheery female voice on the other end. "Did I catch ya on your break?".
"Yep, only a minute late", Damien responded, walking towards his truck.
"Good! So what's the plan for tonight?", Ellie asked.
"Dinner at my place? 8 O'clock?".
"Hmmm", she responded. "Sounds good, but I'm more interested in dessert if you get my meaning....", Ellie finished, giggling at the end.
Damien chuckled. "I'll see what I can do, baby".
"So how was your--", Ellie was cut off by a loud booming noise followed by screaming.
"E-Ellie? is everything alright?", Damien asked, his hand resting on the door to his pick-up truck.
"Oh my god!", he heard Ellie's voice cry out over the phone.
crack, crack, crack, Damien heard before a loud clattering noise.
"Ellie?!", Damien yelled into the phone.
When he realized he wasn't going to get a response, he climbed into his truck, put the key in the ignition and sped out of the yard towards the Downtown Atlas bank.

This... This was just brilliant.

Lilith Ross, 24, City Coroner, was celebrating an entire week without dying, or getting mortally wounded -- It was a surprising rare occurrence for the pretty young woman. Admittedly, she hadn't been terribly active as Necrosis, who would be partially responsible for her frequent 'death,' but even as a civilian she seemed to attract trouble. Maybe it was the perfume she wore. Or the make-up. The corset, maybe? It didn't matter; after all, who's going to believe a person claiming that a person who had been murdered two days previous was now up and walking around, inspecting the corpses of others?
So Lilith decided to treat herself to dinner at a nice restaurant with an old friend while she could; she was still on call, and in this city, a break did not last very long at all. She'd even gotten all dressed up for the occasion. Unfortunately, she had the brilliant idea of stopping into the bank to withdraw some money on the way there, in case she was stuck for it later on in the evening.

The queues weren't too bad, and, helmet under her arm, Lilith soon found herself near the front of the line... Which was when the robbers decided to make an appearance. She was grabbed and shoved to the floor by the man behind her before she got a chance to object. When she tried to sit up, a heavy boot impacted with her ribs, winding her and sending her to the cold, marble floor again.
"Try that again, Morticia, and see what happens." It - he - growled. He fired a shot into the air as a warning. It took her a hell of a lot of willpower not to laugh. Who did this idiot think he was? Instead she pretended to rub her 'injured' side and lay completely still on the ground.

Another shot rang out a little distance away, and the goth looked up just in time to see a pretty young teller behind the glass silently drop to the floor. Lilith met have made some kind of sub-conscious move to reach the girl, because in the next moment she was dragged to her feet by her hair in front of all the others there, her long black locks obscuring her view of the small crowd. She braced herself for a gunshot, a little surprised to feel the bite of stainless steel against her throat, slitting it in one smooth motion. She gagged instinctively, before she was dropped to the floor again. Bleeding out was not a fun way to die, it could take her almost five minutes to die... If her healing ability was being suppressed. Several people screamed as Lilith weakly clutched the knife wound, on the edge of consciousness. She was lying in the warm, sticky pool now, struggling to breathe. God, her dress and gloves... They were going to be ruined. As long as the blood didn't soak too much into the inside of her boots, they would be alright. With that thought, Lilith passed out silently.

When she came back around a few minutes later, the wound was still open, but healing slowly. It was hard to knit together flesh when there was a shortage of platelets to do so. She cracked her eyes open a fraction, seeing she was exactly where they had left her... In a pool of her own blood. Ugh, this guys had no class whatsoever. They also had the bright idea to turn their backs on her, partially blocking the civilian's view of her. If she could just reach her helmet... Or would she just lie there until the heat was off?

She reached out slowly for her helmet, seizing it and jamming it on just before the screaming started again. If she was lucky, nobody had paid much attention to her earlier, and her face had been somewhat obscured when she'd been 'killed'...

Come to Atlas City, she said. Spend more time with your father, she said. It will be good for you, she said.

Nowhere in that whole spiel did she mention a bank robbery the day of his first paycheck.

It wasn't like he could blame Mrs. Reed for this, though. There was no way she could have foretold this. And he had been having fun with the philharmonic.

But still.

At the first boom, Tristan had immediately ducked to the floor. By the time the armed men started marching into the bank, he was already in the process of making himself as small as possible. Not an easy feat for someone with long legs and over 6 feet. Had this been any other situation, he probably would have laughed at his lack of grace, but he was hardly in the mood at the moment to entertain that thought for long.

One of the men shot a teller, and shortly afterwards dragged another girl to her feet, only to slice her throat open. Screams filled the room, and Tristan flinched at the sight. His earphones were still in, giving the scene an extremely asympathetic soundtrack: Ponchielli's Dance of the Hours. Images of hippos and alligators in tutus and pointe shoes danced around in his head, and his internal smile at the recollection passed the physical border and spread on his face.

