The Stormcrow, A Superhero's Tale Options

[Acadian]

The Air and Space museum. Wonder what Bismarck wants there? Whatever it is, it seems that he may have found it.

Silverlight is engaged in a classic duel between the forces of light and darkness – literally.

And a mystic motorcycle archer! Bowbiker? No, his name is Hwarang according to the ever-so-handy Cray.

And what do you get if you cross a next gen terminator with a bullet train? Mercury the metalman! Very cool images you conjure with your descriptions.

That Crow-chick from out of town quite helps to turn the tide with her deadly wings.

Let’s hope Silverlight can shed a little light on what’s going on at the museum!

[SubRosa]

Renee: January does not care if people are making bootleg Stormcrow shirts and the like and selling them for their own profit. Just so long as the money is not being used to fund Nazis. If people are using it to pay their rent or buy dinner, then more power to them as far as she is concerned. That is just one more way that her identity is doing some good in the world.

Silverlight does live right next door. So she's definitely going to be surprised, but happy, to see January turn up.

Hwarang the character was inspired by a K-drama called Hwarang, about the historical hwarang. That is where my picture of him below comes from.

I love the name Metro Man! Maybe that will be a comic book character in January's "real" superhero world, like Nightman, Superious, and Miss Fortune.

You know what, I had not thought of Mercury being descriptive of how he can control and reshape metal. I just took the name from the RL train that he was inspired by. I saw a picture of that once, and knew it had to be a superhero. From there I decided that rather than being a guy who wore powered armor, instead his metal control ability would *be* the power in the armor.


Acadian: You can be sure that Bismarck does not want to just get some pics of the airplanes. He's got a goal, find two lost puppies, that will level two cities in atomic fire. We are finally circling back to the events that started out this story.

I expect you will like the bow-biker. He is the result of a lot of time spent working out an arcane archer I had. Once I narrowed down that he was going to be a Korean hwarang, I was going to make him a horse-archer (since that is what the historical hwarang were). But then I thought, it's the 21st century. He should have a modern ride. So instead he has an electric motorcycle from the Technocracy.

Mercury is definitely metal. He is inspired by a couple of podcasters who are also big train nerds. They did a 9 hour or so series on the Penn Central Railroad and its bankruptcy. I think that is where I first saw a picture of the New York Central Mercury train, and knew I had to turn that into a superhero somehow.

We have some more fighty posts, before we finally get down to answering the question of what the baddies are up to in the museum.






The Atomkrieg were inspired by the real life Atomwaffen Division

Hwarang is based on Park Hyung-sik

MiG-17


Book 12.21 - Broken Arrow

"These hombres you are tangling with are the Atomkrieg," the elder hacker went on. "Bad dudes. Not big fans of you by the way. They burned an effigy of you on the steps of an Alabama courthouse a few months ago, after your fight with the National Socialist League at Motor City Pride. The local police took selfies with them while they did it."

"Their leader is a cyborg named Bismarck. He's that guy you saw earlier on the ground. He's a telekinetic, is strong, and heavily armored. The one in the air throwing down against Silverlight with elemental darkness is Reinhard. Watch it, he's a rumored to be a mage. Besides the regular goons, there's three more metas to look out for. One's a vibration emitter called Blitz. He can literally shake things apart. Another is Skorzeny, who is their commando. He can turn two-dimensional. He's good at hiding, and slicing things apart with the edges of his hands and arms. The last is a big guy named Tirpitz, classic brick. Oh, and Duck!"

January did not think, she simply did what Cray told her to. She did the splits, and splayed out her legs at a ninety degree angle to either side of her body. That dropped her down to the floor just in time to feel a whoosh of air pass by overhead. She caught sight of something big and metallic flashing past. It looked like a fist, but was far too large to be that.

She rolled back in the direction that the attack had come from, pulled in her legs, and shot them up into a double kick. She felt her boots crunch into something hard. She followed through with the motion, and leaped to her feet. She put on a half twist in the air as she did so. That put her face to face with what could only have been Tirpitz.

Everything about him was oversized and overdone. He stood about seven feet tall, and January wryly imagined that he might have been the same in width. His frame burst with muscle, and was suffused with a soft glow that January suspected was a force field. His head was encased with one of those coal scuttle helmets that the Germans had worn in the Second World War. But this one had a solid steel mask that covered the entire face as well, which was painted with a full white skull. His hands were sheathed in a pair of massively outsized metal gauntlets that shone with energy. Each knuckle was the size of a tea saucer, and was shaped like a skull.

Four of those skulls were coming January's way. She chose not to dodge or block. Instead she stood there and took it, just to see what he had. Granted, she cheated. She called upon Earth and suffused her body with that element's ideal. She was stone, she was the mountain, she was adamant. Nothing could harm her now.

He hit hard enough that the shockwave of the strike shattered a glass case beside them, and sprayed broken shards across the early radar screen displayed within. But the blow merely glanced off the side of January's face, as did his follow up to her gut. He came in for a third punch, but by this time January had a good idea of his strength.

