KILLER WOLF'S PROFILE

Even though the story has been "finished" for a long time, I'm still open to any feedback. As I said in my explanation, it was a new experiment for me. Instead of having a plot from the beginning, I just had the characters. Once they started bouncing off of each other, I got a picture of where the story was going to go.

I'll be putting up subsequent episodes every day or so until it is all posted. I was thinking of just throwing a PDF up, but 44,000+ words of superhero angst is probably a tough pill to swallow!

Also, the guy from your story who can only be invisible when no one is watching reminds me of one of the guys in Mystery Men. I finally got to see that movie earlier this year. I usually don't like Stiller films, but I had to watch it just for the Tom Waits parts, and ended up really enjoying it.

I've also tried to do this character as part of a more typical comic-book team in the past. I may post that story after this one ends.

His name was not Johnny, but that was what everyone called him. Not Johnny didn’t like it, but there wasn’t much he could do. It seemed he was surrounded by people with horrible memories and bad manners. To Not Johnny, it felt just like home.
Not Johnny had never been quite right, and that is somewhat of an understatement. He did bad things in his youth, and tried to make up for them by being a kind of super Samaritan. Not Johnny helped others at his own expense, and when he got sick, all of his money was already gone.

The term sickness is actually misapplied. Not Johnny wasn’t sick, he was broken. An aborted attempt at heroics around the age of sixteen left him with a spine that was just a couple steps up the ladder from broken glass. He’d gotten into the car with a friend of his when she had been drinking, severely. Not Johnny was being a good guy and driving her home so that none of the other Not Johnny’s of the world could take advantage of her. His heroism was somewhat selfish, he’d wanted her for himself…but even he wasn’t about to try and take her in that state. There would have been no challenge, and Not Johnny didn’t like things that came easily…with the life he’d had, he couldn’t even understand them.

Some people become more and more despondent as they drink, and that was how Not Johnny’s friend was. The memory is crystal clear. One moment, he looked over to smile at her as she appeared to sleep with her head against the window, a shared favorite song on the radio. The next, all hell broke loose.

With a shriek, the girl came bolt awake and snatched at the steering wheel. Not Johnny over corrected and went off the road in the opposite direction. The bridge abutment was less then forgiving. When the dust settled and the horn finally died out, Not Johnny’s friend was dead and he was paralyzed, unable to get away from her blood as it pooled and dripped down. It was hell on earth, and Not Johnny wanted to die.

Ten years later, Not Johnny had regained, somewhat, the use of his body and kicked the booze habit. It was somewhat ironic that what was in a roundabout way responsible for his predicament was also the only thing that could numb his mangled body and let him get to sleep at night.

Life had not gotten any easier, but it had not gotten any worse. That was until the first tremor. Not Johnny didn’t know what it meant, but he knew that it as not good. When he finally knuckled under and went to the doctor, he was referred to a specialist. The specialist used words like “unforeseen” and “inoperable” to describe Not Johnny’s condition.

The young man who’s name was not Johnny was also not a doctor, so talk of bone shards, fusing vertebrae, dying nerves and an electrical problem in his brain went over his head. It was beside the point really. He was a walking time bomb…but with varied methods of detonation. He could survive for years, slowly losing control of his body a piece at a time until there was nothing left capable of feeling…or one of the tiny bone spears inside of him could shift, killing him before he even knew anything had changed.

He left the specialist’s office with a garbage bag full of pain pills, in four to a pack free sample blisters, and a referral for end of life counseling. He folded it into a small paper airplane and sailed it away from the top level of the hospital’s parking garage.

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Behind him, where they could be seen between the stands of trees, the distant lights looked like a flickering fire from the speeding car on the interstate. Terrence Coates kept flicking his eyes up to the mirror and having to turn slightly behind the wheel to keep checking just to make sure it was only a trick conjured up by the interaction between the input and what his brain was doing with it. He’d had entirely too much fire in his life, and the thought of it chasing him was very disquieting.

