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SpoilerA few years ago, Gabe took a job working as a late-night janitor at a science facility run by Blackoak Laboratories, to make ends meet during his apprenticeship. Blackoak worked to investigate the applications of nanotechnology. During his rounds, Gabe came across an open door.
Strange, he thought. The staff usually kept everything locked.

Nudging the door aside, he walked into the room. Though it was cluttered, one specimen stood out: a jar labelled SAMPLE 11-03-59-PGE containing a white paste. The jar was cracked. Walking closer, he reached out to touch the jar, accidentally cutting himself in the process. Thething inside flowed up and out, into the gash. Shocked, Gabe inspected the wound; though it had stopped bleeding, it didn't look particularly strange. He quit the job the next day.

A few days later, while finishing a project at home, he caught himself hoping for a sander to speed up the work... and heard a whirring sound.

"Jesus!"

The fingers of his right hand had curled into a fist. Attached to the base was a wide shell-like protrusion, the underside of which was spinning round. It looked exactly like a disc sander, and it worked exactly like a disc sander. Over the course of months, Gabe learned to control his newfound ability, shaping his hand into different tools at will. He finished his apprenticeship and started his own small business, mostly repair work. However, due to his reclusion, no one noticed it when one day, Gabe Farrell vanished into thin air.

SpoilerBorn in a land of marshes and near-constant war, Cailean was trained in the local lord’s army from an early age as a cavalry lancer. Not especially strong or fast, he survived mostly by being able to dodge his opponents’ weapons and avoid the main front of the battle- not the most courageous strategy, but it kept him alive long enough to see the start of the first great war for the kingdom’s crown.

The army Cailean belonged to was unceremoniously grouped with the other forces of the current king’s youngest son, who sought to wrest control of the kingdom from his older and less militant brother. Cailean, naturally, knew very little of this conflict except that it meant the upcoming battle would be the largest of his life, and that there was an outstanding chance that the next time he entered the field it would be the last. His fears were realized at noon on the first day of the battle; blinded momentarily by the sun and focused on controlling his blood-panicked horse, a soldier belonging to the other side scored a massive blow down the side of Cailean’s face and deep into his chest.

Fortunately for Cailean, the grass he fell on was fresh and away from the worst part of the battle, and the man who had struck him assumed him dead and galloped off; unfortunately, the blow had been fatal, though not immediately so, and none of his comrades-in-arms were willing or able to assist him. Blood bubbling on his lips, Cailean desperately tried to crawl away from the fighting, miraculously managing to make it to the edge of a nearby lake. A single white heron watched impassively as he managed to plunge a shaking hand into the water an instant before collapsing into unconsciousness, face down in the lake’s shore. His blood slowly stained the water a dull red, tarnishing the holiness of the particular waters sacred to a goddess of mercy, the Taccha Maowyn.

The Tach of that land are not particularly benevolent figures. Something like gods, their interests are entirely their own, and except in certain rare cases their feelings towards humans are neutral at best. Maowyn, seeing Cailean’s blood drain into her lake, was at first infuriated at this sacrilege and moved to pierce his skull with her beak, for of course she had been the heron that watched him approach. However, a breath of life still existed within him; stirred by this and feeling something that was not quite pity so much as desire, Maowyn healed the dying soldier’s wounds with a sweep of her wings and brought him back to the world of the living.

Cailean awoke to the sight of a terrifyingly beautiful heron standing over him, its silver beak flashing in the sunlight as it cast an unreadable gaze over his face. Speaking without words, it told him that he had been saved by the mercy of Taccha Maowyn, and that all she asked in return for his life was for him to show the same mercy to all those that he would lay eyes upon, for as long as he may walk the earth. The soldier could not refuse, for surely the Taccha’s mercy was better than her wrath, though in secret his heart sank. Maowyn was a goddess of mercy but she was by no means a kindly being. Warriors prayed to her for a clean death in battle, and the blessings she gave ended the life of the receiver as often as they saved it.

