It started with an accident, as many of these stories do…
It was a rainy night and the bus was full of people. The
driver had taken an extra shift, those new school books weren’t going to pay
for themselves after all, so he needed to put in all the extra hours he could…
He needed to provide, he had to give his son a proper education and make sure
he’d never have to work graveyard shifts like his old man…
The truck hit him out of nowhere… in just a few seconds he
wondered if he had passed a red light, had he fallen asleep on the wheel? or
maybe the other driver had, he wasn’t sure. The horrified screams of his
passengers mingled with his own as he thought about his son and his dog, who
were the only family he had left. The bus bounced on its side and he felt one
of his ribs crack under his own weight on the safety belt of his seat, it
tumbled twice and just as it seemed it would hit the side of a building… it
stopped.
It was as if all of the impulse behind the rolling bus had
simply come to a halt, the driver, who was bracing himself for a big impact,
slowly opened his eyes, and to his amazement, the bus seemed to be floating in midair,
suspended by an eerie light that seemed to glow with a violet aura. Not only was
the bus suspended in midair… but also the shattered glass, the passengers’ bags,
and the passengers themselves were suspended as if gravity had sort of
forgotten about them. The driver, now breathing heavily sat still for a moment,
not knowing what to do, until he finally tried looking at his rearview mirror.
Floating amongst the debris and the injured passengers, a
little girl with a bowl cut, a purple flower dress and mismatched sneakers was shaking
and sobbing. Her eyes glowed with a light that matched the color of the energy
that seemed to be holding up the bus and its passengers.
"W… wha… what’s happening? I… where’s my momma?”
The media were all over the news like rats on peanut butter,
trying to find out who the girl was, where she lived, why her mom had taken her
away from her father’s home that night, and how she had managed to develop what
they were now calling a *gift*. After a few days of open harassment by the
press and the public, the girl and her mom were accepted into a variation of
the “witness protection program”. This government-appointed program was later
dubbed the “Gifted Individuals Protection Service” or GIPS. As if acting on a
chain reaction, many cases of “gifted” people, mostly children, began appearing
in cities all over the country, seemingly without a clear reason and with
abilities that ranged from the seemingly harmless to others that could constitute
a sizable threat to the world’s population if left unchecked.
As time passed, these individuals and their families started
asking for a chance to re-insert themselves into normal life.
They weren’t asking for any type of special treatment, just a chance to have a life outside the walls of the pseudo-prison they were living in. After much deliberation the
central government appointed a task force, dubbing it the Gifted Individuals
Federal Training and Education Department, G.I.F.T.E.D. they would oversee the development of a network of facilities around the country, one in each major city, where they would train and supervise gifted people's actions so as to better assess a way in which these individuals could contribute to society's advancement.
As time passed the Department served to help these gifted
individuals to find their place in society either by giving them jobs that
suited their special abilities, or by helping law enforcement deal with others
who used their powers to break the law. Not everyone who found themselves
gifted with superhuman abilities accepted to be taken into G.I.F.T.E.D., and
some of those who did not find themselves the recipient of a “gift” took up the
vigilante mantle anyway, each having their own reasons to fight crime in their
own way. Some of these “superior individuals” have been known to work alongside
with the members of G.I.F.T.E.D. Their work, however, is not recognized as
official.
As of today you find yourself assigned to the city of Westfall,
a place where the police finds itself constantly outnumbered by street gangs
and the gifted villains who run them. The city council finally agreed to
approve a sizeable part of its budget in order to bring in some help from G.I.F.T.E.D.
in hopes of lowering the city’s crime rate.
You now stand in front of the greatest challenge you've ever had in your entire life...
Will you make a name for yourself as one of the greatest
heroes of all time? Or will you fail to leave your mark, like many others
before you?
Roll the dice and see what FATE has in store for you!