A gruff voice and a barrel to his face quickly slammed him back to the gravity of his current situation. "What's so funny, huh, punk?" the gunman demanded, the metal hole leering just two inches from the tip of Tristan's nose. It slowly moved up to between his wide blue eyes, and Tristan swallowed dryly, too terrified to answer lest the man reply with a gun shot. At that instant he suddenly wondered why he hadn't just turned invisible and escaped to begin with. It would have been so simple too! The commotion would have provided a suitable cover, and before the teller had died he'd be out the door and headed to the nearest bus stop. He almost wished the man would shoot him for his stupidity...almost. Ugh, it was too late now to be worrying about what he could have done. He was much too involved now. People had seen him. In particular, this man with the gun had seen him.

Speaking of, the aggressor was apparently not used to silent answers. That, or he really wanted to hear Tristan's voice. Not that I can blame him, Tristan thought.

"I said what's so funny?" the gunman repeated, louder. "Fuckin' white-headed freak. You think this is funny??"

The barrel moved swiftly away from Tristan's face, but his relief was cut short when he saw it pointing at the forehead of a small boy, alone, his mother across the room from him. She screamed desperately at the gunman, but his finger moved to pull the trigger.

A click. Frustrated, the man tried to shoot again. Another click. Click, click, click. With a growl, he turned away from the boy. "Stupid gun's jammed," he complained to another of the armed men. The mother was crying silently, tears of relief.

Tristan's pulse beat loudly in his head, and he felt sweat roll down his face as he stared intently at the malfunctioning gun. Slowly, he started to reel himself back in, leaving just enough of himself out to keep that gun from firing.

"Ring... Ring... Ring..."

The phone rang consistently. An old, rotary phone from god knows when. It sat on the little old-fashioned table, black and tarnished. A real antique, that has seen better days. It certainly wasn't appreciated. But, it didn't stop, so somebody was going to have to answer it. Muttering under his breath, the tall, good-looking man stretched in the sunlight that poured form his window, still stuck in that place between awake and asleep. He glanced wearily at the clock; four in the afternoon. Ugh... It had been a very rough night, and the bouncer hadn't gotten into bed until nearly nine that morning. His shift started again at nine-thirty that evening, and tonight was Friday night. TGIF all across the city, drunken party goers everywhere. He pinched the bridge of his nose at the mere thought of it. By the time he got up, put tracksuit bottoms on and got to the phone, it had stopped ringing.

"Shit," He mumbled, running a hand through his mop of messy hair. Well, he was up now. He walked the length of his small apartment, flopping onto the couch and turning on the TV. He sat up however as he saw the news flash on the screen... Some kind of robbery at the bank. There had been gunfire, and at least one confirmed killing. That was it; Eric was on his feet in a flash, heading back into his room to get his costume together...

The Abettor stood over the body of the young woman... The 'robbers' had been so distracted by the yelling of one man with a jammed weapon that they'd simply allowed one of Atlas's most prominent heroes to waltz in the front door. He vaguely recognized the woman... That helmet... Hmmm, she obviously hadn't been prepared; what were the chances that she of all people would be the one chosen to be killed in a hostage situation?
He crouched down with a small smile to feel for a pulse. To an ordinary person, it would seem impossible that she could survive the loss of that much blood.
"Stop playing around, Necrosis. It's getting old." He straightened up, offering out a hand to his blood-soaked colleague. They had only met a couple of times before, but her knew well of her regenerative abilities, and her ability to cheat death everytime.

He smiled at the group, daring one of them to make one false move. "I'll give you one chance to get up and leave while you still can."

A wiry young man with pale skin and thick glasses was sitting at a desk in front of a computer, hard at work. The desk was situated directly in front of a very grand looking office on the top floor of one of the tallest office buildings in Atlas City. That office was the office of Victoria Rosario. Editor in Chief of Rogue Magazine. The worlds #1 most popular magazine. It covered everything that anyone would want to read. Fashion, Stars, Movies and most importantly, Supers. IT was one of the only known magazines that kept up to date on the super human community and their deeds and misdeeds. It was all due to the vision of Ms. Rosario. It was her baby.....the man in front of her office however, was her bitch. The young man was Christopher Coleson, her personal assistant. Though she never quite got his name right, even though it was on his desk, she depended on him for a lot. Even though Chris had a lot of work to do, he was about to get a lot more.

"Coleman!" The familiar voice screamed over the intercom.

"Yes, Ms. Rosario?" Chris said in a very concerned and polite way.

