Toronto, Ontario, Canada -- another land of the free and home of the brave. The largest city in Canada, with a population of over three million (and a metropolitan census of over double that), it is everything for its country that New York City or Los Angeles is for the United States. It is, however, nicer, what with its country being Canada and all.

Situated on the shore of one of the largest inland freshwater seas in the world, Toronto is a city of culture, commerce, and opportunity. Unfortunately, among those opportunities are many chances for criminals looking to make a buck.

Federal attitude towards the Gifted tends to fall on the side of civil rights (at least, until cause for fear is given and the government needs to look tough). Officially, however, there is no censure on using Gifts in a way that doesn't violate an otherwise existent law.

With perhaps three dozen Gifted in the country altogether, the people of Toronto often forget about or disregard the revolution that has engulfed much of the world. But, perhaps because of that very scarcity, the city can be seen as a tempting place for Gifted foreigners to come and try to make their mark on the world.

Toby was minding his own business. Just making his way downtown walking on the sidewalk and listening to his Ipod. It had been a week since his full breakout. He was just thankful that where he had been standing no camera caught his face. The last thing he wanted was a lot of attention on him from his "gifts". All he had wanted to do was protect his family. However, he had ended up destroying half the bank instead. His parents looked at him with a mixture of love, fear and pity. His sister was glad he had protected them and she did not judge him for what he had become. For that he was thankful. He missed the old days, when all he had was the portals. Things were much simpler then. Just go where he wanted and have fun. Now he could potentially blow up a building and he had almost no control over it. The only thing he could do was not use his powers.

Suddenly, as if fate itself were just spiting him, there was a screech of tires. Toby looked up in time to see a car just barely swerve to miss one that ran a red light. While the cars did not make contact the one that swerved was now barreling down on Toby. Instinctively he threw up his hands to protect himself....and in response half the street peeled up and made a wall around him. He heard the first crash form the car hitting his barrier and then four or five more from cars either entering the now large hole he had created, or slamming their brakes and causing more accidents to avoid it. He panicked and quickly made a portal underneath him to an alleyway he had passed a few blocks back. He cursed himself for lack of control and, with tears in his eyes thinking of how many people he might have just hurt, quickly made his way in the opposite direction of the now catastrophe he had caused.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:42, Sun 11 Dec 2016.

David bounded through Palmerston, traversing the urban neighbourhood at about sixty kilometers an hour afoot, hurdling entire houses in order to keep his more or less straight line approach.  The app he ran on his phone to monitor emergency calls had relayed to his earbud a somewhat confused-sounding report about a vehicular incident involving the ‘Larger Than Life’ statues.

LTL was a trio of ten foot tall statues, cast in bronze, in a variety of heroic poses.  They were the work of a local artist, commissioned in the wake of the Awakenings, purportedly to remind people that the world has long had a mythic tradition of powered heroes, and the presence of the Gifted should be seen as a sign of hope as well as a reason to fear.

Apparently, having them erected on the border of Christie Pits Park meant they were a reason to not go off the road unexpectedly, although he had to admit that car vs sculpture was a far better scenario than car vs playing children.

Emerging from Little Italy onto Bloor street across from the park, he veered west toward where the statues resided.  He wasn’t certain how badly the driver or passengers had been injured in order for there to have been a 911 call, but if he could assist, he….

He stumbled to a halt, just inside the park, as he saw a couple of things that didn’t make sense.  For one, there were two cars clearly in distress; one, on its side up against one of the park’s trees, the other halfway onto the sidewalk, its trunk crushed in heavily and its rear axle clearly broken.

The second thing?  The LTL display was…missing.

Bounding over to the first car, he carefully tipped it back onto its wheels to discover it was already empty, but before he could approach the second car he heard the screeching of tires from up the street followed by the familiar crunch of an automobile accident.  Screams rose as well, followed by breaking glass.

This was…atypical, to say the least.

Loping down the street toward the source of the disturbance, he found…well, he found the trio of statues.  One was in the process of shoving aside the car that had just crashed into it, while the other two were smashing their way into the front of a building that proclaimed itself to be ‘Toronto Gold – Buy and Sell!’

…that was something you didn’t see every day.

Still, statues were good – statues weren’t people, and that meant he could discourage them from continuing what they were doing a little more aggressively than usual.

