#meraverse

Taking children to battle is a monster's game. Trying to keep them from being heroes is a fool's errand. Thus, sidekicks. The first sidekick was Comfort, the boy-healer who supported Lady Liberty, and he set the standard for many that would come after for years. Playing support, generally avoiding direct action confrontation, allowed to help, as he would whether he was allowed to or not, but under conditions. This worked, for a long time. There were missteps, there were mistakes, there were even tragedies. But no one thought there was a better way. Until Viscera. When he killed the Sidekick Squad, strung up their bodies for their mentors to find, drove said mentors to violence and madness, he broke something, in the hero community and the hearts of the public. Sidekicks were banned for years, policed with hovering relentlessness. Children are not to be in battle. It is insane they were ever allowed to be. 

But they wanted to be. And they would be. Heroes are too inspiring. The thrill is too tempting. To rebel against authority is an act of childhood in and of itself. And when you have power, and you can help someone, you do. That’s what they’d been taught, if not directly, by proof, by spacemen from the sky and those with nothing but masks and wits. So they would go it alone, in secret. And some would succeed. Others would get hurt, or worse. You can stop some, but only so many. And if they do it alone, there’s no one to help them. 

The Instant, being the fastest being in the universe by a wide margin, is critical to keeping the world safe from an ever increasing number of world ending threats. While most civilians are of the perception that things have “calmed down” since the silver age of heroism, the opposite is in fact true, and the Instant Protection Network is perhaps the only reason for our planet’s continued existence. 

The process, on the surface, is simple. A set of scanners, a world wide network, monitors for intense energy signatures and distortions of all kinds. This could range from nuclear fission to gravitational implosions, or matters more arcane and less scientifically understood. The Network notifies the Instant, who deploys with functionally zero delay to resolve the issue before anyone can be hurt. No less than 5 attempts to create a black hole on the Earth’s surface by 3 different villains (and one heroic accident) have been thwarted with no casualties through this method. The Instant Defense Network is what the Instant’s time is almost entirely devoted to, so they don’t appear on missions with the rest of the Protectorate except in the direst circumstances, and even with their speed, they must delegate. Energy is the primary concern for them, and they must determine what to leave to other heroes, and what is truly an IPN level crisis. 

Behind the scenes, the network is a marvel of bioengineering, with closely guarded secrets to its functioning. No technology on Earth could process, transmit, and convey the information at the necessary speeds, so a new technology was created, by using cloned grey matter and nerves from the Instant’s own brain. Nothing else could’ve done it. But how does the information travel? Supposedly, these nerves stretch in a network throughout the world, each connecting to a regional sensor node, all coming back to wherever the IPN HQ is located. Such an experimental technology is dangerous. Thank goodness the Instant’s allies don’t know who really built it, or trouble may brew…

Under the guidance of their CEO Alonzo "Lon" Jevity the Tenth and his near identical ancestors, the Eternal Power Company has been the leader in global energy sales and innovation in new ways to provide power to a world with increasing demand to fuel strange technology (and occasionally doomsday devices) Recently, they have come under criticism for somehow coming into possession of the Eon Beam, a futuristic weapon that ages its target tens of thousands of years in seconds. Previously, this item has been the focal point of schemes by villains such as Chronovore, The DieVergent and Madam Forever- to name a few, and was THOUGHT to currently be in the possession of the Protectorate. The EPC uses the Beam to turn bones of livestock, bought en mass from the agricultural industry, into fossils, for the purpose of replenishing the worlds quickly draining supply of fossil fuels. Supporters call this the only long term solution to the energy crisis that would not require complete restructuring of the world's energy infrastructure, critics point out that doubling down on fossil fuels will make a host of environmental issues work. But business is booming, and if the Protectorate has tried to retrieve the beam, they clearly did not succeed.

