Profile: Morrison Falconer
May. 19th, 2025 06:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
noheroics
M. Falconer
"I never wanted to be a hero, at least not like they were. I liked numbers. Numbers were safe. Numbers came home every night, and if I got them wrong they didn't haunt me in my sleep."
QUICK FACTS
APPEARANCE
PERSONALITY
HISTORY
WORLD
ET CETERA
"I never wanted to be a hero, at least not like they were. I liked numbers. Numbers were safe. Numbers came home every night, and if I got them wrong they didn't haunt me in my sleep."
QUICK FACTS
APPEARANCE
PERSONALITY
HISTORY
WORLD
ET CETERA
QUICK FACTS.
NAME: Morrison Falconer
NICKNAMES: N/A
AGE: 32
HEIGHT: 5'11"
WEIGHT: 162lbs
HAIR: Brown
EYES: Green
MARITAL STATUS: Single
SEXUALITY: Bisexual
OCCUPATION: CPA
HOMETOWN: Gate City, U.S.A.
PARENTS: Nathaniel Falconer, father (deceased); Callie Caskill, mother
SIBLINGS: None
TRAITS: Intelligent, level-headed, responsible, skeptical
LIKES: Numbers, coffee, quiet mornings, rain
DISLIKES: Traffic, EDM, violence, birds
NICKNAMES: N/A
AGE: 32
HEIGHT: 5'11"
WEIGHT: 162lbs
HAIR: Brown
EYES: Green
MARITAL STATUS: Single
SEXUALITY: Bisexual
OCCUPATION: CPA
HOMETOWN: Gate City, U.S.A.
PARENTS: Nathaniel Falconer, father (deceased); Callie Caskill, mother
SIBLINGS: None
TRAITS: Intelligent, level-headed, responsible, skeptical
LIKES: Numbers, coffee, quiet mornings, rain
DISLIKES: Traffic, EDM, violence, birds
APPEARANCE.
Morrison is a big guy who's always remembered as being smaller. This could be the tendency to slouch, or it could be the fact that he's a quiet, unassuming sort of guy and has worked hard to seem that way. He's a solid 5'11" pushing six feet even, 162 pounds of well-arranged lean muscle in an honestly pretty drab suit. His favorite color is grey and he wears a lot of it, excepting his penchant for brightly colored socks. His sandy brown hair is kept cropped short on the sides and a little longer on top, and is usually worn neatly combed to one side. Large, black-rimmed glasses hide green eyes and complete a look that screams "I majored in math." This is largely accurate.
He doesn't talk much, most of the time. Morrison's happy to listen. When he does speak, his voice is a pleasant, easy tenor that tends towards soothing and polite. When he's upset, which is less often, that voice deepens and hardens and the consonants become clipped and precise. His laugh is just this side of obnoxious, and pretty loud. It's embarrassing. He does tend to speak with his hands, gesturing or waving, and often pushes his glasses up his nose or adjusts the set of the earpieces, especially when stressed or thinking hard. When he walks, it's with a long stride and often with a slight bounce. If you ever catch him out of his de facto suits, he's likely wearing chinos and a t-shirt or his gym clothes. Mostly, if you remember him, it's because you're trying, and he's not.
Morrison is a big guy who's always remembered as being smaller. This could be the tendency to slouch, or it could be the fact that he's a quiet, unassuming sort of guy and has worked hard to seem that way. He's a solid 5'11" pushing six feet even, 162 pounds of well-arranged lean muscle in an honestly pretty drab suit. His favorite color is grey and he wears a lot of it, excepting his penchant for brightly colored socks. His sandy brown hair is kept cropped short on the sides and a little longer on top, and is usually worn neatly combed to one side. Large, black-rimmed glasses hide green eyes and complete a look that screams "I majored in math." This is largely accurate.He doesn't talk much, most of the time. Morrison's happy to listen. When he does speak, his voice is a pleasant, easy tenor that tends towards soothing and polite. When he's upset, which is less often, that voice deepens and hardens and the consonants become clipped and precise. His laugh is just this side of obnoxious, and pretty loud. It's embarrassing. He does tend to speak with his hands, gesturing or waving, and often pushes his glasses up his nose or adjusts the set of the earpieces, especially when stressed or thinking hard. When he walks, it's with a long stride and often with a slight bounce. If you ever catch him out of his de facto suits, he's likely wearing chinos and a t-shirt or his gym clothes. Mostly, if you remember him, it's because you're trying, and he's not.
PERSONALITY.
