Reginald Raravi's Lucky Break (open to one or two)

1:45 pm

The sun hung blisteringly hot above Reginald as he sat in his Toyota outside the Shrimp Palace, the seafood restaurant he lived above. The restaurant and the entire building also happened to be owned by his father. Though his father was as loving as they come, he was still a strict man, and a stricter landlord. He allowed Reggie to work off some of his rent by putting in hours at the Shrimp Palace on weekends, however as it was looking then, Reggie was still going to come up short. So far superheroics proved to be less than lucrative business.

"I still can't believe you're a hero, dude! That's so tight!" Chubbs exclaimed from the passenger seat.

Chubbs' real name was Chester McAllen. You wouldn't know it looking at him, but the the nickname was originally given to him ironically back when he was a scrawny teenager. After highschool his life slowed down and so did his metabolism. He was Reggie's childhood best friend and thus far the only person who knew of his secret alter ego. This was out of necessity as Reginald quickly discovered it was very hard to get footage of himself fighting crime. Besides, if you couldn't trust a doughy stoner with your secrets, who could you trust?

Chubbs excitedly punched at the air, "I always kind of hoped I'd get to be a sidekick some day."

Reggie raised an eyebrow at his friend.

"Maybe they'll let us join like Prodigy or something. Wouldn't that rule?!"

"Dude, those kids are like half our age."

"So what?"

"So if we run around with a bunch of teenagers people will think we're creeps."

"But we're not creeps."

"Yeah but people won't know that. They'll just see some grown ass men running around with a bunch of children in costumes. No one will wanna sponser that. "

"Fuck people, dude. You can let that shit stop you, but when I get an invite, I'm joining."

"Why would you get one? You don't even have any super powers."

"Then I'll get some. Super powers spread like wildfire, man. Once someone gets them people around then just start getting them too."

"They aren't herpes."

Their bickering was interrupted by Reginald's antique police scanner. "*Khhhhzzzt* All units. *vhhssh* 5th and Leonardo st. Code *khrzzt* Bank robbery in progress. Possible metahuman *vhhhmmnm*"

It started to go dead. Piece of garbage. He decided as soon as his rent was paid he would buy himself a new one. He gave it a good smack in an attempt to bring it back to life.

"Repeat reports of *vhhhht* at the scene."

Reginald's eyes lit up. His foot was on the gas pedal before dispatch even finished the sentence. There it was, his chance to finally make it big in the superhero game right in front of him. It didn't matter who or what was reported at the scene. He was sure it was a big enough name to help the name of Mr. Invincible grow with it.

When with his reckless driving he found the scene crowded with police, media, and other onlookers.
Parking in an alley down the block sounded like the most solid course of action, so that's what he did.

Reggie decided to check himself in the reflection of his car window one last time before heading into action. To him, his sleeveless Adidas shirt and shorts looked awesome. He made sure the logos were proudly displayed. Sure, the news would probably have to blur them out, but the videos onlookers took their cellphones would not. Adidas would almost definitely see these and then maybe they would work with him to design a suit capable of stretching like he does. He was sure of this. All he was missing was the muscles. In an instant he had them. Shaping his body was the first trick he learned with his powers.

"Buff bod: check. Super legs, go!"

At that he pulled his ski mask over his face. The forehead was married with a big red lowercase i. He then extended his legs until he was eye level with the surrounding building.

"Are you sure we should be running into a bank robbery wearing ski masks?" Chubbs asked as he adjusted his bullet proof vest.

"We'd have real masks if your dumb vest didn't eat up our budget. "

Reggie stretched an arm down and expanded his hand to pick up his sidekick.

"My uncle gave me a deal on it. Besides, getting shot would suck."

"Just keep that camera on me, OK?"

Reggie still wasn't used to walking with legs extended to such a length, so his arrival was more a dizzy wobble than anything heroic like he imagined. He ignored the site warnings from police as he wobbled over the crowd to the front of the bank. He gently put Chubbs down and shrunk himself down to normal size.

"Ummm. Look out, assholes! It's uh- It's Invincible time!" He looked to the camera, "How was that?"

Chubbs gave a silent thumbs up.

Reginald pushed the door to the back open. Mr. Invincible was about to show the world he was a hero, or die trying. But hopefully not the second part. That would suck.

Bank robberies were super cliché, but the villains did still seem to have decent brain power.

The bank was holding a large collection of precious gems and metals, more so than usual, so they'd hired some powered muscle to keep it safe. Jilaiya was one of them, and arriving at the bank, it occurred to him that the robbers must of gotten their hands on the timetable. He estimated that they'd been there for maybe ten minutes, so they were probably almost done looting the place, and would be looking to make a quick get away.

That meant he'd have to be quick.

Jilaiya held out a hand, and blood gushed out of it, but instead of falling to the ground, it twisted and flowed over his arm, covering it.

“Attention, overly-cliched-villains. In about ten minutes, you will all either by unconscious, or in a lot of pain, and there's nothing you can do about it. Bad luck!”

With that, he flung his arm out, and a tendril of blood shot out towards the roof of the bank. It latched on, and Jilaiya hauled himself up onto the roof, using the makeshift grappling hook. He took a cursory look around, and saw an over sized man wearing a ski mask. It occurred to him that maybe the bank robbers were intentionally following the stereotype. He shrugged and ran towards the bank robber, a bloody tendril extending from his right arm.

He was looking forward to this fight too much.