He rose from the mud and water and saw that his skin was stained a deep crimson where his blood had been spilled, though all other signs of his wounds had vanished. Maowyn, mantling her wide, white wings, told him that her blessings did not come without a price. He was one of hers now, and all would know it by the marks on his skin. She vanished in a flurry of feathers and Cailean was left alone by the lake, free of the death that had so recently seemed certain to claim him.

Returning to the field of battle, he saw that more time had gone by than he could have guessed. The battle was over and surely days had passed; corpses littered the ground like fallen reeds and the ground was wet with blood. Far above him, vultures circled in the still air as he checked the faces of the dead for those he knew; he saw none, and stained with earth and blood he could not tell which of the bodies had been his fellows and which had been his enemies.

Distantly, Cailean heard a voice and looked up to see a soldier approaching him from out of the forest, sword in hand. His uniform was the blue and gray of the opposing side and his arms were soaked up to the elbows in the blood of the recently dead; his face, equally as gory, was twisted into a snarl of hate. Wearily, Cailean snatched up a nearby abandoned spear and prepared to fight. As the man began to run towards him, he stumbled for just a second, and Cailean threw the spear straight into his torso.

Instantly he felt his chest explode with pain, as though he had been the one wounded, and dropped to his knees in agony. He clawed at his armor but it was unbroken; there was no wound, and as he listened to the dying screams of the other man he felt sure that his meeting with Maowyn had been a hallucination, that he had never been healed and was still dying on the field somewhere, and only dreaming that he had ever had a chance to survive…

A feather alighted delicately on the ground in front of him, brilliant white against the blood-stained mud; another joined it, then another, and the Tachha Maowyn appeared in all her terrible glory as a heron-headed woman with massive, sweeping wings beating the air behind her back. Coldly she stared down at him, and through his pain he heard a ringing voice reminded him of the conditions of his blessing. He was a knight of mercy, now, and he could not lay harm on another being while it still breathed unless it was to ease its passing into the world of the dead. Reaching for her wing, the Taccha plucked out a long, fine feather and dropped it to the ground; it landed as a dagger, point down in the earth.

Shaking and with black spots flickering at the edge of his vision, Cailean pulled the dagger from the ground and began to walk towards the dying man. He saw his opponent’s eyes glazed over in fear and pain and his hands claw at the ground and the shaft of wood sticking out from his chest. His gaze went briefly to Cailean but it was clear he saw nothing, and as the blessed soldier plunged the dagger into his heart they rolled back into his head and he breathed his last.

From that day onward, Cailean’s life was a blur of conflicting orders and inexplicable agony. The commander of his army, seeing that a Tach had blessed one of his soldiers, made Cailean into a standard bearer, forcing him to go out into the field of battle in order to intimidate the opposing forces with the supposed divine approval of his cause. That Cailean essentially spent each battle running around frantically stabbing downed warriors with his dagger and screaming about mercy and herons and blood wasn’t of any real concern, and when the blessed soldier vanished suddenly in the middle of a skirmish the commander took it as a sign that the Tach had grown tired of the war and were signaling its impending end. He won the decisive battle in the following months, and Cailean was completely forgotten in the subsequent chaos.

SpoilerThere was a knock on the door. This was JJ’s first clue that something was wrong. The condemned building he lived in featured a giant hole in the wall next to the door. Anyone who knew him, just came through that, and anyone who wanted to hurt him came through that anyways. JJ paused the megaporn that was playing on his glasses and picked up his Roomsweeper.

“Who is it?” he called, trying to disguise his voice as a woman’s.

“Mr. Jacobs, we know you’re in there.” A stern voice came from the other side of the door. JJ let out a low stream of curses. “We’d like to have a talk with you.”

The cursing softened as he walked towards the door. “Sheila…” he whispered into his headset.
A digital voice spoke into his earpiece, “Satellite imagery shows two large men, business suits. I’m detecting a smartlinked gun on each of them.”

