This week, Kimerex and I discuss Neil Gaiman’s interview about piracy, Steam making a lot of money, and the DC Universe Online contest winners.
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As always, feedback can be posted down below in the comments as well as emailing heroes@handheldheroes.net
Closing music – Tighten Up by The Black Keys
Since some people are curious as to what the winning entries are, I will post them here.
1st Place – Jeff
Name: Blake Smith
AKA: Big Dog
Sex: Male
Power Set: Nature (Shapeshifter)
Movement: Super Speed
Weapon Style: Brawling
Morality: Villain
Personality: Powerful
Origins: Meta
Blake wasn’t ever typical, but he was certainly a stereotypical high
school jock. Tall, muscled, and blessed with seemingly Olympian
reaction time, he was All-State running back three years in a row, had
six triple-double basketball games his senior year, and dated the Prom
Queen as a freshman. He was set with a full ride to the University of
Texas. He had two of the school’s smartest (read: nerdiest) students
doing his homework for him. And he didn’t believe in ever looking
back. It was his right.
Then came the last week of school.
After a night of partying, Blake woke up in the woods just east of
Austin. He immediately noticed that his clothes were ripped and that
he was covered in blood. Inhaling the scent, he shivered and put his
paws to his nose. Paws? For an instant, he could have sworn that
instead of hands he had paws, like a huge dog, or a wolf. Must have
been the booze still talking. He got to his feet and started wandering
towards the sound of traffic. He saw two cars at the side of the road,
surrounded by bottles of Shiner Bock. He thought he recognized one of
the cars; it looked like it belonged to Angela, one of the
cheerleaders he’d had on tap that year. He had started to walk towards
it when a head popped up from behind it. A middle-aged man was
ashen-faced, eyes wide. He saw Blake and sprinted to the other car,
whipping the door open, starting the vehicle, and pulling away before
the door was even closed. Blake went around to the driver’s side,
where the man had been.
The inside of the car was red. There was hardly a square inch that
wasn’t covered in blood. Blake dropped to his knees and promptly puked
his guts out. He could taste the coppery goodness between ragged
gasps. Goodness? No, it was horrible, not good. But there was
something about the scene that made him feel…just…alive. He wanted
to howl. He didn’t know why, but he could hardly restrain himself.
Just as he was pursing his lips, a highway patrol car pulled up behind
him. The officer stepped out with his gun unholstered and pointing
right at Blake.
“On your stomach. Now!”
Blake looked at the officer, at the gun, back at the car, down at his
hands. Paws. They were definitely paws now. He remembered. He couldn’t
remember exactly what he’d done, but he remembered how freeing it was.
How it had been better than all the awards he’d racked up over the
years, better than the best game he’d ever played in his life.
“I said get down!”
Blake looked at the officer. The man was shaking, staring at what
until a moment ago was a human teenage boy. Blake liked this feeling.
He took a step towards the patrol car. The officer backed up a step.
“I said…” the officer’s voice trailed off.
Football and basketball at UT? That would mean more classes, which
would suck, but he could find someone to do the work for him. And
college girls, sure. And more bars. He’d be a star, he was certain.
But he’d never get it now, not since this cop had seen him. He had to
do something. He wanted to do something. He could still be a big man
on campus. And it looked like he had a new way to occupy his time,
too. All he had to do was get rid of the cop. It was his right.
After all, Blake had always been the big dog.
Runner Up – Srinidhi
plague by Obsidian Spire
Chapter 1
Harsh, caustic winds swept across the barren landscape. A dense, murky fog circled all around as far as one could see and extinguished all light except for the slight pinprick of a dying cigarette bud thrown carelessly into the unflinching streets. A lone figure carefully stalked through the streets, checking around every corner for any sign of hostility. He slowly approached a debilitated, crumbling building, keeping his grip tight upon the butt of his half-empty assault rifle.