"Avoids conflict" are probably the two best words to sum up Morrison. He's never understood the lure of good versus evil, of love saves the day, of the grand gesture and the epic failure. It's due in large part to his family. Growing up in a hero household, you really only have one of three options: become a hero because it's in your genes, become a villain because you hate your genes, or end up so devastatingly normal it's practically a superpower in itself. Morrison chose the third route. Heroics were something that got people killed, that ruined as many lives as they saved, that caused wanton destruction and never changed a thing. There were always new heroes, and there were always new villains, and still the little guys on the street got hurt. He doesn't want the responsibility of dozens of lives, if not hundreds, in his hands day after day. It's too much responsibility, overwhelming to say the least. So he turned the other way, and found solace in numbers.
Numbers are Morrison's number one love. He's good at math, he enjoys finding math analogies in everything, especially appreciates classical music and perhaps paradoxically plays jazz piano, partially because of the way it subverts normal mathematical standards. Math is everywhere, and math is something solid he can do. He was managing his own finances long before most kids realize money doesn't magically appear out of nowhere, and had made a considerable amount in the stock market before he graduated from college. He's never been tempted to do anything morally grey with his talent, either, partially because of his upbringing, but more largely due to his innate sense of right and wrong.
If Morrison were a D&D class, he'd be Lawful Good. He believes in organization, in authority providing it speaks from a place of benevolence and knowledge. The laws are there to keep people safe, and he's a big supporter of the unions, as he feels they keep heroes and villains from involving too many innocent bystanders, or from destroying too much city infrastructure. There are times he feels the laws aren't stringent enough, but largely he feels that the system works for the people, not against them, and anyone who disagrees takes for granted all the good that system provides them. He believes in doing what's right above all, in helping people, in being a Good Person. This leads to a certain amount of hypocrisy on his part, as he outright refuses to use his own extranormal abilities to help people. He believes that certain people were meant to do certain things, and that his place is right where he is; doing taxes, helping people to live their lives within their means, to support the system and not try to subvert it.
There's a lot of inherent self-conflict below the surface, with Morrison. His own extranormal abilities mirror those of his parents: he can fly at speeds of over 100 mph, has enhanced strength and durability above that of an average human, possesses lightning-quick reflexes, and is incredibly far-sighted (resulting in a guy who has to wear reading glasses to do paperwork, but can read your license from twenty yards away). Using those abilities, Morrison could easily serve his city in a heroic capacity. The only thing stopping him is how terrified he is of failure. Morrison doesn't want to hold lives in his hands. He's sure he couldn't handle the pressure. He barely made it through the stress of college, and that was with a very specific schedule and plan. Improvisation? A nightmare. He vastly prefers ritual, routine, and habit. That being said, despite being very vehemently opposed to any heroic work, Morrison blames himself entirely for his father's death. If he had been willing to follow in his footsteps, if he'd told his father he had abilities at all, if he'd done anything differently perhaps Nathaniel would still be alive. Or maybe they'd both be dead. Regardless, he carries the guilt for that, and each person he firmly dismisses and sends to the police adds another little 'what if' to that pile of guilt. This has led to many sleepless nights, more and more moments where he finds himself wondering if he shouldn't try it, just once.
There aren't very many people in Morrison's life; he's always tended towards introversion and secrecy, and this hasn't changed at all since his childhood. If anything these days, he's more selective about the people he lets get close, worried they might be more interested in his past than his present. He has a few friends who are more borderline associates, and were either former coworkers or old college classmates, a couple exes of both genders he's still on very vaguely friendly terms with, and his family. His mother he speaks to weekly, and only sees when he can't get out of it: birthdays, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Christmas, the usual. She married her former publicist three years ago, a mostly inoffensive man who keeps trying to get Morrison to branch out into accounting law or working for the film industry, and since then has made Morrison's love life her special project. It makes him nervous, so he stays away as much as possible. The only other family member he will see on a very regular basis is his godfather. Erwin is now in his early sixties and has been retired since the incident back in 2007, but that's only given him more time to spend with Morrison and try to convince him to take up heroing. He blamed himself even more strongly for Nathaniel's death, and has apparently decided to honor his old friend's memory by talking his son into taking up the mantle of the Falconeer. Morrison finds it incredibly irritating, but Erwin also shares stories of his father that aren't just about heroics, stories of his mother before they got married, stories of what it was like growing up other places in other times. Erwin had never set out to be a villain. He just made bad decisions, acted rashly. Morrison respects him for being able to admit it, and for not ever forcing a conversation when he doesn't feel like talking about a thing. They have lunch together at least once a week, and Morrison has bailed the old man out of jail on several occasions after a night of drunk and disorderly or petty larceny.
