F
four
Guest
Original poster
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@cactsus and @four.
A professional hero finds himself in a hard situation trying to fend off a monster of the week that has proven too powerful for him to handle. To his surprise, a mundane-looking pedestrian emerges and effortlessly defeats the threat. Asked of his identity, the pedestrian replies that he is just a normal salaryman.
This is a story about an everyday person who wants nothing to do with mad scientists and alien invasions, but happens to be blessed with immense power; and a small-time hero trying too hard to persuade him to put his potential to use to fight on the side of the good guys.
A deconstructive, lighthearted tale, In the spirit of One Punch Man.
CAST:
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JAY KIM
the ...
5'9' | Male | 27 | Lawful Neutral
Appearance
Overall he has a masculine but unassuming appearance. Having a mother that was Mexican and a father who was Korean gave him curly, dark brown hair, a wide jaw, defined cheeks, and small eyes. His hair he wears in a professional cut with the top longer but not drastically so. If you don't gather from his manner and the way he carries himself, you can definitely tell from the look in his eyes that he's a hardworking man probably suffering from some severe sleep-deprivation.
He dresses professionally in suits and watches, usually with a briefcase somewhere nearby.
Most would agree that his appearance isn't anything noteworthy.
Personality
Jay is an average, relatable guy with an unrivaled passion for his career. This up-and-coming assistant business manager feels strongly about his work and the advancement of his title-- and when it comes down to it, he can be outright heartless in the competitive workplace environment. He puts in hours tirelessly at his job, planning and carrying out business-related objectives for Fanpo (the 2nd biggest fan producer/distributor globally!)
Apart form his work, Jay Kim, a bachelor, has developed an affinity for all things concerning house work. He's an expert when it comes to cooking, cleaning, and laundry.
Socially, there isn't much worth mentioning.
Skills/Abilities
Among his many skills, writing an amazing resume, finishing full twenty-page reports in mere hours, and being consistently punctual are his most prized. He also has immense, unbeatable physical strength.
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CAESAR CRAVEN
the Longcoat Wizard
5'11'' | Male | 25 | Chaotic Good
Alliterative names to the maximum, courtesy of cheesy hero stories.
Appearance
Of average height and build.
His facial features are sharp but not exceedingly masculine, with a straight nose, thin eyebrows, and prominent lashes. Has dark, slightly curly hair, blessed with the uncanny ability to actually not appear too bad in the medium-length, unkempt mess that it usually falls in.
Terribly vain and perfectly willing to admit it, he goes to great lengths to maintain his appearance. He imagines himself to some sort of untouchable king of cool, although the truthfulness in that varies greatly depending on the observer.
The most iconic element in his costume is a black longcoat, which he wears over a long-sleeved T-shirt with the ends of the sleeves covering most of his hands, doubling as gloves. He's adopted a single circle as an emblem of his hero persona, and has it printed on the part in the front of the T-shirt that shows through the partly-buttoned coat. The outfit also includes dress pants and a pair of old-fashion leather shoes. Alternatively, he is sometimes seen in a sloppily put together suit and tie.
Having a fondness of accessories, he wears a necklace, many rings, and sometimes a knit cap and a pair of large sunglasses.
Personality
The swiftness with which he switches between personalities is truly astounding to those who first witness it. Towards the public, he upholds a persona of a reliable hero - calm, capable, and courteous; but not without the occasional flair with the speeches and boasts.
Underneath that, however, he has too jolly a personality for anyone to be trusted. Perpetually cheerful, he slips into nonsensical rambling all too often, the content of which revealing much about his weird, personal brand of optimism, as well as his profound lack of understanding about how much of the world actually works. Not extraordinarily good at telling apart times appropriates for nonsense banter and times that are not, his speech is a mess of a mixture of witty, amusing remarks, and blatant lies. His fascination towards heroism is what drove him into the trade in the first place, and it hasn't been reduced a bit as his attitude towards heroes of high reputation borders on fanboying.
