Archive Mutants & Masterminds: Future Imperfect - First Blood

[Rorx]

(3 years pre-invasion)

Tom crept as quietly as he could through the brush after his father. Depsite this being his first hunting trip, sort of an 18th birthday present, his natural agility was almost good enough to match his more more experienced father's progress through the forest. Following his fathers pointing hand he spotted the deer and acknowledged his fathers sugestion that he take a shot at it.Tom had done a little work on the range in preparation for this, but he had always been more interested in the pistols and smaller military weapons than the big hunting rifles. However, he lined up the shot careully, treating it as similar to a range shoot, half let out his breath and squeezed the trigger. The shot was good and the deer barely had a chance to move before it registered it's own death and collapsed to the ground, the others nearby it running rapidly into the distance.

Father and son, moved over to the kill, both with similar grins on their faces, both filled with pride, for slightly different reasons, Tom for the difficulty of the shot and his father for his sons first kill. On reaching the animal his father thought to surprise him by asking him to gut the deer before they carried it back to the pickup, unfortunately for Gerald Tom had over heard him talking to one of the other sound engineers in his company about it the previous night. Not difficult to do considering Tom’s enhanced senses, especially his hearing when he wanted it. Wielding the knife was distasteful to Tom, but he managed to keep that from his face, instead putting on a mask of concentration. The messy task done they made their way with their prize back to the pickup.

(2 years pre-invasion)

Following the hunt, Greg was happy enough to indulge Tom’s preference for pistol shooting. Indeed after losing a timed point shoot to Tom they joined forces to enter some team combat shooting competitions. Due to Tom’s university commitments they weren’t able to do particularly well, but on the other hand they didn’t do badly enough to make them give up either. It was after a competition in the fall of his 2nd year at University when it started.

As such things likely always do it started innocently enough, a couple of men waiting to see Greg about business when they got back from the competition. Nothing unusual, but Tom had spotted that they were carrying, and they weren’t the guys from CSI that his dad occasionally did contract work for which either made them feds or crooks. Given the way they spoke Tom was pretty sure it was the latter, which is why he made a point of listening in even as he made his way to the gun safe and put the guns used in the competition away as his dad had asked. Even half the building away he was able to follow their conversation, the stereotype veiled threats, requesting a large share of the company in return for ‘insurance’ against ‘problems’. As Tom expected, his father turns them down, reminding them that he was a friend of ‘Old Blue Eyes’, who had guaranteed the company would remain independent, even after his death. The young ‘business’ men laugh at this, but Tom had always taken it seriously, even though he had been so young when he had been in the room and heard it himself.

A few days later the first of the incidents occurred, a mix up at a venue meaning that a sound engineer for a different company took over doing a gig that Greg was due to do. They both knew it could get worse, but Greg had kept his company clean for too long to let it get sweeped up easily by anyone. However, the ‘business’ men made a mistake on their next move against the company. That night it was Tom who was acting as sound engineer for a small gig in one of the more rundown casinos a little way off the strip. He was approached by two guys, once again they were, to him at least, obviously armed. They told him that the gig was being taken over by someone else and he was to accompany them. He tried to protest that he didn’t need a lift as his car was just outside, but they weren’t having any of that and frogmarched him to their waiting SUV. Tom and Greg had faced rescue situations any number of times in the combat shooting competitions, so Tom was interested how this would turn out, what sort of location they would take him to and how they would arrange it. They weren’t in the car long, but still long enough to have left the main part of the city and head into the nearer parts of the surrounding desert, the two men hadn’t bothered to blindfold Tom, but the severely tinted windows had partially obscured the route they had taken.

Getting out of the car it was obvious to anyone that it was an old hangar, and from the holes in some of the walls and roof, one that was no longer in use. He was taken through to an old office room on the ground floor, that had both completely intact walls and an intact ceiling, there he was predictably tied to a chair to await his fate. Or at least that’s what the guys thought was going to happen, Tom had other ideas. He had no intention of letting these guys and their bosses to get away with this. Waiting until one of the guys left Tom called the other guy over and simply ordered him to cut him loose and hand over his gun, which thanks to his vocal powers the guy did. Unfortunately the other man returned at that point and seeing Tom out of the chair and with a gun he went for his own. Luckily Tom was faster, and more accurate and the man didn’t get up from the pair of rounds that Tom put into him, but left Tom open to the strike of the man he had gained the gun from. He was briefly stunned by the blow, and dropped the gun, but the kidnapper had little time to gloat as he scrambled across the ground after the weapon. Knowing the futility of starting a tussle for the gun, and having other abilities to call on, Tom let rip with a sonic blast of what proved to be lethal force. Seconds later there were two bodies on the floor of the room as Tom got to his feet and staggered out towards the car.

Feeling the reaction set in, Tom barely made it to the drain outside the hangar before losing his last meal.

[Rorx]

Sitting back on his knees next to the drain Tom was still struggling with the fact that he had killed two people, but when it came down to it, it was either that or be killed himself. Getting to his feet he made his way over to the car, and after a while found where one of the men had put a bottle of water. Rinsing his mouth out and having a drink, he started thinking back over the various CSI shows he had watched over the years, trying to figure out how to best dispose of the bodies without it pointing back to him.

Eventually he had made up his mind. Driving the car about 2/3rds of the way up the runway, he turned off and drove about another mile behind some low hills/large dunes before stopping the car. Using the lights from the car he used a combination of his powers and a shovel he had found in the building he digs a large but fairly shallow pit. Big enough for the car to fit into it, but only about 3ft deep. Going back to the building he uses a travel rug and some plastic sheeting that was already in the car, confirming his assumption that he probably wasn't going to survive their company, to move the bodies into the car and back out to the pit site.

Once there he puts the bodies into the bottom of the pit and stands back a way. Unleashing a power he hasn't tried very often he puts a Sonic Storm over the pit, rapidly breaking the bodies and even the bones down to small fragments with 30 seconds concentrated bombardment. Next he drove the car over the liquid remains sinking into the sand and dirt at the bottom of the pit, and returned to his observation place. The sun was just starting to rise in the distance as he forced extra energy into the Storm that he held upon the car until it to was a pile of fragments soaking in the various fluids from the car.

After burying the remains in the pit he uses almost the last of his energy in moving a Storm around to hide the pit and various foot and tyre tracks as he slowly makes his way back to the runway and the building. Moving it ahead of him into the building it disrupts the bloodstains on the floors, breaking down the cells and the concrete itself so it is absorbed easier into it. Finally he makes his way back to the main road, disruoting his tracks as he goes for as long as he can maintain his concentration.

Once back on the main road he walks a couple of miles down the road to be away from the area before he uses his cell to call a University friend to pick him up, passing it off as being dumped in the desert as the wrong end of someones drunken prank.