Martin’s Enemies

 

Crysaloids

 

Crysaloids are a naturally occurring species spawned in the worldtunnels. These heat-absorbing creatures can threaten entire universes if allowed to breed unchecked. They have occasionally infested the omnimover system at Martin’s School, most recently when Tommy Taylor meddled with the system.

 

For more information on Crysaloids, click here!

 

Gravestone

 

Gravestone, real name William Graves, is an assassin who personally targeted the Wave and his family after the Wave stopped him from assassinating an Estrel diplomat on the orders of an anonymous client. Gravestone felt he was “robbed” of his kill because the Wave easily countered his powerset of superstrength and the ability to decay objects through touch. After killing the Wave’s wife, Gravestone was apprehended by the Wave and placed in the “Sandcastle” prison off the coast of Joyous Harbor where he remains to this day, his decaying touch unable to free him from the shifting sands of his cell.

 

The Wave and his son Tommy were profoundly traumatized. The Wave blamed himself for what happened and took to drink to cope with the pain. Tommy had to live with his grandmother and grew up bitter and lonely. The way he saw it, his father did fail his mother. He should have killed Gravestone, not hand him over to the authorities. Tommy grew up despising and mistrusting all superheroes seeing them as egomanics who gave false hope to the people they protected. Superheroes were liars. They acted like they could save everyone.

 

In this way, Gravestone was not only responsible for ruining the lives of Tommy and his father but with giving Mr. Blue the opening he needed to copy Willow Collins’ pictomundus power.

 

Gravestone was never anything more than a thug, which makes his influence on the lives of other people all the more incongruous and appalling. Gravestone was the product of an abusive home which taught him that being weak was the only truly wrong thing a person could do. He was removed from high school when he stabbed a teacher that called him stupid with a knife. That incident ruined any chance he had of legally obtaining superpowers, but he was exactly the kind of person the mob wanted to give powers to–dumb, impulsive, and desperate to not be weak. Created to be a legbreaker, he snapped bones with his superhuman muscles and disfigured faces with his decaying touch and found that he loved hurting people. It didn’t take much convincing on the mob’s part to get Gravestone to try murder. But murderous superhumans have few friends. The BOL wants nothing to do with them, and organized crime wants them off the board as soon as they serve their purpose lest they start getting ambitious and thinking they’re more than a humanoid bullet. Gravestone was always going to fail. If the Wave didn’t take him down, someone else would have.

 

For as much thought as Tommy has given to Gravestone, Gravestone hasn’t thought about him or his father at all.

 

He might start if he knew what a dangerous enemy he’s made.

 

Mr. Blue

 

Mr. Blue was an enigmatic factotum for the BOL. He cleaned up after members and kept them out of trouble by using his ability to modify the frequency of his energy body to allow him to slip in and out of local reality. He has recently gone AWOL from the BOL and has become a much, much more serious threat. He has copied the pictomundus power of Martin’s student Willow Collins which has opened the entire multiverse to his influence. With a small army of young, impressible superhuman “students” he has set himself up as the royal advisor to Prince Cadell, supposed ruler of the universe known as the Kingdom. A master manipulator, he controls with false kindness what he can’t through brute force.

 

For more information on Mr. Blue, click here!

 

Party Crasher

 

“I was born with the power to create energized cables out of thin air. My parents loved that about me. They kept telling me how much money I was going to make for them going into construction. But they never loved me. Now I tear down buildings. If they were smart, they would have given me an implant. Then I could have done what I wanted to do–play ball, play video games, be free.”

 

Manfred “Manny” Washington was born with the ability to create strong, glowing strands. His mother called them “angel hairs.” He used to attach them to everything. He had to learn to keep his cables to himself, but learn he did. He learned how to be constructive with his cables thanks to his teachers at Martin’s School. He learned how to lift things, pull things, and connect things. He learned how to build things, and he liked to build things.

 

He loved his superpower. He was so happy that he had it.

 

Then his life started to become difficult in his teenage years.

 

His parents wanted him to put all his time and effort behind developing his powers. He was already being courted by several construction and manufacturing companies and they wanted to make sure he got the best deal possible. But Manfred wanted to do more. He wanted to be like other kids. He wanted to hang out at the Johnny Winter’s on the boardwalk, play video games, and play baseball at Rockatansky park. His parents got upset, and the worst part was that they didn’t get upset at him. They wouldn’t dare make him upset. He was all their eggs in one basket. Instead they got upset at each other, and day after day Manfred had to listen to them destroy each other and debate over who “turned him bad.”