Leaping high into the air, he came down like a cannonball in the middle of the back of the car-struck sculpture, driving it face-down into the street – not that it had a face, per se, being one of those more ‘abstract’ creations that had more of a suggestion of features than anything requiring great detail…or great talent, possibly.  He hit with more force than he should have for his size, thanks to his enhanced inertia, and the sculpture boomed into the asphalt with a resounding impact.

”Bad statue!  Down!  Stay!” he barked at it, under the theory that giving it orders and having it ignore him was better than not even trying.  He didn’t have time to make sure it stayed down, however, and rebounding off the divot he’d left in its back, he turned on the other two.

”No, no, no!” someone cried from further up the street, and snapping his head around that way he saw, in amongst the variety of pedestrians running the other direction, someone was approaching and waving his arms angrily.

A young white male, eighteen, maybe twenty, dressed (in all things) in black jeans, many-buckled boots, a purple shirt, black trench coat, sunglasses, and a purple fauxhawk.

Yeah.  Seriously.

“You’re not so mighty!” the kid sneered, as teenagers only could.  “You’re just one guy, whereas I’m,” and he actually paused for effect here, while the other two statues continued to smash their way into the building. ”The Master of Puppets!”

The Mighty shook his head, then strode over to grab one of the pair of statues by the elbow.  This one had been cast with its hands on its hips, and it seemed to be stuck that way despite being animated, so it had been flailing a little less effectively than it might have been in the first place.

Hauling it away from the storefront, he flung it stumbling to smash into the first one he’d tangled with, sending both of them crashing to the street again in a cacophony of abused metal.  Was this kid for real?

”Okay kid, look,” he sighed, pointing a gloved finger.  ”Points for going a little different for a name, but really?  Metallica’s lawyers are going to eat you for breakfast; they don’t let anything slide.  And as for—“

He lost where he was going with that as white light burst inside his head, and he found himself embedded in the wall of the building across the street.  Hauling himself out, he swung around to find the third statue stomping toward him, her hips rolling back and forth as she advanced.

How about that – guess the kid could control them a little more remotely than he’d thought.  And the fact that he’d been knocked forty feet across the street was…disconcerting.  They were a lot stronger than he’d have anticipated, if they were able to move him that far with a hit – he was pretty hard to get moving unless he was the one doing it.

”All right, kid, that’s enough!” he barked, invoking Adult Authority as best he could.  It might not help, teenagers being what they are, but he likely wasn’t far out from under parental thumbs to have fully lost the sensation of Being In Trouble.  He ducked under the grab the statue made at him, reached up and grabbed her in return under the arm, and rolled her awkwardly over his shoulder to slam her into the ground.  He did not like it when people were bigger than he was, even when they weren’t actually people.  He wasn’t used to it, and it was just…wrong.

He stepped back, seeing the other two were getting to their feet, and realized he’d have to do something different.  This wasn’t working very well, and—

Well, that was when the streetlight reached down and wrapped itself around him.

”Oh, come on!” he protested, caught off-guard as the punk laughed scornfully at him and the steel lamp post tightened its coils like the strangest constrictor snake ever.  Just how much could this kid do at once?  He’d never heard of a Gifted like this guy – he must be newly Awakened.

”You’re seriously doing this?” he called out, taking a breath and flexing his arms, prompting a series of cracks and groans from the suddenly stressed streetlight.  ”This is your big debut, robbing a gold shop?  Are you—“

He broke off and closed his eyes as the mailbox one of the statues had hurled at him smashed against his face, bouncing back and spraying undelivered post everywhere…and actually possibly landing this kid in federal crime territory, come to think of it.

”Are you just about done?” he continued, his voice lowering ominously, and the streetlight column shattered into several pieces as he dropped bare-footed to the ground.  Apparently not, as the three Larger Than Life continued to stalk toward him.

Well, he had an idea of how to deal with this.  It was…unconventional, but it should - probably - do the trick….

---

---

It being twenty past ten on a Wednesday morning, business was fairly slow at the Walmart Supercentre in Dufferin Mall.  There were two cashiers open, and only a handful of other employees on the floor, all doing their best to avoid doing any real work if they could manage it.  Only a couple of them were close enough to the door to hear the deep thump of impact that came shortly before the doors whooshed open.

The Mighty strode into the store, stepping lightly despite his mass.  Streamers of smoke rose from his hair, and parts of his charred shirt still glowed with embers.  He left a trail of smudged black footprints as he walked, his bare feet slapping on the polished floor.

