Realistic or Modern Childhood Friends

[Darkbloom]

It's a warm sunny day and Thomas (hero name still pending) is out heroing, helping people in every way, shape and form. Rescuing cats from trees, stopping bank robbers, petty thieves, and scouring the streets for broken down cars. He is able to transport people, animals, or things from one place to another by creating portals, or create spatial distortions to deal serious damage to villains, among many other daily life applications. When Thomas was a small child, he had aspirations of becoming a hero along with another friend, but she disappeared for unknown reasons. He often thinks about what she's up to. After a long day Thomas returns home to an empty apartment and his cat, who purrs and rubs against his leg. He leans over and picks her up, stroking her soft fur as he walks through his apartment. Heroing isn't exactly a lucrative job, so he has to have a rea life job as Thomas instead of his hero self. For the duration of four hours a day, he has to spend time waiting for customers to access the help chat on the company website. It's a part time job that helps pay rent when necessary as well as provisions for himself and his cat. She meows in protest as he sets her down, scurrying off to her food dish. Customer service is easy money, and he's a relatively outgoing individual. Becoming a hero was in his DNA. Over the next four hours, he doesn't get a lot of action. Someone's grandma getting on the website was trying to order a gift for her grandchildren, but got lost navigating the website. She chatted for at least an hour, going on about anything and everything. Thomas couldn't help but laugh sometimes. In the last thirty minutes of the work day, he got up and left the computer to get a cup of water. myrkwise

 

[myrkwise]

Evelyn spent her morning about the same as she usually did - working to hunt down and capture the most foolish metahuman who dared to play hero and was foolish enough to draw her attention, with either a particularly volatile power or personality. Meta powers were never acceptable, but she was at least sane enough to have priorities.

Today's target was one that had been on her notice for a while: a vigilante by the name of Scorch who possessed the power to conjure seriously dangerous and potent flames - ones hot enough to vaporize most liquids, and thus most bodies. It had been annoyingly difficult to even manage a half-decent scouting attempt of the guy to get a read on his habits and schedules, as few of her agents seemed up for the task.

But whatever the case... the day had finally arrived. Her equipment was ready, and she herself would be entering the field for the first time in a while - mainly in order to provide morale for her troops. It would take every bit of what they had to not only take Scorch down, but also to capture him alive. His meta power was a marvel that begged further research, after all.

Three clicks were all it took for her to lock down the tracker positioned on Scorch, currently involving in burning some vagrants in a downtown back alley.

Go time.

 

[Darkbloom]

Thomas had a fitful sleep. It will certainly make today's heroing a little bit harder than it should be. He stretched as he got out of bed and went to make a pot of coffee. The newspaper had been delivered to his doorstep, so while his coffee pot was brewing he went to retrieve it and opened it to his favorite section. The cat, who he named Lucy, tried to dash out of the room but he cleverly stopped this by making a portal to his room. Lucy's momentum was too much and she ran straight through to the bedroom. Thomas closed the portal as well as the front door, foiling her escape plan.

With at least one cup of coffee drained down his system and another one soon to be finished, Thomas headed out. "Stay out of trouble Lucy!" He called, closing the door right as Lucy was about to escape again. "I really should get something for that..." he muses as he walks outside. Being a popular hero, there was always a line of people standing outside his apartment building waiting for him. "Whoa, one at a time!" He shook every hand and signed every picture. "Have a good day everyone!" He waved and jogged off, keeping his head on a swivel for things he could assist with.

So far, all was quiet. Occasionally there would be a newbie hero having trouble with something that Thomas would help for, and give tips about being better and more efficient using his or her abilities. And more or less the same as before. Sometimes a kid would yell out to him to request playing video games. Although it wasn't something he normally wanted to focus on, he was the friendly sort and agreed to be the kid's video game partner for a bit. After one hour of this, Thomas made an excuse to leave because the kid was beating him too many times. He left through the window and scouted everywhere he could with his eyes on top of a tall building.

 

[myrkwise]

"There you are." Evelyn muttered to herself, smiling through her plain white mask.

"Who the hell are you?" rasped Scorch, the smoke from his flames barely dissipating as he spoke, the charred remains of the petty thieves he'd torched crumbling into ash beneath him.

"Your cure."

And just like that, the plan snapped into motion. Freezing cold gas billowed all around the unsuspecting vigilante, suppressing his flames before they'd even manifested. It would be child's play to capture him now...

 

[Darkbloom]

Thomas noticed smoke rising from one of the alleys. "I think this bears further investigation..." He moves quickly across the rooftops through his portals, each disappearing behind him as he made the next one. He's not limited by the amount he can make, but the more he has open at one time the harder it is to keep them stable.