In general, Morrison comes off as a pretty boring guy. He's a creature of habit, and likes spending most of his time alone. He loves numbers, loves the quiet, makes awful math puns and pets every dog he sees. He's polite, friendly in a very repressed sort of way, but opens up easily once you get him talking. He tends towards sarcastic or snarky answers when upset or irritated, though generally the only way to piss him off is to start pandering towards heroics or to dismiss his job or lifestyle as wrong or unimportant, or to belittle anyone around him. He's got a strong protective streak, and it shows. Physically, he comes across as a little awkward, but that's mostly the result of an unfortunate combination of self-consciousness and careful control of his strength and speed. Overall, he paints a picture of an awkward young man just coming into his thirties and trying to figure out his purpose in life.
Numbers are Morrison's number one love. He's good at math, he enjoys finding math analogies in everything, especially appreciates classical music and perhaps paradoxically plays jazz piano, partially because of the way it subverts normal mathematical standards. Math is everywhere, and math is something solid he can do. He was managing his own finances long before most kids realize money doesn't magically appear out of nowhere, and had made a considerable amount in the stock market before he graduated from college. He's never been tempted to do anything morally grey with his talent, either, partially because of his upbringing, but more largely due to his innate sense of right and wrong.
If Morrison were a D&D class, he'd be Lawful Good. He believes in organization, in authority providing it speaks from a place of benevolence and knowledge. The laws are there to keep people safe, and he's a big supporter of the unions, as he feels they keep heroes and villains from involving too many innocent bystanders, or from destroying too much city infrastructure. There are times he feels the laws aren't stringent enough, but largely he feels that the system works for the people, not against them, and anyone who disagrees takes for granted all the good that system provides them. He believes in doing what's right above all, in helping people, in being a Good Person. This leads to a certain amount of hypocrisy on his part, as he outright refuses to use his own extranormal abilities to help people. He believes that certain people were meant to do certain things, and that his place is right where he is; doing taxes, helping people to live their lives within their means, to support the system and not try to subvert it.
There's a lot of inherent self-conflict below the surface, with Morrison. His own extranormal abilities mirror those of his parents: he can fly at speeds of over 100 mph, has enhanced strength and durability above that of an average human, possesses lightning-quick reflexes, and is incredibly far-sighted (resulting in a guy who has to wear reading glasses to do paperwork, but can read your license from twenty yards away). Using those abilities, Morrison could easily serve his city in a heroic capacity. The only thing stopping him is how terrified he is of failure. Morrison doesn't want to hold lives in his hands. He's sure he couldn't handle the pressure. He barely made it through the stress of college, and that was with a very specific schedule and plan. Improvisation? A nightmare. He vastly prefers ritual, routine, and habit. That being said, despite being very vehemently opposed to any heroic work, Morrison blames himself entirely for his father's death. If he had been willing to follow in his footsteps, if he'd told his father he had abilities at all, if he'd done anything differently perhaps Nathaniel would still be alive. Or maybe they'd both be dead. Regardless, he carries the guilt for that, and each person he firmly dismisses and sends to the police adds another little 'what if' to that pile of guilt. This has led to many sleepless nights, more and more moments where he finds himself wondering if he shouldn't try it, just once.
There aren't very many people in Morrison's life; he's always tended towards introversion and secrecy, and this hasn't changed at all since his childhood. If anything these days, he's more selective about the people he lets get close, worried they might be more interested in his past than his present. He has a few friends who are more borderline associates, and were either former coworkers or old college classmates, a couple exes of both genders he's still on very vaguely friendly terms with, and his family. His mother he speaks to weekly, and only sees when he can't get out of it: birthdays, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Christmas, the usual. She married her former publicist three years ago, a mostly inoffensive man who keeps trying to get Morrison to branch out into accounting law or working for the film industry, and since then has made Morrison's love life her special project. It makes him nervous, so he stays away as much as possible. The only other family member he will see on a very regular basis is his godfather. Erwin is now in his early sixties and has been retired since the incident back in 2007, but that's only given him more time to spend with Morrison and try to convince him to take up heroing. He blamed himself even more strongly for Nathaniel's death, and has apparently decided to honor his old friend's memory by talking his son into taking up the mantle of the Falconeer. Morrison finds it incredibly irritating, but Erwin also shares stories of his father that aren't just about heroics, stories of his mother before they got married, stories of what it was like growing up other places in other times. Erwin had never set out to be a villain. He just made bad decisions, acted rashly. Morrison respects him for being able to admit it, and for not ever forcing a conversation when he doesn't feel like talking about a thing. They have lunch together at least once a week, and Morrison has bailed the old man out of jail on several occasions after a night of drunk and disorderly or petty larceny.
