Chapter 1
It was just after 9 A.M. on a sunny May morning when a large white van pulled up outside the First National Bank of Chicago. In a flash, five armed men in ski masks leapt out the back and inside the lobby. One of them raised his semi-automatic into the air and fired a burst at the ceiling.
“Everybody get down!” He shouted. This command was unnecessary, as it turned out, since everyone had done precisely that as soon as the shots were fired.
“Nobody does anything stupid and nobody gets hurt.” He continued, well aware of how clichéd his speech was. Some things become clichés for a reason. He waved his gun in a menacing fashion and motioned to the tellers behind the counter.
“All of you; out in front with the rest. Anybody who trips the silent alarm gets a bullet between the eyes.”
The terrified employees filed out with their hands in the air. The rest of the armed men went around the lobby to disable any cameras that were visible. They were aware that undoubtedly there would be hidden cameras as well, but it still seemed prudent to at least destroy whatever was in sight. Plus, wrecking things was fun.
Once the employees and customers were secured on the ground, the men nodded to each other. One man began emptying out the cash drawers at each teller station while two others continued to patrol the lobby; their guns trained on the hostages, ready to unload at the first sign of movement. The remaining two headed off downstairs, where the vault was located. As they descended and began to sift through the various tools and explosives they were carrying in tote bags, they looked up and noticed with equal parts confusion and excitement that the vault door was already open. They paused briefly to process this unforeseen turn of events, but only long enough to notice the 3 by 3 by 3 cubed palette of $100 bills that was visible at the vault’s rear. With the giddy excitement of a child on Christmas morning, the 2 criminals rushed headlong into the vault. They barely had time to appreciate the perfume of the thousands of crisp bills in front of them when the vault door suddenly slammed shut behind them.
Upstairs, the 3 criminals heard the crash of the vault, but mistook it for the sound of the door being blown open. It wasn’t until after they had finished collecting the contents of the cash drawers that they realized the 2 men in the vault hadn’t checked in.
“Echo one, come in” the man said into his walkie-talkie. He paused and listened. One second. Three seconds. Five seconds. Static was the only response.
“Echo one, what’s your status. Come back.”
Nothing.
“Shit”
He motioned towards another of the men.
“Bravo, get down there and find out what the problem is.”
The other man nodded and headed towards the downstairs steps and disappeared from view.
With all the teller stations bare, the two men had no choice but to wait to hear back from their recently departed cohort. And, as is wont to happen when two men who are in the middle of committing a class B felony have a few moments to themselves for quiet contemplation, they started to get nervous. Very nervous.
The two men walked towards each other and met in the center of the lobby to conference.
“Shit man, I don’t like this. We’ve already been here too long.”
“Relax; we’re still on schedule. Everything’s going to be fine.” The other man replied. Even as he spoke, he was acutely aware that he was trying to reassure himself at least as much as the other man.
“Get Bravo on the line. See what the hold up . . .” He broke off suddenly. A noise in the distance. An unmistakable and terrifyingly shrill noise. The one noise above all others they preyed they wouldn’t have to hear today. Sirens.
“Oh fuck! Go see how close they are!”
The men split up, with one heading towards the front window and the other heading towards the stairs. When he reached the top of the stairs, he screamed down: “
Echo one, Bravo we’ve been made. We’ve got to move now!”
The sirens were getting louder now. The man whirled around. “Charlie, how much time have we…”
But the other man wasn’t there anymore.
“What the hell. Charlie where the hell are you?” No response. “Charlie, if you fuckin’ bailed on me I swear I will rip your goddamn nuts off!”
Getting desperate now, he screamed into the walkie-talkie.
“Echo one, Bravo, Charlie somebody talk to me goddamn it!”
Static again.
Where the fuck could they all be? This momentary curiosity was replaced almost at once by the stark realization that wherever they were, it meant that he was now all alone. The thought hit him like ice-cold water at the base of his neck. He was standing in the middle of a bank lobby with a handful of stolen money as the cops were closing in. And he was all alone.
Suddenly, he heard a voice. A deep, booming voice that didn’t so much speak as much as emanate from the air all around him.
“Feeling a little lonely?”
The man whirled around, trying to track the source, but it was useless. The speaker, whoever he was, seemed to be everywhere all at once.
“Don’t worry; you’ll be making lots of new friends where you’re going.”
The man’s breathing quickened and he started shaking.
“Wh-wh-what the h-h-ell is going on here?” Trying to sound tough and failing miserably. “Show yourself, c-coward.”
“Alright, if you insist” the voice cheerfully replied. In front of the man a chiseled vision of steel and grey descended slowly from the ceiling. The man knew him. Everyone knew him. Captain Invincible.
“We gonna do this the easy way or the hard way?”
The man responded by opening fire from his semi-automatic. But even before he could press his finger to the trigger, the man in front of him seemed to lose physical form and become a blur of blue. Only when the clip was empty did his shape return. Not so much as a scratch was on him as he walked up to the now hysterical man.