 

Manfred listened to his parents. He kept his head down and continued his studies. It was better than having a home filled with uncomfortable, silent tension punctuated by shouting matches. But he kept a heart full of resentment, and day after day his resentment grew. His teachers could tell there was friction between Manfred and his parents, but they were limited in what they could do. They were his teachers, and teachers can never take the place of parents. 

 

One day, Manfred’s parents struck each other, and he retaliated by pulling himself out of his studies. His teachers saw his grades plummet and several awkward talks later Manfred lived on his own at Martin’s dorm while his teachers served as in-between negotiators between himself and his parents.

 

For a small window of time, things looked like they might improve–but then one night, his parents put themselves in the hospital, and when Manfred found out he decided he was “owed” an episode of his own. If they could embarrass him by doing something stupid, if they could get at him by making really bad decisions for themselves, then he was going to show them that no one could make bad decisions like a teenaged male.

 

He sought out the BOL and joined them, and they gave him the strength to never ask what became of his parents. He learned from them how to use his cables like he did when he was a child–without concern for whatever they attached to.

 

He took the name Party Crasher and dedicated his life to raining on every parade. If there’s a major celebration, a big party, or a sociable gathering, he’s going to show up and ruin it with as much glee as a child kicking over a sandcastle.

 

Party Crasher hates seeing people have fun. To him, there’s always an ulterior motive behind a smile. Happiness is never genuine. Every positive feeling is forced. He always had to pretend to be happy, and so he assumes that about others. When he ruins someone’s day, he justifies it by telling himself he’s only exposing their true feelings. The way he sees it, if people were really happy, they’d be happy whether or not he smashes their buildings or breaks their cars. But when he breaks things, he sees people turn on each other like dogs. He sees them bicker and yell and go to pieces fighting each other. They hardly ever direct their hatred to him. They treat him like something natural, like the rain. They don’t blame him, they blame other people. “Why did you host the awards here? Why wasn’t there more security? Why aren’t the superheroes here yet?” Party Crasher thinks they do it because other people are just as weak as they are while he’s strong. That’s why his parents did it. They didn’t dare make him angry, and now neither do his victims.

 

He loves to see people act like his parents. It allows him to hate strangers without restraint.

 

Nothing makes Party Crasher happier than to see the inner ugliness of people brought to the surface through a little conflict. He doesn’t even mind being captured by superheroes so long as he can capture a good freakout and put it on the noosphere.

 

Party Crasher is a tricky opponent to fight. He can summon his cables, which he calls his crasher cables, out of thin air. In an instant a superhero can be surrounded by a tangle of writing, stinging cables. His crasher cables are incandescent, and the light they emit determines their properties. Purple cables move those that touch them in a direction determined by Party Crasher when he creates them. They can move people with enough force to launch them into the air or pull them to a higher elevation–Party Crasher himself uses purple cables to quickly move around. Orange cables project a field that draws objects to them and holds them tight like the strands of a spider web. And Green cables project an enervating energy field that makes people feel tired until they fall asleep.

 

Party Crashes himself is immune from the debilitating effects of his own cables and can wield them as whips, javelins, clubs, or use them as a rope to carry himself around. But Party Crasher doesn’t like to engage superheroes directly. He’s all about provoking a reaction and that extends to how he fights. He prefers to lead superheroes on a chase by using his purple cables to evade them and while they’re focused on him set up orange and green cables to trap them. He loves to watch superheroes run into his cables like flies to flypaper.

 

Party Crasher wears a black jumpsuit and domino mask (for style, everyone knows he’s Manfred Washington) with bright glowing lines made of photite fabric that represent his crasher cables and party confetti. His costume isn’t the most impressive (he’s often called Scribble Man or Captain Chicken Scratch) but it does have something like an aesthetic appeal with bright colors on black.

 

Party Crasher shows why it’s important for superheroes to be symbols of hope. Without hope, a person has two choices. They can either try and find hope, or they can make others as lost as they are. Party Crasher chose the latter. And to Martin’s teachers, Party Crasher shows the sad reality that no matter how by-the-book a teacher plays things in conflicts between teachers and parents, no matter how hard a teacher works to mitigate the damage parents do to their children, only a parent can heal the damage inflicted by a parent, and teachers are but teachers.

