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Old 09-06-2020, 11:06 PM   #2
wyze2099
Hench Mutant
 
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Join Date: Jul 2006
Posts: 323
Prologue Session: "Transmutations, Brand New Statements"

The scene takes place in the neighborhood in and around Union Square Park in the summer. A man named Baxter Stockman, scientist and corporate CEO, holds a victory rally for his mayoral campaign now that his only opposition has recently dropped out of the running. Boasting about his "Action, Not Words" platform, he has drawn a crowd in and around the park.

Up the street, Michael Thompson, the man who will be later known as Johann Sebastian Shark, emerges from a neighborhood grocery store, preparing to head home, cook up some steaks, and settle into his weekend.

He's alerted to the sound of a loud explosion, followed shortly by machine-gun fire coming from the park. This sends citizens fleeing in all directions. Michael approaches the park, hoping to usher the panicked bystanders to safety by directing them to the nearest subway entrances. He rolls Charisma to do this, which is a stat he happens to be good at.

A harsh, gravelly voice takes over the loudspeakers as a feline humanoid wearing a white coat with a black armband takes over the podium. He's joined by an entourage consisting of what looks like a blue manta ray in a black t-shirt and tactical cargo pants, a skateboarding lizard, and a bipedal turtle wearing a red mask around his eyes.

He introduces himself as Old Hob, a mutant. He defines mutants as the dirty secrets the government has been keeping from the population. But he claims the humans are the real monsters. He announces that he and his kind are done hiding, being abused, and pretending they don't exist. He claims that rather than believing humans should all die the way he used to believe, now he wants them to feel what he and his kind have felt. Instead of changing hearts and minds, he wants to change everything.

Michael's efforts to clear out the bystanders gets increasingly difficult the closer he gets to Union Square Park. Now he has a clear view of the unfolding situation ... just in time for Old Hob to toss a glowing green object into the crowd. It's a bomb.

The bomb explodes in the crowd's midst, releasing a toxic cloud that causes the crowd to undergo nightmarish bodily transformations. In fact, the more their bodies change, the more they look like animals. Toads, crocodiles, cheetahs, badgers, and other animals of varying descriptions. And Michael himself finds that he's increased in size, his skin has turned scaly and gray, and he now resembles a shark.

The wind carries the green cloud further up the street and into more neighborhoods in the West Side of New York, causing even more of a large-scale panic.

The NYPD and the Earth Protection Force try to restore order by restraining and subduing the fleeing citizens. Three of them attempt to do so with the pacifistic Michael, who discovers that he's far more durable than he used to be. He simply absorbs baton strikes from the officers that would have laid him out even ten minutes ago. However, he finds he's not as susceptible to gas sprayed in the area.

He and other mutated victims awaken later in the gymnasium of a community center. EPF agents and medics are on hand, all of them in hazmat suits. The representaive informs the crowd of the changes that have been made while they were unconscious: all the mutated citizens are being quarantined in a specific area of Manhattan; a wall is beginning to be erected around the affected area as they speak. Unaffected humans are being relocated for their safety, while the infected citizens are told that they are not allowed to leave or make contact with uninfected citizens. Including their family and friends. Food, clothing, and other essential supplies will be shipped in through an official channel at regular intervals.

Naturally, this causes quite a bit of a stir among the mutated citizens. Some are concerned about missing relatives they haven't seen since the bomb went off. Some don't trust the authorities to act in their best interests. All of them are varying degrees of upset that their lives have experienced such a sudden upheaval.

Ever the peacemaker, Michael attempts to calm the rising tempers. He rolls high enough to be successful. At least for now.

The EPF spend the next few hours assigning new living quarters to the mutated citizens who don't already live in the neighborhood. Luckily, Michael does, so he ventures back to his apartment, recovered groceries in hand. He finds that his eight-foot shark form now barely fits in the tiny hallway outside his door.

He greets his next-door neighbor, an old lady who lives with far more cats than the apartment's lease allows. Now she herself has been mutated into a feline form. She opens the door to her own apartment and finds that her own cats no longer recognize, both in appearance and scent. She is devastated by this, as Michael offers a few encouraging words and enters his own apartment, groceries in hand.

Hunger gnaws at him, so he ends up cooking all of the steaks in his apartment blood-rare and goes on a feeding frenzy, his vision tinted red until he finally collapses into bed, exhausted. He breaks his bed in the process.

The wall is completed quickly. Months pass, and Michael and the other citizens slowly adapt to their new status quo, though it is one that becomes increasingly desperate as the walled-off area grows increasingly desperate. Michael adopts the name Johann Sebastian Shark, while the walled-off and neglected section of New York comes to be called ... Mutant Town.

Next Session: "Neighborhood Ruckus"
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TMNT: Mutant Town
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