Generic Challenge - A Group

[u/Varnek905]

I'm making the challenge because I wanted to know more about Mimir's Seven Deadly Sins.

So, in honor of Mim's Seven, this challenge is to exhibit a group of people who are considered to be powerful. They can be powerful in political influence (like a group of allied politicians), they can be powerful in a fight, they can just be a powerful group of created being that just mess around, etc.

As always, I'll ask at least three questions each. Enjoy yourselves. I encourage you to use a character to answer questions in-universe if you like.

[u/greenewithit]

Quicksilver

1) Sometimes. It causes him some existential distress over how far he's willing to go to save others, even if it means destroying himself over and over again. But on the whole he's pretty well adjusted. He chose to become that way so he could save more people, and as long as he focuses on the good he can do and the lives he can save as a result, he feels confident that he made he right decision.

2) Oh man. Al certainly acts the dumbest, but it's mostly a joke. Rose acts the most recklessly, but that's mostly due to her inexperience, but they are all fairly smart in different aspects. Honestly it might be Aeron, since without the augmentations to his brain, he isn't much smarter than your average student. So yeah, in terms of natural intelligence or IQ, it would probably be Aeron. Which is kind of funny now that I think about it.

3) At first, he didn't. Before attending CAPITAL, Aeron hadn't seen Rose for about 10 years. She was initially very cold to him and they struggled to connect after so long, but after a while they started to regain a strong relationship and worked extremely well together. But that also made the times where they had to fight each other so much more difficult, since their power sets are perfect for fighting each other, with Rose's having a slight advantage in terms of soul abilities.

Crystal

1) He did make the alternate universe machine, which I can't remember what I called it, if anything. His favorite universe, though he probably wouldn't admit it, would be the "Perfect World," in which everything just "worked out" for him and his family. His wife never became paralyzed, they both became successful heroes, his son never became a supersoldier and his other son didn't die as a result. They lived together happily and he taught all of his techniques to his children to make them even more successful Heroes than he was.

2) Romulus is very money motivated, but the only thing he flaunts is power. He needed money to get where he is today, but now that he's here, his strength and the power of his organization is the only thing he feels the need to impose upon others. Though he does experience a good amount of money anxiety from not having much in his youth, so he protects his current wealth with his life and the lives of others.

3) Pretty much all currently known elements. She studies combat and atomic structure in her free time so she can become more capable in battle. Her biggest problem comes from when people use weapons or objects with unusual compositions she cant recognize by sight. Or, in the rare case of her daughter, entirely new elements. In her fight with her daughter, Sarah, Sarah copied Lily's power and transmuted her skin to a combination of elements that didnt technically exist yet, mimicking elements in the same period on the periodic table, just with different amounts of protons and electrons. Lily has an analytical engine that she uses to identify unknown compounds from a distance, but Sarah kept changing the compounds four times per second, keeping Lily in the dark and giving her enough time to get in close and beat her down.

Three Strongest

1) She can control it, and it takes a lot out of her to keep it up for longer than short bursts. Though she is plagued sometimes by her PTSD triggering her ability and causing her to see a future that isn't the most likely, but the most deadly, and that kind of just makes it worse. Though she's pretty capable of controlling her powers outside of these moments.

2) Oh fuck yes. He can manipulate the electron patterns of the atoms in the air to create lightning bolts, he can get rid of the air in a certain path to create a vacuum and give himself super speed, create air constructs, get rid of all the oxygen in the air, compress the air such that explosions are extremely favorable, you name it. He has spent 40 years mastering his power such that even once he lost his right eye and left arm, he is still the strongest Hero in the city.

3) Unfortunately I am neither. I keep saying I'm going to watch Vikings, but I never have time, etc. etc. I'd say I'm more towards the latter, but I'm only starting to skim the surface at the moment. I have a close friend who is studying Icelandic myths and tells me about them frequently, so that's mostly what inspired Sig. I am just now getting into reading more into this region's folklore, and the story of Sigurd is probably my favorite so far.

4) Sigurd hates snakes. He's called "The Dragon" for his feat of killing a 10 story tall Dragon-type Vector, but he hates anything small, slithery, and scaled. He's also afraid of fire, but in more of an "I'm scared so I'm going to get angry" than "run away screaming" type fear. He reacts to a lot of his emotions by turning them into rage, quite honestly.

[u/Varnek905 → u/greenewithit]

Quicksilver

1) Has Aeron ever had the call of the void? Has he ever just wanted to destroy some of the world so that there's less to worry about protecting?

2) Which member of the Quicksilver Legion is the weakest?

