#Tup especially wants to drown him in his own fancy mayor toilet

[mwolf0epsilon]

Superhero AU - Keeping Sane while in Hell

Keeping the Superhero AU pain train rolling!

This time, we discuss some occurrences during training & the families of the abductees trying to find their loved ones through various means.

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For the most part, the troops are kept in a single building that's been converted into high security barracks/prison cells. There's a few exceptions who are confined to windowless cells (Alpha-17, Dogma, Hardcase, etc...) because their powers make them harder to control/contain, but otherwise the situation is honestly quite communal. Which, at the end of the day, is what keeps everyone relatively sane.

They form a support network, with some of the abductees taking others under their wing and becoming protective of them (Fives immediately just pulls Tup into the Dominoes unit because the kid is considerably younger than everyone else and has no idea what happened to his twin, Cody and his gang of childhood pals take a shine to Rex really quickly, Fox and Wolffe form their own groups, etc...), while others gravitate towards the more assertive/calming presences in their shared space.

It makes the intense training bearable to be able to endure all of whatever their captors have in store for them, only to then have someone there to comfort and listen to you. Someone that can relate to your plight.

After all powers have been gauged and rated, and Palpatine has decided which troopers belong in the Hero group and which are better suited for the Villain group, the training becomes more combat intensive. A schedule is set up that consists of "learning modules" about controlling their newfound powers, hand to hand combat, weaponry training and then bringing all of it together.

They start off with training dummies. Then sophisticated battle robots. And then the beasts that were created during earlier experiments with the concoction.

Overtime, people who's powers were more unstable are integrated into the group. But Tup has still not been reunited with his twin. The reason why becomes obvious during a test.

One of the first conclusions Palpatine makes when presented with the more unstable abilities some troopers have, is to find ways to forcefully suppress them to better control them.

The two clone babies that were created in the first version of the super-soldier experiments (Boba and Omega) are by the time of current events already 10 years old (these experiments have been taking place for years, with Hemlock's version only recently yielding positive results), and through the use of specially designed harnesses their slowly developing powers can be suppressed.

This method is ideal for Hardcase (the harness considerably mellows him out to the point he's a little sluggish) and Alpha-17 (it prevents him from being able to build up magmatic crust to create a construct body), but not so much for Dogma who has been stuck as a kaiju for a very long time. He's too scared to change back, and far too large to be so easily controlled. On top of that he's so frightened he lashes out. In Palpatine's eyes he's only good for one thing, and it's to make his group of heroes look good. The city has seen kaiju activity before, it wouldn't be strange to have one attack out of the blue.

All he really needs is to keep the kid terrified. Which he succeeds in a rather brutal manner.

By gradually teaching the group to fight beasts, Palpatine slowly conditions them to attack anything remotely monstrous without a thought (It doesn't matter if this used to be someone's beloved pet cat, now it's a ferocious sabertoothed tiger with two heads and a spiked tail. It doesn't matter if this used to be a stray pup, it's become a slobbering ravenous beast that is starved enough to eat a whole person). The only one to hesitate at all when Dogma is thrown at the group (still unaware of what is going on, or where he is, or what's even happened to him) is Tup, and that's because he knows his twin is the kaiju. Sadly his cries for everyone to stop fall on deaf ears and Dogma gets to experience the full force of everyone else's powers.

It's only when the poor kid falls unconscious and finally changes back out of exhaustion that Palpatine's deceit comes to light (You can guess how everyone reacts to the thought of having attacked and beaten up a 12 year old, the twin of which is besides himself with anger because none of them listened to him). But the damage is done. Dogma is terrified of the group, so it doesn't take much to activate his power at all. The only thing keeping him human is medication (that he has a specific schedule to take, unless he's 'needed' in which case he's essentially a walking time-bomb) specially made to keep his transformation at bay.

Until the day they are deployed, training gets no less brutal. Palpatine intends to break their spirits, but he never quite manages. Because, even though they all go through unspeakable horrors in the facility and comply with most of his whims, the troopers still do what they can to keep the hope of their eventual freedom going.

After Dogma's first "session" it also became easy for Slick to track down where he's being kept, so both he and Tup take to sneaking through the vents to at least comfort their brother and try to lessen the damage of his isolation. In due time, others join him. Some are welcomed more easily... Others Dogma cannot stand to be near out of sheer terror (Rex is unfortunately someone he's perpetually scared of, because he's the one expected to beat the kaiju anytime Palpatine decides the city is due for a monster mash).

There's also the matter of Boba and Omega becoming curious of the captives and sneaking off to either observe or engage with them (Boba is a little more distant and prefers to not talk to anyone, while Omega takes a liking to CF99 and openly talks to them and asks them questions).

Outside of the facility, the families of the abductees are not staying idle. Some (like Slick, Tup and Dogma's mom) were injured when the powers first manifested themselves and cannot look for answers more actively due to said injuries, but still maintain in contact with others who they have discovered are on the same boat. The ones who did not sustain injuries try to make sense of what little they know or saw (no one knows the military took their loved ones, but they saw strange vans, helicopters and other vehicles with some kind of logo on them), and try to keep everyone else informed.

And then there's those who don't even know if their loved ones are alive...

The Lawquanes live on their farm in the countryside. They have no idea what's happened to Rex. All they know is that one night the news showed something calamitous happening in the city, and their "daughter's" (remember, Rex hadn't had the time to even come out to them as trans) apartment was one of many buildings destroyed. They haven't been contacted by Rex since then and they believe he's one of several casualties. They still want answers.

To top it all off, Cut's older brother and nephews have also not been in contact, so there's no real way to get those answers than to go to the big city themselves. They don't know what they're getting themselves into at all...