DC Universe: The New Age of Heroes (RP Topic)

“No, I don’t. What, is this some ego thing? Aww, did the big scary danger noodle get his snoot booped? It’s okay, buddy, happens to the best of us. I’m sure there are healthier ways to cope with it. Not that I expect you to listen to me; but hey, might as well try, right?”

“I just need a sample of your poison.” Runa tells him. “No strings attached. Unless you want what happened back there to happen to you all here, too, without letting you run away this time.” He threatens, his voice steady, not giving away that he’s totally bluffing as he has no actual clue what happened back at the old hideout. He re-primes his boosters, just in case this went south.

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“Well, uh, in the game, when you press one of those buttons, it… uh… makes things happen on the screen.” Ryan tried to explain, not sure just how little Iosif might know, “…Might be easier if we just try to show you.”

“Guess we’re doing the tutorial then…” Zack murmured under his foul breath, already flicking through the menu to reach it.

He throws his head back and laughs. “And let you copy my formula like these pieces of [trash]?” He grins madly, jabbing his finger at them, “Never! I own these streets, and anybody that thinks different is gonna learn that the hard way. Kill em!” He snaps, three of the guys going for Runa, one for Nightingale, and the snake hissing again at her as well.

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Runa shot a laser across the ground at their feet, at the moment using it more as a tactic to keep them away and show them part of what he was capable of than as an attack. “I’m not asking.” He tells them. “It will make your lives a lot easier to give it to me now instead of making me have to take it.”

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Nightingale dances sideways, her shadow sharpening and slicing into the van’s tires. Another tendril swipes out, aiming to trip one of the gangsters.

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Iosif nodded slowly, looking back at the controller. Usually these sort of things are a lot flatter with a lot more buttons…

Iosif set the controller on his knees and pulled his hands into his coat, certain he had made a serious faux pas by not comprehending this. He’d take his hands back out when he absolutely had to, aka when it was painfully obvious.

Geosh was close enough now to clearly witness this, he saw that one guy was going after nightingale, and finished that she could hold her own, so Geosh moved to pass the guy and go help runa.

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The gangsters continued to advance, unphased. Seemed as though they were much more scared of what Quetzalcoatl would do to them if they gave up his product than they were of Runa. One of them charges for him, aiming for a diving tackle.

The thug wobbles for a moment, but keeps his balance, throwing out a hand to grab her. The snake, meanwhile, tries to slither past her unnoticed with the distraction of the hulking man grabbing for her neck.

“Hey, it’s okay.” Charlie whispered in a reassuring tone.

As Zack started up the tutorial, the first thing it taught was how to rev up the car’s engine. “Ready?” Charlie asked in Iosif’s direction, “It’s okay, I can show you how to do this.”

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Iosif slowly slid his hands back out of his pockets and grabbed the controller. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be worse than… Um, than…

…He couldn’t think of a good parallel.

“Okay.” Charlie smiles, shifting a little in her seat so that she’s turned more towards Iosif to see what he’s doing, “So, first thing you want to do is hold down on this button here, with the square on it, see? That’ll make your car rev up.” She explains, pointing to what she was talking about on the controller.

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Iosif pressed the button, the controller’s design mercifully indicating how much pressure was enough to make the game respond, the car churning up a semi-realistic engine sound and causing Iosif to sink back into the couch cushions in terror.

“I-Is that good?” He desperately wanted to take his thumb off the button on the off chance that it would make the noise stop.

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“Yeah, that’s great!” Charlie nods encouragingly, “Just hold that button down, when you start moving that’s how you keep going forward.”

Iosif’s reaction to the loud engine was just something Charlie had come to expect at this point, but she soon found the remote and turned the sound right down to a level that hopefully wouldn’t be as horrifying. Meanwhile, the game counted down the start of the race, before the car sped off onto the track. It went straight for a little bit, and in that time instructions on how to move from left to right appeared on the screen.

“Okay, so, this thumbstick over here?” Charlie pointed to it on his controller, “If you move that around, that moves your car around in the game, wanna try?”

She ducks away from the swipe, pulling her shadow close to her. It swirls around her, ready to ward off attacks and obscuring her actual form.

Runa boosted to the side7 left and brought the blade of X-Caliber down towards the lunging brute’s neck. “Fine, I’ll just extract what I need from your blood if I have to.”

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Geosh materialized his spear, grabbed it with both hands, and stabbed it at one of the other thug’s back.

Iosif tentatively pressed the stick to the right.

The car turned gracefully to the right, colliding into a fence with a grinding of metal and pixelated sparks before sliding off of the first exposed ledge it could find and showing a dramatic sepia filter replay of the car plummeting to its fate, coupled with a slight fade in the incredibly 2000’s soundtrack as a means of further expressing the game’s disappointment in the player.

Whatever reaction this brought to those desperately wanting to get through the tutorial was entirely lost on Iosif as the light of realization shone brightly in his eyes, fixated on the car as it respawned on the tutorial course.

“Ohhhhhhhh.”

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The gigantic serpent circled around, going in tighter to wrap around her legs as the gangster grabbed for her again.

As the man stumbled and toppled, that sudden drop thankfully left him with just a light graze, as the other two tried to box him in on two sides, coming in swinging for him.

But this effort is impeded some as Geosh comes up from behind one of the enforcers and stabs him, making him cry out in pain and swing out wildly behind him to bat Geosh away.

Charlie chuckled softly at the sight, not out of derision, but from the pureness of the moment, his first steps into a whole new world. Fortunately for the others, though, Iosif was the only one playing, so all they had to lose was a bit more time. “See, simple right?” She says, as the car comes up to the first actual turn, “So now you know what to do.”

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Iosif bit down on his lip and bored his eyes into the screen. He was ready.

As the car drove up to the curve, Iosif guessed what may or may not have been the proper timing and slid the stick all the way to the right, trying not to accidentally collide with any surface and cause the controller to shake violently - that had been uncomfortable albeit drowned out by the realization.

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Geosh grabbed one of the arms trying to bat him away, and wrenched the arm behind the thug’s back.

Runa ducks to the side with another boost,6 hoping that the wild swings, paired with the close quarters and there no longer being a person between the two, would cause one to harm the other instead of himself.