 

 

Radioactor

 

“Antique you say? Dated you say? Let’s see you turn this episode off! There’s no dial, no cable, no batteries! Nothing but pure radio magic!”

 

“I am piping culture straight into the brains of plebians, and you dare oppose me as if I were some base villain? Have at you!”

 

Jerome James was a talented radio actor during the 1940’s. As the world was rocked by war, he along with other entertainers did their best to keep up morale on the homefront. Jerome played a variety of roles across popular shows like Inner Mind, Beyond the Bounds, and The Jason Gridley Hour. To Americans fighting overseas, or to Americans doing their part in factories and homes, he was the man with the sinister voice giving life to madmen, monsters, and gangsters. He distracted America from the horrors of the war with the horrors of the invisible stage. He was a household name, a byword for horror like Karloff and Legosi.

 

But as radio faced increased competition from moving pictures and three-dimensional photite displays, Jerome’s star plummeted. Not everyone in radio was like Orson Wells who could deftly move from air to screen. Jerome tried, but the wild gesticulations he used in the radio studio to get into character just made him look funny when people could actually see him. After he had enough of hidden smiles and muffled snickers, he retired and lost himself in a bottle drinking himself and his savings away.

 

For some, the rejuvenation treatments of the early 1950’s offered a way to reinvent themselves, a second youth in which paths previously overlooked could be taken, but for others like Jerome rejuvenation only offered a way to deepen the ruts they dug for themselves. Throughout the decades of his long life, Jerome soured into a misanthrope. He saw only the bad of the modern world, never the good. He saw skyrocketing rates of suicide and depression, and while many blamed supertechnology for those ills, Jerome blamed art. 

 

Jerome believed that a  great cultural rot had gripped America since his time. The spoken world was supreme. It was nothing less than art perfected. But America turned her back on the spoken word for easier entertainment for softer minds. It started with moving pictures, “art” that gave images to those that couldn’t create them with their own imaginations, and it devolved to telepathic “art.” Modern Americans no longer had to explore a narrative or examine themes, now “art” flashed on their minds like light on a blank screen, like those damable moving pictures that started the great rot!

 

No wonder modern man couldn’t find purpose in modern life. There was nothing beautiful in it.

 

Jerome’s friends from radio tried to help him adjust to modern life. He still had fans, though far fewer than he once had, and they had conventions. They would have loved to hear from him. People still did radio plays, though they weren’t near as popular as they once were. He could easily find a job doing one. But Jerome was a proud man. He would not engage with the world as a shadow of what he once was. And so he disengaged from the world and lived through the bottle. He would go in and out of rehab. He would clean himself up then waste himself just to have something to do with all the years of his immortal life. Occasionally, someone would write a story on the reclusive “man of a thousand monsters,” but that would be the extent of his impact on the world.

 

But in 2020, something happened.

While drowning his sorrows with a familiar vintage in a familiar bar, he happened to hear something he hadn’t heard in a long time–his own voice. The radio was playing one of his old performances from Inner Mind. The memories came flooding back, and the emotional experience caused him to undergo hyperstasis. He found that he could make others hear what he was hearing. He told his friends how he heard his voice on the radio and they heard it as if they were there. 

 

Medical examination revealed that there was more to his power than sharing songs. He was an incredibly gifted telepath. Men had to train for years to achieve the power he developed overnight. He could, if he wanted to, force his thoughts upon an entire city regardless of modern telepathic defenses. He swept them aside as if they weren’t there.

 

His doctors told him that this was a sign from God. This was his chance to break out of the stagnation that had been the majority of his years. With his power, he could become a great dreamwalker helping dreamers navigate through the gates of ivory and horn, or a telepathic therapist at TIMS helping PK kids control their thoughtforms, or a telepathic detective collecting statements from the memories of interviewees.

 

But Jerome knew exactly what he was going to do.

 

He was going back into radio, and this time nothing and nobody was going to kick  him off the air.

 

Jerome decided to use his telepathy, which he called his broadcast, to strike back against the great cultural rot. If people weren’t going to go out and seek art, then he would bring art to them. If they were going to be passive sponges soaking up whatever pablum thrown their way, then he would flood them with the greatest radio programs–his own, naturally.