"Get in here, now!" She screamed once again.

Chris simply sighed and got up from his desk. He walked over to the double doors and opened them. He walked inside the large luxurious office. There was a small waterfall and a zen garden, along with a bonsai tree and several modern couches and coffee tables. At the center of it all was a large black desk that looked very modern with a large red chair situated behind it that almost looked futuristic. Ms. Rosario was in the corner of her office, looking down and out of the wall of windows in her office. Chris approached her. "What do you need, Ms. Rosario?" Chris asked patiently.

The woman who spun around to meet him was, to put it simply, beautiful. She had tanned skin with natural blonde hair wrapped up in a very professional bun. She wore a blue button up with a grey woman's suit jacket along with a grey work skirt. As long as Chris had known her, she had never worn pants. "Calvin, I need you to round up our on the scene team and alert the Super writers. The Abettor just flew past my office and there is smoke rising from the Atlas Central bank. It happened not 10 seconds ago. We need to be the first with this story and we have to fit it into to tomorrow's issue, understood." From the moment she had started talking, Chris had been writing down almost every word she said. He looked up at her. "On it ma'am." He the turned around and went to work on his Blackberry. He BBMed everyone she had told him to contact and explained the situation to them in under 3 minutes. He then sat back down at his desk and felt good. A voice suddenly rung in his head. "Christopher, why be you laxed? Did you not understand thy lady. Villainy is afoot! This is why I brought you back, to combat the forces of evil and to protect the innocent mortals of Midgard." Chris sighed. "Baldur, I have work to do and...." he was interrupted. "I'm surprised at you Christopher! Does not the safety of your fellow man not concern you more than this monotonous clanging of keys upon thy board. Come my friend, let us to battle!" Chris glanced at his key board, then down the hall to the stairs. "Your right. Let's go!" Baldur sounded in his head. "Verily."

Chris walked to the stair case and opened the door. He ran up them one flight to the roof of the building. He rant to the corner and looked down at the bank below. He shook his left wrist and a very strange watch came out of it. He brought the watch to his face and spoke. "As the darkness consumes the light, so does the light consume the darkness!" A huge flash of light came from Chris, turning him into a shining beacon. When the light faded, a tall armored man with glowing blue eyes and glowing blue lines on his face stood where Chris once stood. Baldur stood on the edge of the building and screamed before leaping off the edge. "For Midgard!"

Baldur landed with a very loud crash. The force of his body indenting the pavement and shattering some of the windows of the bank. He then stood up and walked into the bank. He surveyed the scene with his glowing eyes and saw many armed thugs and a man in a strange suit he had never seen before. He also noted the dead near the safe and a woman with a helmet covered in her own blood. The lines on his face glowed a bit brighter at this sight. "Thy villains would display such acts of barbarism before children!" Baldur yelled at the criminals. If they hadn't noticed him before, they sure as hell did now. One who was not 5 feet from him turned around and aimed an assault rifle at his head. Baldur did not even look at him. The thug then opened fire on Baldur, aiming for his head, the only thing that wasn't armored. The bullets flattened against Baldur's incredibly dense skin, but the force caused him to move his head a bit.

After the thug stopped firing. Baldur simply turned his head and stared at him. "You dare attack a son of Odin!" Baldur took a step towards him and flicked him in the forehead. The thug went flying back and smacked against the wall of the bank. "I will offer Amnesty once, all of you lay down your arms, or face the wrath of an Asgardian."

Damien's tires screeched as he hit the brakes in front of the Bank and opened the door on his truck with enough force to tear the door from the car.
Without even pausing, he dropped the door to the concrete and sprinted up the steps to the Atlas bank, barging in on what could only be a robbery. Infront of Damien was a tall man clad in some kind of armor having a stand off with several armed men, and upon surveying the room, Damien took note of the mortally wounded woman wearing a helmet, and the blood-spray pattern on a bank teller window.
No sign of Ellie.
Ellie was a bank teller.
Someones blood is on the bank teller window.
Several thoughts tore through Damien's brain as his stomach dropped and his world began to crumble around him.
No, no, no. She can't be dead., Damien thought to himself, and armed thugs be damned, he still couldn't bring himself to look over the Teller's desk. Denial began to set in, accompanied by unrelenting rage.
"WHERE IS SHE?!", he practically screamed, turning his gaze to the nearest thug, he began to walk towards him. The armed man panicked and opened fire with his automatic pistol, the rounds tearing through Damien's shirt, but flattening and dropping to the floor harmlessly. Damien enraged farther by the act roared and charged forth, closing the distance just as the backpedaling man ran out of ammo. Damien slammed his fist as hard as he could into the man's sternum, bursting organs and breaking bones around the impact area with the force of his punch and sending the poor thug across the room, his flight stopped short by a thick oak desk, and even then, he tumbled several more yards before stopping, his lifeless body leaking a bit of blood from the mouth.
"i'm not going to ask you again", Damien said coldly, his fists clenched as he turned towards the other bank robbers and completely disregarding the armored man in the room.
"Where's Ellie?!".

