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♦ Topic: The Endbringers, Thread XXXII
In: Boards ► World News ► Main
Lasersmile (Original Poster)
Posted on May 1st, 2011:
Starting a new topic because the last one hit post limit.
The Behemoth attacked Al-Hofuf, Saudi Arabia, on December 2nd, 2010. Thread here.
The Simurgh attacked Canberra, Australia on February 24th, 2011. Thread here.
Estimated time for next attack is May 17th, 2011. This time is not exact, and is likely to deviate by as much as 15 days.
Official speculation points to the North Atlantic as the next likely target.
(Showing page 9 of 9)
► Answer Key
Replied on May 5th, 2011:
Anyone think they're coming for Boston? Big coastal city, not yet hit by any of them… I'm thinking Leviathan.
Could be ugly.
► Miss Mercury (Protectorate Employee)
Replied on May 5th, 2011:
They're all ugly. We're gearing up to hold the line anyway, same as always.
One of these times, we'll have a new cape, or a Tinker will crack the puzzle.
Until then, we do our job.
-☿
► Laser Augment
Replied on May 5th, 2011:
Boston would be ugly?
Brockton Bay would be worse. Have you seen what's going on here?
► Answer Key
Replied on May 5th, 2011:
At this point, would anyone notice if an Endbringer did hit BB?
/jk
End of Page. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ... 8, 9
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♦ Topic: What's up with Brockton Bay?
In: Boards ► News ► Events ► America
Bagrat (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)
Posted on May 4th, 2011:
Look, there's something interesting going on almost everywhere. And, when that something involves capes, I try to find out. It's what I do. Look at my badges^. And watching a lot of television, surfing the internet, and out-and-out asking sources usually does the trick.
But sometimes, I just can't make the pieces fit together. Maybe I'm missing a piece, or maybe I'm missing sleep. Either way, it feels like something's funny.
Look at this timeline of recent events in Brockton Bay:
● April 15th : Bakuda rampage.
Hundreds dead, thousands wounded, City Hall leveled, main highway interchange leveled, power out for days, and Lung released. Was the worst disaster in the city's history since the Dock Riots, maybe ever.
● April 19th: Lung eats Kaiser and Menja. Alive.
Civilian casualties nil, but damn scary all the same. We've all seen the footage: the Little League game cutting away to glimpses of the fight a block away.
● April 27th: Great Docks Fire.
E88 wipes out the Merchants, with collateral damage of a couple hundred dead or missing and almost an eighth of the city up in flames. Oh, and the bay was on fire for a while. Also a candidate for worst disaster in city's history: wins on property damage, loses on loss of life.
● April 29th: New Wave beats Coil.
Coil blows up a skyscraper in the middle of the day. New Wave hit the fire alarm in advance, but we're still looking at dozens who didn't leave their desks, plus however many henches Coil had down there. Any other city, or if the fire alarm hadn't been pulled, this would be the worst disaster anyone local can remember. In Brockton Bay, it's apparently just lunch hour.
● May 2nd: Attack on New Wave?
Someone or some group goes after New Wave at home. At this point, all we know for sure is that they(?) set half the neighbourhood on fire and they didn't stop until Eidolon himself came to town and put on one hell of lightshow.
Sure, we don't have all the details on the more recent events yet, not the full list of casualties, not even who the cape(s?) going after New Wave was. Sure, further details will emerge in time. Sure, we'll probably never know the whole story.
That's normal.
Know what's not normal? This kind of violence. You could go a year in New York without seeing a single event like that. The casualties and property damage involved is simply unbelievable — nothing like an Endbringer fight, but otherwise off the scale. And if you drop below the big, headline-getting events, the pattern holds. Know how many times a typical Ward gets in a fight or assists in disaster relief? Once a month on average, and with backup there. Know how many times the Wards ENE have been in fights or doing disaster relief, exclusive of the big events above? Just from the police blotter, they're averaging just over two fights / hazardous environmental situations on things that never make the headlines per week. And the statistics for the Protectorate look the same.
So, what happened to turn this sleepy little city by the sea into an ongoing war-zone?