 

What did it matter if they didn’t want to listen? There were no dials, wires, or batteries when it came to telepathy. There was no turning this radio off. As for morality, he considered himself fully within his rights. The plebeians were fine with corporations foisting their garbage culture upon them. Who didn’t know what Johnny Winter’s sold flurry burgers? Who didn’t swim within a cultural sewer and have their souls sickened? 

 

It was time to force upon them the cure.

 

Jerome latched onto the supervillain lifestyle with both hands. When people join the BOL, they typically start doing subtle crimes–pickpocketing, shoplifting, vandalism, etc–and they typically do them in street clothes. Jerome was more reckless in his debut. He started his supervillian career by spreading his broadcast over Mainline City, announcing who he was and what he wanted to do to their fair city.

 

“Good evening, Mainline City. I am the Radioactor. You cannot see me, because I exist only within your mind’s eye. You construct my appearance now, as I speak, out of the words that you hear. That is the power of the spoken word. It directs the mind. Long have your minds been without direction. But the Radioactor is here to take the reigns and pull you back onto the path of culture. I think we’ll start with three hours of Inner Mind, then an hour or two of Beyond the Bounds. That would be a nice start, I think.”

 

Jerome forced the entire city to listen to his broadcast. People buried their heads in pillows, shouted, played music, but it was all useless. The sounds of a production nearly eighty years old kept up the volume in the back of their minds. There was no turning it off. Citizens of Mainline City just had to carry on with their daily lives as best they could. The Interway and roads were sealed off, because no one was sure if the broadcast was contagious or not. Mainline City was isolated and crippled by nothing more than a radio drama that wouldn’t turn off.

 

Jerome prepared for the inevitable superhero confrontation with relish. He got a cape, and suit, and hat, and styled himself to look just like a creepy 1943 photograph of himself advertising Inner Mind. He sought out the BOL (they aren’t hard at all to find so long as you aren’t associated with any superteams or law enforcement) and purchased a cane with a gaeite core from the BOL’s master of trick weapons, Mr. Gimmick, though he never joined the BOL proper. He considered the BOL nothing more than aimless vandals acting on impulse, completely different from himself, you see. 

 

The cane was built to look like an old fashioned radio mic. Jerome often spoke into the mic out of habit, though it had no effect on his broadcast. The cane’s function was to channel Jerome’s telepathy and convert it into energy. This gave Jerome a plan B for superhero intervention (he understood it was considered good form to go down swinging). By converting his broadcast to energy through the gaeite in his cane, Jerome could create forcefields and energy blasts. He could lower the strength of his broadcast in exchange for physical power.

 

When the superheroes took him down (because he, like many BOL members, knew very well they would get him in the end) he would be sure to tell them that Radioactor was one word. It sounded better when there wasn’t a pause between radio and actor.

 

The Red Cardinals were the ones that located Jerome (he was atop the AEon Freedom Building, which is often used as a perch by egotistical supervillains as it’s the tallest building in the city). A brief skirmish later and Jerome was imprisoned on O’Brien Island with a city’s worth of charges. He could have gotten a stricter prison, but the jury couldn’t help but feel pity for the bitter old misanthrope. The jury would come to regret their decision during the O’Brien Island breakout in January 2021 where Jerome and others escaped due to mysterious worldsplinters opening up throughout the island.

 

Now a free man, for as long as it will last, Jerome is taking steps to ensure he remains active for as long as possible. He quite liked his first run as a supervillain. He wants to see how long he’ll last on his second run. He swiftly attacks cities across America and leaves before he’s located. He’ll be in town long enough to broadcast a thirty minute episode then leave his audience with the promise that part 2 will be broadcasting “sooner than you think.” When he does face superheroes, he distracts them with telepathic illusions. Is that gunman taking a pretty girl hostage on the bridge from an episode of Inner Mind? Is that man about to jump off a building from an episode of Beyond the Bounds? Dare you call the bluff? What about reports of a woman missing a priceless heirloom? That one is obviously from Inner Mind, it’s even the subject of the story Jerome is piping into everyone’s minds–but what if you played along and solved the crime before the solution was revealed in the radio drama? Maybe Jerome will cut the broadcast early if you do? After all, getting recognition for himself and old radio dramas is ultimately Radiocator’s goal. In that respect, he’s been very successful as a supervillain. He’s gotten countless people to look up old radio shows just to see what the crazy supervillain is on about. And for the less inquisitive, there’s always the direct approach…

 

Don’t touch that dial! It won’t do you any good if you do! The Radioactor will return!