Superhero Collab

Doctor Jensen wrote:You played that off really well. I'm impressed.

Once you browse reddit enough, you learn how to play off a lot of things...

Ain't that the truth. You did well with the newest update. I think I can go next. But, once the battle is over, are we gonna transition into other bad guys coming in and fighting our characters? That way we introduced each side.

You could introduce Samson now, the final meta of the group before the battle is done. I don't think the bad guys should be introduced out in the open just yet. Maybe have them watching from afar and the heroes notice them, like ontop of a skyscraper or something. That ol' foreshadowing shit from English class.

Sounds like a good enough plan to me. I do need to get Samson in there, then we can finish up this fight.

One thing I noticed though, Manny, and maybe Morgan (don't remember). Dragoon is perfectly fine with killing. In fact, he'd more than likely try to kill the Demon if he had the chance. The symbiote is kind of messing up his mind around the Demon.

I think I've done a poor job explain Jo's strength and durability. Lol.

His healing isn't very quick; skin and flesh wounds heal in about a minute; a broken bone about an hour; re-attaching a limb takes around two days. However, he can move on a fracture pretty easily, as long as it doesn't physically hamper his limb's operation; I imagine after the Demon swung him around, his body's riddled with slowly healing fractures. Not fun, but functional. Lol.

His body is durable as a side effect of his powers, so he doesn't break his fist when he delivers a super-powered punch, or yank his arms out of the sockets when he lifts a car, or tear all his ligaments when he runs quickly; he's only roughly twice as durable as a normal person.

In terms of superhuman abilities, he's easily the least powerful and most vulnerable of the group; he's just the most knowledgeable and skilled about dealing with Meta-Humans, and the most "expendable" due to his healing powers.

Want me to get next chapter, or do you wanna go, Jensen? I'm interested to see the return of Samson.

Yeah, I can go ahead. I'll adjust with what I've learned about Jo as well.

I like the way you do Dragoon's dialogue, by the way, John. I feel like you understand how to speak for him better than I do. Lol.

Do bear in mind that despite his limitations, Jo does have a fair bit of ability to bring to the table. Lol. He's very fast for a human, a quick thinker, and damn hard to hit when he's on guard; he can avoid bullets when he's aware of the attacker; he's just not invulnerable or Wolverine. :P

Hey guys, I'll have the next part out by tomorrow. I'm studying my brains out right now.

I had an idea about DEMONs. I've been debating whether the cloak/exoskeleton extends their lifespan or not. I thought about it only affecting the user when in using their  demon but it's effects would be exponential.

So if you use it for a few minutes you might get an extension that is double the amount of time; insignificant really. If you use it frequently over the span of a few years, you might see a few years added on. Theoretically if you were to use it continuously for one year it would extend your lifespan by a significant chunk.

The reason I bring this up is because I always imagined Lucifer having this worldly wisdom, the kind obtained by years of life experience. However, he'd be somewhat old by that point.

More interesting, to me at least, is that Lucifer was around during the Cold War. Perhaps he spent his 20's as a rebellious youth, travelling the world and seeing first hand the conflicts that took place. I'd imagine he could have met some famous/infamous figures like Ché, Castro, Mao, Pol pot, etc. These guys come to mind because the Communist ideal was a classless society,  which might have fit with a young Lucifer's vision. His ability to provide energy to the masses would prompt him to support, maybe even join, some of these people but become disillusioned with their methods.

Eventually, maybe like in his early thirties, Lucifer returns home to North America but can't adapt to life there either. He sees the strings the government pulls, how unaware people are, and generally can't stand a consumer society. While no longer a supporter of the Communists that caused so much death, he neither supports the system that exploits the poor.

Then in his mid thirties, for some reason or another, Lucifer becomes part of project DEMON. Maybe he went in with the intention of using that power to shape the world into what he thought it should be; by force if necessary.

Likewise, I like the idea of Al wanting to be a normal human again but this project took a lot of that away from him. So not only is he part alien, at the genetic level, the more time he uses the cloak the less he ages. If he were to dedicate his life to this job, it's very possible he may witness the aging of people around him while he seems impossibly young. He's not immortal; he could just not use the cloak... but like uncle Ben used to say "with great power comes great responsibility".

So he's potentially immortal, as long as he isn't murdered? Or is his aging process just significantly slowed? It seems like an interesting premise to me either way. Dragoon's symbiotic organism doesn't work exactly that way (or does it? I dunno), but it seems cool. With that sort of power, it seems like people would become very knowledgeable, and thus, very powerful. Like Lucifer.

I have a question as well. So, I know that the symbiotic organism that has enveloped Onzi is conscious, however, I'm trying to figure out what to call it. I'm not sure if I should call it an exoskin, exosuit, etc. You can probably tell that when I write because I'm always changing the words I'm using for it. Keep in mind, it's not completely sentient, just conscious enough to guide Onzi a bit.

What would you guys call it? Advice?

The cloak extends his life span exponentially, so after a certain point of continous use it has the potential to prolong the user's life to ridiculous levels. In other words, the user would be effectively immortal because they are slower and slower the more they use the cloak.

As for Dragoon's substance, maybe exosuit is best? It is like a skin but the two additional arms means it does more than just skin. So exosuit, or biosuit, or bio-exosuit, would be acceptable?

I dunno, if Dragoon's suit is influencing thoughts by means of guidance, doesn't that technically make it a symbiote? I mean, it's semi-conscious in the fact that it can guide Dragoon mentally, and while it isn't really feasting on his life force to sustain itself, he can't remove it without killing himself and potentially it.

For ease of words, I think exosuit fits best, but I think it's more of a symbiote.