A glory seeker by nature with slight blood knight tendencies, he fights the hero fight because he enjoys it. A good person at heart, he does care dearly about the people and the city he's tasked himself to protect, but that is often overshadowed by an exuberant desire to make a name for himself, and a tendency to revel a bit too much in the fights. Overly confident in his capabilities, he would often have already charges into the fray by the time he assessments reveal that it is all too much for him to handle single-handedly. Him surviving to this day is a mixture of cleverness, fast reactions, and sheer luck.
In terms of personal relationships, his eagerness backfires often, with many of the people who have found his personality to be at least entertaining quickly growing tired as his antics cross the lines into being obnoxious. Despite genuinely wishing the best for his friends, his inability to reconcile his own perception of "best" with the opinions of the recipient result in a tendency for his constant interfere with other people's life to become troubling.
Skills/Abilities
Magic user. His own preferred version of an explanation is that he can "cut and fold the fabric of reality if he thinks hard enough" - which is a much fancier way of conveying the fact that the only functioning form of his magic is the ability to open up pairs of portals that lead to each other. The most frequently visited application is teleportation, but he can be seen using it in combat as well as to carry out mundane tasks such as retrieving his scooter keys from where he left them in the living room without having to go back out of the garage.
Has also received some training and can put up a decent hand-to-hand fight. Wields a plain metal quarterstaff as a trademark weapon - presumably fashioned from something he picked up at a construction site at some point and decided to keep handy.
10:00 AM | ONE CITY | EIGHTH FLOOR APARTMENT
The apartment on the eighth floor was empty, but the lights were on. So was the television set. The man on the screen was far enough into his rant he was barely making the effort to be facing the camera anymore.
" - Remember when it was about acts of bravery, about belief in the power of one person changing the world for the better!"
The hoarse voice was not as much of an act as it was something that one would acquire naturally if they spent fifteen years screaming in a studio. He wore a full suit and sat at a desk with a greenscreened background behind him, with his name plastered across the banner. With his accent and the way he slammed his fist into the table between every two words he stressed, though, he could just as well have just downed his fourth mug of beer that night and slouching against a bar stand.
"Heroism is over, I tell you. The good old days are over - nobody cares anymore, nobody -"
Because he would have choked on himself otherwise, there was a brief pause in the harangue, just long enough for the sentence "costumed hero rescues local cat" to make its way halfway across the marquee on the bottom of the screen.
" - and now all we've got are these self-important pricks in cheap costumes throwin pathetic punches at - these - "
His hands waved in the air as he tried to come up with a description that would carry the appropriate amount of mockery.
" - these ridiculous squid monsters -"
Because of the fact that it was a late night talk show and the airing in the morning was a replaying of the live version last night, and also because that the electricity being cut in a certain eighth-floor apartment wouldn't affect a news studio in another city anyway - the show continued even as the floor trembled and the screen flickered. Then the television, along with the lights in the apartment, went out.
08:40 AM | ONE CITY | STREETS
A little more than an hour earlier.
Late night talk show host Billy Chadwick had his morning commute severely inconvenienced by the incident of an oversized cephalopod arm slapping onto his windshield.
"frippin' -"
Pedestrians spectated in horror as moist, sucker-lined tendrils latched onto the pavement on the river banks, and the body of the creature emerged from beneath the waters.
" - frippin jinxed it," he muttered and let go of the steering wheel as the tentacle wrapped around his vehicle and lifted into the air.
ENTER: RIDICULOUS SQUID MONSTER
The Billy Chadwick Show did not claim itself to be a pinnacle of scientific accuracy. The host himself, however, was familiar enough with the laws of physics that he would probably be able to give a rather compelling explanation why a cephalopod, made almost entirely from muscle tissue and lacking a skeleton, will not be able to grow to the size of a small house and walk on land without being crushed beneath its own weight.
The squid hauled itself out of the water and onto the sidewalk, made a gurgling noise, then lifted the car and tossed it into the air to express its opinion towards having its existence questioned by what a puny human thought he knew about the laws of physics.
