Post #2812246 in Hadean, a roleplay on RPG

Within the depths of a storage room echoed the tinny tsk, tsk of a hi-hat. It petered out, followed by an "ah, fuck". A neck cracked. Wrists rolled. And in came the kick.

Stashed away in the corner was a figure in a loose tracksuit, curled over a drum set. Scabbed fingers held the sticks and flirted with a simple 4/4 rock beat without any thought behind it. Distracted to the trained ear. Dark eyes fixated on a tiny phone screen and the crappy audio coming from it.

"- sure, maybe - Really Hope We Don't - but I think punk is the sound this generation needs. I really do."

A twiggy woman leaned back in her seat, shaggy red hair falling over her face and caught in her lip gloss, legs wide apart and boot resting on one knee. One sleeve fell off her shoulder, showing off a brutal burn as confidently as she flashed a grin. The interviewer asked something muffled out by a stream of blast beats.

"-eah, it's - ri - back in Queens, when I, ah, let's say dabbled in vigilantism - oh, shut up! Shut the fuck up," the woman turned on the audience, who had let out a collective sound of dread at that 'v' word. Her finger pointed accusingly at them, but the sarcastic tweak of a smile made it impossible to tell how serious she was. "You have Logan Price up here talking 'bout snorting coke behind the wheel, cut me a break." A mixed response. Laughs and 'oooh's. She rolled her shoulder and turned back to the interviewer. "So back in Queens, when I was tripping out hard on LSD, I hallucinated that I stopped a gas station robbery..."

The figure's drumming sped up. Their breath hitched in anticipation, for something.

A chant flooded through a stadium. Rows of lighters raised up towards a dark, moonless sky.

"So, Vicki, it's no surprise to you what I'm about to say, surely, but you've been declared quite the controversial figure," the interviewer at last threw at her, the topic she'd been dancing around the interview. The woman rolled her eyes and her hand, goading him on. "You've been under a lot of pressure to join a hero's organization lately. How have you been coping with that?" No answer, just an unimpressed raised brow. The need for a cigarette itched at the back of her head. "Well, do you feel that what you're doing now is good enough for the hero community? With your -"

"Let me stop you right there," she interrupted with a raised hand. The laid-back persona she presented before was stripped away in an instant. "The hero community? What is that?" The interviewer opened his mouth again to regain control of the conversation, when she leaned forward, her elbows pushing her legs apart. "Actually, let's talk about that. Heroes. Look, I didn't get that moment in my life when a superhero lifted me from the rubble, cape fluttering and skin radiant with, shit, radiation. Hendrix, The Pixies, Velvet Underground - those were my heroes."

The chanting faded out in the stadium, it had gone on for too long with no reward, when suddenly - the clash of a symbol, and a spotlight on a translucent white backdrop, revealing the silhouette of somebody behind a drum kit. The stadium was back alive, this time with screams.

The figure's drumming devolved into a frenzy. There was no longer a rhythm to it, or you were just too slow to catch it. Sweat splashed onto the drums and jumped as her sticks crashed down beside it.

"Thirty million superheroes across the world, and is that even counting those that aren't putting on costumes and fighting crime?" The woman slipped a cigarette packet from her back pocket and lit one on stage, ignoring the looks the crew was giving her. Her leg jiggled with agitation. It translated on camera. "That's my community." She claimed, pointing her cigarette at the interviewer. She took a drag, then like she wasn't able to bear it any longer, stood up. "Here's a secret about supers - well, it ain't a secret, let's call it an ignored fact - most of us get it from shit. A lot of us could have gone our entire lives without being super, or realizing we’re super, if shit didn’t happen to us. So. In the spirit of doing right by the hero community, I’ve got a message for kids at home." She turned towards the screen and pointed her cigarette right at it.

"Next time someone tries giving you the Uncle Ben speech, you say... Fuck. That." She took another puff, and the interviewer behind her looked off stage for help. "You don’t have to sacrifice what you want to be because of the shit that happened to you, or shit you didn’t ask to be born with. So yeah, to answer your question. I think I’m doing some good here."

