Capeworld Comics

Ishinomori Students

 

Snow Maiden and Snowborg 273

 

The Yuki Onna is a popular figure in Japanese culture. Not only do they exist within Japan’s diverse mystic shadow, but ghosts throughout Japan have adopted the persona of the yuki onna through the folklore substitution syndrome (where ghosts, owing to the amnesia that sometimes accompanies their manifestation, adopt the personas of characters from the folklore and religion familiar to them and come to believe that they are those characters). One such infamous ghost, the Snow Maiden of 1975, was the ghost of a Japanese mountain climber who perished on Mt. Everest. The ghost took over Mt. Everest until the Monster League calmed her down.

 

The persona of the Snow Maiden has also been taken up by the living. If a Japanese girl develops superpowers even slightly related to ice and cold, odds are that they’ll at least entertain the idea of being a Snow Maiden. They’ll dress up in white kimonos and bleach their skin and grow their hair out long. It’s so prevalent that it’s almost expected of female cryomancers that they’ll go through a Snow Maiden “phase.” There’s even a club for Snow Maidens up in the Kiso Mountains and a stereotype about men with ice powers being effeminate or gay. There are even Snow Maiden cafes, as bizarre as it might seem.

This Snow Maiden is far from the first to use the name, but she is the first to fight by creating a giant snowman around her that she pilots like a guardian giant mecha.

 

Her name is Sara Ito, star student of Ishinomori’s mecha program. Inspired by the prestigious guardian giant Lord Glacius, Sara looked to extreme cold to find out how to build stronger guardian giants. She developed a colony of extremely small super-nanites that exist as intangible particles/waves when inactive. These nanites, which she calls her “snowflakes,” follow Sara around and emit faint patterns of light indicating their status. But when the temperature drops, the snowflakes become superconductive, and Snowborg 273 (as in negative 273 Kelvin) is formed!

 

Snowborg…Fall!

 

Yes, Snowborg is a giant snowman, and stereotypically so. Sara’s superconductive field, thanks to cryokinetic powers she developed at Ishinomori, is fully under her control, and it can do some pretty crazy things. The field is like an artificial ghost. It’s invisible, intangible, and can alter localized reality. Most typically this comes in the form of the generation of extremely cold temperatures (273 isn’t just a name for the “robot”) and ice. Snowborg forms like a shell around Sara and she can feel through its slushy fingers and see through its tiny (relative to its entire body) coal eyes. But it can also fold the fabric of space to “blizzard-port” behind opponents and store its assortment of weaponry (Dr. Hwang’s BLANKET system uses a similar principle). When one fights Snowborg, one doesn’t fight just ice and cold.

 

Snowborg 273 is armed with a “broom,” really an advanced naginata whose blade is made of several stiffened fibers, an elastic “scarf” made of rhecite that can restrain foes, a top hat that contains a high-powered ultra-megabeam (Snowborg! Time to pull victory out of our hat! Defrost busterrrrrr!!!), and an array of shiny photite emitter “buttons” that can project illusions and is very useful in combination with the “blizzard-port.”

 

The coal eyes and mouth are just for decoration and to make Snowborg look expressive. They don’t have a function.

 

Sara is highly competitive and took on the Snow Maiden name in an effort to make it “hers” even among a sea of “imitators.” She’s a loud, boisterous, and somewhat bratty perfectionist who doesn’t mind correcting her teachers in front of the class or outright skipping if a lecture bores her. She loves to be the know-it-all. Her grades in STEM classes are perfect, but her grades in the humanities are lacking from her not putting forward more than the minimum effort required of her.

 

Sara loves being a superheroine. She loves the attention, the pageantry, the high-stakes, and seeing her ranking rise and rise as Snowborg defeats greater and greater threats. She’s hellbent on getting into the tournament against Martin’s and has even threatened her teachers with zoning completely out of her humanities classes if they don’t put her in.

 

Sara also has a big secret, and it’s a testament to the good relationship we have with Ishinomori that they would trust us with it–Sara isn’t just a girl dressed up like a yuki onna. She is one. She’s a ghost.

 

Sara originally designed her superconductive field to be attached to an aether drive, the traditional power source of a guardian giant. While testing her superconductive field, she ignored safety protocol and tried to force a union between the field and the drive in the hopes of creating a gestalt engine with the powers of both. The result was the full molecular disintegration of her body and the generation of her ghost. 

 

She now haunts her superconductive field and is hellbent on making it and the guardian giant it powers greater than any aether drive guardian. She’s driven in a way only a ghost can be. She needs her field to be the best. She needs to be the best. Her teachers are worried that her tunnel-vision obsession isn’t healthy, and is preventing Sara from coming to grips with the reality of her situation–that she died. Sara Ito died from her obsession, and now its preventing her ghost from truly living.

 

Skull Savior Neo King

 

The Skull Savior legacy is one of the most respected and storied superhero legacies not only in Japan, but in the world. It may even be THE superhero legacy. Needless to say, the name Skull Savior carries with it a lot of weight. Skull Savior is not something a boy can be. Only a man can shoulder the burden of the name. The path of Skull Savior is a path of pain, fear, and loss. But it is the duty of Skull Savior to not only face these things, but push past them.

 

Skull Savior is not a man. No mere man can be Skull Savior. He is a super-man. He is the impossible made possible. He is light from darkness, life from death, and hope from despair. Transformation is thus the hallmark of Skull Savior and goes all the way back to his origins in 1971. He started as the transformation of an act of evil into an act of good.

 

The first Skull Savior was teenaged orphan Joe Kubo. He and everyone else that lived in his group home were abducted by Dr. Dark, sociopathic terrorist and student of the infamous Unit 731 of Imperial Japan, and his secret organization Shadowlight. 

 

Dr. Dark had a backup plan in case his army of biological demons failed to destroy Japan, and that backup was the shock field. The shock field, modeled off data shared with Dr. Dark by German Vril adepts during WW2, was an extradimensional field of energy. Dr. Dark created the shock field with the intent of using it all himself to become a powerful superhuman, but he found that no one person could control the shock field. The single human mind just wasn’t strong enough. His solution was to link the shock field to several minds–several perfectly obedient minds.

 

Dr. Dark kidnapped every man, woman, and child in Joe’s group home with the intention of turning them into brainwashed cyborg soldiers with just enough intelligence to follow his orders. But though Joe was transformed like all the rest, he was saved before he underwent the brainwashing process by an assistant of Dr. Dark broken by having to turn children into monstrous living weapons. The assistant freed Joe and then killed himself. Joe, confused and frightened by circumstances and his new body which felt unnaturally heavy and slick, fled into the night.

 

He had become a Darkman, a being with smooth white skin, clawed hands, and a head shaped like a skull. He didn’t breathe. He had no lungs. He couldn’t smell. Everything felt slick to the touch. He could scratch himself with his hands, but as soon as he did the wound closed. And he couldn’t even cry about it. His eyes had been taken from him and in their place were two large, black, photo-receptor scoops.

 

Scared and hiding in the woods, he was found by crippled oni private Yoshi, one of many oni soldiers abandoned by the Japanese government following WW2. Humans–and only humans–were entitled to veterans’ services. Yoshi took Joe under his wing and became a father figure for the orphan. He heard his story, sympathized, and gave him a place to stay in his little forest cabin. He also helped Joe realize the path forward–vengeance–and gave Joe the means to carry out that vengeance by teaching him martial arts. Many attribute jiu jitsu to 16th century samurai. That is inaccurate. The oni invented and mastered jiu jitsu well before mankind evolved.

 

When he was ready, Joe activated an in-built photite hologram projector that allowed him to appear human (for assassination missions) and took Yoshi’s old motorcycle to begin hunting and mercy-killing the men and women who raised him and the boys and girls that were his siblings in all but blood.

 

It was one against dozens, but Joe had an edge through his martial arts training. While training, he discovered how he could use the shock field to instill vibrations into matter until it shook itself apart on the molecular level. With Yoshi’s help, he created the skull shock technique, the traditional finishing move of the Skull Savior legacy. Joe’s version channeled the shock field into his hands, then with three blows he would impart vibrations into opponents which would freeze them in place. He would then create a vibration to “detonate” the imparted vibrations by banging his forearms together and forming an X. His opponents, though they could regenerate just as he could, would vanish as they dissolved into nothing. Joe was thankful that skull shock didn’t leave a body. He didn’t want to bury the twisted remains of his loved ones, he just wanted them gone.

 

When Dr. Dark was killed by Beyondion, Joe was left as the only one in control of the shock field. He mastered it, and found that he could grant control over the shock field to others. He constructed transformation belts which temporarily turned humans into Darkmen like himself. He traveled Japan, still with Yoshi’s old motorcycle, and distributed these belts to those he found worthy to become the next generation of Skull Saviors while he retired to manage a group home for troubled teenagers.

 

There are currently hundreds of Skull Saviors throughout Japan–Skull Savior Hotblood, Skull Savior Olympian, Skull Savior Fortissimo, and on, and on. While all Skull Saviors have superhuman Darkmen bodies and the ability to project energy from the shock field as destructive vibrations, different Skull Saviors can use the shock field in different ways. It appears that different minds can make the shock field do different things. Skull Savior Hotblood was able to use the shock field to superheat himself into a fiery human missile, and Skull Savior Proton was able to use the shock field to rearrange the atomic structure of matter.