"Stop playing around, Necrosis. It's getting old."

The woman opened her eyes fully, a smirk spreading across her face. She wasn't fooling Abettor, that was for sure. Ordinarily, she would have refused his hand and got to her feet by herself, but she was still feeling a little light-headed. She reached up and gripped his hand, hoisting herself up again. The room rolled, and Necrosis stumbled slightly, using the hero beside her to hold herself upright until it passed. She touched her throat gently with one bloody hand, frowning as she noted the progress of the healing. It was closed now, but only just.

She flinched slightly as something rather large and heavy impacted on the pavement outside, peeking over Abettor's shoulder to see, lo and behold, Baldur. Norse god or not, he was walking freaking cliché, in Lilith's own, haughty opinion. She would love to use her negating abilities on him, just once, to see what would happen to him. However, doing so at the moment would affect everyone, and she really didn't want the crowd see her getting shot to pieces, only for her to pull herself back together again. Another time, maybe.

"Thy villains would display such acts of barbarism before children!"
Lilith rolled her eyes behind her visor, looking up to the other hero. "Is it just me who can't take this guy seriously?" She muttered, just loud enough for Abettor to hear. At least his crassness was diverting attention away from her own set-back, and the fact she was still holding onto... She suddenly stepped away from the black-clad hero, turning pink under the helmet. When the hell did she turn into Lois freaking Lane?

Another person, a civilian by all appearances, came charging into the bank next. He went from panicking to a blind rage in seconds. "WHERE IS SHE?!"
Before anyone could stop him, he lost it, taking his rage out on one of the nearby thugs. The bullets... Necrosis frowned. He was one of them, but obviously not a vigilante. He was a threat not just to the robbers, but to the civilians and the vigilantes and maybe even himself if he did not let up.
"Fancy checking around back, big man?" She addressed the Abettor with a slight tilt of her head, quickly wiping her hands on the back of her skirt.

Walking calmly over to him, she reached out to touch his shoulder, eying the other 'villains'. They were wary of her, nervous. They'd just seen her die in front of their very eyes, yet here she was. She hoped that this man didn't try anything... He was powered-down, and she had a scalpel within easy reach. "How about you just calm down a little, mate?"

Tristan watched wide-eyed as, one by one, superhumans--or should he use the word the newspapers gave them?--landed, slammed, and barged into the bank. He soon realized that the young woman who had seemingly died was standing up with hardly a scratch (but plenty of blood splatter). He knew superhumans were a part of society, and there had been quite a few costumed ones in New York, but it still gave him a little bit of initial shock when he saw them. Shock that quickly turned into bitter distaste which morphed into mercilessly sarcastic inner-commentary.

There was the classic costumed hero. The Norse God who had somehow been demoted to mortal living quarters. The goth-looking heroine, too balance it out (there always had to be a female, but God forbid she be too feminine.) And the average, every-day non-hero driven mad by love.

Heroic antics were sure to follow. Much of it would appear in the papers the next day, an inspiring case of triumphant justice.

Inspiring indeed.

Most likely completely oblivious to yet another superhuman. One who had gained much of his abilities through an inspired man.

But enough of that. Tristan shook his head, ridding himself of those thoughts. Those belonged to a past Tristan. The one who was so steeped in grudges, he was too stubborn to move forward and heal. The present Tristan needed to be focused on this still dangerous situation at hand.

Although the "heroes" had arrived, Tristan was still wary of the gunman. The arrival of the last super had proved that the men weren't entirely scared into inactivity. They still had guns, and all but one was in perfect working condition.

Well, not if he could help it.

Within the next minute, he had all the firearms blocked. Should any of the men try to fire, it would either result in a jam, or even better, a backfire. There were a lot of guns, though, and spread about the room at that. He could already feel his body relaxing, and if he wasn't too careful, he'd be relaxed all over the floor. Taking a bit of a gamble--he was still new to this particular ability--he strengthened the gravity on himself so that he was effectively rooted to the ground. Hopefully it had only taken a hold on him. It wouldn't do well if the other normal civilians couldn't escape because the ground had taken a special liking to their undersides. Forcing his eyes to stay open--they had an annoying habit of closing when he wasn't completely within his body--he waited to see who would make the next move.