In general, Morrison comes off as a pretty boring guy. He's a creature of habit, and likes spending most of his time alone. He loves numbers, loves the quiet, makes awful math puns and pets every dog he sees. He's polite, friendly in a very repressed sort of way, but opens up easily once you get him talking. He tends towards sarcastic or snarky answers when upset or irritated, though generally the only way to piss him off is to start pandering towards heroics or to dismiss his job or lifestyle as wrong or unimportant, or to belittle anyone around him. He's got a strong protective streak, and it shows. Physically, he comes across as a little awkward, but that's mostly the result of an unfortunate combination of self-consciousness and careful control of his strength and speed. Overall, he paints a picture of an awkward young man just coming into his thirties and trying to figure out his purpose in life.
HISTORY.
Nathaniel Falconer served Gate City as its leading hero, the Falconeer, for nearly three decades before his untimely death. Armed with the power of flight, enhanced strength, and the eyes of a hawk, the Falconeer defended his hometown from many of the most notable names in villainy (Cold Shoulder, Serial Jane, and the Mance, just to name a few), but was perhaps best known for his many-year rivalry with the infamous Black Buzzard. Born Erwin Cox, gifted an advanced mechanical jetpack and trained by the US Army as a secret Cold War weapon, the Black Buzzard was highly intelligent and tactical, with a gift for flying that bordered on unnatural. He was the Falconeer's first opponent, and a constant in a life that was constantly changing. Their epic battles were turned into movies, radio plays, even a stage production with gravity-defying aerial acrobatics, and as in real life, the Falconeer always emerged triumphant.
Nathaniel made quite a life for himself as the Falconeer, his secret identity protected by union law, his income assured, and in 1981 he met the hero Sparrowswift, a woman with the gift of flight much like his own. She was the only one ever able to outfly him, and their wedding was the most televised event of 1982. It was no surprise when later that year, Callie Caskill (née Swift) gave birth to a baby boy who looked to be the very best of extranormal stock. With Nathaniel's dark hair and Callie's green eyes, everyone figured it was only a matter of time before their darling boy started showing other family traits. As Morrison grew older, he looked to fulfill every expectation his parents had: tall, athletically gifted, stronger and faster than most of his classmates--and if he turned out to be a little nearsighted, well, you couldn't win them all.
No, Morrison's eyesight wasn't what worried his parents. It was more the fact that he just seemed so...well, normal. He played soccer, but showed no interest in pursuing sports past the occasional neighborhood game. He joined the Boy Scouts, but did nothing more heroic than raising the most money for the ASPCA charity drive in his troop. Instead, Morrison showed a disturbing tendency to prefer school, excelled in math, did well in language and economics, and showed absolutely no sign of any extranormal abilities. Once he turned seventeen, more than three years past the age where most extranormals started showing signs of talent, his parents were forced to face the unthinkable: their son was human. Nothing more, and nothing less.
It bothered Morrison. How could it not? His father kept trying to find ways to make his clearly latent powers manifest, called doctors, made appointments, and his mother was no better with her consoling talks about how they still loved him anyway, even if he wasn't going to be like them. It all rang hollow when he caught her unaware, looking despondent, disappointed, depressed. He could feel it. And even with that, he couldn't make himself even begin to want powers. It was all too terrifying. He'd watched the broadcasts, as a kid. Everyone watched them, highlights on the news, televised battle royales that were better-filmed than most big-budget movies, even the talk spots on late-night TV. Morrison saw the heroes and villains fight, sure, but he also saw what no one else seemed to: everyone else. The civilians, injured or terrified or both, running for their lives. The still, still bodies the camera crews tried so hard to cut past. The families looking on in tears as their homes were demolished. How could he want to be a part of that? How could he look at his father the same way again, or his mother even, once he realized the consequences of what they did? He couldn't. And so when his powers finally manifested, he hid them completely. No one knew. No one could know. They'd make him go out there, and he couldn't face that. He wanted to help. He didn't want to hurt. To kill, even tangentially, accidentally.