 

Every few years, another Skull Savior is added to their ranks. Another young man joins an ever-growing legion of invincible champions of justice.

 

None of them feel worthy, and because of this, they are worthy.

 

Skull Savior must show no fear, no pain. Skull Savior will never give up, never hide, never be defeated, and never accept evil. It’s one hell of a burden, much too much of a burden for any individual, but the Skull Saviors draw strength from each other, and their mentorships are second to none.

 

The newest Skull Savior is Skull Savior Neo King, known in his civilian identity as Asahi Watanabe. Asahi is one of the most notable students at Ishinomori for his power, skill, and legacy. He’s one of the golden boys, and he’s earned being one.

 

Asahi was chosen to become the next Skull Savior by Skull Savior Neo, who works as Dr. Kaito Suzuki, biochemistry teacher at Ishinomori. Asahi was chosen because of his immense creativity. A poor student (relatively speaking, as the academic standards at Ishinomori are extremely high), Asahi was often tutored by Dr. Suzuki who tried to keep the boy from failing. Asahi was a talented artist who often doodled and daydreamed about being a mangaka during class, and it was while looking over his sketchbook filled with novel Skull Savior designs that SSN began to consider Asahi his successor. He began to ask Asahi in passing what he would do in certain situations if he was Skull Savior, and he was impressed by Asahi’s answers. The boy couldn’t figure out how the Krebs cycle worked, but he had a head for creatively applying superpowers in ERC scenarios. 

 

Asahi didn’t think himself worthy when he was finally given his transformation belt. They never do.

 

SSN himself used to be a boy that doodled in class and dreamed about what he would do with the powers of the many Skull Saviors. It led him to invent his Neo belt in 2009.

 

All Skull Savior transformation belts tap into the power of the shock field, but the Neo belt was different in that it could draw power from other belts back into the shock field and into the Neo belt. It allowed SSN to borrow the powers of all previous Skull Saviors, and the sharing of powers proved so useful that all succeeding transformation belts make use of a “Neo switch,” SSN revolutionized what it meant to be a Skull Savior. From him onward, the formula became “one unique and thoroughly mastered powerset plus one Neo switch,” and a system was set up to prevent Neo switches from draining the powers of active Skull Saviors. Skull Saviors can choose to set their belts on a “share” mode when not in use.

 

SSN’s recent creation, the Neo King belt, took the concept of power sharing to the next level. Neo switches allowed Skull Saviors to access the powers of previous Skull Saviors, but only one at a time. A Skull Savior could, for instance, draw on the powerset of Skull Savior Cloudmaster and fly through the air or the powerset of Skull Savior Hotblood to emit blasts of volcanic heat, but not both. The Neo King belt could draw on the powersets of two different Skull Saviors. This was why Asahi’s creativity was so important. He was able to combine the powersets of Skull Saviors in optimal ways, for instance, combining Skull Savior Cloudmaster and Skull Savior Hotblood into Skull Savior Hotcloud, a Skull Savior who could blast through the air through powerful jets of fire.

 

The Neo King belt also came with an incredibly powerful, but incredibly dangerous, supermode–Shin King mode. Shin King mode allowed SSNK to combine progressively greater numbers of Skull Saviors as it increased in level. Each level doubled the number of Skull Savior powersets that could be combined. Level 1 allowed for the combination of 4 Skull Saviors, level 2 allowed for the combination of 8, level 3 allowed for the combination of 16, and so on. 

 

Shin King mode is a powerful tool in Asahi’s arsenal, but there’s the catch. Level 1 starts to burn out the Neo switch and Asahi has only a limited amount of time before a failsafe shuts the belt down. Level 2 cuts the time he has in half, and level 3 cuts that time in half, and so on with progressively higher levels.

 

SSNK also has access to Final Shin King mode, though SSN has told him that he’s never to use it unless it’s an absolute emergency. It’s something for the lab, not for the field. Final Shin King mode allows SSNK to use the powers of all Skull Saviors all at once–but it burns out the Neo switch in seconds.

 

Asahi has issues with his identity. He’s seen action against the BOL and Nightmare Gallery, but he still doesn’t feel like a true Skull Savior, he feels like someone trying to be a Skull Savior. He spends a lot of time in his Darkman form. Rarely does he transform back into Asahi, and he even sometimes sleeps in his powered-up form. This has caused his classmates to view him as a snob as culturally, being in “superhero mode” around peers is considered to be putting on airs in Japan. One is expected to keep and maintain two personas–a superhero persona for the public and another persona for the superhero community.

 

Dr. Suzuki is worried that Asahi isn’t comfortable being who he is–and if Asahi isn’t comfortable being who he is, how can he be comfortable being Skull Savior?

 

Nels the Dragonhearted

 

In the world of Nazarth, everything is made of a substance called dragonwater. Dragonwater was what Nazarth was before the coming of the Two–roiling, living, chaotic “waters.” The Two, the ultimate gods of Nazarth, took the dragonwater and sealed it within the heart of Nazarth-the Well. From the Well, the Two divided the dragonwater into portions and used those portions to create Nazarth as it is known today. From dragonwater came the keystone dualities of Nazarth– light and darkness, hot and cold, stars and space, time and distance, and the Nazarthians, whose men were radiant creatures with skin like gold and eyes like fire and whose women were dark creatures with skin as black and cold as night and eyes like silvery moons.

 

Though dragonwater for the most part holds the forms the Two gave them, sometimes it reverts to its old, chaotic ways. Inert objects spring to life.The wind becomes a breath, the sun becomes an eye, and Nazarthians are seized by thoughts that are not their own. These are known as dragons, though some Weft Authority guides translate the exact term to mean “demons” or “spirits.”

 

In mild manifestations, dragons can be helpful. Imagine a castle that seals itself when damaged, or a sword that fights to protect its wielder, or a protective voice in one’s head that warns of danger. But more severe manifestations can be nightmarishly destructive. Imagine an ice storm that refuses to end and give up its life to the warmth, or a forest that walks and tramples everything beneath its roots and hills, or one seized by overpowering, violent impulses. Severe dragons are a constant danger to the order of Nazarth, and young Nazarthian boys prove their manhood by seeking out and slaying them.

 

There are a rare, blessed few in Nazarth who can form a rapport with dragons. It’s not such a farfetched thing. After all, Nazarthians and dragons are both made out of the same substance. These are the dragonhearted, and they wield an incredible power that combines chaotic might and orderly intellect. The dragonhearted can command dragons to “leap” across forms. A dragon animating a tree can be commanded to enter and animate a fire, or a lake, or a stone. Dragons can do this because everything in Nazarth is ultimately made out of the same prima materia, but a few dragonhearted have dragons powerful enough to possess substances from other realities. Some dragons can work on leptons and fermions just as well as dragonwater.

 

Nels the dragonhearted is a young Nazarthian male who has come to Ishinomori for education and adventure along with his dragon Ker. He’s not the first Nazarthian to come to Earth, Martin’s has a few Nazarthians of its own, but he distinguishes himself with his above-average skill as a dragonhearted and his matchless enthusiasm.

 

Nels is a polite, humble warrior with a high opinion of his friends and school. He’s crazy about Earth culture, particularly movies, and is diligently making his way through every film on every major film registry. It’s quite a quest considering the US National Film Registry alone contains hundreds of films. Undaunted, Nels likes to ask others for their favorite films. He feels that he can learn a lot about a person just from knowing their favorite films. He’s learned how to say “Hello, I am Nels the dragonhearted, what are your favorite movies?” in several languages.

 

Boisterous, outgoing, and friendly, Nels likes seeing new places and meeting new friends. It’s what drove him to seek an education on Earth in the first place. He loves a challenge, and throws himself fully into whatever “quest” he happens to have at the moment be it the quest to finish his math homework, the quest to pick up a pizza order for film club, or the quest to see a solid state copy of East of Eden (he’s convinced the proper way to see films is on a screen, not through the noosphere).He is as inexhaustible as the Well in his exuberance.

 

Nels can sometimes come across as overbearing, and he doesn’t always look before he leaps, but his dragonheart is always in the right place.

 

Fairy Dreaming

 

The courts of Fairie play a long and convoluted game, and in their game, the pieces are always humans. To immortals whose personalities change very slowly if at all, human lives with their idiosyncratic evolutions are the most precious things in the universe.

 

Humans never stay the same for long. The stages of their lives flash brilliantly and are gone, and are all the more valuable for their brevity. 

 

The courts of Fairie exercise influence over humans to demonstrate their skill and to leave an immortal mark upon mortal clay. The Seelie court prefers to manipulate humans with tricky deals and the Unseelie court with iron-clad contracts, but they both place humans on their board and take turns moving them.

 

Sometimes, the courts want to have one of their own as a piece on the board. Sometimes, they want a piece taken off the board. The tradition of changeling switches accomplishes both desires. Changeling switches are when a human, often an infant, is replaced by a fairy. The courts never ask permission. They see nothing wrong in never asking permission. The human child is raised kindly and doted on by the courts. They become a Thomas the Rhymer or Red Crosse Knight. And the human parents are given a special child, a wise child who can do things no other child can. The human parents finding out about the switch would just overcomplicate things and lead to hurt feelings.