He twisted a knob on the old car’s radio and it snapped off. The radio was now locked in the on position, but all it reported was a dull hiss of static that, at random intervals, allowed a little bleed over from a different station. It was like being wheeled down a long hallway and hearing little bits of what was going on in each room as you went past.

His cellular phone rang again, the upbeat little piece of digitized music seeming sharply at odds with the content he was expecting. He flipped the phone open and held it to his ear with one hand, again scanning his mirrors almost absently.

“Coates.” He said. This was how he always answered his phone. He was having trouble making it out over the static. “Hold on a minute.” He said, setting the phone in his lap so he had a free hand to scout the dash for something he could kill the radio with.

He’d been sharing the car with his daughter, reluctantly. She’d left the car adapter for her mp3 player. Actually, it was designed back in the days of the Sony CD player, but it worked just as well. Hell, it was so utilitarian that even Coates could find a use for it. He slammed the dead tape into the deck and, with a click, the static died off into a high pitched whine.

“Okay, lets try it again.” He said into the phone.

The voice on the other end belonged to a nervous young officer on site at the worst crime scene of his, admittedly short, career. This wasn’t so much an official channels thing as it was a matter of fraternity. It was a big time case unfolding in a back woods venue. In some ways, it could have been considered a big break. If the call had come down in some other place, a place where someone that Terrence, sometimes called Terry, but usually only by women or people older then himself, knew wasn’t running the show, this would not be happening.

As it was, the middle aged cop, now a single father of two, was closing in on a fresh lead in a case that had been nagging him for six years. He had no illusions that closing this case would make it easier to get along with his kids, or help him get to sleep at night, or to tell the truth, even make the smallest dent in his nightly alcohol consumption. No, Terrence Coates was not a man who hoped for the best.

All he wanted was that one piece of evidence that would put him closer to the son of a bitch who murdered his wife.

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Not Johnny drifted along like that for a while, and then there was the sudden upturn in his daily events. Despite the fact he’d previously applied on at least three occasions, which is bad memory short hand for six times, he had finally been approved for disability. It seemed strange, but fitting in a way, that they had declined to take care of him while he was alive…now that his clock was running down, they seemed much less reticent to put his name on a check.

That is why Not Johnny was in the bank that day. There had been a problem with his direct deposit, and he’d had to come down to sort it out. He was stuck in line, and two days off his medicine. At the time, it was little more then a pronounced inconvenience to him, the fact he felt like he had to walk in slow motion to keep from screaming every so many steps, but it would turn out to be more important later.

A young woman slid by him in line, excusing her self and promising “It’ll only be a minute.” She was attractive, cold, and could lie without pause. If he wasn’t partially convinced that a good roll in the hay would kill him, he would have tried asking her out. As it was, he just took note of how her ass looked in that skirt.

He was still looking at it when the first gunshot went off. The involuntary jump made it feel as if two ropes of something had been torn apart in his back. Not Johnny was close to the gunmen. He had some flecks of plaster from the fresh hole in the ceiling on his head and shoulders. His ears were ringing.

There were two of them. One with a pistol, the other a shotgun. The first shot had gone into the roof, a good place for it. Fairly safe, what with this being a one story building. They wore masks and angrily swept their weapons back and forth across the crowd.

“Get down on the ground, all of you.” Pistol said.

“NOW!” Shotgun added with a shout, jabbing the shotgun in the crowd’s general direction.

Not Johnny could hear the other people making their quick descents. Not Johnny was not moving.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Pistol demanded, gesturing towards him, “You deaf?”

“Not quite, but you came close firing that thing in here.” Not Johnny said, not caring. Perhaps this was a better way to go out then waiting for some shard of bone or short circuit in his brain to do him in.

“Are you stupid?” Pistol asked.

“You’re the one robbing a bank that is literally down the street from the cop shop.” Not Johnny said.

“Oh, funny guy.” Pistol said. “Lets see how funny you think…”

And he stopped. Pistol was right there, gun hand cocked up and behind his shoulder to come down on this asshole’s head and knock him to the ground, but he stopped. He was not still though, a slight tremor was shaking his entire body.