A few screams came from the streets, the city folk stopping in the middle of their trips to work or to school upon witnessing this absurdity. The few seconds felt a lot longer than a few seconds for Billy, who watched as the cityscape outside of his car window did an aileron roll, while he was himself strapped helplessly to the seat of a vehicle that wasn't designed to be airborne. For one instant the world outside was upside down, and the inside of the car was without gravity. His closed his eyes and waited for the fall to begin. Yet before his eyes were completely shut, he caught a glimpse of the sight of a circle - a circle of bright white flame, through which -
The landing came a lot sooner than it reasonably would have, and the light thud was truly underwhelming in comparison to the spectacular crash that never happened.
Confused, he opened his eyes. His car had somehow emerged resting - upside down, but otherwise safely - upon the ground.
"Nailed it." Said the young man outside the car as, behind him, a much smaller, but similarly flaming, circular portal sealed itself.
ENTER: SELF-IMPORTANT PRICK IN A COSTUME
Portal magic had a number of applications that made certain things a lot more convenient, including getting oneself to the site instantaneously upon notification of a monster attack, and intercepting a car mid-air and transporting it safely back onto the ground.
Caesar Craven straightened the collar of his black longcoat. A white circle printed onto the front of his shirt showed between the collars of the coat as she stood, leather shoes on the pavement with the capsized car between himself and the monster on the other side of the riverside road. He smiled - this must have been the best entrance he pulled off in months.
"'you alright old man?" He asked, bending to look at the man stuck in his car. Looks startled, but not injured. Could probably get himself out of there without help -
"Old man? Who are you calling an old man you disrespectful little -"
-could definitely get himself out there without help.
Taking his attention away from the civilian, he cast his sight towards the creature and its angry, tentacle-thrashing tantrum. Caesar pulled his weapon out of the coat, the metal quarterstaff just long enough to have its tip scrape against the asphalt as he swung it a circle to get a good grip.
"Dear citizens, please do not panic," he announced, smiling. Due courtesy.
He squinted at the squid across the road.
Several minutes earlier, Caesar Craven was slouching around in his eighth-floor apartment, having scarcely awoken and was only moments from the decision to actually get off the couch and go get some morning coffee, or the decision to turn the television off because he fell asleep before he could turn it off last night and now it was a middle-aged man blabbering nonsense on the screen. The pre-recorded programme was interrupted by an emergency broadcast; and several minutes later he was fully dressed, had his shoes on and weapon in hand, and had decided to do without the coffee because there was nothing more sobering than a monster incident in the morning anyway. Several minutes later, he was charging straight in the direction of the giant squid, hollywood-samurai-duel style.
The squid squinted back.
Several minutes later, he was feeling a bit overwhelmed because parrying four wildly thrashing appendages with two hands on one metal rod was something pretty inherently difficult.
Seizing a temporary opening, he found the time to step backwards into a freshly opened circle of white, and emerged on the other side, behind the creature.
The squid was too large and too heavy, and the four other limbs that supported it were too clumsy to be able to adjust in time. He had a clear shot.
Feet latching onto the rim of the pavement along the river, he brought the staff down with both hands in a blow that surely carried enough force to crack a skull.
The back of the head of the squid monster lacked a skull and gave off a somewhat anti-climatic squish sound.
"Eh."
Several metres away from the fight scene. Late night talk show host Billy Chadwick had just succeeded in freeing himself from the restraints of a safety belt and a car door whose handle was very hard to properly locate and operate because everything was upside-down. Stepping out of the vehicle, he narrowed his eyes to see, off the other side of the road, a little splash on the surface of the water where Caesar tripped, lost his balance, and had plopped into the river.
Scratching the back of its head with one of its tendrils, the squid let out a slightly louder gurgling sound and, slowly, turned itself around.
Another several metres away, a crowd of citizens had stopped in their morning commuting trips to spectate, and were slightly confused as to what just happened. Somewhere amidst them, a circle opened in the air, and a soaked and slightly disoriented Caesar apologised as a large amount of river-water gushed out of the portal behind him, cascaded onto the pavement, and ruined a great many suits that people were wearing to work.
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