So instead, Morrison decided to completely own his humanity. He'd always been good at school, good with numbers, and when he graduated high school as salutatorian it surprised no one except perhaps his own parents and a few teachers who'd been expecting him to take valedictorian. Tensions had been growing between Morrison and his father for months at this point, and when Morrison decided he was going to go to college out-of-state to pursue a degree in accounting and finance, it started a fight bigger than all those that came before. Morrison walked out, and didn't come back. He and his father spoke twice during his entire six years at college; once when he finished his bachelor's and started his masters, and once at Christmas in 2006, six months before Morrison graduated. By the time he received his diploma and certifications, his father was dead.
Nathaniel had only stopped working for about six months after his son was born. Afterwards, he was back on the job and in the skies, and kept it up long past the age most heroes retired. As the years passed, it was considered a job for the youngsters, the older heroes only turning out for public events and the occasional passing of the torch or team-up affair, just enough appearances to fulfill their union contracts. Nathaniel wasn't one of these, and remained active well into his forties. People said when he reached fifty and continued to fight that he was making a mistake, that he was playing with fire, that men his age shouldn't be putting so much stres on themselves, and people eventually turned out to be right. Nathaniel was 52 that March day in 2007, and had left the house that morning feeling completely fine. When the call came in that the Black Buzzard was robbing First Century bank downtown, the Falconeer was first on the scene. Everyone turned out for a fight between the Falconeer and the Black Buzzard; how could they not? The pair was infamous, their fights the best and the flashiest, with the least amount of damage to their surroundings, the fewest number of casualties. People could watch them fighting above and feel safe. This was due in no small part to the friendship that had developed between these two men and the effort they put into planning and choreographing their moves. It was real, the struggle; there was always the chance that Erwin would get away, that Nathaniel wouldn't take him in, but they both had no desire to see people get hurt, and always fought according to their own personal code of honor.
When Nathaniel suddenly went pale, Erwin had no idea what had happened. He figured some new menace the union hadn't mentioned, some new hotshot showing up to try and save the day or steal his thunder. He looked behind him, and when he looked back Nathaniel was plummeting headfirst in a freefall towards the buildings far below them. He tried to save the man. On that count, everyone agreed. But his jetpack just wasn't fast enough, couldn't get up the speed necessary to catch Nathaniel before he connected with the building and went rocketing through it like a catapulted stone. The casualties for that incident were horrific. Over a dozen dead, a hundred more injured, nearly an entire block leveled in the destruction that followed. The Black Buzzard saved more lives that day than any villain on record, and half the heroes. It wasn't his fault, according to the coroner--congenital heart failure was the official cause of death, his body just couldn't take the strain anymore or the lack of oxygen at higher altitudes--but he retired anyway, and Gate City was left bereft of both its biggest hero and its most notorious villain.
Morrison came home for the funeral. He stayed a week for his mother, then returned to school for his finals, unable to stay any longer out of both necessity and an uncomfortable sense of guilt. If he'd stayed, if he'd lived the life they'd wanted, his father might not have been out there. He could have retired, and Morrison could have been fighting as the Falconeer instead. Instead, he'd gone to college, he'd denied his own abilities, he'd never even mentioned to either parent that he had abilities. But more than ever now, he couldn't handle the idea of stepping in to fill those shoes. So he went back to school, he finished his degree, acquired his CPA certification, and moved back to Gate City to work in a local accounting firm specializing in low-income and disaster-related cases. He joined a part-time basketball league, made a few friends, and led a quiet life for the next three years, until the day his mother's book hit stores.
Callie had taken her husband's death hard. The insurance and union benefit payments were enough to support her, so money wasn't an issue, but they had been a very close couple. Despite counseling sessions, group therapy, and the unwavering support of friends, she was still having trouble coping over a year later. When her psychologist finally suggested she write about her feelings, write a letter to Nathaniel, perhaps, she took it to heart. What began as a letter to her husband, a reminiscing of how they met, turned into her life story--and by proxy, her son's. The published copy had only the thinnest of disguises, names barely changed, his school name not even hidden, and it took all of three months after publication before the first hero request came in. A woman walked into his office and instead of asking him for help with her taxes or contesting an audit, she insisted he was the only one who could save her husband from the mafia family who'd taken him. With much disbelief and figuring it was a fluke, Morrison escorted her to the police precinct and left it at that. But the first woman was followed by another person, and another after that, and another--and finally, eight months after the publishing of My Life in the Skies: an Autobiography of Heroes in Love Morrison finally learned what his mother had done.
Morrison was furious. Considered changing his name, even, an act he was only barely talked out of by his godfather--the former Black Buzzard, Erwin Cox. He should keep his name, Erwin said; changing it would only prove to people that they were right, that he was the son of the Falconeer and Sparrowswift, and that was practically inviting paparazzi. Leaving Gate City was also an equally stupid idea. Other cities weren't nearly as forgiving to heroes undercover, and their methods were harsh enough to skate federal allowances. So he stayed, and fended off every request for heroic intervention, fending off his godfather's sly attempts to get him to try it out, and insisting he was normal until he almost believed it.