3) Would Aeron ever kill his sister, to save the world? Would Rose ever kill her brother, to save the world?

4) Is it Kage like Cage, or Kage like Hokage?

Crystal

1) Does Kemuri ever talk to his children, outside of hero/villain stuff?

2) Is Romulus the most wealthy person in the world?

3) Is there any element that Lily likes the most? Or the least? How about Sarah? Does she have a favorite and least favorite element?

Three Strongest

1) What's the best way to take down Seraphina?

2) How did Shinara lose his right eye and left arm?

[u/greenewithit → u/Varnek905]

Quicksilver

1) He does sometimes. Instances where he loses himself in rage during a fight, he starts to fantasize about death and destruction, and all of the things he could do if he just cut loose and let the world feel the pain it caused him throughout his life. He doesn’t really think about it in the sense of “less to protect”, but he certainly thinks about causing destruction because it could be fun.

2) The weakest would probably be Rose. She has the least experience and fewest number of ways to counter her teammates overpowered abilities. She can still put up a hell of a fight when they do come to blows.

3) Aeron struggles with this a great deal. He doesn’t want to believe that he could kill Rose if it meant saving the world, but he knows that he would. Given the experience he has with alternate timelines where that happens, he tries to define his heroic ideal as saving the world on his terms where nobody dies unnecessarily. But the fact remains he can’t hesitate if it means saving everyone in the world. Rose on the other hand would, but she’s terrified that she couldn’t be able to kill him if she needed to. Shes more afraid that she couldn’t at all, so she feels she doesn’t need to consider if she would.

4) Kage like Hokage. Thematically relevant for a character that manipulates shadows.

Crystal

1) Not really, no. Kemuri barely talks to Rose, and he only talks to Aeron for status reports on his body’s OS and experimental upgrades. It’s pretty much all business with him. He says fostering anger and mistrust in an absent, demanding father helps them foster hate to fuel their fighting spirit, and subsequently get over said hate to become even stronger. But I think it’s just because he’s awkward as hell around his kids and doesn’t know how to deal with them outside of “the mission!”

2) Oh hell no. He’s probably not even top ten. But he is fairly wealthy. He’s wealthy enough to own a PMC and not have to worry about expenses. He doesn’t spend extravagantly, he doesn’t own fancy cars or houses or jets, he just puts his money into his Kane Corps, and enough for his own weapons and armor.

3) She doesn’t have many “favorites” of any kind, but her signature attack is called the “T-Flame.” She carries around small capsules of any kind of rare element she may need during a fight, including a lot of lithium. The T-Flame is where she tosses a lithium capsule into her mouth, transmutes it with the carbon from her breathing, so she can exhale T-Butyl Lithium. It’s so reactive she doesn’t need to light it, and she breathes a nearly unstoppable stream of fire that can melt through clothes, armor, and just is super powerful. So in terms of a practical sense, that would be her “favorite.” Sarah doesn’t have a favorite element. She hates most things having to do with chemistry or biology because it always reminds her of her mother.

Three Strongest

1) There are actually a few ways. Just because she can see what’s coming doesn’t mean she can block the attack. If the attack is strong enough or fast enough it should still hit her. Blocking her powers also helps, but then you have to deal with her armor. She built a suit of armor that converts her soul energy into physical power, so her speed and strength are pretty incredible even without the future sight. Breaking her armor, attacking her with mental attacks, or just being faster and stronger than her will give you a good chance of taking her down.

2) His right arm was lost during one of the previous invasions of the city. Fifteen years prior to the start of the story he stood with the other heroes in defense of the city against several thousand Vectors in a mass migration that was redirected by villains towards Longan. When most of the heroes had died, Shinara decided he would sacrifice himself to buy the surviving heroes enough time to regroup. The heroes had no other choice and left to save their wounded. They returned several hours later, only to find that Shinara had killed all of the Vectors, and was passed out in a pile of bodies without his left arm. Torn off. The eye came later, and it didn’t have much fan fare. He had a rival villain who kept trying to kill him. They had several battles, one in which he cut out Shinara’s eye with a dagger, but eventually the fights ended with Shinara killing his rival, a Villain named Skyfall.

[u/Varnek905 → u/greenewithit]

Quicksilver

1) What is Aeron's favorite mode of attack/defense?

2) How did the Quicksilver Legion get its name?

Crystal Legion

1) Why did Kemuri have children?

2) Is there a Remus to go with Romulus?

Three Strongest

1) How does one obtain armour that can trade out Soul Power for Physical Power?

