Plot idea – Sword-weilding hero

- 799 views

Ok, so I’ve got you another story idea. This one is actually one I came up with over a year ago, but have kept to myself so far. I figured “what the hell”, since in writing this down I’m also doing myself the favor of further developing the story and its world.
You’ll find the whole thing after the break. It’s 1300 words worth of writing.

In a contemporary setting, we have our MC(Main Character). He is currently in college, though that has little actual bearing on this story. It’s just to give a sense of where he’s at in life.

So, he’s a very boring, bland guy. He’s spent his entire life just quietly studying in class. He hasn’t had a social life, he hasn’t been bullied, he hasn’t had any formal position at anything… He’s just done the opposite of sticking out.
Oddly, there’s one guy who’s been hanging on to him. Perhaps he just felt like this was a guy he could speak his mind freely to without any problems, seeing how he wasn’t very likely to get any form of response beyond a nod anyway.
So he’s had no proper social life, only has one “friend” (who actually isn’t more than “that guy who hangs out with him in class most of the time and occasionally drags his apathic ass around to places”.)
He hasn’t been bullied because frankly, the bullies never took note of him. It’s a wonder anyone did.

But one day when… Let’s say he’s walking through the park. Or better yet, he’s sitting on a bench there reading.
So, one day when he’s sitting on a bench reading in the park a very young girl (think: Index) jumps out of the bush on the other side of the park road.
She runs over to him, visibly distressed, and begs him to help her.
She says that she thinks he “might be her hero.”
She hurriedly explains that she’s being chased by some bad men who want to lock her up again, using a phrasing that makes it sound like they’d dressed her in a Straitjacket and crammed her into a small, empty room.
She then hears noises from down the road and proceeds to pull the MC from his sitting position and hides behind him as the men, who look like secret agents of some form, enter their sight.

They get close enough to realize that she’s taking cover behind the MC and tells him that she is their property, and that he is better off not getting involved… With a not so subtle hint that he won’t go away unscathed if he doesn’t cooperate.
The girl shedding tears asking him to not let them take him away makes the apathic MC feel that he is socially obliged to help her out, so he braces himself for a fight that he knows he’s probably going to lose.
The men spread out to a half-circle in front of him, preparing to beat him up.
MC braces himself, and raises the book he had been reading. He’s still not really sure if he should be doing this, mostly because he doesn’t really care. Yes, the apathy is important here.

So, one of the men start charging at him, and MC instantly throws the book at him.
It hits his head… And literally makes him fly off of his feet. The forward movement is completely negated and turned into backward movement, resulting in a quarter of a back-flip that lands him on the ground, nocked out cold.
The MC is visibly surprised by this display of strength. The men who were with the knocked out hostile look at their friend on the ground for a moment and the MC takes this as a chance to grab the girl and run in the opposite direction.

But as they run and he looks back to check on their pursuers, he misses that one of them is coming from the other direction, and is weilding a knife.
The girl shouts “watch out!”, but the MC only has just enough time to turn around and see the hostile stabbing at him.

Everything goes white for just a moment… And he finds himself unharmed.
The knife-arm has been pushed to the side.
And in his hand… Is a sword.
After everyone has had a panel of “Wha- :O” (exception for the little girl who just lights up with joy), the MC proceeds to swing down in the opposite direction, injuring and the hostile in front of him with a long cut going from his cheek, down and deep into his chest and ending at his left arm, which was lowered at the time.
The man flinches heavily, but manages to skimper away.
The hostiles on the other side stop right behind the MC and one of them begin to pull out a gun, but the MC quickly turns around and manages to cut up his wrist real bad, causing him to drop the gun and them both to run away.

So the MC has saved the little girl, scaring away her pursuers.

The girl radiates joy, and concludes that:

“I’ve found my hero!”

So what was this about?

Well you see, this girl was captured an unknown amount of time ago and put into a high-security facility in which she was studied… For psychic ability.
Yes, she appears to be a unique speciment capable of both analyzing and interacting with the world around her using nothing but her mind.
While she explains (and demonstrates) that it is to a very limited degree, the fact that she can do it at all has made her a highly valuable subject…
Who had just managed to barely escape from the clutches of a corporation that secretly runs the town’s mafia-like criminal organization. The one the men in the suits were from.

She goes on to explain that during her entire time of inprisonment, she’s been dreaming of and praying to find a hero, who would both help her and the entire city, possibly the entire world.
She knows that this is the MC, because she has pictured this hero weilding a sword exactly like the one that had somehow appeared in the MC’s hand.
Furthermore, the MC is strong, gentle and caring.

… Unfortunately, only the strength part is accounted for with this apathic person. And that, too, had appeared as suddenly as the sword.
Not strength a the level where he’d knock people out with a single punch, but definitely more strength an the average person… And enough to weild the sword with relative ease.

Ok, so that’s the little girl’s deal.
But what about the MC? Why did a sword pop up in his hand?

Well, this only becomes apparent much later on in the story, but the MC has in his whole life always been what people expected him to be.
At home, his parents hadn’t cared and just wanted him to be quiet and not make a fuss of things.
At school his teachers had expected him to be quiet, not make a fuss and study properly.
So that’s what he had become.
A person who is quiet, uninvolved. More or less transparent.

And when I say he had been what people expected him to be, I mean that literally.
The reason he became this girl’s hero is because she expected to run into someone who would be her hero. She ran into him, so she thus expected him to be that sword-hero.
So he gained a sword.

What does this mean for the plot?
Well, as he becomes more famous for the vigilante justice he is occasionally forced to carry out (mostly involving the aforementioned criminal organization), the people in the city will start to take note, and start rumors.
In the end, relatively late in the story, he will be rumored to be capable of flight… And thus be capable of flight.

Eventually, a nemesis shows up in the form of a person who can generate plasma from his body. Like shooting a beam from his hand, or even using his feet as thrusters to allow him to fly long before the MC becomes capable of such.

Yes, this is my take on a comic-book superhero story. He will not be swinging that sword around most of the time, but he will take it out every now and then when it’s appropriate.

And guess what?
This is on the top of my list of things I will try to make when I’m good enough at art to try my hand at a comic (which is, well, when I can draw characters consistently. So like ages from now :’D)