“Ah; the easy way”
Outside, the police arrived on the scene just in time to see a man in a ski mask suddenly explode through the glass window and land on his back in the middle of the street. As the dust settled, Captain Invincible could be seen emerging through the now-shattered glass. He headed straight towards the Chief.
“Sorry about that. Meant to whip him through the revolving doors. Looks like my aim’s a little off. As usual, I’ll transfer you funds to pay for the damages. You’ll find 2 others unconscious just outside the vault and 2 more inside it.”
The Chief couldn’t help but smile. “Man, Invincible we’ve got to get you a cell phone. One of the tellers tripped the alarm but we wouldn’t have bothered if we’d have known you were already on the scene.”
“Yeah, well I enjoy the incapacitation but I prefer pickup to delivery so it’s good you’re here.”
The chief smiled again, but Captain Invincible noted a hint of fear behind the smile.
“Something wrong Chief?”
The smile melted away from the chief’s face and he inhaled deeply and nodded.
“I think you’d better come back to the station with me so I can explain. It’s the Doctor, and it’s not good.”
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5 comments:
Yay! Congrats on your second installment and for getting it up on schedule. To a person like me, that's amazing already. My hat's off to you.
A couple technical things, and then some broader points:
1. You have a typo on Paragraph 20. I believe you want "prayed" instead of "preyed."
2. In Paragraph 39, the order you described things in was confusing. One sentence said that he opened fire and the next sentence said that the man disappeared before he pulled the trigger. It made it sound like he fired first and then put his finger on the trigger. Now, I understand you wanted to say that he fired into nothing because the man had disappeared even before the bullets came out. Can you reword to make this clearer?
3. Also in paragraph #39, you refer to "the man" a couple of different times, and it's not always clear which is which. Are there ways around this? Should you give the character whose perspective we're taking a name?
4. General note: And I don't know how you're going to get around this... throughout the scene, I was imagining the bank robbery scene from The Dark Knight. That one also had henchmen disappearing, plans falling apart, us seeing the perspective of the robbers, and a fear-inspiring voice interrupting the action. Sadly, when that happens, mostly I think "Man, that was a cool movie" and not, "I am intrigued by this story I'm reading"... and it takes me out of the reading. Seeing as how tons of people also saw that movie, I wonder if a lot of your readers will have the same reaction. Again, I don't know what to do about this. That movie's awesomeness and ubiquitousness is causing problems for you in this scene.
5. A question for you: Do you want your audience to have a clear understanding of who are the good guys and who are the bad guys? And a related (but not necessarily identical) question: Who do you want the audience to sympathize with? I think the answers to these questions will affect how you write the encounter between the blue man and the bank robber, as well as between the cops and the blue man. For example, when the blue man's voice is first heard, it sounds evil (secretive, calculating, ominous). Did you intend for this to happen? When, later, he's chatting with the cops, are the cops afraid of him? Who has the power in that situation? Etc. I guess, a little bit of thinking about (a) your intent for what the audience should feel and know after each scene, and (b) the motivations for the characters.
Sorry, my feedback is getting more demanding. Mostly 'cause I'm into it though.
Yes, that was me who deleted the first comment. Again, hit Publish too soon. :)
Hi Becky, thanks for all the comments.
First of all, you don't need to be impressed that I got this up on time. I already had probably the first 8 parts finished, so it's just cutting and pasting right now. You can start being impressed if/when I actually start producing new material and getting that up on time.
Now, I am impressed that you took the time to count all the paragraphs.
In a strange way, evoking thoughts of The Dark Knight is kind of what I was going for. Certainly not The Dark Knight specifically (I wrote this over a year before that movie came out) but it's meant remind you of every cliched scene where the superhero comes in and stops the "bad guys" (though obviously not to the point where it completely pulls you out of the story). So really I want the reader to project their ideas of what a superhero is onto this character. I'm trying (perhaps unsuccesfully) to use something of a trick in establishing this character in a very quick way so that you feel like you know him better than you really do.
All in all though, so far of everything I've written for this story this is the part I'm least happy with and is the one section most likely to just be replaced completely if I ever think of a better way to introduce this character. It's not that I think this part if terrible, it's just that it's very utilitarian and I don't feel like it's very "fun". Your point about it being somewhat confusing in the middle is well taken; I really did muddle through this with the intention of coming back later and tightening it up.
As for your last question(s) . . . um, you're over-thinking it. All I wanted to say and all I want the reader to take from it is "ok, so this guy's apparently a superhero."
A bit of a teaser for this week's entry; there's a distinct change in tone coming, and I think it's the first "make or break" point where the reader will either see what I'm trying to do or just think it's way too goofy (or maybe both).
I actually really got into that section. I was reading it quickly because I wanted to see what happens next. Which is, of course, a good thing.
One thing I caught though. This sentence didn't make sense to me and I had to reread it like 3 times:
“Yeah, well I enjoy the incapacitation but I prefer pickup to delivery so it’s good you’re here.”
I get what you're going for, but maybe there's a clearer way to say it? I thought at first that he liked being incapacitated...
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