 

Changeling switches aren’t a thing anymore for either courts–or so they say. But you should never believe what a fairy says. It’s true that they never tell a lie, but that doesn’t mean they have to tell the truth. 

 

Why Nuada, king of the Seelie court, used the daughter of his son Lugh as a changeling is a matter of speculation, as are most matters concerning Fairie. Perhaps she was part of a deal too good for Nuada to pass up. Perhaps the Seelie court got a very special human in turn? Maybe Nuada hoped to install one of his own as a popular superheroine, someone trusted and loved by the humans and tied to him by blood? Maybe he wanted to hide his heir from the eyes of the Unseelie court? Everyone knows that both courts are filled with spies and turncoats. Earth would be far enough from Fairie to hide her from spies but not far enough that Nuada wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on her.

 

But in speculating on the motives that brought her to Earth, let us not forget that Fairy Dreaming is her own person with her own identity. She doesn’t even know that she’s a fairy let alone grandaughter of the ruler of the Seelie court. As far as she knows, she’s simply superhuman Ayumi Abe, one of many “magical girls” in Japan who transforms with a phrase and a gesture from a plain, ordinary girl into a bright champion of peace and justice. And that may be all that her teachers know as well. We’re only privy to this secret because of a deal struck between Danny and Nuada–we ensure Ayumi wins during the tournament and Nuada uses his syncretic resonance with the inert god Dagda to give us a backdoor into the Kingdom.

 

From what we’ve gathered, Nuada struck some sort of deal with Hiro and Hana Abe, a retired superhero couple who were once Mr. Illusion and Firemaiden. They would raise his granddaughter as their own, get her into Ishinomori, and never reveal to her who she really was. She would be told that her powers over heat and light came from their genetically-linked hyperstasis.

 

Nuada placed a glamour on Ayumi to make her look like an ordinary human. She’s not ugly, but no one would say she’s beautiful–she’s at most, a little pretty. But so great are Ayumi’s powers that the glamor would fail when she started using them. Her parents told her that suddenly becoming a beautiful woman with glowing skin and eyes that shined like fire whenever she exerted her powers was the result of an illusion cast by her subconscious desire to look more assertive and confident. She believed her parents, she had no reason not to, and called her transformation “glamoring” after the illusory glamors of Fairie.

 

She looked like a fairy, so she decided to lean into that for her superheroine persona and gave herself the supername Fairy Dreaming.

 

Glamor on, Fairy Dreaming!

Basically, she’s a fairy disguised as a human who believes she’s a human that subconsciously disguises herself as a fairy when she powers-up.

 

Ayumi has the standard powers of the Seelie court–she can cast illusions and shapeshift herself and others, but she also has the powers of her father Lugh. Those powers are still in their infancy owing to her very shy, very nonconfrontational personality. She’s the daughter of a war god, and its only in combat that her powers can reach their full potential.

Instinctively, Ayumi knows how to use her father’s powers. She knows that she can summon and control light and change the weather. What frightens her is how natural it feels to use her powers in violent ways. It feels the most natural thing in the world for her to form her light into a spear just like her father’s famous spear Sleg (a Fox echo of the Cerbereans’ powersource, sleg), also known as Slaughterer. When she controls the weather, she doesn’t want to make it sunny, she wants to make it stormy…very stormy. She wants the winds to blow and the lightning to roar. She forces herself to lose every sparring match with her peers because when she fights with them, she knows how to fight well beyond her instructional level. She knows how to parry and strike and grapple with a muscle memory that should only belong to black belts. And yet, somehow, she has it. And what’s worse, that same instinctive understanding of combat tells her to strike at full force and go for the weak spots. It tells her to crush her opponents, not just beat them.

Fearing that she was some sort of psycho killer in the making, Ayumi started to talk to the Ishinomori’s psychiatrist, and that’s partially how we know about her troubles, but mostly we owe our knowledge to Dr. Hwang’s good detective work. He remembered that a year back Ishinomori presented a psychiatric profile of “Girl A” during a seminar on superhuman child psychiatry. All it took to confirm they were talking about Ayumi was guess work and checking social media. Apparently, Ayumi told a girl who told a girl about her appointment with the psychiatrist and now she’s got the reputation as “the serial killer girl.”

 

Ayumi is socially ostracized and then some, but It’s not just because of the “serial killer girl” thing. It’s because Ayumi prefers being in her human form. She claims that it’s because it’s her “real” form, but really it’s because she attracts less attention when she looks plain. In Japan, the custom is that superheroes wear costumes while in action, but among peers you don’t dress up otherwise you’re seen as putting on airs. The exception to this is the magical girl cliche. They have a tradition of ultra-fancy tea parties and get-togethers where everyone shows up dressed like parade floats. In preferring her plain form, Ayumi sends the message to the other magical girls that she’s too good for them. They think that she’s calling them snobs…though they kind of are.

 

Ayumi, in her meekness, has discovered a power Lugh never had–the power to heal with her light. Solar gods sometimes have the ability to cure sickness and mend flesh, but Lugh was always more interested in breaking bodies than healing them, so he never developed powers that could have been his through syncretic resonance with other solar deities. Ayumi prefers to use her powers to treat the sick and infirmed and to heal people after a battle. This contributes to her social ostracization as Ishinomori believes that every student should be combat capable (Martin’s only requires students to complete ERC 1. Ishinomori requires students to complete ERC 2.). Ayumi’s peers often view her as a burden in a battle, an indecisive firefly who flitters around the battlefield. Yes, she’ll patch you up when all is said and done, but if she actually got her head in the game you wouldn’t need patching up in the first place.

 

Understanding that his daughter is something of a weenie, Lugh has sent his dog Failinis to protect Ayumi. Failinis appeared to Ayumi one day in the form of an adorable shiba inu. It was a classic story–he ran into her on the streets, she fed him some leftovers from her lunch, he followed her home, and then “Mom can I keep him?”

The Abes kne=ow who Failinis was–he told them. But to Ayumi, “Fally” is just a weird dog–a yokai or kaiju perhaps–who took a liking to her. She doesn’t know Fally can talk, but she does know he can do a lot of magical things. He can turn water into wine by swimming in it, disintegrate objects with his breath, create gusts of wind with his tail, and vomit quantities of gold and silver on command.

 

Don’t tell the Cerbereans this, but Failinis is kind of cooler than Cerberus.

 

Failinis longs for his new owner to lead him into battle just as Lugh did, but he has to be content with Ayumi pulling him back from the action time and time again and being told “Fally, no!” over and over.

 

The deal Nuada struck with Danny grants us passage into the Kingdom if we can:

 

1. Get Fairy Dreaming to enter the tournament.
2. Have her win.
3. Make sure she doesn’t find out that she’s a fairy or that her win was rigged.

 

The first is easy. The second is unfair to our students, but reasonable in light of circumstances. But the third may be the hardest one. If we don’t tell Fairy Dreaming who she really is, are we no better than Nuada?

 

Stranger 3

 

Once a bioweapon in the service of the Belriel Empire, Stranger 3 along with her “parents” Stranger 1 and Stranger 2 defied orders when they realized they were more than a unit–they were a family. Now on the side of the Lifemen and Earth, Stranger 3 trains with the original Lifeman to hone her genetics-based ability to transform into all monsters recorded on her internal database. She is all monsters, and all heart.

 

For more information on Stranger 3, click here!

Universe 161 and Justice 8

 

–The ultimate defenders of Universe 161, Justice 8 are a team of scientists, science projects, and crime fighters devoted to expanding the horizons of mankind’s understanding and safeguard against whatever dangers that might be unearthed.

 

–Universe 161 is an analog universe. That means that, though their Earth and superhumans have significant differences from our Earth and our superhumans, on the cosmic level their universe is 99.9% similar to our own. They have a Milky Way and an Earth that formed in much the same way as ours did. They have similar continents and similar species. Even their history is highly similar to our own. They had Athenian democracy and Roman imperialism. They had Genghis Khan and Abraham Lincoln. Where their history starts to diverge from ours is in the 19th century. We had our climacteric in the 19th century with contact between Baltim and Samuel Liddell McGregor Mathers traditionally given as the moment marking the climacteric as it led to a rapid thinning of the Archon Walls, the shadow war between Theosophists and Thelemites and the formation of the Circled Square which worked to check the power of Earth’s expanding nations. Their climacteric occurred, by their calendar, in 1750, and by our calendar 1990. A Greek scientist named Dr. Kleitos Kyrie opened a link to a wellspring of cosmic power called the Cosmic Core and produced a source of infinite energy that revolutionized human civilization. Tapping into the Cosmic Core also brought humanity into contact with older races also utilizing the Cosmic Core for energy such as the Form Masters and Jupiterians. 161 has rapidly changed in a few brief decades. They’ve gone from a world of fossil fuels and rare superhumans to one of cosmic energy and superhumans making the news every day.