“It would make my fucking day if those suddenly didn’t work Sheila.”

“Roger that.”

It occurred to JJ before he opened the door that maybe these people weren’t here about the break-in at the Smithson Megacorps R&D department. Maybe these thugs weren’t here because he stole everything that he could fit into his pockets. That maybe they weren’t here for that mysterious tube, or for Sheila. Maybe it was a sales call or something. JJ put on his friendliest face and opened the door.

“What the fucking fuck do you motherfuckers want?”

“Hello Mr. Jacobs, we’re here on behalf of Smithson Corporations.”

Fuck.

“You were seen fleeing the premise with a large quantity of stolen goods. We’ve come to retrieve them.” The brown-haired man on the right said. Both men were equally tall, buff and intimidating. In fact, they looked nearly identical except for their hair color.

“That’s racial profiling asshole! You got no proof that that thief was me.”

“No less than 17 cameras recorded your face as you committed the theft.” Spoke the black-haired man.

“I’ve got a brother that looks exactly like me! It was probably that good-for-nothing you’re looking for!”

“The tracking tags in the stolen goods lead directly to this ‘house.’”

“He probably stashed them here when he was visiting last week!”

“You’re currently wearing one of the stolen commlinks on your arm.”

“Your face is wearing a stolen commlink!”

“Mr. Jacobs, cooperate or we will retrieve the company property by force.” The brown-haired man peered down at JJ from behind his cyberglasses. It was a look that said he wouldn’t even bat an eye to blowing a man’s head off.

JJ glared back up at him in silence for a moment. Then with a resigned sigh, his shoulders slumped.

“Well, you got me. You leave me no choice but to return your company’s possessions straightaway.”
He unbolted the door and let it swing open. “After all, you brainless muscle types could probably snap me half with one hand.” He stepped back and beckoned for them to step inside. “There’s simply no way I could bea—SUCKER PUNCH!” JJ lobbed a sudden left hook from nowhere at the black-haired man’s face. The punch got nowhere near as the man grabbed JJ by the hand and picked him up. He pulled him up to eye level and gave him the least amused stare JJ had ever seen.

“That’ll be enough, Mr. Jacobs.”

“The fucking hell it is!” JJ yelled as a sudden surge of electricity surged out of his metal limb and into the brute. The man staggered back and dropped JJ, who immediately gave him another shock punch to the face. Black fell to the ground.

“Ha take that, bitch!”

JJ’s gloating was quickly halted by a big meaty fist connecting with his chest and sending him sprawling into the house. JJ was already drawing his Roomsweeper when Brown pulled his gun out and pulled the trigger.

Click.

“Thank you Sheila!” JJ yelled in a singsong voice as he fired a hail of pellets at Brown. The shot caught him in the shoulder, but didn’t seem to actually do anything. Brown looked angrily at JJ, then at his gun. He tossed the firearm aside, pulled out a buck knife and charged. JJ shrieked and dove into the next room, slamming the door behind him.

“Sheila, why the hell didn’t you tell me he had a knife on him?!” JJ ran down a hallway as he heard the door behind him shatter.

“I’m sorry James, it was beyond my range of detection.” JJ ducked into the kitchen. Propped up in the corner was the big mysterious tube case. One of the things they were looking for assumedly.

“Dammit Sheila, that’s a big motherfucking knife out there!” he picked up the tube and made for the next room. Maybe if he could reach the back door he could make a break for it. Big footsteps sounded from the hallway. “Are you still connected to his network?”

“I have access to all of his systems, yes.” The kitchen door exploded open as Brown burst in, blood trickling down his arm. He spotted JJ holding the tube, stopped for a moment, then thought better of it and lunged forward.

“Hit him with the Megaporn!” JJ flinched as Brown ‘s attack abruptly stopped. There was silence for a moment as a look of horror spread across Brown’s face.

