Harbor City Heroes Nick
Nickolas Rossini
My home town is Chicago. I grew up there and became a copper as soon as I turned 18. It was hard back then to be an honest cop in a corrupt department. Especially since my mother, a good Irish Catholic girl married one of the mad bad Rossi boys. They met at a school dance and it was love at first sight. It didn’t matter that neither of their parents approved the match.
I walked the thin line between honest and being on the take for nine years when my luck ran out. My partner’s wife got sick and nothing would help her but a lot of money. So Patrick, my partner and a man I trusted with my life, got into debt with some of my less than savory relatives. He got into debt so bad there was nothing I could do to help him.
In 1939 Patrick led me into a trap. Since I couldn’t be bought the “Family” decided that I had to die. I was shot in the back by my own partner. I never wanted revenge, but I would have liked to find justice. Even the possibility of Patrick being convicted was ended when he was later gunned down by a hitman.
The strangest thing about my afterlife is the fact that I’m tied to the material plane. Or at least that’s how some crazy old woman could see me put it. I have a connection to the bullet that shot me. In fact, I was able to go back and find the bullet. It’s the one real thing I can touch easily. I keep on my watch chain, since when you’re dead you don’t need to know the time.
First Mission
I was lurking abouth the University library hoping to find someone reading an interesting book of at least to catch Professor Monroe up to his dirty tricks when I heard something. One graduate student was telling another about how one of her professors was trying to get a grant to study all the weird things that have been going on here in Harbor City. From those tabloid newspapers, it seems weird things might be going on all over the place.
Figuring being dead and not having much else going on, I went over to his office in the Physics tower. It turned out my timing was just right as he had invited over some other strange characters to have a little chat. There was this guy in what reminded me of knight's armor from the old days, but it was painted blue and yellow and looked more like it was out of a sci fi movie.
There was this guy who didn't look like much of anything. He was one of those guys the neighbors would have described as "real quiet" before he went on some sort of killing spree. From what I could tell he seems to be able to make things move from one place to another. I think they call it teleporting.
The thing that surprised me the most was what I think was a dame made out of lots of little lights. Some of the lights could talk and one of them tried to make friends with this cat that was hanging round. I'm pretty sure that wasn't a normal pussy either, but it didn't admit to anything.
I'd seen on the tv that the Blue and Yellow guy, I think he calls himself enforcer, had stopped some fellow at the bank who was throwing furniture around. The cops took that guy, who was a plumber who's wife had left him, into custody.
The Professor seems to want to find a way to make people with unusual talents safer in terms of dealing with the government. He said he's doing it to get a good grant and maybe wind the Noble Prize, but I got a gut feeling there's more to it than that.