 

The people of 161 are taking their first baby steps outside their terrestrial home. They’re expanding energetically throughout the stars and multiverse. Their enthusiasm reminds many of our own 1950’s. The war was over and a wider multiverse than any we had known was before us. But with exploration came conflict. I’m sure many of you remember the conflicts of our 1950’s. Earth State had a problem with ARGO ignoring their superpower laws and “taking our side” over theirs when it came to superpower control, a problem that continues to this day. In the US, telepath-permissive states clashed with telepath-restrictive states with telepath-restrictive states arguing unfair competition and danger from criminal telepaths. And everyone had a problem with the Chromian Empire parking one of their sun swallowers near our favorite star and claiming our solar system as a protectorate. In hindsight, the Chromians were the least pressing matter. They were all claims, no action. But they seemed to be the most pressing matter and distracted us from solving the more intractable problems of terrestrial politics, and in that sense caused great harm to our planet. This is why our superheroes have told Justice 8 not to fret so much over their supervillains but to take caution over their world’s politics. Gold Star once told Mr. Stranger that supervillains are like storms, they’re loud and powerful and impressive, but they quickly subside. Politics, on the other hand, are festering wounds.

 

Still, Mr. Stranger and the rest of Justice 8 strive to be as apolitical as possible…for as long as they can.

 

In their expansion and growth, 161 is facing the classic conflict of governments vs superpowers. In our world, this conflict was perhaps best articulated by superhuman anthropologist Dr. Stone in his 1936 book Intercessors. “The state and superhumans occupy the same niche in the ecology of geopolitics. They are the generators and guarantors of rights. They are compelled to compete not because they are different, but because they are similar.” Dr. Stone saw three resolutions to the conflict–states would either step down their authority and evolve into minarchist governments like our United States did after the Worlds War, states would become a hierarchical government of superhumans managed by secondary hyperstasis systems like Earth State and their implants, or states adopt a feudal system where a few superhumans control the government in exchange for using their powers for the benefit and comfort of a population of basics as is the case for Blue Angel’s Royaume.

 

As they march toward an uncertain future, 161 looks to our “older” world for models of how to handle superpowers. They look at the United States, Earth State, and Royaume and pick what they think is best.

 

So far, they seem to be leaning toward the Earth State model, though it’s mostly because the population wants to cling to normalcy as the world around them changes. They’re used to a world with strong governments, possibly because their hyperstatic climacteric came later than our own and thus the 19th century expansion of state powers wasn’t checked by anything like our Circled Square. Strong governments are familiar and comforting to the people of 161, so when their governments said “let us regulate Cosmic Core energy like we regulate everything else.” they answered “Yes, please.”

 

The ultimate question of what should be done about superhumans still hangs in the air due to 161’s relatively small superhuman population. But eventually conflict is going to force them to decide. The Kyrie Research Institute seems to be shaping up to the flashpoint. KRI’s Cosmic Core research and harvesting facilities were legally claimed by a coalition of nations led by their United States, and that set a precedent. Several members of Justice 8 work with KRI. If the governments of the world can regulate KRI’s energy, then why can’t they regulate KRI’s superhumans?

 

Our world made peace with itself by giving competing ideologies their room. Minarchists can have the United States. Those that believe in the promise of safety offered by secondary hyperstasis and superpower controls can have the Earth State. There are neo-feudal societies where superhuman families rule populations of basics in exchange for using their powers to provide for their comfort and security, telepathic societies that transcend physical borders where membership is determined not by birth but by ideology, and all kinds of societies all existing together on the same planet.

 

But our world only obtained this multifaceted peace after the violence of the Worlds War.

 

It is our strongest hope that 161 can avoid the mistakes our world made. We wish them the best of luck and stand by to assist them as superpowers transform their world.

 

–161’s relatively recent climacteric means that there were several decades on Earth 161 where human progress was unaltered by superpowers. These decades created several divergences between our respective histories. For instance, in our world, the Great War in the Air began in 1912 when the German airship Vaterland II bombed New York City in response to America refusing to hand over its gaeite reserves. The Circled Square was occupied by the Borderland Invasion, and Germany took advantage of their absence and tried to ensure protection from the Borderland ghosts through the acquisition of gaeite. But there was no Circled Square or Borderland on Earth 161. The great nations, unchecked by the Circled Square, competed with one another through territorial disputes and alliances until Austria-Hungary invaded Serbia in 1914 and forced everyone to play their cards in a global war called World War I. 161 would have another global conflict called World War II in 1939 which kicked off when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. This analog to our Worlds War was a terrestrial affair with only a few active superhumans–and these superhumans fought on both sides. With hyperstasis being rare, the Axis powers had no need to fear a growing superhuman population and no need to invent secondary hyperstasis controls like Vril networks and closed noospheres. If anything, the Axis of 161 tried to court superhumans to their side and use them as evidence of racial superiority. Thus we see that the persecution of superhumans by our own Axis wasn’t because they were powerful, but because they were powerful and could not be readily controlled. Russia entered the conflict on the side of the Axis just as it did in our world, but they switched to the side of the Allies after Germany invaded them in 1941.

 

Russia ending the conflict on the side of the winners had dire consequences for 161. Communism spread throughout the world. China became communist with a small part splitting and becoming a nation called Taiwan. There was a war in Korea, and the outcome would be a North Korea and a South Korea. Communist states remain alive and well in present 161, but their reaction to the explosion in hyperstasis that follows every climacteric has been to court superhumans to their side. How long this continues to be their response depends on how long it is before they find a feasible secondary hyperstasis system. It is highly likely that they’ve already made some headway in controlling superhuman populations going by the story of Resonance. 

 

In 2018, the superteam known as the Peacekeepers, which is made of superhumans from member states of the United Nations, a kind of toothless intergovernmental organization, disbanded when it became known that Chinese member Resonance had used his powers over wavelengths to hack virtually every every computer on the internet–their version of the noosphere except its non-telepathic. Resonance’s power-amplifying costume was confiscated and the Chinese Communist Party disavowed all knowledge of his activities. This made him angry, and rather than submit to consequences, he fought back against the Peacekeepers and escaped after taking a teammate hostage. Resonance hopped a portal to our world and joined the BOL. While laying low, he’s released everything he knows about the CCP’s activities, though the CCP of course denies it all. It turns out that the CCP’s plan to control superhumans rests on their spy network. They plan to leverage blackmail against superhumans–or in the event of blackmail being nonexistent, invent some.

 

It is fortunate that Justice 8 are true heroes. There’s nothing for the CCP to use as blackmail against them, and people don’t believe the lies they invent.

 

Dr. Freeman once said that the greatest superpower is being virtuous. Case in point.

 

I’m not sure if the governments of 161 are used to people having earnest faith in those in power. If so, that’s rather sad.

 

Mr. Stranger

 

The greatest hero of Universe 161, Mr. Stranger was created in 1992 (by our calendar, 1752 by their calendar) as an advanced robot named Adam by Dr. Kleitos Kyrie to explore what mankind couldn’t. When Dr. Kyrie discovered how to draw power from the Cosmic Core in 1990, he left the business of extracting and storing that power to other scientists. He wasn’t at all concerned with power. Knowledge was what he wanted. He wanted to understand the Cosmic Core. He wanted to explore it as man had previously explored the waters and the sky. He had a theory that the Cosmic Core was the birthplace of his universe–and perhaps even the multiverse. 

 

He believed the Cosmic Core was like a crackling fireplace. It threw sparks, and these sparks became universes. If he was correct, then the Cosmic Core would be a syncretic analog of the Rock of Eternity. It would be the Rock of Eternity’s mirrored reflection. While the Rock of Eternity would be the center of the multiverse as translated through the concept of order while the Cosmic Core would be the center of the multiverse as translated through chaos. The Rock of Eternity allowed cosmic energy to flow into it from without and routed that energy across the multiverse. The Cosmic Core created energy within and expelled it to further the infinite growth of the multiverse.

 

It was an interesting theory, but it was one Dr. Kyrie couldn’t test.

 

Anything or anyone without the multiverse signature of 161 is sent catapulting across the multiverse when they approach the Cosmic Core. Gold Star and Mary Marvel tried to investigate the Cosmic Core only to find themselves in Universe Chi. The Action Figure League invited them over to the House of Winters Past for hot cocoa. A fun time was had by all, but it left the mystery of the Cosmic Core unsolved. And anything or anyone from 161 that approached the Cosmic Core beyond its distantmost corona was absorbed by the Cosmic Core, broken down at the molecular level and annihilated. 

 

But Dr. Kyrie had a theory. Cosmic Core energy had been shown to respond to thoughts. A person with a strong will could make the energy jump from one contact to another. Dr. Kyrie believed that the right body in the right mind could enter the Cosmic Core by willing itself to stay together.

 

During a visit to our Earth as part of a scientist exchange program, Dr. Kyrie studied our quasimorphs and found that their ability to control every molecule of their body was the solution he was looking for. When he returned to 161, he immediately began work on an artificial quasimorph–Adam the superexplorer.

Adam was built with a body of durite (their name for perkunite) and through nanite circuits was given the ability to feel and control every atom of his being just like a quasimorph. He could stretch himself like rubber, dissolve himself into a cloud, or drip along the floor as a puddle.

 

Born with curiosity and without fear, Adam was more than ready to step through a portal in Dr. Kyrie’s lab that led to the Cosmic Core.

 

Starshot, one of Mr. Blue’s latest Anti’s, got on Adam’s bad side by suggesting to him in the bluntest terms possible that his father abused him by creating him to be willing to dive into the Cosmic Core. Adam cares too much about his reputation as the calm leader of Justice 8 to show how much Starshot’s words hurt him, but hurt him they did. He views Starshot’s relation to his creator, Sol Master Copy, through his own relation to his own creator and that has created problems in recent events. He refuses to see Starshot as anything but a rebellious brat, an ungrateful runaway who doesn’t show his parents the proper respect.