“Oh god my eyes!” he screamed, clutching at his cyberglasses. “What the hell is this?! Why would someone even imagine this!?! Augghh!!” Brown’s suffering was cut short as JJ swung the tube case into the side of his head and knocked him out cold.

“C’mon Sheila let’s get out of here before he come to.” JJ slung the tube across his back and made a beeline for the back door. Standing in front of it, though, was Black. In one hand was his gun, in the other, the smartlink system he had ripped out of it.

“Sheila, this one’s smarter...”

Black raised the gun and JJ’s hands went up with it. “End of the line, Mr. Jacobs.”

The shot fired, but the bullet hit the house behind. JJ had disappeared.

SpoilerThe world of Ivennia was not unlike Earth. While the species that it harboured were quite different to what Earth has, the Kyriel race was quite like humanity in almost every way. Their society was quite different in that they did not waste lives and resources fighting themselves, as the planets indigenous wildlife was fiercer than humans would have ever encountered. At the time, the Kyriel race was as advanced as humanity was during the beginning of the twentieth century. Their militaries where not as wide spread as one per nation. Instead they pooled into one incredibly large taskforce to deal with the populations problems without distinction. While they could deal with the larger members of the wildlife, what they couldn’t protect Kyriel society from was an alien invasion. It was not an invasion of an advanced life form that wanted peace or war. This alien race consisted of a spore, nothing else. It appeared in something first assumed to be an asteroid that would burn up in atmosphere, and rain into the ocean. What it did instead was survive the atmospheric entry to detonate before hitting the water. Across the globe small white spores floated with the wind. It took a few hours for one scientist to ascertain that this spore was radioactive. While it did not give out dangerous levels of normal radiation, it gave out something different, something unique. The radiation it gave out mutated Kyriel DNA at an alarming rate. A few days after exposure, the first hit of the race began to rapidly mutate into beings fiercer than the most dangerous of animals. They grew, and mutated, and evolved into large, crazy monsters. On the exact opposite of the globe the military acted, sealing off a dozen thousand Kyriels that had only marginal exposure to the spore. They were each tested before entry, and each person was more exposed than the last. They had to stop admitting people, both from overexposure and lack of space. Those that survived lived several hundred metres under the surface. Those on the surface did not survive. The original monsters purged the planet with a blanket of fire. Anybody that ventured onto the surface never returned, so it was sealed off to keep them safe. While that included the air and meant that all the oxygen left underground would run out, something unexpected happened. The radiation caused by the spores became intelligent. It forced the bodies of everyone affected to mutate rapidly. It was an extremely painful, but necessary process. Their bodies no longer took up so much oxygen, and new levels of breathable air were created somehow. They did not have the equipment to fully examine their bodies in detail, and therefore the secret of these mutations was never found. With little trust in them, a lot of time and effort was spent creating a renewable air source so that they could live like regular Kyriel again. Once an air supply had been created, their bodies returned to normal. Fast forward four hundred years. A society was formed after the first 50 years had passed. They had long abandoned the idea that the surface would become habitual again. There was nothing left, just scorched earth and deadly levels of toxins in the air. Society has changed drastically with the introduction of mutation ranks. Scientists eventually discovered a way to test for mutation levels in blood, marking it with a percentage. If someone’s DNA was completely rewritten, they were 100% mutated and were Rank A. Such people were, by martial law, to be killed on the spot to prevent another outbreak of rampaging giants. No such person was ever found which was a relief to many people. B class was 50%, while AB would be anything closer to 75%. That was how they were marked. Each year lower and lower ratings were found. Any signs of mutations had all but vanished after four hundred years.

Spoiler

Shutup nobody liked the eyes so I put them away.