She let go of Earth, and instead became Water. She flowed under his left cross, and continued going low. She crashed a fist against his stomach a moment later. She found that the faint glow around him was definitely a force field, for it prevented her from actually touching his body. He merely grunted in reply. She could have sworn that the skull painted upon his helmet smiled down at her.

He brought both fists straight down at her in a double blow. But she rolled aside, and he merely gouged out a massive chunk of the marble floor. She replied with a kick to his knee. But while this was usually the weak spot in any opponent, he merely grunted again, and appeared entirely unfazed.

"Long Live Death!"

January turned her head to see a pair of henchmen across the space level their rifles upon a single woman. The other heroes appeared to be too occupied with other foes to deal with them. The two neo-Nazis were likewise too far away for January to reach. Well, reach with her hands at least.

She called upon the sky. It answered by transforming into a blanket of gray clouds that rumbled with force and sheeted rain. This would be something new for her. She had never done it indoors. So she had to concentrate. She stretched her arms up to the firmament overhead, and pulled down very deliberately and precisely. She focused upon exactly what she wanted from the elements, and then willed it into reality.

The sky responded with a jagged bolt of lightning. The electricity lanced down, and crashed through the glass ceiling overhead. That shattered a wide plate of the transparent material, and sent shards of it flying down below. January hoped that would not hurt anyone. But broken glass was better than bullets.

The lightning continued down, and forked out into two distinct bolts of energy. Each of these slammed into a neo-Nazi. Both were thrown from their feet. Sparks flew around their bodies and smoke curled from their uniforms. Their rifles clattered away with metal bent and polymer melted off.

Of course all of this left January wide open to Tirpitz's next attack. She did not even have time to turn back to face him. Before she knew it, he hit her in the back of the head like a truck. She went flying forward and crashed face-first into the wide stone tiles of the floor. The world spun around her, and lights danced before her eyes.

She tried to scrabble to her feet, but she could not climb up. The floor seemed to slide out from under her boots, and she could not tell up from down. Then she felt herself lifted up into the air, only to come crashing back down a moment later. Granite tile exploded around her, as she sank down deep into the floor.

She tasted blood in her mouth, and felt fire rise inside her. This bastard was not going to be the end of her. Not by a long shot.

She kicked out hard, and felt her foot impact something. Then a strong hand clamped down upon her ankle, and flung her through the air. The next thing she knew, she saw the SR-71 coming up in front of her. She was about to crash through it!

She snapped out her wings. Their tips dug into the granite floor, and gouged deep furrows into it. Her feet came down a moment later, and again, cut more trenches into the wide stone tiles. She slowed, and came to a halt just inches from the legendary Blackbird. She took a moment to kiss the fingers of one hand, and then press them lovingly against the black hull of the famous spy plane.

She turned to see that Tirpitz was charging after her like an enraged bull. He was clearly intent upon slamming directly into her and carrying them both through the great plane. January smiled, he was telegraphing his attack from a mile away. That gave her plenty of time to respond.

She twisted slightly, so that her left side faced the neo-Nazi. Then she reached out with her left hand, and curled her fingers inward to beckon him forward. It was half invitation, half taunt. But its only real purpose was to distract him from what her right hand was doing on the other side of her body. It reached down into her belt, and pulled forth a party favor.

"There are no Nazis in Valhalla," she snarled at the oncoming brute.

He was almost upon her. Just before he could reach her she leaped skyward in a forward somersault. As she did so, she tossed her toy right in front of the Nazi's face. The flash pack went off an instant later, and sent brilliant strobes of light out in every direction. The flashes were so intense that even though January had screwed her eyes shut, she still saw bright afterimages against the back of her eyelids.

That was enough to stagger and slow the charging rhino of a Nazi. Still in the air, January reached down and wrapped her arms around the tree trunk of his neck. She continued through with the motion, and pulled him up off the ground with her. That sent them both spinning through the air back the way he had come from. But this time they ended with January slamming him down belly-first into a new crater in the granite floor.

He was slow to rise to his feet this time. January was quicker. She had some pent up anger to work out, and this guy was the perfect target to unload it upon. In her mind's eye she replaced that coal scuttle helmet and skull mask with the face of Patricia Fine. Lightning burned through her veins, and she bared her teeth in a predatory grin. It was time to end this.

She stepped up to the neo-Nazi, and rested one hand on his shoulder. She used that as a springboard to lift herself into the air above him. She came down a second later and unleashed Ragnarok. She led with her elbow, and it crashed directly into the top of his armored skull.

The Nazi's force field winked out in an instant, overwhelmed by the force of the blow. His helmet and metal mask shattered immediately afterward. That revealed him to be a man with a shaven head, a bristly five o'clock shadow, and a swastika tattoo right in the middle of his forehead. His blue eyes rolled up in his head, and he collapsed into a heap on the floor.

January turned to see another neo-Nazi that Cray had warned her about: Blitz. He was a skinny man dressed like his comrades: in a black uniform, helmet, and half skull mask. His body was a blur however, as if the space around him was shivering or shaking at some insane speed. He was not armed with a rifle. Instead he gestured with one hand, and that blur of motion lanced out from his fingers.