 

This is what Adam strongly believes: That his father was a good man who gave him a good heart. His father made him brave, and it is good to be brave. His father loved him too much to make his programmed, innate nature anything but good.

 

He was not abused.

 

And it makes him furious to hear another artificial claim he was.

 

Adam’s greatest regret was the one time he went against his programming, the one time he forgot himself, and forgot his courage.

 

Fearlessly, Adam stepped through Dr. Kyrie’s portal. He wasn’t programmed to fear, but when he was brought face-to-face with the infinity that was the Cosmic Core, he learned what fear was. He felt himself start to dissolve within the endless light of the Cosmic Core like a drop of water hitting the ocean. He was becoming eternity, and eternity stretched so far beyond himself that he was afraid he would lose himself. He was too small, too small to be seen, too small to be touched, too small to exist…

 

He began to forget himself, and in forgetting himself, forgot his courage.

 

He felt fear.

 

And unaccustomed to the feeling of fear, Adam panicked. 

 

He tried to escape back through the portal to Dr. Kyrie’s lab and brought the Cosmic Core with him. 

 

Dr. Kyrie and his lab were absorbed in a flash of light.

 

Exactly 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds later, Adam reappeared in the crater that had once been Dr. Kyrie’s lab.

 

But he was the only one that came back.

 

Contact with the Cosmic Core had transformed Adam. He became a battery of the primal energies of creation. His mind was open to the secret powers of the astral. Every circuit of his being hummed to the music of the spheres.

 

He developed an array of superpowers. Telekinesis, telepathy, teleportation, clairvoyance, molecular manipulation, dimensional phasing, energy projection, the list went on and on and on. Even now he develops further powers as his link to the Cosmic Core increases with time. 

 

Adam became the mightiest superhuman of his Earth, of his universe, but not one of his powers made up for the guilt he felt in failing in the one task which he had been created to perform.

 

Guilt ridden, Adam vowed that the legacy of KRI (Kyrie Research Institute, pronounced “cry.” “Eureka is our cry!” is their motto) would not die with the man.

 

KRI was rapidly disintegrating in the wake of Dr. Kyrie’s passing, but Adam joined KRI as the seemingly human “Abe Kadmon” and helped the organization reverse course. Today, KRI is the greatest scientific research institute on the planet and works closely with Justice 8. KRI investigates things no other group can–ghosts, aliens, beings from other universes (meaning us). KRI connects their Earth to the wider multiverse community. They’re the ones that talk to our Weft Authority, and in that sense they’re the Earth-161 version of the Weft Authority, just a little less experienced and expansive.

 

Abe is credited as one of the greatest minds working at KRI and the reason it came back from the brink, but no one working at KRI truly knows how much they owe Abe. His contact with the Cosmic Core made him the smartest being in his universe. He could do the work of every researcher at KRI at once, but he would never put all his friends out of a job. Instead, he subtly influences his friends into coming to conclusions he’s already reached either by telepathic suggestion or by dropping hints throughout an investigation.

 

He feels guilty about deceiving his friends, but he doesn’t know what else to do. KRI has to continue. He doesn’t want to put his friends out of a job. He doesn’t want them to resent him like Xanthippe resents Adam.

 

Abe developed a crush on Dr. Kleitos Kyrie’s daughter Xanthippe, which made things awkward because she blamed Adam for the death of her father. Whenever KRI found themselves in danger while exploring the domains of the unknown, Abe would hypnotize his friends into ignoring his absence while he protected them as Adam. Xanthippe hates how she and KRI owe their lives to Adam several times over and is constantly pushing her team to be more careful and self-sufficient. She hopes that one day Adam won’t be needed anymore.

 

Adam claims he no longer feels fear, that he only feels the courage and curiosity he was programmed to feel. The one time he felt fear was his last time. But one has to wonder how true that is. He seems to feel quite a lot of fear. He fears being hated by Xanthippe, he fears letting down KRI, and he fears his friends being mad at him if they understood how much he contributed to their discoveries.

 

When pressed on these observations, Adam clarifies that he feels “caution” instead of fear. 

 

Adam sees fear as something very shameful. He would never admit to having it.

 

Early on in his superhero career, Adam called himself Adam Kyrie, but after Xanthippe told him that he had no right to use his father’s name, he switched his name to Adam Stranger. He took the name Stranger because he felt like a stranger everywhere he went. From his Earth to our Earth, he was a stranger.

 

As his name suggests, Mr. Stranger is often lonely. As Abe, he pines for Xanthippe from a distance. As Adam, he looks at the Earth from a cave on the moon he’s made into an airless, soundless home. In the silence, the sight of Earth takes on a near-religious significance to Adam. It is the ideal world, beautiful and life-facilitating, and sometimes he doesn’t feel like he belongs to it. Sometimes, it’s just a light in the sky.

 

His loneliness is soothed by his friends. His friends that call him Abe Kadmon know him as a brilliant, hardworking researcher that’s a little absent minded and forgetful as if his mind is on other things (it usually is). His friends that call him Adam Stranger know him as a mighty, hardworking hero that’s a little overprotective of his teammates (Quantum Detective has joked that he’s the team’s den mother). Regardless of which pool of friends he happens to associate with at the time, he is comforted to learn that he’s not alone in his loneliness. Whether it’s through Tim Miles, junior researcher at KRI who feels useless compared to his coworkers or Bill Adams, AKA the Gargoyle, who feels monstrous compared to the rest of humanity, Mr. Stranger knows that he isn’t alone in feeling that the Earth is just a light in the sky.

 

To further assuage his loneliness and expand his influence to the stars, he created a series of robots called the Strangers each imbued with circuits that resonate with the Cosmic Core just like his own. He considers them his children and is very proud to see them bring peace to the universe. The most famous Stranger is called Basilia, and is romantically attracted to Adam even while Adam considers her his daughter. Basilia has a high opinion of artificials and believes Adam limits himself by trying to appear human when he isn’t. So what if Adam created her? That doesn’t make her his daughter. That’s just Adam neurotically aping human norms again. They’re closer to gods then they are are to humans, and gods were incestuous.

 

Being an artificial that created other artificials, Mr. Stranger was touched by the story of Sol Master Copy from Universe 101 and agreed to throw the entire might of Justice 8 behind retrieving the runaway robot boy Starshot. He intends to return Starshot to his parents no matter the cost, even if he personally cannot stand Starshot and his aggressive mouth.

 

Mr. Stranger is the leader of Justice 8. He didn’t earn the position by being the strongest, but by being the calmest. Unflappable and naturally diplomatic, he checks more aggressive members like Gargoyle and Quantum Detective. 

 

Shortly after ex-superhero Resonance revealed to the world that the CCP was gathering blackmail on the planet’s superhumans, Mr. Stranger discovered that his KRI coworker Aeneas Aindrea was a Chinese spy. Fearing Aeneas would get in serious trouble if his cover got blown, Mr. Stranger protects him while feeding him false information. He’s remarked that Dr. Aeneas is the Dr. Smith to his Robot.

Yes, their world had Lost in Space to.

 

Arrow

 

He’s an analog for our world’s Arrow. There seems to be an archer superhero on every Earth., it’s just a law of the cosmos. This Arrow shares the same supername, name (Ralph Payne) and general origin. Both Arrows were members of US intelligence gifted with superhuman physicality who started using customized bows and arrows when they found they could shoot them faster and with more force than bullets. 

 

They also hate being compared to each other. They really hate being compared to each other.

 

Our Arrow was FBI and started in 1939. Their Arrow was CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) and started in 1775 (Their calendar is different. We’re at 2020, they’re at 1780, so he started in 2015 by our time). Our Arrow is older, and his book Tools of Vulcan: Weaponry for Superhumanity inspired generations of superhuman archers, swordsmen, and slingers. Their Arrow is younger, and the smaller superhuman population of 161 means there’s not many that could benefit from his instruction.

 

You can think of them as old Arrow and young Arrow, or as our Arrow likes to put it, “kid Arrow.”

 

Just like our Arrow, their Arrow is a highly skilled combatant armed with a collection of bizarre not effective arrows manufactured by KRI to his specifications. He’s got fire arrows, glue arrows, homing arrows, explosive arrows, cyclone arrows, planet-busting arrows, black hole arrows…

 

They’ve managed to avoid being brought up on illegal weapons manufacturing charges by the UN because technically, his arrows aren’t classified as weapons but investigation tools.

 

What was that quote by Dr. Stone? “The superhuman makes a circus of the law,” something like that.

 

Though both Arrows are remarkably similar in skill and weaponry, there are two significant differences. The first is that while our arrow is adamant about the superiority of a rhecite compound bow over all other weapons, their Arrow uses gauntlets that load and fire arrows by drawing on the electric power of his muscles. Every time he fires his muscles tense. These gauntlets give every shot maximum power and, as he’s very fond of pointing out to our Arrow, allows him to fire with only one hand. The drawback, as our Arrow readily points out, is that he can’t as readily control the force of his shots as he would with a drawstring.