(Showing page 21 of 22)
► IDoLater
Replied on May 5th, 2011:
Think about it: a Master with some kind of mind-control ability explains everything, from the way the gangs all start fighting among themselves to the rumors about New Wave fighting among themselves, or fighting Eidolon.
I bet they're trying to take over the city.
► P-Cost
Replied on May 5th, 2011:
You think a sufficiently powerful Master or Thinker is the answer to everything. When you're not thinking it's all the Simurgh's fault, which is really the same thing only less funny. This kind of obsessive thinking is why "tinfoil hat" isn't a compliment.
You know, sometimes things just happen: not a plan, not a conspiracy, people independently acting on their own individual hopes and plans, following their God-given free will. Looking for one person or group of people who are secretly making it all happen is just being lazy.
"The greatest trick the Simurgh ever pulled was convincing the world she was behind it all."
OP wanted to know why everyone's fighting? Simple. There was a balance of power, and then Bakuda blew it up, and until there is a balance again everybody's going to be trying to come out on top.
► Ekul
Replied on May 5th, 2011:
@Laser Augment
There aren't any rumors about new capes on the streets here, really. Talk about some of the E88 capes unretiring, talk about the fighting on the streets, sure, but talk of some new mastermind claiming territory? No.
The closest I've even heard are those same old cheap Halloween scares about a living mass of bugs.
► IDoLater
Replied on May 5th, 2011:
If New Wave had gone villain, the Triumvirate wouldn't have left any of them free. If the Triumvirate had gone Villain… same result. But there was fighting!
It's mind-control.
Or possibly all about secrets. Brandish had something on Fortress, something worth killing her to cover up.
Or how else do you explain that press conference with Fortress Construction?
► IDoLater
Replied on May 5th, 2011:
If New Wave had gone villain, the Triumvirate wouldn't have left any of them free. If the Triumvirate had gone Villain… same result. But there was fighting!
It's mind-control.
Or possibly all about secrets. Brandish had something on Fortress, something worth killing her to cover up.
Or how else do you explain that press conference with Fortress Construction?
Edit: Double post, sorry. It's the lag!
► Reave (Verified PRT Agent)
Replied on May 5th, 2011:
Proud of how everyone's stepped up in the face of this, glad to see someone's noticed the tempo we've been running. The bigger stuff makes the headlines, and we're out there doing disaster relief when it hits, but the captures are something to be proud of too. Alabaster, Barker, Ballistic, Trainwreck, all in the last two weeks. These aren't the biggest fish, but we're working down the list at a rate of progress anyone would be proud to own.
Hell, we got Lung once before all this kicked off, and we'll get him again.
Don't count this city out.
► White Fairy
Replied on May 5th, 2011:
@Ekul
Not every cape looks human. If those rumors are out there, why isn't that the place to start in looking for a new cape in Brockton Bay?
► XxVoid_CowboyxX
Replied on May 5th, 2011:
What kind of rankings do you think a bug-cape would have? Changer 7? Stranger 2? Maybe a low level Brute or Mover rating, too. And maybe bug-powers in human form, like Spiderman.
Could be really cool! I mean, not beat-Eidolon-cool, but cool.
► Chilldrizzle (Moderator: Events America)
Replied on May 5th, 2011:
@XxVoid_CowboyxX
Take hypothetical powersets to the Vs. board before it poisons the thread.
And have an infraction for being off-topic.
► Ekul
Replied on May 5th, 2011:
@White Fairy
Sure, and if I thought there were an actual cape involved, I'd be more polite. But the versions I've heard are all "True story, I know a guy who knows a guy who saw some bugs in the area when it all went down..."
Just bullshit, half the time from people so drugged up that spiders are the least weird thing they were seeing.
I'm betting there's an arachnophobe with nothing better to do behind this.
If you want to know who really did what and why, look at who got what they wanted. E88's the last gang standing, and Krieg's running the show.
End of Page. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ... 20, 21, 22
You have no Private Messages.
John leaned back from the screen and stretched, feeling the muscles in his back and arms bunch and twist.
Not that he needed to stretch any kinks out, but it was a nice reminder of how far he'd come.
And it wasn't as if he had anything better to do than stretch or surf message boards.
