Sign Up Amateurs

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[font="Lucida Sans Unicode"][center][size="3"][u][b]Amateurs[/b][/u][/size]

[size="2"]I thought it would be easy to be a superhero. I thought it would be fun, and I'd get famous and get all the girls and the money I wanted. Don't get me wrong, I knew I'd get my ass kicked a few times along the way, but I never let that stop me.

I was a ******* moron.

I realised this blindingly obvious fact as I sat, tied to a chair in the middle of an abanoned warehouse, a single overhead light creating a pool of light around me, in the middle of the darkness. My own blood drenched the front of my costume, and my head hung forwards, more blood dribbling from the mouth of my ripped, ruined mask. A much older, tougher man paced around me, running his bloodied fingers through his salt-and-pepper hair. He was well-dressed but unkempt at the same time, sweating and breathing heavily, his designer Italian shirt-sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

[b]"We can do this one of two ways, you little son of a *****,"[/b] he snarled, a hint of Italian in his accent,[b] "You can tell me where the rest of you assholes are, or I can start cutting your ******* fingers off and listen to you scream, and then you tell me. Your choice, hotshot."

"I told you,"[/b] I groaned weakly, trying to lift my head to look this bastard in the eye, [b]"I don't know them...we all work alone..."[/b]

Christ, I can be an idiot sometimes...

[b]"Fine,"[/b] said the man, matter-of-factly, wandering over to the metal table set up a few feet from me and picking up an enormous Bowie knife, looking at the blade as it glinted in the harsh electric light,[b] "Let's go to work."[/b]

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Ok, it gets pretty gruesome in a second, so let's skip back to the beginning. I'm no bad-ass superhero, I'm just an idiot with the right combination of loneliness and ambition, and access to a makeshift costume. But as I discovered, there are people out there who don't take too kindly to a stupid kid dicking around in their business.

I'm not the only one, either. Through some weird twist of fate, or a mass outbreak of mental retardation, a whole bunch of people in this city decided to do the same. Some of them are on morally righteous quests for justice, others are just out to commit some acts of violence on petty criminals, while some, like me, are just well-meaning morons trying to do some good in a broken system.

This is their story.

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Welcome to Amateurs, a potentially brutal but darkly funny tale of life as a wannabe hero, living in the real world. Think Kick-Ass but on a broader scale, involving far more characters and a much bigger world.

Your story in this RP is your own, at least at first. If you wish to do a superhero origin story then that's fine, if you want your character to be much further along in his or her quest then that's fine too. The only things I am insisting on at the moment is that there are no supervillains in this world, only superheroes. For now, at least, you are fighting against standard criminals, whether you're picking off petty robbers and muggers, or working your way through violent gangs of organised criminals.

As far as content goes, pretty much anything goes as long as there is a reason. Sex, violence, foul language are all fine, but if they are portrayed gratuitously and for no reason then I will ask you to change things. This is a realistic RP, so keep that in mind.

Other than that, just have fun! Your character will be fairly isolated at the beginning of the RP, but there will be team-ups and the stories will intertwine as the RP goes on, so anything goes really!

Here is what you need to sign up:[/center]

[b]Secret Identity (optional)
Real Name:
Age:
Gender:
Appearance:[/b] picture or detailed description is good, both gets you extra brownie points!
[b]Personality:[/b] a reasonable length description of your character's personality, use your common sense when it comes to length
[b]Short Bio:[/b] include some details about your personal life, preferably with some reason for why you decided to become a hero.
[b]Notable Relationships:[/b] anything that would be compromised by your second life as a superhero?

[b]Hero Identity
Superhero Name:[/b] anything goes, really. It can even have swears if you want to!
[b]Superhero Appearance: [/b]basically, what does your costume look like?
[b]Equipment:[/b] you can go a bit nuts with this, as long as it is (probably) technically possible, and make sure it reflects your secret identity's financial status. For example, a teenage hero-wannabe is going to have much worse equipment than a billionaire playboy with access to hi-tech equipment.
[b]Special Skills:[/b] what makes you a good(ish) hero? Combat skills are probably helpful, anything to do with agility would maybe come in handy too, but what specifically can you do that no-one else can?