He reaches the rooftop above the alley to see a form of mist in the alley. "No!" He makes a portal and steps through it, starting to make another move. He walks in near the back of the mist, just now feeling the cold. "Brrrrr! I need to evaporate this cloud!" He instinctively reaches out in front of himself to prevent running into anything, and finds Scorch. This is the worst possible thing for him. Whoever thought of this was extremely intelligent, a kind of villain Thomas wasn't great at fighting.

But he wasn't going to leave Scorch here. He pulls and folds space around Scorch and himself, isolating them from the mist. Then he ruptures the space around them, obliterating the cloud from existence. Once it's gone, a figure stands not far away from where he guessed the cloud came from. "This ends now, villain!" Thomas declared. But... Something was familiar about her. He rubs his eyes and looks again. She's wearing a mask, though it's her hair he really notices. "Wait... I know you..."

 

[myrkwise]

Evelyn swerved to the sudden threat, narrowing her gaze at the figure before her. Despite her better judgment, she responded to his tongue-waggling, albeit with disdain.

"I couldn't imagine how," she monotonously muttered, throwing up a sign into the air to signal her minions to cover her escape. Given by what this intruder had just accomplished... she couldn't risk engaging with him head-on, at least not yet.

 

[Darkbloom]

This was Evelyn all right. But she had... changed, quite a bit. The two of them used to play heroes against pretend villains. He had been growing feelings for her right before she disappeared without a trace. Thomas searched for her for a long time, but never found anything. And now she's here... he needs to help her remember somehow. "Evelyn! It's me, Thomas! Please, remember!" He takes off his mask to see if that helps. Evelyn was brilliant when he knew her. She still is, based on this plan she created to capture Scorch.

Thomas keeps Scorch inside the isolation and steps out of it. He wants to run and give her a big hug, but she wouldn't respond to that well at all, seeing as she's forgotten who he is, along with their past. Instead, he walks forward slowly, sending her minions to a pocket dimension with a wave of his hand. "Evelyn... what happened? I never thought..." He choked on his last words. "...I never thought you'd be a villain..."

 

[myrkwise]

Evelyn stared at the unfamiliar figure in front of her, as he tore off his mask to reveal a fair-skinned, black-haired young man with the most disturbed of expressions hanging off his face, as he practically begged at Evelyn's unimpressed gait.

"Evelyn! It's me, Thomas! Please, remember!"

She didn't understand. Had she come across this hero before? She'd fought so many in her time, that they'd all started to blend together at some point... It was certainly possible.

Evelyn then grimaced as she witnessed her allies get whisked away to somewhere she could only speculate of. Were they dead? Had she just sent her comrades to their graves? Who is this?

Her eyes narrowed in a cold fury.

"I never thought you'd be a villain..."

There was a tone of familiarity to his voice that Evelyn couldn't quite parse out... It ached at the back of her mind like an annoying fly, always just out of reach.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Evelyn stated, attempting to be as calm as she could. "Please release my compatriots, before this gets any uglier."

Silently, she fiddled with the flask of gaseous neutralizer in her back pocket. The enemy she now faced seemed to have some sort of spatial manipulation at his disposal... Any projectile or melee attack would end badly. No, only a close-viscinity, unexpected gas assault could have even the possibility of taking this monster down.

 

[Darkbloom]

He had no intention of keeping her minions trapped forever. But events had taken a delicate turn. Evelyn doesn't seem to remember him. Thomas suspects with her level of planning on this operation that she could have a second plan, although he's only half sure. "All right... All right, Evelyn. I'll let you go this time."

Which was probably a bad idea, but his mind is all over the place. She's a villain, he's the hero, and she's forgotten everything. He foiled her plan to take Scorch, and that's a win. Given her caution, Thomas surmises that she doesn't have a way to deal with him yet. "Yet", being the key word. If he lets her go now, she'll be back with a plan to fight him.

The pocket dimensions released the minions and Thomas stepped backward until he reached Scorch. "We'll be taking our leave now. I need to have a word with Red here." Thomas put his hand on Scorch's shoulder, surrounding the two in another pocket of space that swallowed them up.

 

[myrkwise]

Evelyn scowled at the disappearance of Scorch. Was she really going to leave this scene empty-handed? After everything she had done to plan and prepare? What a pain…

Well, at least her allies were free. That, at least, had been kind of him…

She swept herself back into the shadows, exiting through an unledged pothole into the sewer system. Another day would come…