She returned to her seat with a bounce, swinging her leg up to rest her foot on her thigh again, and gave pause. The figure dropped threw her drumsticks down, their wood smeared with red, and hunched over, panting. "I think I am." Repeated over the phone's warbled speakers.

The hum of ghostly back up vocals joined the drum solo, echoing from every corner of the stadium. The crowd swung their lighters, their shouts morphing from, "Cold Front! Cold Front!" to "VICKI! VICKI!"

Then a sudden whoosh of air blew over the crowd, snuffing out every flame. All lights went out. The music cut shot. The stage went dead. The crowds were left anticipating in a jet-black stadium.

When the lights came back on, they were focused on a white-clad figure, their fist raised high and clutching a microphone. Other black clad and masked band members were posed behind her, their hands poised over their instruments. Vic waited for the excited crowd to calm down before she brought the mic down to her lips to say, in the flattest voice imaginable,

"Hey, Atlas City."

The crowd cheered. A little less excitedly than before. Vic shook her head with a grin.

"Sorry. We can do that better."

The white coat she wore dropped to her boots. She clutched the mic with both hands as the band suddenly slammed down on their instruments, and she screamed,

"LET'S MAKE OUT!"

Vic listened to her illegally uploaded performance through earphones with far too good quality to be subjected to such a mess as she stared into the window of a newsagents. She could barely hear her own voice over the crowd screaming the lyrics. Her eyes flicked between the magazines on display. To her left, a woman's magazine, where articles were written criticizing her decision to hold a signing of her leaked nudes, right next to bikini pics taken by some pervert when she wasn't paying attention on the beach, next to which was a snarky remark about her weight. To her right, a 'respectable' news source, where her latest live 'outburst' was scrutinized, as well as her lack of a statement on whether supers should all be registered by the government and made to carry identification. Vic's tongue rolled to the back of her mouth as her eyes refocused, settling on her reflection instead of sensationalist titles behind it. A cap, hoodie and medical mask hid her face. The disguise made her look like a teenage delinquent, and she felt like it, from the way the store owner was eyeing her up. Her back molars bit down on her tongue, hard, and she entered the store.

All the stuff in those magazines she could find on her phone, anyway.

Soon Vic was skating down the path, carelessly weaving between pedestrians with her hands in her pockets and clutching breakfast. She dismounted at the park, flipping the board up with her foot and resting it against a bench before flopping down beside it and unwrapping 'breakfast' - an ice cream bar, covered in sprinkles and shaped like a clown, with a big red gumball for its nose. She hooked a finger around her mask and pulled it down for a bite.

Snap.

About three bites in, she heard the dreaded sound of a shutter snapping.

"Jesus," she muttered, looking around, "Here?" Her eyes locked on to some guy across the path crouching with a camera, and she pulled back up her mask, grabbed her skateboard and stood up. She did not need the internet to get a hold of her eating a Candied Clown at 7 am. As she sped up, a voice followed after her.

"Vicki? VickI Vortex. Tobias, from Apex Media."

No, no, no, fuck off.

"Vicki Vortex, with your history of vigilantism, the public wants to know-"

"Dude, it's the first thing in the morning. How long have you been following me for? I know that you finding me here isn't a coincidence," Vic snapped all in one breath before she'd even finished turning around to him. A camera went off and she retracted, squinting at the man's face. "Oh, shit. You."

Tobias Flanagan, the independent 'journalist' famous for jumping celebrities with hard questions in moments they least expect it and getting embarrassing or incriminating answers as a result. "Where is the camera?" She asked calmly. As Tobias raised the camera in his hands, Vic snatched at his collar and flicked away the teeny body camera attached to it. "Unless you're asking about the date of my next tour - no comment. Kindly fuck off." She turned, pulling down her mask, and aggressively bit off her ice cream's nose. Her teeth clanked against the ice hard gumball. Despite her trying to get away, the man persisted.

"How do you feel about privatizing supers? With the rise of private hero institutions worldwide, would you feel more comfortable being involved with the NAHLA, or a private company? What is your comment on the superhero idol culture ?"

"Will you stop it?!"

The man was wheezing out his questions. Without realizing it, she had begun to thin the air around him.

Snippet #2812246

located in Atlas City, a part of Hadean, one of the many universes on RPG.

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Characters Present

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