 

Our Arrow dresses in a hooded red suit and their Arrow dresses similarly but in green with purple gloves and boots.

 

Both Arrows are cold professionals. They’ve killed before, and they’ve killed without regret. They don’t consider themselves superheroes. They consider themselves operatives with superpowers.

 

They’re both kind of insufferable.

 

After the Resonance revelation that the CCP is trying to find blackmail on superhumans, Justice 8 has looked at Arrow with new scrutiny. They know he’s done wetwork for the US government. They know he’s killed people. They just don’t know the details and it bothers them. Gargoyle and Quantum Detective demand he comes clean about everything he’s ever done. But Arrow insists that he’ll get the team in even more trouble if he starts revealing CBI secrets. China is more or less their enemy. They don’t need to make the US one as well.

 

Mr. Stranger is doing his best to keep the team together, but it looks like Arrow might walk if for nothing else than to stop the friction between himself and the rest of the team.

 

Gargoyle

 

Folklorist Bill Adams was the kindest man a person could meet. He donated to charity, loved his wife, raised his son, and led an uneventful but peaceful life teaching cultural anthropology at Mainline City’s community college. He liked to frame his lessons around fear. Fear was his grand unifying theory of human culture. 

 

Unlike animals, man could anticipate future events. From his anticipations came fear. What if I don’t have enough food for the winter? What if a member of my family dies? What if I get sick?

 

From fear came agriculture to store up food in case of misfortune, and from agriculture came government to efficiently regulate the labor of man. From fear came the monsters of folklore and mythology so man could discuss how it felt to fear something.

 

Civilization itself was thus a product of fear. Mankind was a product of fear.

 

But though he lectured on fear, he never truly understood it until he faced down a mugger’s shotgun barrel, his wife holding his left hand and his son holding his right hand.

 

Maybe it was something he came across in his studies, some scrap of text, some broken amulet, that allowed him to be reborn as a monster similar to the devil paintings and  gargoyle statues he collected. Or maybe, sometimes, there is a dark magic to innocent blood and shattered dreams.

 

Maybe, sometimes, the universe recoils at an injustice.

 

Bill’s blood seeped into the pavement beneath his cooling body and mingled with the blood of his loved ones. Their spent life was given to the inert concrete and caused it to stir with enraged vigor.

 

With red eyes shining like the street lamps, he saw what he had become and what had become of his family. Cradling all three bodies in gray, gravelly hands, he screamed in a voice that shook the city.

 

From that night on, he would always see the world in the color of blood.

 

His first act as a monster was to track down his killer. He did so, and he crushed his head between his hands.

 

As the blood cooled on his hands, he failed to feel any satisfaction. His family was dead. He was dead. The killer was dead. All was dead, all was finished.

 

And yet he still stood, a living gravestone to his entire life.

 

Determined that no one in Mainline City would ever again suffer as he had suffered, he demolished his home with his bare hands. He crushed the mementos of his old life so that a new being could rise from the ashes, a new being whose house was the city. He became a gargoyle, a rocky mockery of the human form watching over the population of Mainline City from the rooftops.

 

It wasn’t long until KRI investigated the “Gargoyle of Mainline City.” Mr. Stranger talked with him, and though Mr. Stranger was a calm, polite paragon and Bill a morose, gruff monster, they became fast friends and bonded over their feelings of guilt and alienation.

Mr. Stranger convinced Gargoyle to step into the light, at least a little way, and tell the world who he was and what happened to him.

 

As with all members of Justice 8, the general story of his origin is known to the public of his world, but specific elements such as his full name, previous profession, and family are known only to KRI and affiliated organizations like ARGO (which is how we know).

 

Don’t blab about these files to the kids. I think it’s worth repeating that everything here is “need-to-know” information.

 

The public loved Bill, and Bill was stunned. He was invited to talk shows. People started wearing his image on t-shirts. He had action figures. He even had letters from groupies.

 

Bill was disgusted. He didn’t see himself as something to be celebrated or emulated and fled from the public eye becoming the most reclusive member of Justice 8. 

 

Amusingly, this made him even more popular, and now he’s routinely ranked as one of if not the most popular members of Justice 8. Everyone wants to see the shadowy monster man who avenged his family.

 

His jaded response to publicity aside, he acknowledges that it was ultimately a good thing that he revealed himself. The public outpouring of support reached beneath his craggy exterior and touched his heart.

 

He does indeed have a heart beneath the stone, as hard as it can be to believe it at times. He’s not solid rock.

 

Bill had a much more positive reaction to joining Justice 8 and considers them his new family. Gruff, outspoken, and overly emotional he often butts heads with other members, especially the equally outspoken Quantum Detective, but at the end of the day he’s just happy to have people to argue with.

 

Bill is often the first member to resort to violence. Sometimes a quick rocky fist to the back of an opponent’s head has prevented a situation from getting worse, but sometimes it makes things worse.

 

Bill has promised that his family’s killer would be the last person he would ever kill and Adam intends to hold him to that promise.

 

In terms of powers and abilities, Gargoyle is like a city street in the form of a man. His skin has the appearance of concrete but is much, much stronger than concrete and nears the strength of perkunite. His eyes shine like traffic lights. He can belch acidic smog from his mouth. At will, he can sprout wings of frosted glass feathers held by frames of steel girders.

 

Gargoyle can make his skin semi-fluidic like a muddy slurry and uses this ability to stick to opponents and dissipate the force of their blows. He also uses it to store objects within his skin. He’s got a KRIS armory buried in his craggy epidermis–first aid kits, environment scanners, extra communicators, extra arrows for Arrow, and trick weapons of his own called Gargoyle rocks. They’re rocks with surprises inside–smoke bombs, fire bombs, bomb bombs…

 

Quantum Detective calls them Gargoyle eggs.

 

Gargoyle’s most remarkable ability is to travel through shadows. Specifically, he travels through the covalent universe we know as Shadow World, a universe that connects all the shadows of the multiverse together.

 

Not proud at all of his looks, Gargoyle wears large hats and trench coats to hide as much of himself as possible. He shares his taste for “detective fashion” with Quantum Detective, and he’s prone to saying that he’s the Sam Spade to Quantum Detective’s Inspector Clouseau.

 

Keymaster

 

Keymaster, teenaged Kleitos Kyrie Jr, uses a tool from the future to fight for the present. The youngest member of KRI, he looks to Gargoyle, Mr. Stranger, and Quantum Detective as role models for how to be a superhero. He’s of average intelligence, which means he’s unfortunately the least intelligent member of KRI, and he knows it. Often, he feels like a tagalong at best and a burden at worst and strives to prove himself just as capable as his teammates.

 

Kleitos, or “K” as he prefers to be called, grew up in the shadow of his supergenius father. With an average IQ, he couldn’t understand a third of what his father did in his lab. He turned to sports to find something of his own that he could be proud of, and though his father was a giant nerd and couldn’t understand a third of what K did on the field, he came to all his games. 

 

When his father died in the same accident that gave Mr. Stranger his powers, K entered into a deep depression. He withdrew from sports, academics, and friends. One night, while he dreamed of his father, a strange device appeared above his bed in a flash of light. The device was like a bronze staff with several segments jutting from its body that reminded him of the teeth of a key, so he called the device a key.

 

At first, K was fascinated by the key and how it moved in response to his thoughts. Then he was horrified to find that the same white glow that surrounded the device also surrounded him–and he couldn’t make it go away.

 

KRI quickly responded to the weird emergency and calmed K down. K credits how they helped him with inspiring him to eventually join Justice 8. At his most confused and frightened, people came to reassure and comfort him. Now he wants to help others just like they helped him.

 

Quantum Detective and Mr. Stranger analyzed the key and they determined two things: the first was that, judging by the chronons around the key, it came from the far future (Quantum Detective says it has to be at least from 20 billion years into the future as a low estimate), and the second was that it had a resonance circuit similar to that found within Mr. Stranger and his stranger robots but far more powerful. The key was linked to the Cosmic Core and drew from its power just as Mr. Stranger did, but while it seeped through Mr. Stranger, it flowed through the key.

 

That was all the two greatest scientists of Earth could tell K. It wasn’t much, but it helped comfort him. It was nice to know he wasn’t going to blow up from a mysterious object that appeared one night above his bed. Why the key appeared to him, why it empowered him, and why it obeyed him in all ways but one–turning off the glow and its empowering effects–these were questions they couldn’t answer. All they could do was form hypotheses–perhaps the most interesting one being that the key is a form of stranger robot from the future. It was mechanical like a stranger robot, had a resonance circuit like a stranger robot, and was intelligent like a stranger robot–or at the very least, intelligent enough to refuse K’s request to transfer the power to someone else.

 

Maybe, in the far future, the stranger robots convert themselves into these keys so as to better attune with the Cosmic Core. As for why one would go back in time and put itself at the disposal of K, perhaps the stranger robots are still loyal to the house of Kyrie after all the long aeons and seek to make one of Earth’s greatest champions rise from the house of Kyrie, or perhaps prevent the line from ending by protecting K.

 

Maybe the key is a future form of Mr. Stranger seeking to protect K where he failed to protect his father.

 

There was one thing K knew about the situation that none of the scientists working for KRI knew–his career as an athlete was over.