SpoilerMember of a famous Jazz band and sidekick to its leader (who is also a vigilante hero), Elimine has been exposed to many different situations from barfights and turf wars to two-headed guardian lions and one awkward event with an immortal who enjoyed limericks. Over the course of her adventures she has learned how to wield a sword, trombone and among other ridiculous things as weapons of deadly force. During her musical career she is used to hauling equipment, playing music and fighting evil. Elimine has become fairly strong and well versed in music playing and problem solving.

Becoming a famous musician was all Elimine ever wanted from life. Her parents insisted that she become a doctor or a lawyer, or anything that would support them when they became old. “There’s no future as a freelance musician,” they always told her, “if you aren’t famous now with your little garage band, you never will be. Give it up Elli.” Heartbroken but determined, she put herself through college as a music major, joining every concert and music group she could while alienating her family. Graduating in the top half of her class, she set out to lounges and bars across the country in the hopes of finding a band that would take her on.

It was at one event like this where she met current band. She sat as close to the front as she could, all her worldly possessions (her personal trombone) with her. When the band finished and left, she got up to follow, planning to do anything she could to let them sign her on. The interview went great, she really matched some of the other members, and her audition was even better: everyone admitted that she was innovative, original, the lot. The only drawback was that they couldn’t afford another member, but would surely take her the moment another member left.

Miserable, Elimine left, and was promptly mugged around the corner. Threatening her with a knife, the man demanded all her money and jewelry. Owning no jewelry and broke, she told him so and that she had nothing to give him. He then demanded her instrument, figuring to at least make some money by selling it, and that was the last straw. No way was she going to lose her only chance at a working life. She swung the case at him as hard as she could, breaking the case as well as several parts of the man’s face. When the band ran around the corner after hearing a fight they found the man facedown with Elli sitting on his back, crying. She was fine, but her case was broken. The head of the band came up to her saying that if she could handle herself that well in a fight then the band, and he, had a use for her.

Thinking he meant security, Elli agreed with the hopes that the band would take her on at a later date. Instead, much to her surprise, they took her on immediately. On the road between shows, she found out why when their leader took her aside. “You know we’re a band, but I fight crime in my off time,” he explained to her. “You’re…joking, right?” “No, I’m dead serious, and I want you to join me. Someone like you could be just the help I need.”

She mostly just watched at first, but eventually started lending a hand as well, and then one day started looking for “evildoers” on her own. Knowing that she was hooked, her leader let her know that, as his sidekick, they would have plenty of things to fight over their adventures, since there is “Adventure everywhere you look for it.”

During one such adventure, Elimine and her leader (whom she does simply call “Leader”) travelled to a realm far different from her own. Though they fought well in this shadow realm, she was separated from Leader and overwhelmed by massive amounts of dark energy. When he managed to fight his way to her, she had been in contact with so much dark energy that she had, in a panic, managed to harness it and bind one of the creatures of that realm to her: a creature of darkness so horrible that it is more shadow than animal. A Black Cat. As an ephemeral being, it could only be stunned or contained but never truly, permanently killed. Her survival tied to a creature that had once tried to kill her, Elimine instead used that bond to have the cat draw as much of the energy out of her as it could in an attempt to save her. It was unable to draw out all of the dark energy, but what remained was not only under Elimine’s full control, giving her an affinity for darkness and limited power, but had also altered her physical appearance in a minor albeit disconcerting way. One small part of her hair was now black and waved as though in a gentle breeze.

Though they emerged from that adventure victorious, her personality from then on has always been more on-edge and her band-mates and friends have taken to handling her with “kid-gloves” by always being on their best behavior around her. They couldn’t know that her power gets away from her when she sleeps, and her hair – its physical manifestation – tried to strangle her in her sleep every night and stopped her from getting real sleep. It wouldn’t cut since it didn’t seem to have a physical form to cut, escaped hair ties and indeed, restraining in every way. She had begun to adjust to less sleep, and was about to embark on what would have been her greatest adventure, when she suddenly disappeared with no notice to the band or Leader to where she went.