He smiled and nodded pleasantly at a slack-jawed Filipino girl who was spraying down lettuce in the produce section as he passed, heading back toward the men’s clothing department.  He stripped his sorely damage shirt off over his head, tearing it most of the rest of the way free as it came off his arms to reveal an impressively muscled chest and back.  Improbably, the shirt seemed to have taken almost all of the soot and char off his face and arms as it had come free, and when he ran his free hand through his hair it fell stylishly back into place.

”Catch,” he suggested to the older Hispanic woman who was working in ladies’ clothing, and gently tossed the scorched shirt to her without breaking stride.  She caught it reflexively, scowling at him with likely just as much reflex.  Dusting absently at his pants with both hands, he got rid of the worst of the scorching in moments as his eyes roamed over the racks.

”Ah!” he exclaimed happily as he spotted the racks that sold his shirts.  Leafing through them until he found an extra-large, he removed it from its hanger and popped the tags off as he walked back toward the front of the store.  Pulling it on over his head, he hid the intriguingly muscled view from sight as he tugged it into place, and carefully opened one of the pouches on his belt as he approached the cash lanes.

Extracting a glossy green plastic twenty dollar bill, he dropped it and the tags on the conveyor belt as the plump, red-headed girl behind the till stared up at him.  Waggling his eyebrows at her with a smile, he nodded and continued his way out of the store, the doors whooshing shut behind him again.  His shadow on the wall outside crouched, then flashed upward and away.

Toronto was a big city, there was likely something else that would need his attention sometime soon….

Toby was being passed left and right by curious goers trying to see what the commotion might have been since traffic had been stopped up. Toby did not notice nor care that he was the only one walking, very quickly, directly away from the accident.

 JOHNNY-5 roared through the interwebz at blazing speeds. Toronto was a well connected modern city so he had no problems sifting through it's networks. He landed on one of the candidates that he'd seen in various news clips already. However this was not the culprit, that much was certain. Currently he was carousing with Supercentre folks. He listened and watched impassively at first. As he watched from the digital realm, he saw various eruptions of social media surrounding his actions like a trail. He factored many different clues about the man into his assessments and decided to take more direct action, a test if you will.

 He split his attention between the Mighty and the unknown assailant at the site of the seismic epicenter downtown. There were people amassing and media of all kinds were picking up the scene quickly so he had a good idea of what it all looked like.

 A buzz came through the man's communications earpiece and then a crackling radio signal, followed by a bass filled voice. >>>There's something transpiring at Eastern Ave. and Cherry Street. It's a rather well populated area, some seismic activity has been detected there... Will you bask in the glory of your recent victory or will you pursue this new lead?<<<

Startled by the unexpected voice in his earbud, the Mighty missed his landing and had to step lively in an awkward little shuffle to avoid totalling a teal SUV parked at the curb.

"I'm sorry, what?" he replied reflexively, looking around suspiciously -- although the likelihood of seeing someone who might be responsible was vanishingly small.

"Look," he went on, thinking furiously.  "I'm going to skip over the usual tropes of 'who is this', and 'how did you get this number', and segue right into clearly, you don't know me.  I don't 'bask in glory'," he denied flatly, which wasn't necessarily true but was absolutely the public image he tried to maintain.  Yes, he absolutely enjoyed the positive attention of his works, but he made an effort to keep from seeming to do so too overly -- nobody liked a cocky, self-absorbed glory hound.

"Eastern and Cherry?" he repeated, orienting himself by street signs and consulting his mental map of the city.  "Fine.  I'm about four clicks as the crow flies, should take me five, six minutes if I'm going to avoid trampling anything important.  You don't get that tightly focused 'seismic activity', so what you're telling me is there's yet another Gifted messing around in my town today."  This...was shaping up to be an unusual day, to say the least.

Starting to move, he travelled alternately in great, building-clearing bounds and low, loping strides along streets that took him in the generally east by south-easterly direction he needed to go.

"Just so you know, Agent Bubbles," he went on matter-of-factly, "I don't go looking for fights.  I appreciate the heads up on the need for some damage control, though."  He'd likely missed the emergency calls regarding this incident while embroiled in his altercation with -- he rolled his eyes -- the 'Master of Puppets'.

Guilt finally overrode his need to flee. He just couldn't leave the street and people like that. He had to do something. He started to make is way back to the scene of the incident avoiding eye contact on his way.

