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slippy · Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 1:54 pm Post subject: Neverending Heroes Story

So, I notice nobody has yet suggested a Heroes neverending story (to the best of my knowledge, anyway). If you don't know what a neverending story is, it's one where anyone on the boards can pick up where the last writer left off and continue the story in their own way for as long as they want. Just be aware that someone else may well step in and take over for you, too.

Note: After this initial introduction, this thread is for continuation of the story only. If you want to comment on aspects of the story, please either start a new thread or put your comments in a PM to the relevant writer.

So, I'll kick off with an idea I was going to write as a complete fanfic on my own, but I've got so many other projects on the go, I just don't have the time to devote to it. I'm starting the story towards the end of "Five Years Gone", so it's a kind of parallel world story that can't interfere with the main thrust of the plot.

We pick up the story five years in the future, five years into the rebuilding of New York City. Hiro and Ando have just vanished, returned to the past to try and repair their own future. Nathan, having revealed himself to really be Sylar is locked in battle with Peter while Parkman and his goons are trying to gain entry to the store room...

(Story starts in next post)

slippy · Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 2:05 pm Post subject: Volume 1a - Parallel

In a dark future - tainted with the blood of millions, the deception of many and the lies of one man - is there to be any hope for us lowly creatures at all? When we think that our heroes are lost to us, will one last voice not still sing free in the wires? Will we see them to their end without ever knowing their true worth to us all?

Chapter 1 - False Perspective

(Narrated by Professor Mohinder Suresh)

Joint Forces Headquarters - National Capital Region, Washington DC
5 Years from now...

I struggled in vain to hold the store-room door closed against the attempts of Parkman's homeland security goons to gain entry. It may have been in vain, but my struggles brought Hiro and Ando enough time to escape. Escape back into the past to hopefully prevent this dark future from coming to pass for them. As I felt the brush of air and heard the slight thud of air moving to fill a vacuum, I knew that they had gone and I stepped back from the door. What I saw past the figures of Parkman and his goons as the door burst open must have shown in my face because as a man, they froze and turned on their heels to see the battle taking place before them. Recovering myself quite quickly, I yelled over the earsplittling noise, "They've gone, Parkman! And I think we should all get out of here!"
He couldn't possibly have heard me over the noise, but that look of intense concentration and slight confusion crossed his face before his eyes met mine. "Let's go," he mouthed as he pounded the two goons on the shoulders and, when they turned to him, pointed to the stairwell. We made a run for it. I challenge any man of moderate sense to stand fast and watch those two sillhouetted figures, surrounded in blinding-bright auras of red and blue, sparking and shimmering as they pounded each other with their fists. No, we ran for our lives. The building was coming apart around our ears. The power of those two men was astounding, the fury and rage spilling out of them obvious in it's intensity. It didn't take a geneticist to figure out that this was the two most powerful anomalistic entities I knew of at the time - Peter and Sylar - locked into the battle of their lives. Though the battling nemeses were glowing and shimmering with radiated energy and bristling with unmeasurable power; though the solid walls of the JFHQ crumbled and split under the forces being unleashed, I saw that the two were still fighting with little more than fists and fury as I turned for one last look before I disappeared around the corner of the stairwell. This fact does not undersell the sheer destructive ability of these two powerful men, but more illustrates that the rage which can come over us all is not tempered by evolution, and indeed can hamper even these two's creative potential as completely as it blinds the rest of us. No finesse of skill, no tapping into borrowed gifts here. Such might! Such devastation.
Reaching the bottom of the stairs, I didn't slow as I joined the crowd of people flooding out into the street. I managed to pick Parkman's loping gait out of the crowd and made my way towards him. I reached him just as he'd broken from the group and was in the process of reaching down to his knees for support. "You're unfit, Parkman," I said as I reached down to put my hand on his shoulder, "You were always unfit."
"You traitor!" He breathed, still looking at the ground. "You damned, filthy trait..." he stopped, raised his head and looked at me, that so-common confusion in his eyes once more, "Wait, that was Petrelli and Sylar up there? But, that was the President a few moments before. Sylar's dead, isn't he?"
"No," I said, watching him pull himself upright, now he had his breath back a little, "Sylar's not easy to kill. Not easy at all. But, the President, you say?" I was disgusted with myself for having missed it, "Sylar and Nathan Petrelli are one and the same. All bets are off." At that moment, there was a sudden cessation of the constant booming and pounding of the immense battle, and the few of us that were still near the building looked up to see a silent, blinding flash of pure, brilliant white, moments before an immense concussion wave hit us, knocking us all unconscious. When I came to after what could not have been more than a few moments, I was intensely confused to find myself still alive. Surely, if one of those two had previously exploded with enough force to lay waste to a sizeable section of New York City, then the two of them in their blind fury would have done at least as much damage. And yet we lived, and so close to the centre of this monumental conflict. There's no doubt that the two of them exploded. The sudden silence, coupled with that blinding white flash: it was what you'd expect at the beginning of such an event. Perhaps the building was already collapsing under the stress of the battle. Maybe this collapse distracted Peter enough from the fight for some part of him. Maybe he teleported, yes, that's it, he must have teleported at the very instant that the critical mass event began. All of this came into my mind like a roaring torrent, as I - rather unsteadily - got to my feet and surveyed the surroundings. Not so bad, I thought to myself. Could have been a lot worse. I wonder where they went?
"Phew, that was close, huh?" The somewhat shaky voice at my shoulder startled me a little. I think anyone would forgive us both being a little nervy at this point. We'd had our world's turned upside down quite a lot just lately. "I mean," he continued, "that coulda been like New York all over agai....hey, did the sun just get a little brighter there for a second?"
"My word. Could they have had that much power?" I mumbled, mostly to myself.
"Huh? Hey, I can't read you?" Parkman was looking rather intently at me, looking even more confused than normal.
"What? What do you mean?" I asked him. Just then, I felt a chill wind on the back of my neck, and I'm sure I heard a voice in that wind. Or maybe it was in my head. I will remember the words it carried until my dying day. My parting gift, Mohinder, use it well. I really did get to be a hero in the end. They chilled me to the core, those words, in that voice. That terrible, terrible voice. Sylar's voice. It wasn't Peter that had teleported them. It was Sylar. He had saved the world. I'd never known he could teleport.
"I said I can't read you, Suresh. The Haitian's dead, so no-one can be blocking me, and I can't read you. Am I losing my ability?"
I looked at him, "No, Matt, you're not. It would seem that Sylar understood a lot more about all this than any of us knew. He'd learned a lot in five years posing as Nathan Petrelli. He evolved me, Matt. He gave me the Haitian's power."
Matt shook his head, "No stuff? So where is he?"
"He's gone, Matt. Him, Peter, Nathan, Claire, Hiro, all of them. Hiro and Ando went back to change the past, but it won't affect us. They'll just create a new timeline. We're stuck with this world. This world Sylar made."
"Not all of them," said Matt, "They're not all gone yet, but we have to stop the plan Sylar set in motion. The plan to kill them all by accident. It'll go ahead without him now if we can't stop it. He had stuff like this written into the Linderman Act right from day one."
Just then, Parkman's pocket beeped, and he pulled out his cellphone. There was a text message on the screen, which he showed me.

