Atlas City

"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.

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.

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.