Bank robberies, not something that Alpha dabbled in very often but a lucrative business when it came to rounding up metahumans. Los Angeles was the location he had picked out, the location a rather annoying group known as Prodigy worked out of, but he had surmised they had an effective radius where he was likely to encounter them, and so Alpha simply decided to work outside of that. The three small time metahumans sat before him within his personal hotel, gruff looking punks who all were more than willing to accept the paychecks. What they thought of the mysterious metahuman dressed in all black went unsaid, if only because the money rode upon them not offending him.

”So, you want us to hit a bank?” The physically least impressive of them questioned, a woman with a rather large black bow upon her head and searching, suspicious eyes.

”That is correct.” Alpha responded with a small nod of his head, keeping a close eye upon all of them.

“No disrespect or anything boss man, but isn't that a little below our...erm..talents?” The larger one of them asked, adjusting large black shades to reveal eyes much like a void.

“Yeah, usually we're getting sent out for something more high profile than knocking over a bank.” The last of them agreed, with that jittery speech of his.

”Trust me, this is beyond simply stealing money. I have more than enough of that stuff, no, what I want is metahumans. Heroes tend to flock to scenes such as a bank robbery, and you may of course help yourself to any money you steal, along with my initial pay.” If they were not wearing those obstructive shades, then he would have seen a glint of greed within their eyes.

“So, what is our pay? I had heard big money, but how big we talking?” The female would question, resting a single elbow upon his desk; brazenly.

”100,000 each, if you do a good job.” It was then that he had them biting.
–
The heist had started as simply as they all did, with them walking in as suave as always. It was upon seeing that all was well that the leader would remove what looked like a rather high caliber weapon from nowhere, firing off a few shots into the air and sending everyone diving to the ground. “Okay, I assume you all know what’s happening now.” She would announce to the entire room, not even bothering to stop the silent alarm from being sounded off. If she had guessed what their boss wanted, then it was likely that this was the exact thing he wanted, a lot of noise. “Bull, get to tearing open the vault.” She said with a snap of her fingers, sending the rather brutish one to his duty.

“Slips, do what you do best.” She would then add in continuing to tote the weapon around in an almost menacing fashion.

“Yessir.” No need for proper gender pronouns, that was for lame social justice types on the internet. Afterall, they had to put on a show for the boss, and when the heroes arrived, they could already count the money piling up.

“Nice costumes, buy them at Wal-Mart?” The leader asked almost scathingly raising her weapon to them and unleashing a spray of bullets upon the rubber meta-human.

Reginald was hit with a few sudden realizations the moment he entered the bank. The first was that he had no idea what he was doing. The last fight participated in happened in highschool, and he didn't even win. The next realization was that all female criminals didn't look like Aileen Wuornos. The woman waving a gun around didn't look like her at all. She was basically the opposite; she was kind of a babe. He could see himself hitting Aileen Wuornos, but how could he bring himself to punch a hot girl?

His next two realizations came as he picked his jaw after the robber made him drop it. Both of these realizations tied into his first, and essentially boiled down to the same thing: "Oh SHIT!"

Our hero found himself being rushed by a maniac waving a long, blood red tendril. Where did this guy come from? He looked crazy; the kind of crazy that was really eager to hurt him. To make that worse Reggie's new found goddess of greed sprayed him with bullets.

"ohshitohshitohshit"

He reflexively squeezed his eyes shut and tensed his muscles. This was it. He was sure he was dead until the bullets hit him. Each that but him did little more than sting as they ricocheted off of his dense new body. The ricocheting bullets bounced around the room aimlessly, which caused the already panicked civilians to scurry for cover.

He opened his eyes. Another realization: He was alive, and not just alive and superpowered.

"Hey! What is wrong with you people?"

Both of his arms stretched from his body instantly. One went toward the crazed blood tentacle guy, at the end of it was a large first aimed at his face. The other any all the way to the bullet babe, he would attempt to grab the gun from her.

Chubbs half cowered behind Mr. Invincible frantically pointing the lens of his camera back and forth at the two targets of his friends arms.

"Make sure you're getting all of this."

Jilaiya was no stranger to fighting, in fact the very opposite was true. His parents knew that their son would end up fighting super beings, and did their best to make sure he knew all of the crucial lessons before it mattered, so that he might live for a little longer.

One sunch thing they had drilled into him was being aware of the enviroment. where were potential threats, where was the cover, where could people be hiding, and most importantly, who was a threat and who was an ally. This training kicked in, and he realised that they stretchy man was in fact, a hero, despite his bank robber outfit.

How did he know this?

The real bank robbers were shooting both him and Jilaiya.

With a thought, the tendril became a slanted shield that deflected most of the bullets before it shattered. The remaining bullet slammed into his chest, and lodged itself in his heart. Jilaiya cried out in pain, and grabbed at his chest with one hand, while the other swiped through the falling blood, making it into a shield again. Christ, these guys were for real.

Fortunately, the only purpose of the heart was to pump blood through the body, a task which Jilaiya himself could easily accomplish with his own ability.

A quick look indicated that ski mask guy had easily survived the onslaught of bullets, though did look somewhat panicked, indicating that he was new to all this. Jilaiya quickly took stock of everything ski mask guy had done. Changing his size, stretching himself, shrugging of bullets... His best guess was that the kid was some sort of biokinetic. Perfect.

The main drawback to his powers was that he limited by how much blood he had. He healed faster than normal, so that meant he could produce large quantities of blood, but that took time. It was one of the main reasons he preferred to spend an hour preparing before fights. But if this guy could produce blood at will...

“Hey, greenie!” Jilaiya cried, knocking away the ski mask guys arm as he dashed towards him, “I'm on your side, can you generate blood with your powers?”