As you can see, I have left the Secret Identity as an optional extra in case anyone wants to reveal their secret identity as the RP goes on, but obviously use your common sense and put things like approximate age and gender in your Hero Identity.

Here is mine as an example:

[b]Secret Identity
Real Name:[/b] Alexander "Alex" Preston
[b]Age: [/b]23
[b]Gender:[/b] Male
[b]Appearance:[/b] Alex is a fairly average guy - he's a little under 6 feet tall, skinny but muscular in a sinewy way, with shaggy light brown hair and striking blue eyes. He wears a pair of thick-rimmed square glasses most of the time, unless he can be bothered to put contacts in, and dresses comfortably but scruffily, usually baggy jeans, t-shirts and shirts with sneakers of various types on his feet.
[b]
Personality:[/b] Alex is laid-back and usually easy conversation, but he often puts up barriers between himself and others to make sure he doesn't get hurt as he has done in the past. As such, he is a perfectly nice guy, but is often fairly lonely. He is usually good-humoured and thoughtful, however, and doesn't take many things too seriously, usually using humour as another mechanism to prevent himself from getting hurt. He is, essentially, good-natured but with a darkness behind his eyes, a weight on his shoulders.

[b]Short Bio:[/b] After losing his mother at the age of 6 in what was later revealed to him to be a gang-related incident, Alex became very closed-off and insular. This lasted for a number of years, until a group of close friends at high school brought him out of his shell and he became the confident, happy young man he is today.

However, when he turned 22 and had just moved out of his father's house, word came that his father had been caught in more gang-related violence and murdered. However, instead of turning in and becoming insular and uncommunicative once again, he was filled with a burning need for justice and vengeance, not against the perpetrators personally, but against the whole broken system.

Out of this need, the hero known as Enigma was born. It took him a long time, and a fair few beatings and a large amount of hospital time and bills, but he gradually raised his success rate and became a competent if not spectacular superhero.

To this day, he manages to maintain both his everyday job as an engineer and his superhero identity with a relative degree of success. The job also allows him to develop new weapons for himself and a few other superheroes who have sought out his help through his anonymous made-to-order website.

[b]Notable Relationships:[/b] Alex has always been fairly successful with the ladies, but he doesn't tend to hold on to girlfriends for too long - his late-night activities tend to get in the way of any meaningful relationships, but he's been seeing a girl named Becky for around a month now and things seem to be going well.

[b]Hero Identity
Superhero Name:[/b] Enigma
[b]Superhero Appearance: [/b]Enigma's costume is functional rather than flamboyant, consisting of a high-collared black combat jacket with a large red letter "E" in a circle emblazoned on the back, a pair of black combat trousers with a red stripe down either leg, black boots and gloves and a black balaclava, with only the eyes visible, made of thin but strong mesh which allows him to breathe easily even without a mouth-hole. He used to have a cape, but found that it got in the way more than anything, so his current costume is designed for ease of movement more than making a statement about his hero identity.
[b]Equipment:[/b] Enigma uses very little permanent equipment, preferring to improvise and use anything that is to hand, whether it's blunt instruments or something more intricate, like a lighter and a can of hairspray. He does, however, carry a homemade weapon which he likes to call a "ShockStick", essentially a telescopic baton which can be charged up and used as a taser for non-lethal takedowns.
[b]Special Skills:[/b] For a 23-year-old, Enigma is a surprisingly effective hand-to-hand combatant and, having trained for a short while as a gymnast when he was younger, is also quite agile, able to make somewhat death-defying leaps between buildings and fight in an unusually acrobatic fashion.
Also, as previously stated, he runs a made-to-order equipment service from his workshop, which offers to make any weapons or equipment for the budding superheroes anonymously. He uses his skill as an engineer to create the orders and leaves the packages in previously-specified locations, receiving the money via wire transfer a few days earlier. This also comes in handy making equipment for himself, and he usually saves the best for himself.

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That should be all you need to know, PM me if you have any questions for now, if there's enough interest in this then I'll make a Backstage thread for it. Happy creating![/font][/size]