#Jon wakes up a few days later with no sight and significantly diminished powers. He doesn’t need either to recognize Martin’s hand in his.

[msfcatlover]

TMA Superhero AU idea:

One of those worlds where superheroes are public figures.

Jon is one of the heroes, though his public image is… hazy at best. He prefers covert ops, and given the opportunity to be the “eye in the sky” (person overseeing a team operation, putting together information from multiple sources and keeping everyone in the loop,) he will take it over working with other people… partially because he knows many people find his powers unsettling. Even when he manages to keep from breaking out in eyes, there’s just something in his aura that sends chills down your spine if you happen to bear witness. (He may or may not have gotten his powers as a victim of a dark ritual gone wrong; his hero name is something simple and obvious like “Oracle,” but there is another name whispered in the darker sides of the super-community that he desperately wants to escape.)

So the agency in charge of Jon keep getting on his case about PR, about bouncing between hero teams, about not being seen by the public. And just as they’re pushing him really out of his comfort zone, Jon gets assigned a new handler (person on the other end of the coms unit, technically the head of each hero’s management, if only the heroes had actual management teams and handlers didn’t have their own higher ups to answer to.) Which is the story of how Martin Blackwood meets a hero he’s admired from afar for years (no, genuinely; it’s rare to catch Oracle on camera, but Martin respects the hell out of the work he does,) right when Jon is at his most high-strung and ready to lash out at the next person to try to tell him what to do.

Martin has his own powers, though he views them as unimpressive and never bothered to register or even really train; his invisibility is tied to his emotional state, and far easier to just hold off than it is to call up on purpose. He does know he should theoretically be able make other things invisible, since his clothes also disappear (meaning the effect extends beyond his own body,) but he’s never been successful at doing more than making like, a large eraser shimmer a bit. There absolutely comes a time when for ~reasons~ they both end up running from the enemy, Jon has been seriously injured, and the alarms are sounding; Martin pulls Jon into his arms, and for the first time manages to make both of them disappear. This is also probably the first time he uses his powers in front of Jon.

Tim’s part of Jon’s newest team, and while his loud, energetic nature gets on Jon’s nerves at first, it quickly becomes clear Tim plays it up for the crowd and to draw attention away from the camera-shy members of the team. Power-wise, Tim tells everyone he has touch-based pyrokinesis; in actuality, Tim can control the temperature of anything he touches, melting or freezing things as easily as he ignites them, sometimes using the expanding air for explosions. It’s good to hold some information back as a trump card, in case of emergency. (His hero name is something like “Sunburst,” probably.) Tim does have something of a playboy reputation, but anyone within the agency can tell you he only has eyes for his handler, one Sasha James. (Both Tim and Sasha are of two minds about Tim’s reputation; depending on the day, you might get an over-dramatic joke on the topic or you might get a rant about biphobic stereotypes and assumptions in public media. The worse Tim’s mood, the less tolerance he has, and the more he gravitates towards the latter.)

Danny was a poster-boy for one of the big-shot hero agencies, but was injured and had to retire tragically young. He encourages Tim to finally get off his practical ass and chase the dream they both had as kids but only Danny actually went after; Tim’s out here being a hero for both of them.

Georgie still runs a podcast, Melanie uses her telekenisis primarily for flying but is not above throwing everything that’s not nailed down at you to stop you escaping, villains are still villains, but there are some underground supers and unregistered heroes who help out on occasion. Oliver and Jon bond over how much having scrying powers actually sucks when they meet up; Oliver’s death prophecies are a little more immediate and can also include severe injury, but his ability to warn people is still limited by human thought and reaction time.

Oh, and Jonah? He’s basically hacked the power system with a mystical ritual that takes the power poured into it, amplifying it, and infusing the increased power into a living being (like drinking a potion to improve your enchantment skills in a video game, then enchanting your armor to improve your potions, then making a potion to improve your enchantments…) The only issue is that once that power’s in something, it can only be removed if the creature voluntarily chooses to give it up and feed it back into the ritual. Of course, there are ways around that too, though they are… draining. He can technically only take a new body once every five years, but he gets the most out of each host and likes to wear them for 10-20.

Jonah has always kept to the shadows and tries to keep his hosts’ identities secret, but the whispers are there if you know how to listen. His influence hasn’t been felt nearly so much in recent years though… 

Don’t worry, I’m sure it’s not relevant.