Five years later, the requests have tapered off somewhat; there aren't as many people looking for a hero when they walk into his office, and his mother has remarried a completely normal, human man. Morrison's life is as it always has been; work, the little social life he has, games of basketball and the occasional blind date. He tells himself he doesn't need anything more, that he's content, but sometimes he wonders. Sometimes he thinks that maybe one little bout of heroing wouldn't be so bad. Those nights are the worst, and they're more frequent these days. It's only a matter of time before he gives in.
Nathaniel made quite a life for himself as the Falconeer, his secret identity protected by union law, his income assured, and in 1981 he met the hero Sparrowswift, a woman with the gift of flight much like his own. She was the only one ever able to outfly him, and their wedding was the most televised event of 1982. It was no surprise when later that year, Callie Caskill (née Swift) gave birth to a baby boy who looked to be the very best of extranormal stock. With Nathaniel's dark hair and Callie's green eyes, everyone figured it was only a matter of time before their darling boy started showing other family traits. As Morrison grew older, he looked to fulfill every expectation his parents had: tall, athletically gifted, stronger and faster than most of his classmates--and if he turned out to be a little nearsighted, well, you couldn't win them all.
No, Morrison's eyesight wasn't what worried his parents. It was more the fact that he just seemed so...well, normal. He played soccer, but showed no interest in pursuing sports past the occasional neighborhood game. He joined the Boy Scouts, but did nothing more heroic than raising the most money for the ASPCA charity drive in his troop. Instead, Morrison showed a disturbing tendency to prefer school, excelled in math, did well in language and economics, and showed absolutely no sign of any extranormal abilities. Once he turned seventeen, more than three years past the age where most extranormals started showing signs of talent, his parents were forced to face the unthinkable: their son was human. Nothing more, and nothing less.
It bothered Morrison. How could it not? His father kept trying to find ways to make his clearly latent powers manifest, called doctors, made appointments, and his mother was no better with her consoling talks about how they still loved him anyway, even if he wasn't going to be like them. It all rang hollow when he caught her unaware, looking despondent, disappointed, depressed. He could feel it. And even with that, he couldn't make himself even begin to want powers. It was all too terrifying. He'd watched the broadcasts, as a kid. Everyone watched them, highlights on the news, televised battle royales that were better-filmed than most big-budget movies, even the talk spots on late-night TV. Morrison saw the heroes and villains fight, sure, but he also saw what no one else seemed to: everyone else. The civilians, injured or terrified or both, running for their lives. The still, still bodies the camera crews tried so hard to cut past. The families looking on in tears as their homes were demolished. How could he want to be a part of that? How could he look at his father the same way again, or his mother even, once he realized the consequences of what they did? He couldn't. And so when his powers finally manifested, he hid them completely. No one knew. No one could know. They'd make him go out there, and he couldn't face that. He wanted to help. He didn't want to hurt. To kill, even tangentially, accidentally.
So instead, Morrison decided to completely own his humanity. He'd always been good at school, good with numbers, and when he graduated high school as salutatorian it surprised no one except perhaps his own parents and a few teachers who'd been expecting him to take valedictorian. Tensions had been growing between Morrison and his father for months at this point, and when Morrison decided he was going to go to college out-of-state to pursue a degree in accounting and finance, it started a fight bigger than all those that came before. Morrison walked out, and didn't come back. He and his father spoke twice during his entire six years at college; once when he finished his bachelor's and started his masters, and once at Christmas in 2006, six months before Morrison graduated. By the time he received his diploma and certifications, his father was dead.
Nathaniel had only stopped working for about six months after his son was born. Afterwards, he was back on the job and in the skies, and kept it up long past the age most heroes retired. As the years passed, it was considered a job for the youngsters, the older heroes only turning out for public events and the occasional passing of the torch or team-up affair, just enough appearances to fulfill their union contracts. Nathaniel wasn't one of these, and remained active well into his forties. People said when he reached fifty and continued to fight that he was making a mistake, that he was playing with fire, that men his age shouldn't be putting so much stres on themselves, and people eventually turned out to be right. Nathaniel was 52 that March day in 2007, and had left the house that morning feeling completely fine. When the call came in that the Black Buzzard was robbing First Century bank downtown, the Falconeer was first on the scene. Everyone turned out for a fight between the Falconeer and the Black Buzzard; how could they not? The pair was infamous, their fights the best and the flashiest, with the least amount of damage to their surroundings, the fewest number of casualties. People could watch them fighting above and feel safe. This was due in no small part to the friendship that had developed between these two men and the effort they put into planning and choreographing their moves. It was real, the struggle; there was always the chance that Erwin would get away, that Nathaniel wouldn't take him in, but they both had no desire to see people get hurt, and always fought according to their own personal code of honor.