SpoilerQuantos has the ability to slow down or speed up time of an object, effectively allowing himself to slow air to create spontaneous shields, or speed up walls so they can passed through. Of course as any action in space-time has an equal reaction, this causes the substance that he uses as coolant to be used up, and too much use will cause his time manipulation apparatus to malfunction. Quantos has the ability to time travel, however it requires a ridiculous amount of power to pull off.

SpoilerA gunmetal-grey spheroid the size of a Giant Star (~3 Tm diameter). It houses one-tenth of the entire surviving population of the universe from which it originates, mostly in physical stasis. For the purposes of this contest, it has been reduced to the size of a large beach ball (~1 m diameter).

Cryogenics, biomechanics, and nanotechnology have sufficiently advanced that, while a body may be frozen and inert, the mind can be transferred to a mechanical matrix set to the specifications of the user, while the body remains indefinitely preserved, hence “physical stasis.” Most of the passengers are in such stasis at any given time, though many have opted to remain “awake.” Natural lifespans are impressive even without cloning, cybernetics, or stasis, and while generations have passed since the last galaxy died, a large portion of the population still remembers living on or near a planet.

The societal hierarchy of each of The Ten has diverged significantly in that time. VII still houses a parliamentary structure, though the governing council is more of a figurehead at this point. Most of the power lies with VII’s High Admiral and her bridge crew; some might claim an oppressive, militaristic dictatorship, but there’s been no opportunity for abuse of power in the centuries of drifting through empty space. The people are happy, as they can occupy themselves in any (virtual) reality they please. The crew is content; while they have to manage a ship the size of a large sun, most of the systems are automated or controllable from a virtual interface. There haven’t been any critical emergencies in a very long time, since there’s been nothing to cause any.

SpoilerThe universe was, by and large, at peace. The War had concluded; so long none remembered its cause but historians, so costly the casualties measured in quadruple-digit exponents, so destructive as to reduce whole galaxies to nebulae. The resultant technological advancements elevated all peoples to the status of demigods. Minds could be copied into computers the size of marbles, matter could be rearranged on a whim, and people began to focus on occupation as recreation rather than necessity. The Universe was united under a single governing body composed of the brightest minds of the time. Life was easy and pleasant.

Then the universe collapsed.

The Big Crunch was a very gradual process, but it was inevitable. Despite knowing it'd happen for millennia, nobody thought to try and stop it until much too late. all their abilities to manipulate matter and energy, the citizens of the universe could not stop their reality from slowly collapsing into a mind-bogglingly large black hole.

So they didn’t.

They ran. They could only run. The High Council of the Unified Species had ten planetships constructed to carry refugees as far from the singularity as possible, picking up more migrants and materials as they fled. Eventually, the universe settled down into a single massive sphere of matter, and ten comparatively-minuscule dots crawling away into infinity.

Years passed into decades, and decades to centuries. Hope was not lost, for the citizens of the universe had escaped the death of all things and had nothing more to hope for. Planets no longer existed, just simulations of planetary environs replicated by the ship, but that was enough for all but the oldest and most nostalgic. Research into escaping to parallel universes proceeded, but gradually slowed as experiments produced no appreciable results and the citizens of VII grew used to their new home. Life was normal, after a fashion, and the people were content once again.



Then this happened.

SpoilerThat's right, folks. The first round is the secret military base masquerading as a Denny's, as seen in Headbucket. Read through a bit. For all intents and purposes, the base has been infinitely "mirrored," to offer the contestants more room to maneuver.

SpoilerHope Lucky wasn't too out of character NotTheAuthor. I can always go back and change it.

SpoilerIt turns out that I have failed to explain reserves in the original post. Basically, when somebody reserves, they have "three hours"* to post; in actuality, this is more like "however long it takes until the post is done or everybody else is starting to get really bored and want to post already." I don't hold anyone at fault for this other than myself, but hope this will be followed in future.

Thank you~