 

The protective glow made him far faster and far stronger than other men. He could defeat an entire football team by himself. He was beyond every world record by astronomical factors. He could outrace comets now. What was the concept of athletic competition to him but a joke?

 

K was devastated. He spent years of his life training to be an athlete. And now his dreams were gone.

 

It was Space Swimmer who brought him out of his depression. She told him to stop being so foolish. He was young. So much of his life was still before him. Nothing about his life was set in stone.  If she, at the age of 100, could change her ways and return to Earth, then he had no excuse not to change course at the age of 17.

 

She urged him to be proactive and not to give into his despair. When her husband died in 1965, she fled to the stars in despair, and now she regretted sitting out on so much of human history.

 

Encouraged by her words, K took the supername Keymaster and called his key the Cosmic Key (because it sounded better than just calling it “the key” or “K’s key”). He wore a black jumpsuit, similar to the blue jumpsuit often worn by Mr. Stranger, with a white K on his chest.

 

He stopped trying to ditch the Cosmic Key and accepted it as his own. Though he still wishes someone else could have the Cosmic Key, he’s accepted that for now, he’s stuck with it.

 

K hopes he’s doing alright as a superhero–and he is. It’s just hard for him to realize it.

 

The Cosmic Key is linked to K, and no known power in existence can separate them, much to K’s annoyance. The Cosmic Key has been transported as far from K as the Cataracts of Ego and Starhome, but it still resonated with K, still returned to his hand when K willed it to, and still made him glow.

 

The white glow around K protects him from all harm, allows him to fly, and grants him superstrength. K can expand the glow to protect nearby objects and people. During fights, he often stays close to Gargoyle who, as an up-close brawler, greatly benefits from being “keyed” and can shield K with his considerable bulk.

 

K can fire blasts of cosmic energy from the key itself. He calls these blasts “jabs” as they’re not technically discharges of energy, they’re sudden extensions of the Cosmic Key’s glow that strike with impactful force. When they’re fired, the extensions stay out, and K can whirl them around like whips to strike opponents or have them retract and fire again and again like battering rams. The Cosmic Key itself is very powerful when used as a melee weapon. K jokingly calls it the strongest club in the multiverse.

 

The hammers of the many Thors that populate the multiverse don’t count, you see. Those are hammers. K has a club.

 

K was a promising athlete before his key found him, especially in the pentathlon, and brings his skills to his superhero career. He wields the Cosmic Key like a fencing saber, fires it like a rifle, and when the “energy jabs” don’t work, can throw the Cosmic Key like a javelin for maximum power.

 

Space Swimmer says he looks like Zeus hurling thunderbolts when he throws the Cosmic Key. It never fails to make him blush when she says it.

 

The most impressive power of the Cosmic Key is that it can do anything K wishes–anything. He can turn the moon to cheese, he can turn blue into red, he can make this into that or here like there. But there is a limit. He can only do one thing at a time, and to do something else he must first undo what he previously did. For instance, if he uses the Cosmic Key to make a fire from a house disappear, doing anything else with the Cosmic Key will cause the fire to reappear. K has learned to be smart about what he uses the Cosmic Key for. He has learned that the most direct solution is often not the best solution. Instead of making a fire vanish from a house and loading his next use of the Cosmic Key with a consequence, he drops the temperature within the house to extinguish the fire. Then the next time he uses the Cosmic Key the house returns to normal.

 

The Cosmic Key seems to be intelligent and nigh-omniscient, which supports the theory that it could be a stranger robot from the future. It’s able to grant K’s wishes using information outside of K’s knowledge. KRI did tests where they had K use the Cosmic Key to boil differently colored glasses of water in a room he couldn’t see. They asked K to use the Cosmic Key to boil the water in the red glass. It did. Then they asked K to use the Cosmic Key to boil the water in the yellow glass. It did–but there wasn’t a yellow glass in the room. The Cosmic Key created a yellow glass with boiling water. This was an important discovery for Justice 8, it told them that it was possible for K to wish for a solution to a problem that didn’t exist.

 

Another test was done to see how the Cosmic Key handled a contradiction. They asked K to tell the Cosmic Key to boil the water in the red glass without boiling the water in the red glass. The water in the red glass boiled…but without heat. As cold as ice, it nonetheless vaporized. It boiled, in a way. This proved that the Cosmic Key, if given an impossible task, will perform a compromise. This meant that K had to be very careful what he wished for. He was going to get it, or at the very least a form of it.

 

KRI also tested whether or not K could delegate commands. They had him tell the Cosmic Key to boil the glass of water that Quantum Detective was thinking of. It refused. Apparently, wishes have to be specifically articulated by K or they aren’t followed.

 

These discoveries were very useful, but they also put K on edge more than he already was. K’s greatest weakness is his indecision. In case it wasn’t apparent, the example of house fire came from real events–one of his first acts as Keymaster. K is terrified of screwing things up with his Cosmic Key. He wishes someone smarter could use it, but he’s stuck with it. He often hesitates using his key and waits for other members of Justice 8 to tell him what to do. This has led to him getting taken down by supervillains that act while he thinks about acting. And of course, each defeat makes him feel more and more useless.

 

Though the glow around K and the glow around the Cosmic Key are visually similar and inexorably linked, it has been observed that they function differently. The glow around K is defensive. It protects and empowers K and those he extends it to. The glow around the Cosmic Key is offensive. It expands in explosive blasts and makes the key powerful enough to knock opponents across the universe. This has led Mr. Stranger to theorize that the Cosmic Key is a weapon system from the far future. What sort of future this would be is best decided by dreams and nightmares. A more optimistic theory by Mr. Stranger is that the Cosmic Key is not a weapon, but a tool. Maybe, in the far future, everyone is nigh-omnipotent, but their nigh-omnipotence is regulated by only being able to do one miracle. Reality would then be decided by a series of votes and vetoes. What sort of future this would be is again, best decided by dreams and nightmares.

 

K has wondered if he wasn’t incredibly apt in naming his device a key. He has wondered if he wasn’t given the key to one day use it to solve some problem no one else can, not even Mr. Stranger or Quantum Detective. Perhaps he’s meant to lock something away and then throw away the key.

 

If that’s so, then he wishes the duty would fall to someone else, someone he could trust to do the right thing when the time came and not screw up.

 

Joyous Harbor Residents

 

Johnny Winter

 

Now with several locations around the world, Johnny Winter’s is a highly successful franchise diner offering delicious American classics, treats inspired by the famous Joyous Harbor boardwalk, and what really made it stand out from the crowd, it’s “hot-and-cold” dishes created by skilled heat-controlling superhumans. The hot parts stay hard and the cold parts stay cold! Nothing is lukewarm!

 

All of this comes in a comfortable casual dining atmosphere made of retro Americana and superhero tradition. Every Johnny Winter’s comes with black-and-white diamond floors, cherry red swivel chairs with snowflake patterns on the seat, potted sea plants sourced from Joyous Harbor, superhero photographs and memorabilia, paper snowflakes hanging from the ceiling, and a “pet” snowman in the corner unique to each location. Ask your server for the name of your location’s snowman!

 

At Johnny Winter’s, the decor is cool and the service is warm! Nothing is bland, nothing is lukewarm!

 

–The back of a Johnny Winter’s menu

 

Keep in mind it’s Winter, not Winters. You add the s when talking about Johnny Winter’s the diner and drop the s when talking about Johnny Winter the person.

 

Born Fredric Hart, Johnny took his supername as his legal name after he made it big in the superhero community in the 1950’s, because really, wouldn’t you want to be called Johnny Winter if you had ice powers?

 

However, ice powers were only part of Fred’s powers. Fred had the ability to control temperature. He could decide how hot or cold something was and how long it stayed that way. He could even change the temperature of an area. He could make sections of an area 0, 20. 80. Or 100 degrees all next to each other.

 

But making things out of ice was always his favorite trick. It was always a showstopper to pull something solid and intricate out of water.

 

Born in 1930, Fred underwent hyperstasis when he was four years old. He was playing in the first snowfall he could remember, and when he saw that the snow started to melt the next morning, he wished that it would freeze back–and it did.

 

As a child in the 1940’s, Fred was drafted when the government lowered the enlistment age from 18 to 15. Though he wanted to be on the front lines, his superiors were well aware of his age and did everything they could to keep him out of the front lines. What the government legalized, the military was left to interpret. Fred worked as a human medical freezer keeping supplies for field medics cold. Under their supervision, he learned how to apply his powers to treat wounds either by cauterizing them or cooling them to cut back on potentially dangerous swelling through vasoconstriction. 

 

His work brought him up-close to the dead and dying, and it quickly broke any illusions he had about war. 

 

When Martin’s School opened in 1947, Fred’s handlers quickly enrolled him, and Fred was glad they did. At Martin’s, he learned how to master his temperature-controlling power and considered a career in medicine building on what he learned in the field, but he couldn’t help but remember how he and the medics were watched over by superheroes and Black Terror soldiers. Gradually during his stay at Martin’s, he realized that he wanted to protect people as he had been protected and started taking the superhero track.

 

Fred took the supername Johnny Winter, and during the 1950’s he was the coolest, hottest up-and-coming superhero. As one of the original Martin’s kids, he carried great expectations, and he met them. 