When Nathaniel suddenly went pale, Erwin had no idea what had happened. He figured some new menace the union hadn't mentioned, some new hotshot showing up to try and save the day or steal his thunder. He looked behind him, and when he looked back Nathaniel was plummeting headfirst in a freefall towards the buildings far below them. He tried to save the man. On that count, everyone agreed. But his jetpack just wasn't fast enough, couldn't get up the speed necessary to catch Nathaniel before he connected with the building and went rocketing through it like a catapulted stone. The casualties for that incident were horrific. Over a dozen dead, a hundred more injured, nearly an entire block leveled in the destruction that followed. The Black Buzzard saved more lives that day than any villain on record, and half the heroes. It wasn't his fault, according to the coroner--congenital heart failure was the official cause of death, his body just couldn't take the strain anymore or the lack of oxygen at higher altitudes--but he retired anyway, and Gate City was left bereft of both its biggest hero and its most notorious villain.
Morrison came home for the funeral. He stayed a week for his mother, then returned to school for his finals, unable to stay any longer out of both necessity and an uncomfortable sense of guilt. If he'd stayed, if he'd lived the life they'd wanted, his father might not have been out there. He could have retired, and Morrison could have been fighting as the Falconeer instead. Instead, he'd gone to college, he'd denied his own abilities, he'd never even mentioned to either parent that he had abilities. But more than ever now, he couldn't handle the idea of stepping in to fill those shoes. So he went back to school, he finished his degree, acquired his CPA certification, and moved back to Gate City to work in a local accounting firm specializing in low-income and disaster-related cases. He joined a part-time basketball league, made a few friends, and led a quiet life for the next three years, until the day his mother's book hit stores.
Callie had taken her husband's death hard. The insurance and union benefit payments were enough to support her, so money wasn't an issue, but they had been a very close couple. Despite counseling sessions, group therapy, and the unwavering support of friends, she was still having trouble coping over a year later. When her psychologist finally suggested she write about her feelings, write a letter to Nathaniel, perhaps, she took it to heart. What began as a letter to her husband, a reminiscing of how they met, turned into her life story--and by proxy, her son's. The published copy had only the thinnest of disguises, names barely changed, his school name not even hidden, and it took all of three months after publication before the first hero request came in. A woman walked into his office and instead of asking him for help with her taxes or contesting an audit, she insisted he was the only one who could save her husband from the mafia family who'd taken him. With much disbelief and figuring it was a fluke, Morrison escorted her to the police precinct and left it at that. But the first woman was followed by another person, and another after that, and another--and finally, eight months after the publishing of My Life in the Skies: an Autobiography of Heroes in Love Morrison finally learned what his mother had done.
Morrison was furious. Considered changing his name, even, an act he was only barely talked out of by his godfather--the former Black Buzzard, Erwin Cox. He should keep his name, Erwin said; changing it would only prove to people that they were right, that he was the son of the Falconeer and Sparrowswift, and that was practically inviting paparazzi. Leaving Gate City was also an equally stupid idea. Other cities weren't nearly as forgiving to heroes undercover, and their methods were harsh enough to skate federal allowances. So he stayed, and fended off every request for heroic intervention, fending off his godfather's sly attempts to get him to try it out, and insisting he was normal until he almost believed it.
Five years later, the requests have tapered off somewhat; there aren't as many people looking for a hero when they walk into his office, and his mother has remarried a completely normal, human man. Morrison's life is as it always has been; work, the little social life he has, games of basketball and the occasional blind date. He tells himself he doesn't need anything more, that he's content, but sometimes he wonders. Sometimes he thinks that maybe one little bout of heroing wouldn't be so bad. Those nights are the worst, and they're more frequent these days. It's only a matter of time before he gives in.
WORLD.
