Hydra

Another Day at the Office

  Metal City, Columbia, parked at the end of a slender peninsula projecting into the Pacific Ocean. It was once a prosperous, charming and peaceful city in the Pacific Northwest. The city was the epitome of life, everyone with a big grin on their face, hostility an idea alien to the city, and the economy booming like it never had been before. Trust was a concept everyone exercised. Good and evil were equally balanced with the cheerful presence of law in the area, they just as friendly as the folk they kept in check. People were so almost frighteningly friendly toward each other. Violence was as low as it had never been, giving Metal City the marvelous accolade "The Most Wonderful City in America". It was like a scene from one of those now old-timey TV shows and movies everyone fawned over. Life was as calm and euphoric as it could be, until August 7th, 1975, when everything changed entirely. 

  At the Weston Power Plant in the southeastern quadrant of the city. The facility had closed for good, due to its toxic emissions. The inside of its towers were coated in a fine layer of soot. Though the details are hazy and mostly forgotten today, the interior of the plant had been set ablaze from supposedly teenagers smoking outside the building, carrying noxious embers and gas into the city. It was warned, though not everyone took the warnings as seriously as they should have. As such, many people breathed in the fumes and embers, expecting their bodies to become destroyed and annihilated with toxins and harmful chemicals. But instead, a peculiar transformation began to take hold. 

  Some people reported "inhumane and supernatural" abilities commonly seen in the pages of comic books and similar types of literature. Some could fly, some could use their minds in ways not intended, some could utilize an element like ice or electricity, and some reported new appendages on their bodies, like wings and extra limbs. While some considered themselves "freaks" with these newfound powers, some decided to take the law into their hands and fight crime in the city, just like a superhero. Those that rivaled them, with the intent of doing harm and causing chaos, decided to use their gifts for evil. What was once a peaceful metropolis soon turned into a comic-influenced battleground of good against evil, and Metal City's quality began to noticeably decline. No one could no longer care. That accolade the city had garnered was now a complete lie. "The Most Wonderful City in America"? That had became a joke in and of itself. The city was torn apart, and that golden and beautiful epitome of a peaceful and harmonious life had disintegrated into memories of yesterday. 

  As years passed, the city remained the battleground. Heroes still fought evil, but with a new generation of powers, villainy began to rise, and heroism began to falter. Without the ability to care any longer, it was far easier to be a villain, and a lot harder to retain goodness and honesty the face of the city with the sinister temptation of stooping to a low level of villainy. Criminal and villainous varmints ripped heroism apart with the intent of making it something they hoped the city would forget about in an effort to spread their agenda, though there's still that strand that wants to remain a hero and battle the torrent of villainy that time produces And with time and darkness, heroism will become a relic of the forgotten past. 

  There's still hope. Wherever there's villainy, there will always be heroism to fight it. That's the truth. Through the ages, there's always been some sort of good to counter the evil. This war is staked in our history, and Metal City's transformation is no different. 

  Current times. Metal City is still that wasteland it's become since the disaster. Power plants and similar facilities poison the air with their emissions. People are about as careless as they've ever been. And in the southwestern quadrant of the city, a dirty, dingy and graffiti-stained metro train slices a path through abandoned buildings and brick towers cut with boarded windows on a trash-littered raised track. Most of the people on the four-car train look the same, apathetic and nearly monochrome, but a man in a purple hooded sweatshirt in the second car colors against the uniformity.