Toronto - Untouched Relic of The Human Age (Location 14)
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….