*Thump*. He immediately turned towards the source of the noise, regretting the ringing sounds from his various armaments moving about that penetrated the obscured atmosphere. They leapt down nearly instantaneously, surrounding him against the wall of the structure. He realized he would have to react quickly before all that was left of him were mangled scraps or worse, he became one of them. He looked for any holes within their circle, but could not find any. He decided that he would have to make one instead of wasting his time searching for an escape route. He carefully aimed at the closest enemies and fired two rounds at each, aiming to penetrate their hearts and brains, ensuring reinvigoration of their deformed bodies could not occur. The recoil dissipated against the light armor he wore, but a miniscule amount traveled through his body and highlighted the areas he was most likely to injure if battle continued. His shots seemed to fly past their targets and embed themselves into the thick brick frame of the opposing constructs, so he decided to try a riskier tactic. He pulled a grenade off his vest and dropped the grenade where he stood. He waited until one second had passed before beginning the painstaking journey away from the imminent death in front of him.
He regretted his choice because he knew that in death he would have taken them with him instead of continuing his pathetically frightened existence. “At least I might see her again.” This thought consoled him deeply, but the adrenaline of the situation caught up with him once again when the explosion of the grenade created a cacophony of pained screams from the zombies. His conviction to see her again did not provide him with superhuman strength or imperviousness, but combined with the circumstances, it did bestow upon him the necessity of heightened awareness. He raced through the empty vastness towards the one place he thought he was safe.
Chapter 2
“This epidemic could not have been prevented”, blasted the speaker systems throughout New York City. The bewildered bystanders did not comprehend the situation until they begun to hear the blood-curdling screams of the epidemics newest victims. They frantically rushed to any form of safety, but they were all too late. A monstrous horde of deformed monsters rushed through the streets, sparing nothing. What the denizens could not have known was the exponential rate at which the epidemic had taken a stranglehold upon the conglomerate of nations known as the United Nations. No one, not even the President of the United States, Barack Obama, could claim safety from this attack, but one group of schizophrenics had preemptively holed up within the underground vaults of New York. Their extreme paranoia towards Obama’s presidency served them well, but what would they do now? This party of four watched the news, switching from channel to channel, until each channel cut off the air with a terrible crunching noise that signified to them the end of all humanities hope. They saw the Twin Towers memorial site littered with more demented bodies than those deaths incurred by the original tragedy. The last image of the Statue of Liberty crumbling upon a horde of unintelligible fiends stayed on screen until a short woman turned off the now static and lifeless TV. She looked upon the remaining survivors with a despondent expression and queried, “Now what do we do?”
A rugged, tired man stood up before answering her simply, “Wait.”
She did not say anything as her blank visage melded into the background. John opened his eyes slowly, trying to remember his dream and her. He felt disappointed that all he could remember were the reports, but he lethargically raised his weary body out of the hard, rough bed. All John remembered from his life before the outbreak was his first name. He did not know why this insignificant label had remained with him because what use is a name in a world where the only person you can tell is yourself. He headed to an organized, simple kitchen where he ravenously wolfed down a meal of Count Chockula and Mayfield milk. John thanked whatever was up there in the heavens because he had managed to retain the food from his last trip to the local grocery store. Oh yes, those zombies behaved so rudely towards their fellow customers that the sounds of constant displeasure could be heard throughout the store.
He averted his eyes from his breakfast to maintain vigilance on the entrance to his underground vault. Motion sensitive equipment activated and protected the entryway, but as he sat there, he noticed from his monitor that the feeds seemed to be down. He mentally listed to plan repairs as his first priority, and then he trudged towards a waste facility located deeper in the vault. After relieving his internal troubles, he regressed to his bedroom. Inside, he searched for the required equipment to survive a possible attack. He put on a light ballistics vest, loaded a pistol with all the ammo that he could fit in it, reloaded a full cartridge of ammo into his rifle and searched for the one thing he could never leave the vault without, a small pin, his last reminder of Diane. He caressed the tarnished metal before placing it gently upon his vests lapel. John marched out of his room, towards a high, rusted metal door that was all that protected him from the outside at the moment.