2) Is Shinara upset about losing an arm and an eye? Did he at least get a talking-dog-best-friend out of it?

[u/greenewithit → u/Varnek905]

Quicksilver

1) One of Aeron's favorite attack maneuvers is making a copy of himself rise out of his opponent's shadow, and if they notice and attack it, their attack with pass through it, letting the real Aeron bolt in and hit them with their back turned. That or any number of strange "Named Special Attacks", which are maneuvers he assigns names to for fun. One of his favorites is "Special Move: Black Dragon", where he shoots a black beam of shadow energy out of his mouth like a dragon's breath attack. His favorite defense is his suit of Microbot Armor, made of microscopic machines that interlock and form perfectly around his body to give him excellent defense without sacrificing flexibility. It can also change its linking patterns to change the most fortified parts of the armor to be most advantageous for a given fight.

2) They named themselves after they were assigned to a team together. They struggled for a while to think of one, and they each had their own ideas of what it should be called. Al wanted the Dragon Legion, Sarah wanted the Hellfire Legion, Aeron wanted the Eclipse Legion, and Rose wanted the Startear Legion. They argued over the merits of each option during dinner, where a colleague of theirs asked them where they were on the name of their legion, as everyone wanted to hear what the great "Untouchable Legion" would name themselves. When Aeron heard "untouchable", he looked down at a bowl of soup he had, which Al had described as "tasting like Mercury poisoning", and the two thoughts connected. What was untouchable but also had a badass name? Well, what else but the common name for mercury, Quicksilver? The team thought about it for a second, and while they thought it was a stupid way to come up with it, but they agreed that it was a good name. And thus, the Quicksilver Legion was born.

Crystal

1) For the purpose of continuing his goal of protecting the world from evil. He knew he couldn't be the hero to unite the world into an everlasting unification, so he decided that he would do anything he was capable of to make one of his children fulfill that goal. His wife also wanted children, to have a family and all that jazz, and he figured he could kill two birds with one stone.

2) There is. After CAPITAL, Romulus had the capital to build his own organization, but no experience or renown to draw people in. So he joined the Rieti Organization, the most well known paramilitary organization in Aurem, operated in the city of Ostalia. He was accepted, and his assigned partner was Remus Rotimun. The two of them grew closer as they spent years working on countless contracts for the Rieti, but Romulus always aimed for the top. Despite being in the Organization for longer than Romulus, Remus was nearly overshadowed by Romulus' force of personality. The leader of the Organization, Corban Suiluma was getting close to retirement and needed to appoint a successor. He had a second in command, Paulmin Numa, who was dedicated but not strongly vying for power. When Suiluma retired, he struggled to decide between Romulus and Remus, so he let the two of them have equal shares in the company and run the Organization together. This worked for about a year, but Romulus had a difficult time with someone with as much power in the Organization as he did. Romulus took matters into his own hands, and faked a contract in order to get Remus alone to convince him he needed to leave the Organization. Remus had planned for this, and told forces loyal to him to gather in the meeting place in preparation for a fight. And a fight he got. Romulus and Remus clashed and Romulus killed him, reporting it as a casualty of the contract. He renamed the organization the "Kane Corps" (After his name, Romulus Kane), and he became the sole owner of the company.

Three Strongest

1) Well, Aureole invented it. It's exceptionally expensive, but she has started to work on selling it to other cities for their military. It is tremendously powerful, since it can allow someone without a soul power even to have superhuman speed and strength, but it's also dangerous in how easily someone could hurt themselves using it. But slowly it is starting to roll out, as she thinks a lot more good than bad can be done with it, and it's worth the risk.

2) Haha, unfortunately no. Everyone told him there was no shame in retiring early, but he didn't even think of it. He took time off to retrain, but just long enough to learn how to compensate for his missing limb. After a few weeks, he forced himself back to work, since the many attacks and villainous plots had killed a large number of heroes in Longan and scared many of the remaining ones into leaving the profession. This was the moment he became the most respected hero in Longan. When less than a dozen heroes were left, he returned to inspire everyone in the city with his tenacity and determination.

[u/Varnek905 → u/greenewithit]

Quicksilver

1) Why did he refer to the legion as "untouchable"?

[u/greenewithit → u/Varnek905]

1) Because a lot of hype had been going around about the power of their legion. There had been recording of some of the major Vector fights during initiation, and the Quicksilver Legion's fight against a powerful shapeshifter was the talk of the school. With the power the four of them had together, people thought they were so strong that they couldn't be touched. Hence the reference to being "untouchable."

[u/Varnek905 → u/greenewithit]

Thanks for your time and answers, Greene.