Tribe 3 entry:
On an ordinary night in Crowd City, the legendary Aveline prowled the streets. Loved by citizens, feared by villains, the feline hero, customarily silent and dangerous, was leaving the site of a bank heist where she’d rescued three hostages and helped the police apprehend the criminals – all without ever being seen. But as she sped through the city, a storm rolled in. Thunder boomed and lightning flashed. And then, the only thing that ever caused brave Aveline’s dedication to flag happened.
Rain poured from the sky. Aveline shrieked and froze for a moment before springing into the air, eyes panicking behind her black mask. She ran full speed to the closest abandoned building and slipped inside. As the storm raged outside she shook herself dry, hissed in anger and stalked through the dark building to find a place to wait out the rain. She found a boarded up door and ripped it open to reveal a set of descending stairs. In the basement she found a most shocking thing.
There, in the middle of the room, lit only by sputtering candled, hovering three feet above the ground with his legs folded, sat the great ape warrior TSolo315. His eyes flitted to the sound of someone entering his hideout. But before he could deal with that, a voice cried out from afar. TSolo315’s hand tightened on his sword and he took a deep breath. In an instant he transported himself to the source of that cry. A young woman across the country in an animal sanctuary was crouched on the floor. A trio of orangutans huddled behind her, terrified. And looming over them all, a man holding a large net and a rifle. “Get out of the way or die,” the stranger said.
Anger filled TSolo315 and he lashed out. With one quick swipe of his sword, the evil man’s net was in tatters. With another swing the rifle was far out of reach. “Run or die,” TSolo315 replied to the stranger. He ran.
TSolo315 nodded silently to the woman and the orangutans and then teleported back to the basement. He opened his eyes just as Aveline was approaching.
“Bad kitty,” he said gruffly. “This is my lair. Go find your own.” What he didn’t say is that he couldn’t leave this place. Not for long. The very magic that had given him strength and the ability to teleport was tied to the mysterious metal in the floor of the basement. If he left it for too long his powers drained and he would eventually die.
Aveline hissed. “I go where I please.”
They faced off, neither willing to back down. TSolo315 raised his sword. Aveline extended her claws.
“Do you want to die tonight, cat?” TSolo315 asked, annoyed. “I have a tasty treat you’ll just love.” He cruelly referenced the only thing they had in common. The only thing that could destroy them both.
“As if you’d ever let that poison near you,” Aveline replied. “Besides, there hasn’t been any of that in this city for years. The people want us out there helping, not dying from eating…” she paused and shuddered. “Eating...
that.”
TSolo315 shrugged, but didn’t lower his weapon.
The heroes glared at each other for a long, silent moment. But before either decided to strike, the sound of many screams filled the air.
“That sounds like trouble,” TSolo315 said. Aveline agreed. She ran up the stairs full speed as he disappeared. By the time she got to the scene of the crime, the fire had engulfed three floors of the building. She looked up and saw people in apartments desperate to escape, terrified. TSolo315 was nowhere to be seen.
Aveline ran to the back of a building and scaled the wall, happy that the rain had stopped. She sprinted across the roof and down a fire escape to an open window. Inside she found a family of three. She helped them out and got them up to the roof before moving to the next window.
Within minutes she had everyone in the building safely upstairs. “Don’t worry,” she told them. “The fire fighters will put out this blaze and you’ll all be fine.”
“No, they won’t,” a voice said from behind her. TSolo315 had arrived. “There are accidents all over the city. No trucks can get through. I did what I could to clear the road but it is going to take some time.”
Aveline looked over the side of the building. “The fire is spreading too quickly. These people need to get out of here.”
“I can handle that,” TSolo315 assured her. “But we have another problem.”
“What?”
“This fire was no accident. I’ve seen this work before. Did you notice the pizza place downstairs?”
“I did. You can’t mean…” She was shocked.
“Yes. This was arson. And only one man could be responsible.”
“I thought he was dead.”
“We all did.” TSolo315 shook his head, furious and afraid. “Obviously that’s what he wanted us to think. So the city would forget.”
Aveline shuddered.
One of the people on the roof, a little boy, walked over. “Who did this? Who wants to hurt us?”
TSolo315 looked down at him. “This wasn’t about you. It was about this building. A very bad man wants to destroy all the pizza places in this city so everyone has to eat at his.”
“Why?” the boy asked.
“Because he’s evil. And can’t accept that no one wants his disgusting pizza.” He spat angrily.
“What’s wrong with his pizza? I love pizza,” the boy said.
“Not this pizza,” Aveline assured him. “It has… pineapple on it.”
The boy and most of the others on the roof screamed. “Not pineapple pizza!”
The little boy clung to Aveline’s black leather-clad leg. “But isn’t pineapple pizza poisonous to you? That’s what my teacher said. It hurts super heroes.”
She nodded. “Yes. While it just tastes disgusting to you, it does even worse to us. But not all super heroes. Just the two of us. It steals our powers and could kill us.”
“Oh no,” the boy cried.
“Shhh, shhh,” Aveline said, trying to calm him. “I know, I know. He created that abomination to kill us. Making normal people miserable is just a bonus for him. But don’t you worry, kiddo. We’ll stop him. No one will ever have to eat pizza with pineapple on it as long as I’m alive.”
“And me,” TSolo315 added. “We need to work together, Aveline. Let our weakness be our strength.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “The city needs us both now. Together we will stop the Pineapple Pizza Man. We will save this city.”
“But, if he burns down all the other places, couldn’t we just not eat pizza?” the boy’s mother asked from behind him.
Aveline hissed.
TSolo315 grunted. “What good is being alive if you can’t have pizza?”
Everyone agreed.
“Thank you, Aveline and TSolo315,” the little boy said. “Thank you.”
Once the residents were safe and the fire was out, Aveline and TSolo315 left the scene together. They spent the rest of the night making plans in their now shared lair. To once and for all defeat the Pineapple Pizza Man. To protect the city and the world from the evil scourge of pizza with pineapple on it. For the rest of their lives if that’s what it took.