When he finally arrived a block away he could se the damage he had caused. He felt horrible for potentially causing so many people to get hurt just to save his own skin. He concentrated as hard as he could and was able to use the earth to raise the one car out of the hole before using the wrapped up part of the street and placing it back in its correct alignment. Unfortunately a water hydrant decided to burst from the water pressure he was pushing aside at the time. It landed harmlessly a few feet away. Thankfully he did not give off any glowyness or had to make any silly hand gestures so he was not obvious. As soon as the street was fixed he quickly started away from the scene again.

(Giving the Mighty a chance to catch up to the scene.)
This message was last edited by the player at 04:17, Thu 15 Dec 2016.

 "Calls are coming in at that intersection, looks like seven injuries and some kind of crater," the voice went on ignoring the jide, "by the way, did you happen to be on a team with ducks at some point, that's a team right? Nevermind, all joking aside, looks like you'll have to ferret out the culprit. There's no good shots from any cell in the area, nor surveilance footage..."

 "Okay, bypass the next intersection if you can, morning traffic is still piling up," the voice warned, "by the way you had a LOT of viruses on your phone..."

 JOHNNY wanted to talk straight with him but he couldn't until he could assess this guys potential, suss out any 'evil' connections and see what was going on at the Triangle. "No rooftop movement either within two blocks of the incident. No, to answer your earlier question, I don't pick up your bounding though you did make quite a raucous with that statue fiasco...really, Puppet Master? That guy was a schmuck, but someday he might be more dangerous."

 A minute later they had reached the intersection, it formed a triangular shape as it merged with traffic from the freeway headed downtown. There before them was a gathering crowd and several smashed up cars, one actually had slid into the hole. A cop car had arrived but they curiously chose to hang back with the crowd waiting for EMTs to arrive. One waves at Mighty.

 "Aw, you got a fan. No actually I told them there was a chance of radioactive contaminants in the hole," the voice chuckled, "don't worry I'm giving them instructions to follow your lead. An ambulance is only a block away and coming in. So what do you see Mighty Man?"
This message was last edited by the player at 06:08, Thu 15 Dec 2016.

"Never been to Anaheim," David replied shortly, ignoring the commentary about the state of his phone and the opinions of the kid he'd been forced to subdue.

Clearly though, he'd been being watched before contact had been made, and he was starting to think it was some sort of technopath Gifted poking around.

"I'm going to have to come back to one of my waived questions," he went on as he drew near the scene.  "You've got an awful lot of access -- who exactly are you, that you're tapped into everything and giving instructions to--"

He broke off as the car in the hole shifted, then lurched upwards as the ground beneath it filled the hole like water rising in a glass.  The car rolled back onto the still-intact asphalt, and after a moment the raised and rippled curtain of street tried to settle itself back into place like a duvet being spread across a bed, with limited success.

"That's--" he began, and was interrupted by a loud but muffled crack, followed by water geysering into the air as a fire hydrant toppled over.

"Oh, come on!" he protested, shaking his head and bounding into the intersection.  He hadn't seen any signs of who had been messing with the street, but likely they had to be close in order to see what they were doing.  The gawkers and rubber-neckers as a mass yelped and moved away from the fountaining water, and he resigned himself to getting a little wet.

"Morning, officers!" he called out over the rush of running water, and scooped up the broken hydrant as he passed it.  Taking a hold of it in both hands, he eyed the spouting stream for a moment before bringing the hydrant firmly down atop it.

Water sprayed everywhere for a moment as he tried to align the edges of the pipe, then subsided to a minor halo of water escaping through the crack.  His pants were gradually getting soaked from the knees down, but it was certainly better than it had been.

"Better," he smiled conversationally at the patrolmen, making sure to keep the hydrant held as still as he could.  "If you could get on the radio and contact someone in city services to get the water to this shut off, that'd be great," he added.  "Any idea how all this happened?" he inquired, not willing to trust the nameless voice on his phone for all of his information.

Toby saw him. Mighty. A really awesome super hero, and he looked like he was here to help. That was great, and then he started asking who might be responsible. that was enough to make Toby fearful again and he quickly set off away from this mess looking back over his shoulder at the Mighty hoping he would not be seen.

 "Yes, I wonder how all this happened too. Though I'm willing to bet from this weird self-repairing street, they are really close...but their motives might be to cause problems or perhaps they aren't in control."
This message was last edited by the player at 20:56, Tue 20 Dec 2016.

David snorted, amused at the theorizing.

"Thanks, Captain Obvious," he replied dryly, wondering yet again just who it was that had latched onto him like this.  It certainly didn't seem like a 'fan' -- not the right flavour to the discourse.