The official story is that folks with extranormal genes were born as a result of the combination of nuclear testing and recessive genetics, first cropping up in the 1940s. People will always be happy to blame godless science and bad blood for anything unwanted. One could assume that it's just a cover story, meant to hide government testing, eugenics experimentation, any number of conspiracy theories, but in truth it isn't all that far off. The human genome has always been adaptable and full of surprises. And science...well, science has always provided a means to an end, for certain individuals. It's really the when that's wrong. There have been extranormal humans around as long as humanity itself has existed. The only reason there seem to be more and more of them with every passing day is there's more and more of humanity with every passing day, and everyone's online and connected. They post videos, they trend names, they make entire databases built around speculation and admiration and three seconds of a radio interview. The federal government has yet to make an overall ruling on extrahumans, considering them a minority of a minority, but that could change any day now. Every day, more and more humans are doing awful things, and it isn't just the ones who wear capes and masks. That doesn't stop the world from blaming them specifically, from feeling fear or envy, from wanting to use them. It's only a matter of time, most places, before something goes terribly, horribly wrong and extranormal humans take the fall.
It's not like that, here. Gate City has always had heroes, as far back as anyone could remember. Other cities have had their share, and their share of villains too, but Gate City is the only one that can proudly boast of records stretching back to the mid-1800s, back when it was just some nowhere collection of farms with a trading post defended from trouble by Blackjack Billy Wild. Heroes and villains have been a huge part of the history of Gate City, and it's a town that's very proud of its heritage. Not every hero is lucky enough to have a home like that; in fact, most cities aren't very welcoming of their heroes. Some ban any sort of extranormal from even residing within city limits, and those individuals must apply for work visas with both city and county in order to even cross the city limits. Several cities trend in the opposite direction, welcoming heroes and villains both and relying on them so heavily to attract tourists that masquerading as an extranormal is a lucrative, if dangerous, line of work.
Gate City is about as middle-of-the-road as it gets, and that's thanks in large part to the Unions. 8 chapters for heroes, 9 for villains, and carefully regulated laws that define their interaction. Working together, so to speak, Gate City has shown the world a way to manage extranormals, keeping civilian casualty rates in extranormal-related conflict below 3% for the last eight years. For the last twenty, if you don't want to count that unfortunate incident back in 2007, when the Falconeer's heart failed mid-fight and he plummeted straight into an occupied office building, leveling the block and killing dozens. It wasn't anything anyone could have predicted. No fault of the unions. No fault of anyone, really, not even the Black Buzzard. The villain tried to save him, and was crucial in the rescue efforts that followed. It only proves the point further--union laws work.
But there are always people who think they have a better idea. People with a Plan. And Plans are dangerous.
It's not like that, here. Gate City has always had heroes, as far back as anyone could remember. Other cities have had their share, and their share of villains too, but Gate City is the only one that can proudly boast of records stretching back to the mid-1800s, back when it was just some nowhere collection of farms with a trading post defended from trouble by Blackjack Billy Wild. Heroes and villains have been a huge part of the history of Gate City, and it's a town that's very proud of its heritage. Not every hero is lucky enough to have a home like that; in fact, most cities aren't very welcoming of their heroes. Some ban any sort of extranormal from even residing within city limits, and those individuals must apply for work visas with both city and county in order to even cross the city limits. Several cities trend in the opposite direction, welcoming heroes and villains both and relying on them so heavily to attract tourists that masquerading as an extranormal is a lucrative, if dangerous, line of work.
Gate City is about as middle-of-the-road as it gets, and that's thanks in large part to the Unions. 8 chapters for heroes, 9 for villains, and carefully regulated laws that define their interaction. Working together, so to speak, Gate City has shown the world a way to manage extranormals, keeping civilian casualty rates in extranormal-related conflict below 3% for the last eight years. For the last twenty, if you don't want to count that unfortunate incident back in 2007, when the Falconeer's heart failed mid-fight and he plummeted straight into an occupied office building, leveling the block and killing dozens. It wasn't anything anyone could have predicted. No fault of the unions. No fault of anyone, really, not even the Black Buzzard. The villain tried to save him, and was crucial in the rescue efforts that followed. It only proves the point further--union laws work.
But there are always people who think they have a better idea. People with a Plan. And Plans are dangerous.
ET CETERA.
PB: Seth Gabel
Played at: N/A
Mature content likely, trigger warnings will be used on relevant posts or tags. Mun is fairly open to exploring mature subjects via RP, if in doubt feel free to contact via PM or OOC contact post/HMD.
All creative content relating to characters and concepts within property of writer unless otherwise noted.
Played at: N/A
Mature content likely, trigger warnings will be used on relevant posts or tags. Mun is fairly open to exploring mature subjects via RP, if in doubt feel free to contact via PM or OOC contact post/HMD.
All creative content relating to characters and concepts within property of writer unless otherwise noted.