I dunno, it's not my place to say.

Well, it's all of our story, so I'm making it your place to say. Haha. I know that symbionts is actually a made up word (as far as I'm aware) from Spider Man, so that's the only thing that makes me hesitant. It IS a symbiotic organism, but maybe existing would work best for the sake of the story.

I did some brief research for you Jensen: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbiosis.

Basically, endosymbiont is probably the word you're looking to describe the organism. Due to its alien nature, it does more than those seen on Earth but it still attached itself onto Dragoon.

In layman terms, people could just call it a suit. Whether it's skin tight like Captain America's of made of metal like Iron Man, people just call it a suit. You could call it a xenosuit if you want to get all alien with it, but I think suit fits the general purpose of it just fine.

Considering it's on the outside, I reckon we would call the organism and exosymbiont. But, that's useful information. Thanks for the help guys, I think I'll just call it an exosuit.

Anyway, who's going next?

You kinda left us hanging with Samson. Maybe you could expand just a bit more on your post.

Samson seemed different in your other thread from Samson in the original... he was more laid back and friendly rather than serious and stoic.

Yeah. He's also in my "Of Dragoons and Crisis City" thread. That should help expand on what I think of him. But I'll write another page or two about the situation, unless someone else wants to write more.

Working on a post. Gonna have Samson, Caitlyn, and Dragoon defeat Demon while João deals with the Meta-Human and Civilian Relocation Unit, also known as the Midnight Cru (read as Crew). They were originally tasked as a group that rounded up illegal immigrants and other societal undesirables, but the government has pumped money and training into them; they now specialize in capturing or killing Meta Humans, along with making certain domestic targets disappear.

They're instructed to kill Jo on sight, since he tends to get better. They account for two of his previous deaths, once shooting him in the head with a sniper bullet, and once killing him with nerve gas. They also killed his family (both, if you're wondering), so Jo has an ax to grind against 'em. He entrusts Samson to carry out the electrocution plan, then, when it's clear that that alone won't bring the Demon down totally, Samson breaks apart the supports on a condemned building and buries himself, Caitlyn, and the Demon under a few tonnes of rubble. Demon is incapacitated, and Samson prevents Dragoon from finishing him off, since he's just a kid under the energy cloak.

At that point, Jo, having finished off the M/CRU squads, lures everyone in close and activates a zero distance portal bridge (a green and black portal that opens on the ground and drops a person where they want to go) and sends them to the Lansing compound to prevent them from doing any more damage, since he doesn't trust Dragoon and Caitlyn is a wild card. Samson, on the other hand, he trusts enough to offer a job.

Thoughts, since this post is a bit of a chapter turn?

My only reservation is that I wanted Dragoon to not go to Saffore's base yet, but if that's how it works out, that's how it works out.

If that's what you want, I'm for it. Let's come up with a way to sort this out amiably and make it work with the overarching plot.

Maybe he notices the portal and escapes in the nick of time, and his acquisition becomes one of Jo's priorities. Maybe he's knocked clear of the Demon, and lands somewhere else, and Jo fails to notice his absence before he opens the portal.

Well, maybe it would work better if he gets sucked through the portal, but he finds a way out of the compound later on. I'm fine with that. I just don't want him to be actively going around with the squad quite yet.

I think Jensen originally had an idea for Lucifer to show up but I considered it too early for such an important character to openly appear. I suggested that perhaps the groups sees Lucifer and the other five princes of hell watching the battle from atop a skyscraper or something. Then someone could mention it to Saffore and she may or may not recgonize Lucifer. At some point, either then or later, Al or the group could reflect on the fact that Al got to Saffore before Lucifer got to Al.

Regardless of whether they appear in the next scene or not, I'd like to set in stone the colour of each Demon. I talked this over with John in the original Heroes and Demons.

Lucifer = Orange and Black (like lava)
Mammon - Gold
Asmodeus - Dark red
Leviathan = Blue
Beezlebub = Black
Belephor = White

Additionally, all of them have yellow eyes. Even Mammon, since his cloak will be a darker shade than his eyes and he'll have a black outline around them. Other than that, the eyes of all Demons are pretty much the same.

For the purposes of the skyscraper scene, I suppose they could all be in humanoid forms. However, I always imagined Lucifer and Al being the only ones to use humanoid forms in combat with the other five using more bestial forms (and still in control).

As for the discussion about Dragoon, I think Jensen's latest idea works best. Not only is Dragoon gone, he now knows the way to get to Saffore's hideout (he had to find a way back somehow). That would give Jo a good reason to find Dragoon and then attempt to modify his memories. It'd be a good cause for tension between the two, since Dragoon does seem adverse to teamwork.

Another point I'd like to bring up is the world. Last time around we had an alternate timeline where certain countries were named differently and had different borders (i.e. USA + Canada = UPNE, Nazi Germany became Fascist Germany, USSR still existed, etc). Not sure if you still wanted to go that route or not. I suppose, for the sake of simplicity, pop culture would be more or less the same. Whether you guys want to use the exact same name of celebrities or painfully obvious stand ins (e.g. Kayne East) is up to you.

Edit: You may have noticed I posted up a profile for Lucifer. Most of it was taken from the original H&D with a few additions. The origin story had been left alone, so that we can figure out the details among ourselves.

I also posted what I had done for the other princes of Hell, but since it's copy and paste certain things might not apply (e.g. the name of the countries from that alternate timeline).

So what's going on with the collab?

I'll post soon, but I'll be trimming down the content to João taking on the M/C.R.U., and leave the conclusion of the fight up to you guys.

Cool. No worries mate.