This beam of energy leaped out across the museum, and tore up the granite floor in a long furrow beneath it. No, it was not exactly energy. It was not like the lasers or arcane bolts that Silverlight could fire. Rather it was a disturbance in space. It seemed to cause matter to shake apart, perhaps even at a molecular or atomic level, so far as January could tell.

January followed the line of the oscillating beam, and saw that it reached out for Hwarang. The Korean-American zoomed across the floor of the museum on his motorcycle. He still fired from his arcane bow as he rode. A single one of these arrows struck the floor amidst a trio of the ordinary neo-Nazis. It exploded in a shower of blue and white energy, which quickly spread across the surface of the wide stone tiles. Frost wafted up, and January realized that it had created a sheet of ice. The Nazis slipped and slid in an almost comical fashion, and spilled most unceremoniously from their feet.

The archer looked up too late to see that Blitz's attack was homing in upon him. It sliced through a display panel about surface-to-air missiles, and then through one such missile that had been placed on exhibit. Thankfully it did not possess a warhead or fuel, so the metal skin of the weapon simply shredded under the attack with no further harm.

January was in the air by then, and she winged her way to intercept the Nazi. But an instant later his energy beam finally caught up with Hwarang. That trench he had gouged through the floor rose up to meet the center of his bike. Steel tore apart under the oscillations, and went flying in all directions.

The motorcycle lifted up as if it had exploded. Hwarang seemed to make use of the motion to leap forward off the bike. He somersaulted through the air and came down on top of a parked MiG-17. He ran across the fuselage of the craft, and drew his glowing, semi-transparent bow back to his ear.

He loosed, and five arrows shot from the string all at once. They spread out horizontally, and bent out in a wide arc, each arrow equidistant from the next. Halfway to Blitz they all bent back inward, and came homing in upon him from front, left, and right all at once. The Nazi tried to roll out of the way. But he was too slow, and all five arrows slammed home into his body at once.

The arcane arrows sliced through Blitz's oscillating energy shield as if it did not exist. They bit into his torso an instant later, and sent him straight to the ground. January wondered how much of those arrows were physical at all, or if like the standard arcane bolt it was primarily astral in nature. As Silverlight had explained, strike the aura, and the damage ground down to the physical body. As the saying went: as above, so below.

January altered her course slightly to swoop down upon the three Nazis who flailed about on the new sheet of ice. One went down when a golden arrow vanished into his body, then another. She was just about to dip a wing down to clip the last one, when a final arrow finished that terrorist off as well. January noted that all of them were still breathing, even though none showed any obvious wounds. So clearly those had been sleep or stun arrows of some kind, a handy tool for a super to have in one's kit.

At the same time though, January silently criticized herself. She had just wasted her time on henchmen that the other hero had been able to take care of on their own. That was inefficient and just poor teamwork. But then again, she supposed a lack of synergy was inevitable given that she had only just met the archer a few moments before.

January looped around and came down to land beside the glass canopy of the MiG-17, just a few feet from the Korean-American. The archer nodded to her, and then cast his eyes across the exhibit. So far as January could tell, that had taken care of all the Atomkrieg except three: Reinhard, Skorzeny, and their leader Bismarck.

[Renee]

Yeah, that'd be sooo D.C., "I'm Metro Man!" Who is Superious, if you don't mind? What sort of abilities and powers?

Ah yes, mercury's the only metal which is fluid at room temperature, as you know. Which is why it's used in thermometers. Anyway, let's see what's up this week. By the way, your YouTube link for Mercury led to a 3-second Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure clip! One of my fave movies from the '80s but was this supposed to go somewhere else? EXCELLENT!

They burned an effigy of Jan??? And the police proudly stood by??? How dare they. mALX and I have had some long PM talks about the south by the way, since she's from Tennessee, and I've never seen anything racist when I used to travel in the south, not like in the movies, especially. But she confirmed that definitely, such things exist. There are such things as entire towns where the law might look the other way (or worse) when such actions occur.

Blitz's superpower does sound rather cool, certainly unique from any others, so far. Too bad he's on the other side.

Whoa... Skorzeny can turn into a slideshow! That's wicked! But again, too bad he's on the other side. What can ya do? Damn, the fight isn't over! I assumed since Cray's on the comm that it is.

Lemme catch up to this in a few. Someone knocking at the door.

[Acadian]

An exciting fight for sure - well described and action packed.

‘I’m gonna let him hit me full on in the face to see how strong he is.’ Surely, Stormcrow must have learned that trick from Rocky Balboa!

She does get flung around a fair bit here. I chuckled when she mentally pictured Patricia Fine’s face on her big foe, Tirpitz. That reminds me of a scene from ‘The Waterboy’ when Adam Sandler similarly pictured his nemesis on the face of another football player and rage-stomped him.

Precision guided lightning! Well done, Stormcrow!

The human vibrator dude blew apart Hwarang’s ride! The mystic archer barely missed a beat though as he showed what his bow could do.

Still more baddies to take out though it seems. Fight’s not over yet.