At this hour — just past two in the afternoon — the odds of anything actually happening were almost nonexistent. That's why he had comms duty now, instead of later, and why he had yet to do a solo patrol.
Not enough experience yet.
He wasn't really sure things would change once he had more, though.
Before… before, he'd been the kid in the corner of the room. The loner. Often enough, the victim. Always, the one unable to make a difference.
It had gnawed at him.
Eventually, like one of those old Charles Atlas ads, he'd gotten ripped in response.
Idly, he flexed a bicep larger than his thigh had been back then.
Funnily enough, the bullying slowed and then stopped as he started putting on muscle mass. Hadn't had to throw a punch, even. Being muscular, being a successful jock... things just changed around him. Less bullying of others, too, at least while he was around. People listened to him, after, and sometimes that was enough. When it wasn't? Bullies could be bullied too, and if they didn't really understand why he was doing what he was doing, at least they understood that he'd make an issue out of anything he saw.
Anything he heard about.
More than the handful of beatings he'd handed down, it was the ripple effect from someone taking notice. The knowledge that bullying wasn't 'cool' anymore, the possibility of punishment from a source the bullies actually respected. He'd been set above them, by the crudest of measures, and had tried to use that.
It worked.
Made a difference.
He'd been proud of that difference. Proud enough to go out and try to make a bigger difference, too, to pick a name that memorialized what he'd done, and pointed toward what he hoped to do for the city as a whole.
Not too proud to admit, a month and handful of outings later, that he needed help.
Having the body of a world-class athlete was genuinely satisfying: it was hard to remember all the little ways in which muscles and joints stuck or didn't quite go right until there was a comparison available. He couldn't remember the last time he'd gotten tired, or been unable to sleep, or felt sore, or suddenly itched... being able to tune up your own body to peak functionality was incredible, and if it took months or years to build lasting results, it was time well spent.
And those results did interest the ladies too. He'd never even had a date before, and being wanted — physically — well, that definitely had its satisfactions.
He knew that it was shallow, but there was an honesty to it too. People saw a man great in size, and hoped he was great in other ways too. Something to try to live up to. That, as much as his pride at what he'd done, had been what took him out to hunt the streets.
The first four times he'd gone out, he'd found nothing real.
The fifth time... he'd found too much.
Being able to heal quickly was part of the biofeedback trick, and it was why he was still alive. The body of an Olympic decathlete, and strength far beyond even that, didn't mean all that much to a gun.
So he'd swallowed his pride and signed up to learn how to do this right, only to find himself set apart again. Unable to make a difference, again.
All too often, forgotten.
Maybe because he was the new kid; maybe because the constant patrols took up the time when they would otherwise have been doing group training exercises in which he could have participated; maybe because, after all those years of being on the outside, that's still the pattern he fell back on. At school, he was learning a new way to deal with people, but that mostly relied on them being impressed by his muscles.
Capes still felt awe, but not for something like a killer set of pecs. No, drawing out that kind of response required power. And, on the kind of scales capes were used to thinking about, an Olympic decathlete didn't even register. Sure, he could hit harder and lift more than even this musculature would justify — but by cape standards? Barely noticeable.
Worse, going up against other capes meant facing threats that made a pistol look like a squirt gun.
John didn't like to think of himself as a coward, but the logic was clear: if a gun was too dangerous for him deal with, then what was he doing even thinking about fighting a serious villain?
All of which meant that, here, he was still the kid in the corner. Everyone else on the team brought something unique to the table, something useful. Something that made a difference.
He brought… muscles.
For that, they could just bring another agent.
It's not that the other Wards were bad. They were all good people to hang out with, at least these days. Encouraging, and friendly. Kids trying to grow up to be heroes.
It wasn't their fault they could make a difference and he… couldn't.
Maybe time, experience, and training would change things.
All those factors counted for something, after all. Miss Militia was even more fragile than he, and she made it work, and work well. Both she and Armsmaster could still take him in hand to hand on the basis of skill alone, and that wasn't even the focus of their powers.
For now, he'd wait, and train, and see. But if he ever thought that he wasn't going to be able to make a difference here, then he'd walk away from it all.
Go back somewhere where he could make a difference.
Browbeat scanned the screens again.
Nothing.