February 15th 1996, Brockton Bay
I woke up in the morning not really believing what had happened the previous day. That is until I accidentally smashed my alarm clock into a billion tiny pieces. I Very carefully got myself ready not wanting to break anymore household essentials before school. I had completely forgotten to finish the papers for today so I'd just have to speed grade before class started.
When I got to Winslow (In record time I must say) it was only 7:30 so I had an hour and a half before the first period. I Finished my papers entirely too quickly and had nothing better to do so I began doing some light reading on the newest cape scene for Brockton Bay in the news.
The Cape column as they called it listed every cape in Brockton and their accolades for the week. This week it seemed that Marquis had fought the teeth and the butcher again in a border skirmish beating them handily. The empire was fairly quiet with a few fights with none cape sicarios whose territory they were trying to seize.
On the hero front the few PRT capes in Brockton had dealt with a few fires and an attempted bank robbery. The Brockton Brigade, a newly formed independent hero team, had captured one of the teeths cape called cutthroat, a mass murderer and thrown him into the newly built “Birdcage” the ultimate cape prison for those with life sentences. As I read I idly wondered who our new group should interact with first and what our name should be.
The PRT would likely try and fail to recruit us all during our first few interactions and I didn't trust that they would let us keep our independence without interference. The Brigade in my opinion were the most likely choice of people to want to team up with us since their weren't really any independent heroes or rogues in the bay.
Before anything happened however the first things we needed were a base, costumes and a name for our organization. Then we could also put out that we were actively recruiting both parahumans and non-capes to the public.
I apparently spent a long time planning since my students began to file into my class. First period was social studies for the freshmen class and it went off without a hitch as did my history of Europe and the American revolution classes for my second and third period. However the issue occurred when my fourth period class came in after lunch. I spotted Brad and his cronies file into class and when they saw me sitting at my desk they gained a look of bafflement for the majority of the class.
After the class I saw them all run out of the room in a panic and that's when I realized that they probably now knew that I was a cape which would be problematic but I would leave it for future Marsh. I had a free period for my last class so I left the school and went home to put on my makeshift costume and began walking to the gym.
The gym itself was a 3 story building with surprisingly all its windows intact and no graffiti anywhere. I saw Hearacles and Hestia standing outside waiting for the rest as I spotted Hephaestus being pushed by Artemis coming down the road opposite me.
“Ah friends, you are here!” Hearacles exclaimed and emphasized with an ear shattering clap of his hands. “Come on in and take a look at our new lair.” he said waving his arm at the door with a bow.
As we entered we saw dozens of fairly well kept weight and cardio machines. All things considered it was all in good repair with only a light coating of dust covering the room. I went to turn on the lights but nothing happened which did make sense since he hadn't been running the business in a while. “ Looks good so far.” I said looking back at the group. I spotted Hephaestus ogling the cardio machines that had electronics in them and the raw material of the weights.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“Oh this is more than good.” Hephaestus said not taking his eyes off the equipment. “ I can use all this as stuff for my tinkering there's probably enough here to get you all proper costumes after a few weeks.” He finished slowly making his way over to the machines.
“What's on the other two floors, Heracles?” I asked curious as to what else we had available to us.
“Floor two is a big track room with a shit ton of sports equipment like your good’ole Louisville slugger and the third floor is where i kept a few offices and conference rooms for the business side of things.” He said then after a moment added. “The basement is where the locker room was and half of it was a storage area for extra equipment.”
“ Could we all go to one of the conference rooms for a second? I thought of some stuff earlier that I wanted to run by you guys” I said trying to rein Hephaestus in before he went full tinker mode.
We all made our way up as Heracles led us upstairs making a bit of idle conversation except of course for Artemis. We entered the room and gathered around a nicer table than we used last time as i got ready to voice my various concerns and ideas
“ So I did a bit of research on the cape scene today and figured we had a few options of how to go about the whole hero thing.” I started. “We Could contact the PRT for help and resources however that would make us less independent than I think we are going for. We could also contact The Brockton Bay Brigade. They are a new hero group in Brockton that have been fighting the teeth recently and have a bit more experience than us, any opinions.” No one spoke up for a few seconds until Hestia raised her head.
“Like I said before I'm a cape nerd through and through and I agree that joining the PRt is a bad idea to start, they are a new government agency and are looking to gain any advantage they can and that includes taking advantage of independent heroes.” She said looking more confident talking about capes than she did most of the time. “ The brigade is new and flashy but honestly they have only captured two capes in Brockton so far and they’ve been active for 4 months, they’ve also lost several fights with all six of them against Marquis and that's been hurting their reputation.” She took a deep breath after that having just given me a better lecture on capes than my two hours of research had given me.
“So should we just make a name for ourselves before we talk to anyone else?” Hephaestus asked.
“I would say yes but be friendly to any other heroes we see out in the streets, no need to alienate them.” Hestia said with the same confidence as before.
“That actually leads to the other point I wanted to bring up today, what is our group name gonna be?” I had written down some options beforehand but wanted to hear their suggestions first.
“Gods of death!” Was Heracles first response earning a large sigh from the rest of us. “ What that's good shit!” He exclaimed looking bewildered as to why we didn't like the name.
“The celestials?” Said Hestia her confidence from earlier starting to bleed off.
“I like the direction you're going in but I think we need something with a bit more of a nod to our powers.” Said Hephaestus
“The Olympians.” Artemis stated, startling the rest of us as this was the first time she’d talked today.
“I had thought of that earlier, the only problem is we don't know if any other gods can give powers or not so it would limit our numbers.” I said looking around to see if there were any more suggestions. None appeared to be forthcoming.
“Alright shoot me down if you don't like it but I was thinking Pantheon.” I said doing jazz hands for the obvious bonus to persuasion.
“That is a sweet fuckin name” Heracles said giving me a grin of excitement.
“It does sound nice and it hints at our powers without giving everything away.” Hestia said with a small smile forming on her face.
“Sounds good to me.” Hephaestus said getting almost giddy at the prospect of the meeting being done so he could finally go tinker.
We all looked expectantly at Artemis as she stared at us in silence for a few moments.
“It's a good name.” She said giving us the longest sentence we had heard yet.
“Alright then the gods have decided our name.” I said a grin beginning to pull at my mouth.
“Pantheon”