I think I can help with that, it read, and was signed only with the letter H.

To be continued....

So, who wants to have a go at the next bit?

Zonedancer · Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2007 4:21 pm Post subject:

Meanwhile…
Micah lit another cigarette. Far from being alone he was surrounded by other smokers; patients tethered to wheeled IV stands, sullen orderlies in soiled scrubs and even a doctor or two talking fast into their cell phones between hard drags. Micah smoked to blend in because after a lifetime on the run that’s what he did best. Good boys without parents stood out so Micah had to look hard and hard boys smoked. Problem was, he beginning to look forward to these breaks outside the hospital with his fellow smokers just a little too much. He told himself it was the nicotine but deep down he knew it was to escape from the waiting room filled with all those scared people silently making their bargains with God. Save him and I promise to go back to church…spare her and I swear I’ll quit drinking…let my baby live and take me instead. New York’s Central Hospital had the largest oncology unit in the country because after the blast New York had the most cancer patients in the country. Micah’s dad was now one of them.
It wasn’t fair. Things were just starting to get good again when his dad got sick. Although Micah and his father hadn’t seen his mom, or Jessica for that matter, in more than a year she somehow managed to find them wherever they where and send them money. A lot of money. Micah missed his mom but as bad as the government wanted to catch him they wanted her even more. They seemed especially mad at his mom and would stop at nothing to get her. Once when Micah asked his mom why Homeland Security was after her so hard Jessica came out and looked him straight in the eye and said that she and the President knew each other and didn’t get along. Soon afterward both his mom and Jessica decided it was just too dangerous to be around Micah and his father any longer and just disappeared. Sometimes Micah wanted his mom back so bad it made him cry.
Right now wasn’t the time to cry. Micah was a man now and had to act like one, his father needed him and he wasn’t going to let him down. His dad could slide through walls but he couldn’t slip past the tumor that was growing in his head. Neither could Micah fix his father like he could fix all the machines he laid his hands on. Something was broken in his father and they needed this hospital to make it better. Only no one got anything for free anymore so Micah and his father had to pay for the treatments Central Hospital Oncology Unit offered and pay for it they did. Soon the last of the money his mom and Jessica had sent would be gone and Micah knew he would have to find more on his own. He would have to get it despite all the promises he had made to his father. He would have to get more money yet he couldn’t afford to get caught because with his father in this hospital he had nowhere to run. Micah was thinking that since the President and Homeland Security got them into this mess then maybe they should have to pay to get them out of it.
Micah sucked on his cigarette as a plan began to form in his mind.