 

His superhero costume might sound like it was a bit complicated–it was a combination of clown, greaser, and snowman, but it was actually very simple, and its simplicity helped get Johnny noticed when he started his superhero career. He dressed in a black top hat, white face paint, dark sunglasses to represent coal eyes, a scarf, an unbuttoned leather jacket, a white shirt with several mismatched buttons, and blue jeans.

 

Fred patrolled Joyous Harbor, and the low-crime community was perfect for him. While he wasn’t a slouch when it came to superheroics, he liked being able to interact with people and perform impromptu ice shows out on the harbor waters for boardwalk crowds. A harsher, meaner beat like Mainline City would have dampened his playful spirit, and his playful spirit was what people liked most about Johnny Winter. He didn’t just arrest bad guys, he left them stuffed inside snowmen. He handed out autographed snowballs to his fans. He would freeze ponds to create skating rinks that people could picnic in the warm grass around. He would work with Martin’s School to give them pre-planned snowdays.

 

Pretty soon, Johnny became as much a fixture of Joyous Harbor as the Turner museum and Old Ironsides, the Thule leviathan who lived in the harbor and gave rides. In 1954, he had his name legally changed to Johnny Winter and cashed in on his celebrity by licensing his name out to an ice cream chain, snow shovel manufacturer, and a motorcycle company.

 

The greaser image wasn’t just for show. Johnny liked motorcycles, a very common form of superhero transport used throughout the forties and fifties, and with his power he was able to optimize his engines by freezing and thawing certain chemical components of the fuel so that they combined to produce greater amounts of energy. He started racing other superheroes in his spare time and proved he was good even when the rules said he couldn’t use his powers. Johnny Winter’s Motorcycles runs to this day, but the snow shovel company went under, and he had to buy the rights back from the ice cream people before he could open his diner.

 

When Johnny retired from superheroics in the 1970’s, he thought back on the good times he had entertaining people and decided that was what he wanted to try doing. He thought food would be a great way to go about entertaining. When he served ice cream coffee at motorcycle meets where the ice cream stayed cold and the coffee stayed hot it was always a hit and he wondered how it would do if he combined it with burgers and fries.

 

The answer was very, very well.

 

1973, the first Johnny Winter’s was established in Joyous Harbor’s Statesmen center. 50’s nostalgia was becoming a thing, and Johnny was quick to cash in on it with his greaser image and history. 

 

The first Johnny Winter’s is filled with superhero memorabilia, as are most diners in Joyous Harbor, and most of it relates to Johnny’s career or that of various 50’s superheroes like the Amazing Sensationals. He’s got part of a dress the Incredible Colossal Girl tore fighting the Titanic Iguanoid as a curtain, a space rock retrieved by the Fantastic Unbelievable Spaceman, and a case containing THE FIRST SNOWBALL JOHNNY WINTER EVER THREW (and then, in vert teeny tiny letters beneath it, AFTER OPENING HIS DINER).

 

Johnny’s ice cream coffee, renamed the coffee float, became a huge hit. If poetry is, as Coleridge described it, the reconciliation of opposites, then the coffee float was a Shakespearean sonnet. People had never tasted something that combined sweet and bitter and hot and cold so well. Encouraged by his success, Johnny began to experiment with other dishes, all of which met with great reception. 

 

He invented the flurry burger, Johnny Winter’s signature entree. Johnny used his powers to keep the meat and cheese sizzling and the lettuce, tomato, and onions salad-cool. To go with the flurry burger, Johnny invented chilly fries, french fries that stayed just a little hot while their cheese and meat topping stayed just a little hotter, but never too hot. A flurry burger, a side of chilly fries, and a coffee float–that classic Johnny Winter’s combo meal.

 

Besides burgers, Johnny looked to treats popular on the boardwalk to come up with his dessert masterpiece–boardwalk cakes, hot funnel cakes covered with cotton candy just cold enough to not melt into goo.

 

He also sold regular funnel cakes, pretzels, and candy apples–all of which are delicious.

 

And of course, Johnny being Johnny, he brought his usual showman flair to his diner. His ice cubes were little snowmen. He had a “ring bell for snow” bell customers could ring to get him to create a light drizzle of snow. He made icicle buns that provided a satisfying crunch to every bite.

 

Johnny had fun, and so did his customers.

 

In 1974, Johnny Winter’s became a franchise and expanded. It started with Johnny teaching local temperature-controlling superhumans how to prepare his dishes and buying a diner at the boardwalk, then buying another downtown and having the the superhumans he trained trained new recruits in turn, then Johnny Winter’s started opening up in other parts of Rhode Island, and by 1977 Johnny Winter’s had snowballed (appropriately enough) into a global franchise. In 1978, Happy Days came to film an episode in Joyous Harbor, and the Fonz himself had lunch at the Johnny WInter’s in the Statesmen center and took a picture of himself wearing Johnny’s jacket and flashing his signature thumbs-up. That propelled Johnny Winter’s popularity into the stratosphere, and the photograph hangs today right by the jukebox with a little note saying that Fonzie is the only man allowed to hit the jukebox.

 

Results of the global expansion were mixed. In some parts of the world, Johnny Winter’s got huge, in other parts, not so much.

 

It was a hit up and down the United States due to its legit superhero cred (something eateries like sandwich shop Hall of Heroes have been accused of manufacturing) and retro Americana. Its boardwalk fare, while common at eateries in Joyous Harbor, was downright exotic to some locations and helped the franchise grow, though the hot-and-cold options were always the main selling point.

 

Johnny Winter’s was also seen as an underdog against the booming fast food industry, and everyone loves an underdog story. Captain Burger, Flash Food, and McDonalds all made huge leaps in gains during the seventies by emphasizing speed and quantity over quality. But Johnny Winter’s took things slow. Guests dined in, looked at the decor, chatted with the staff, took pictures next to the pet snowmen (think pet rocks plus potted plants, but far cuter). Johnny Winter’s was about quality, novelty, and individuality. Captain Burger’s cheeseburgers and fries were pretty much Flash Food’s cheeseburgers and fries, but they had nothing like the flurry burger or the chilly fries. They didn’t hire trained superhuman chefs, they hired the cheapest workers they could. They didn’t even sell funnel cakes.

 

The retro look of Johnny Winter’s, which got more and more retro as the years went by, helped it market itself as the last of an ancient breed, the last of the mom-and-pop diners of the 50’s.

 

True retro diners didn’t have temperature controlling chefs, but the comparison was great for advertising.

 

Proof that Johnny’s had a niche all its own came in the 1990’s when the company launched a disastrous spin-off brand called Johnny Summer’s which sought to adapt Johnny Winter’s food to a fast food formula. Essentially, it dropped the hot-and-cold dishes for the sake of expediency.

 

The food was horrible and Johnny Summer’s didn’t even survive its first summer.

 

Johnny Winter’s was controversial within Earth State. In more permissive member states, the franchise was quite popular, especially among the youth, because was seen as a symbol of rebellion against Earth State’s anti-superhuman legislation. But a handful of member states outright banned Johnny Winter’s for this very reason. Nowadays, you can’t get a flurry burger in Egypt, for instance. Johnny Winter’s has considered rebranding to get around the bans, but Johnny has vetoed all attempts with his majority share in the company. He was willing to do regional rebranding, but not for Earth State.

 

Because it was (and remains) a stereotype that ice powers are feminine in Japan, Johnny Winter’s had to rebrand itself as Johni Winter’s. At Johni Winter’s, waitresses dress as yuki onna in white kimonos. Johni Winter’s became a huge franchise in Japan and its good-looking staff melted the hearts of many a young Japanese man. Johni Winter’s servers were very well paid for fast food workers, and the position was highly competitive. Many pop idols got their start in the entertainment industry by earning their white kimono (shame they didn’t stay in fast food). And of course, it’s assumed in Japan that all superheroines with ice powers did a stint as a Johni Winter’s server in her youth.

 

Johnny Winter’s extends across cultures and subcultures. It’s American culture, superhero culture, Joyous Harbor culture, and in the franchise’s global reach it touches the cultures of other nations, adapting in the process.

 

There is one other culture that Johnny Winter’s touches–the culture of Martin’s School. Johnny Winter himself was one of the first students at Martin’s and he never forgot how much he owed the school not only for the education they gave him but for getting him out of the war. The Johnny Winter Scholarship Program is, like the name suggests, is a scholarship for prospective Martin’s students. The only requirement for the program is that an applicant not be a native of Rhode Island and be willing to make the trip to Joyous Harbor and live in one of Martin’s dorms. Johnny believes that the best education comes from being taken out of one’s familiar area of comfort. The war, for instance, took him far out of his familiar area of comfort and then some.

Johnny Winter’s is also a member of Martin’s contact education program. Students with energy and temperature powers work at Johnny Winter’s to train them in precisely controlling their powers. If they can handle a lunchtime crowd of coffee floats and flurry burgers without giving anyone indigestion and making sure what’s cold and hot on the plate isn’t cold and hot in the belly, then they can be trusted to work their powers on things potentially more deadly than hamburgers Because of the number of Martin’s students working at Johnny Winter’s, Johnny’s history as a student, and because the funnel cakes really are damn delicious, Johnny Winter’s has become a popular hangout for the kids. After class, they can often be found at the one on the boardwalk or the original one in the Statesmen center, talking to Johnny Winter himself.