Chapter 3
As John walked, he allowed his mind to drift. Today was the anniversary of her death, as a quasi tradition he would fight against anyone and everyone just to see her again. He understood he was just being sentimental, but he needed something tangible for him to hold on to or else he would just commit suicide right where he stood. He passed through a complex series of gates that beeped harshly due to his weaponry. He finally reached the entrance and exited through a small alcove hidden with additional security protecting the backup plans John had set up. He carefully shut the exit behind him and evaluated the work ahead of him. He decided that fixing the motion sensitive cameras would best serve as his first move because of the additional cannon security attached to them. He carefully opened the casing and peered within to see if he could fix this easily. Unfortunately, it seemed as though the problem exceeded his rudimentary technical skills when all he could do was burn his fingers. John moved onto the cannons themselves because they were far more vital than the cameras, but would not work without visual input regarding their targets, so in the end John’s actions would remain futile unless he could repair the cameras as well. He marked down that some of the cannons no longer comprised their full array of parts and that combined ammo remained below 10% of full capacity. He noted that they had not been scratched or dinged and felt a sense of pride within their proof of protection, but worried that today would be their first day of failure. John quickly decided that any future attempts would require further study of the textbooks that he and the others had collected during their stay within the vault.
Before leaving to see Diane again, John returned to the vault through the hidden recess within the wall and brought an extra canteen and three small MREs (Meal, Ready-to-Eat) with him. He left through the hidden vault exit and proceeded until the tunnel came to a camouflaged door; he exited through the door and replaced the camouflage before shouldering his rifle and stoutly heading through the deserted roads of New York.
Chapter 4
It began to rain down upon his body, but the storm mattered little to John. The path to Diane appeared to serpentine and cross through the most volatile sections of New York, but John recognized that he could quickly travel to her home and back to the vault before the zombies emerged from their daytime slumber. He walked at a constant pace trying to ensure that he would remain in the clear for time, but his pace needed to quicken if he wanted to remain alive. John’s eyes wandered over the dilapidated ruins surrounding him and once again wondered if anyone or anything could have prevented the disease from spreading. He had fought against them for the majority of his adult life, but he still knew as little about them as he had when they first attacked. During his thinking, John slowed down tremendously and only recognized this after he once again focused on the journey ahead.
He saw that his time was now extremely hard pressed to be safe, but being the sentimental fool that he is, he decided to continue when he saw a small hill on the outskirts of New York. He carefully hedged around the crumbled stones, gnarled roots, and mixed outgrowth of plant life surrounding the cemetery. He kept one hand on his lapel, holding the pin that Diane had given him all those years ago. He reached her tombstone and stopped to kneel before the grave of her body. He stared at the engraved images on her tombstone and tried to put them to memory, but words and thoughts overpowered his memory. “Always remember that I am waiting for you” reverberated through his skull, but the image of her stone countenance maintained control over his eyes. He allowed himself to reminisce about her, but even with the replica before him, he could barely remember what she truly looked like let alone what he actually wanted to remember, her vivacity and personality.
John’s eyes only opened he heard a thunderous, uncontrolled sound from within a nearby structure. He realized his mistake, but he did not regret his choice to see his beloved. He would only see her one last time before he would finally join her in the eternal afterlife. He thought aloud, “Is what I am about to do right Diane, or am I just being selfish? Have I redeemed myself or do I deserve further punishment?”
Unable to answer him, the sight of Diane’s grave bore a hole into John’s soul. He could no longer look at her eternal rest without internal turmoil. John slowly reached for his pistol hanging to his belt, aimed it at his heart, and fired twice before the pain caused him to drop the now heavy weapon. Instead of dying as any normal man would, John decided to try to ensure the impossibility of his body serving as a host for the virus and frantically grasped for the pistol lying on the ground in front of him, trying to aim it at his head. Only managing to pull the trigger once before all air escaped his lungs, his face tightened around the now defunct muscles and the gun slipped through his creased, long fingers to the wilted flora beneath him. His hands remained clasped around Diane’s token of affection, as his body slumped over her fallen tombstone becoming a part of her and the Earth. Overhead, the sky partially cleared revealing a miniscule rainbow that seemed to glisten with life, reflecting the barely visible light from the stars overhead, but the zombies rushing towards their potential sustenance only utilized their olfactory and visual senses to spot their prey, ignoring the beauty that lay above.
The End