Soon, it seemed to spread around the room, in varying degrees. Shotgun was caught up in the fringe of it. A couple of the computers, and the main surveillance camera as the police would later discover, reported nothing but static or white noise.

Not Johnny stood there in what seemed to be the eye of a hurricane of a kind of palsy or seizure disorder. It was then that he realized he was, somehow, responsible for it. Just coming to this realization seemed to break the spell, or whatever it was, long enough for Pistol to fall to the ground with a nosebleed.

Shotgun regained control of his legs and took off running. Not Johnny was not sure why, but he felt compelled to give chase. Once they made it outside, he had to stop. One of his legs was going numb and cold, and running would do him no favors. He put his hand to the railing to steady himself.

It was quite by luck that he made contact at the exact time Shotgun was trying to vault the same railing further down the walkway. Whatever it was that Not Johnny could do to a person just by standing next to them was made even worse by conduction. Shotgun jerked in midair like someone laid a livewire down on his spine. He collapsed onto a heap next to the bank manager’s new car.

Not Johnny staggered off. This was the sort of event that would bring a lot of questions, and he was not in the mood to answer any of them. Hell, as far as he knew he might end up inadvertently killing whoever came round to ask them. He’d have to try to fix the checks some other way, he realized. He would also need to open a new bank account.

This was partially because he wanted to avoid any potential recognition, and the ensuing questions, but also largely because the service at this place was just horrible. He made it to his car and drove off.

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Some explanation provided-

author=Trihan
That's a really cool idea, Killer Wolf.

My take on it is that magic (or spellcrafting as it'll be known) is only possible by having imprinted gems/runes/macguffins surgically implanted into the body, which draw their power directly from the spellcrafter's vitality to facilitate the effects (making the user physically weaker to the point where using conventional weaponry would be useless, and they're unable to support their weight in heavy armour) Most go with the forehead because it results in the most potent links, but there may also be minor spellcrafters who just have it done on the wrists or ears.

The procedure for implanting them is brutal and extremely painful, so only a handful of people have ever been known to have it done.

That's not as cool as your thing. :(

I was doing a write up for a game world that was very heavy into Rune usage, but outside of that there wasn't much magic. Essentially, the Runes were the language of magic and they were left behind by those who came before. People could enhance their bodies by getting Runes inked on them. For the course of the story, the main bad guy was a hulking brute who loaded up on speed Runes, so he was as agile as cat burglar.

Of course there were also a lot of people who drew fake runes on themselves to look tough or scare other people.

It was pretty much just a workaround to allow "cybernetic" enhancements in a medieval fantasy setting, without involving the words "Gnomish" or "Contraption."

Back on topic -

As an explanation for how a Grey Wizard gets started, maybe death/near death isn't a bad idea. They are taken to a point where they can see both sides of the veil, which alters their understanding. They no longer view the world in absolutes, blacks and whites, but instead Grey.

They could gain new power by assisting the dead/dying or releasing trapped spirits. I'm kind of tipping my hand about something I'm doing in my current main project, but I'm pretty sure I don't hold the exclusive rights to that idea, so if it sounds like something that might work - go for it!

author=Dudesoft
What the hell is with all these window avatars? We should get new ones for forum rpg before these become mainstream.

I made my avatar for two reasons:

1.Cyberspace Kim Gordon did not approve of the treatment Patti Smith received in what will now be referred to as the incident on "Boxing Patti Day." Because of this, I felt like she should keep an eye on things around here for a while.

2.Despite the above statement, I'm not actually suffering a bout of schizophrenia, I just thought it would be funny. Sort of anti-bandwagoning, since avy-Kim's world looks red.

Sorry for any pattern recognition issues.

Sounds good to me, as long as the best moves don't require following button prompts to a very strange syncopated rhythm. In LoD, I stuck with "weaker" additions because I had their rhythms worked out to the point I could do them every time, without even needing to see the cues.

When I tried some of the other moves, I remember screwing up most of the time and dealing pitiful damage.

I will destroy you, Melbu Frahma!

+25 damage.

Well, damn.