Lacking anything productive he could do while he was keeping a cap on the broken hydrant, he looked about the intersection while one of the patrol cops was on his radio trying to get the water shut off.  People were aimlessly standing about, rubbernecking as the general public were wont to do in such situations, with a few who seemed to be just trying to pass through on their way to somewhere else.

And...one kid, who was acting not quite like anyone else.  He was scuttling away, but kept shooting guilty-looking glances over his shoulder, and his body temperature was a little more elevated than it probably should have been, as if he had been exerting himself.

The Mighty was willing to play to his hunches when the occasion seemed to call for it.

"Hey, kid!" he called out the next time the young man looked back, trying not to sound antagonistic.  How he reacted might give an indication as to whether or not he'd been involved in this whole...event.

Toby was trying to get away. He turned his head around again and not only heard but saw the mighty looking right at him and calling out to him. For a moment he froze in his tracks unsure of what to do. Then the creeping fear took over his mind and he bolted down the alleyway right next to him.

 Within the digital realm Johnny continued to monitor and for the once decided to stay quiet, analyzing the scene taking place. He tapped into all the connected equipment in the area and watched the scene impassionately and objectively. He zeroed in on the kid's phone, it was an outdated and inexpensive phone, logs showed it had been purchased eight months ago, and had one hundred and forty-five minutes left on the prepaid plan. The phone records revealed nothing except that this young man was no criminal, but rather had close ties to his family...

David's head dropped with a long-suffering sigh -- sometimes, he hated it when his intuition proved fruitful.  And, unfortunately, whether this kid was doing it out of a sense of mischief or because he had insufficient control -- malice didn't really seem to be a viable motive -- he couldn't let him just go running around half-cocked like this.

Looking over at the pair of officers, he shrugged apologetically.

"Sorry," he called over to them, then dropped the fire hydrant to one side, letting the full force of the water geyser upward again.  Even before the renewed fount of water began to patter back down to the ground once more, he was up and away in a prodigious leap that carried him to the rooftop of one of the buildings that formed the alley of refuge.  Striding to the edge, he located the fleeing boy and jumped down to land in his paht with a crack of bare feet meeting asphalt.

"Hold up a sec, kid," he urged, raising his hands unthreateningly, palms out and held wide.  "I'm not looking for a fight, I just want to talk with you."  He'd had more than enough fights with adolescents this morning already, thank you very much.

Toby was just about to open a portal and go home when the Mighty crashed down next to him. Fear and panic froze his mind and he did not even hear what the Mighty said. He immediately dropped to his knees and tears began to fall. "Im sorry....I am so so sorry. I didnt mean for anyone to get hurt...the car was coming and it just happened....I tried to fix it I swear but I dont know what i am doing."

As he cried rain began to fall where they were standing however it seemed to be centered on the kid. The mighty was barely getting wet, although he was already pretty soaked. The kid however was in the middle of a mini downpour. He looked up at the clouds above and yelled at them. "STOP IT!!" a quick bolt of lightning shot up into the clouds and detonated making a hole that caused the rain to stop. Toby then just hung his head in shame.

Despite himself, the Mighty flinched -- it was difficult not to react instinctively when the elements were sounding off with such vigour.

"Geeze, kid, settle down already," he asked plaintively, blowing some of the water streaming down his face off his upper lip.  While he'd always liked a good thunderstorm, he didn't much like being this close to the heart of one being fulled by Teen Angst.

"It was an accident, I get it," he continued soothingly.  "You don't have full control over what's happening, I get that too -- it's not easy to make things go how you want to, right at first."  He'd inadvertently broken any number of things until he'd gotten the hang of the right amount of pressure to use, in the way of his own Awakening.

"You just gotta calm down, take a breath, okay?" he urged, advancing slowly.  "Getting all worked up is only going to make things harder to keep under control.  Tell me your name," he requested, abruptly changing the subject in a manner he hoped would distract the boy.

Toby took some deep breaths. "Toby." He was starting ever so slightly to calm down as soon as he realized the Mighty was not about to just up and arrest him.

David touched his own chest with his fingertips, still moving slowly so as to not spook the kid if he could manage it.

"I'm Dave," he replied -- it was hardly a secret, after all.  He lowered his hands, keeping his posture non-threatening.

"So," he went on, glancing up at the unnatural cloud that was still dispersing.  "I'm guessing I wouldn't be out of line to suggest that what happened back there was something to do with you?  An accident, maybe?"  Given how the kid -- Toby -- was reacting, he was pretty sure he hadn't ripped up the street deliberately.