On New Year's Day, 1986, Ambrose Black, the hemokinetic serial killer supervillain better known as Viscera, murdered Cub, Sparrow, Hint Kid, Awe, and Miss Mortar (Identities Redacted) and displayed their body in a very public fashion as revenge for them putting him away three years prior. stringing them up on the statue of Paragon in Probus City Center. The fallout of this triggered the “Dark Age of Heroes” (Also known as the Bronze Age), as Lone Wolf (Lobo Cazador), Aerie (Jan Vogelhüter), Clue-Keeper (Helena Sagebrush), Shock (Identity Unknown), and The Bricklayer (Clay Martins) championed a violent vengeance quest that spiraled into a culture of fear and a cycle of revenge. The public turned against the very idea of sidekicks and the endangerment of meta-youth in a way not previously so consistently felt, a persisting sentiment among older generations to this day. The founding of Prospects Academy in ‘88 was a direct response to this, led by the Protectorate of the time and the original sidekick, Comfort.

Excerpt an interview with Paragon on THE SHOWDOWN with Cathy Creighton (Circa 2010)

C - “Recently, reports have emerged, particularly in the American Midwest, of the Prayers for Paragon movement gaining strength. Do you have any comments on that?” P - “Sorry, I’m afraid I haven’t heard of that. People are praying for me?” C - “They’re praying TO you. Congratulations. You’ve reached godhood. Only took you coming back from the dead to do it.”

P - “Oh, I’m um, flattered I supposed, but there’s really no need. I’m not a god.”

C - “Why not? Your devotees would argue the woman who stitched reality itself back together is as close to God as any of us will ever get to know.” P - “Sorry, I think you misunderstood. A god is something specific, at least the gods I know.”

C - “The ones you know?”

P - “Yes, like well. I suppose you might not recognize them. But the gods I know are all sort of- how do I put this? They’re stories. Living stories. Remembrance, worship, and belief help fuel them. And I understand that this might disqualify them from godhood in many cultures, such an ability to be quantified, but gods as I understand them have a specific definition, a criteria I don’t meet.” 

C - “So, you aren’t like them because you aren’t powered this belief or outside consciousness?” P - “Among other things, but that’s probably the main one.” C - “Are you weaker than them?” P - “....”

C - “For example, in a fight, who would win? I imagine you must have fought them if you met them, that’s what heroes do!” Creighton winks to camera, conspiratorially.

P - “Yes, I’ve fought some gods. We’ve resolved our differences since then, though.”

C - “Did you win?” P - “....Yes.” C - “So if they are deserving of worship, why wouldn’t you be? Then again, I suppose you never said you aren’t, just that you aren’t a god.” P - “Well hang on, I didn’t think you would assume I-” C - “You heard it here first folks. The old gods are dead, and Paragon killed them!” P - “I told you I didn’t kill any-”

A bullet train with a hungering maw rips through time in space swallowing warriors for motives unknown. Once it has collected its army, they must fight through the train's endless cars to be the last fighter standing, while dealing with whatever else the train has picked up along the way. The Pain Train usually grants some sort of reward to the winner, before depositing everyone (or what's left of them) back in the time and place they were swallowed. The Train’s creator is unknown, its conductor only rumored, but the Train has a will, and it has themes. In the past, it has (in different trials) collected the greatest sword fighters from across the universe, the same warrior from different points in their life, the same warrior but from different alternate timelines, every descendant of Ghengis Khan between the age of 18 and 35, and every attendant of one year’s summer olympics. The trials are always combat. Not always lethal, but usually are. You don’t have to fight, if you don’t want to, of course. But there’s no other way off. There are aged corpses of those who tried. 

The most nefarious minds in villainy, brought together at last! Dr. Half-Life, the master of transformative radiation, with human trials by nuclear fire! Jyvan the Builder, The Mother of Ruin, the alien architect of the most terrifying weapons of war in the galaxy!  Reaperman, The living scythe that commands the dead and consumes the living! The Glutton, the Darkworld ruler-in-absentia, eater of all magic, older than man!  Terrorformist, the pathokinetic who makes the gods tremble in fear! Cambrian, the planets wrath made manifest! And Deathtective, the solver of “unbreakable” cases, killer of the unkillable! Alone, each could bring a city to its knees, on the rare occasions their egos let them work together, the world is at their knees!