Plot ideas

[dans]

I need some ideas... this morning, Alex and Tammi avoided separate assassination attempts. The attempts were set up to look like accidents, and targets without the specific super powers of Alex and Tammi might not have noticed the situation in time to escape. Neither has any idea that the accident was on purpose or intended to be fatal. In fact, depending on the circumstances, one or the other might not even realize that it might have been fatal.

Both are rookies at being mystery heroes, so they are not automatically on guard for bad guys, they are still learning to use their powers, and have not even discovered the full extent of their powers yet.

So what were these two accidents? How did the two women discover and avoid them?

Tammi and Akex are miles apart when these 'accidents' occur, and I don't want them to know that the were assassination attempts, just accidents. It is even possible that one or both of them are totally unaware that anything dangerous was going on...

Background...

Alex and Tammi met for the first time yesterday, in San Francisco in 1960. Alex lives in the city, either in an apartment in the Bayview area not far from Candlestick Park (not the best neighborhood in SF at the time) or in a house on a hill in the Golden Gate area (not sure if she has purchased the house yet). Tammi is probably staying in a dormitory at the University of San Francisco. Today is the first day of the national trials for the 1960 Olympic gymnastics team.

Yesterday morning, Alex and Tammi were the first people to find a murder victim in Golden Gate Park. Whoever committed the murder is concerned that the two women might have witnessed something incriminating (as far as I know, they did not...) and wants to get rid of them.

So this morning, there were separate assassination attempts on the lives of both Tammi and Alex. Both attempts were set up to look like accidents. Some incidental use of their powers warned them in time to avoid these accidents.

Alex has enhanced vision (telescopic 'zoom in' vision and can see very well in low light levels). Tammi has enhanced hearing (she can hear very faint noises and hear into infrasonic and ultrasonic ranges). So Alex must have seen something a normal person wouldn't have seen, and Tammi must have heard something a normal person would not have heard.

The bad guys are well financed and not particularly worried about collateral damage, so the scope of the accidents may not have been limited to the two women.

If I use or adapt your suggestions, I can write you into the story somehow. San Francisco cop, Olympic gymnastics trial judge, one of the bad guys, autograph seeker, patron of the arts, maybe you could the headliner on the marquee of a movie theater showing the summer blockbuster.

Thanks!

[redsycorax]

I think one answer would be to scope out the Bayview local geography at this point in time. Were there any disused factories or derelict housing facilities in the vicinity that any sniper might have used in the context, overlooking the attempted assassinations of the two women in question. Say Alice captures a glint of light from a sniper sight in a building she knows is derelict or disused and is alerted to the sniper targeting herself and Tammi. Say Tammi hears some sounds that she knows are those of sniper rifle assembly coming from a property that she knows is supposed to be deserted (perhaps Tammi was the daughter of a police officer?) Or, Tammi might detect other anomalous sounds from the derelict building, like a rifle being loaded, or a fragment of a telephone conversation from an adjacent booth near the building shortly before it happens.

It may part of a terrorist conspiracy to disrupt the US preparation for the 1960 Olympics. I'll leave you to interpolate who might be involved there. Perhaps KGB deep cover agents? Perhaps white supremacists who might not like the fact that there are African-Americans representing the country in that context?

[dans]

I originally was planning to have a conspiracy among some crooked judges to disqualify the best US gymnasts so some other nation has a better chance of victory. But I'm thinking of making the murder independent of the Olympics tryouts. Maybe two concurrent mysteries to solve...

I don't think there were _any_ non-white gymnasts trying out for the 60 Olympic team. Of course, on Other Earth, the first really well-known mystery hero was Major Power, a black man whose mother had been a slave. So Other Earth may be a little more enlightened than our own Earth.

[dans]

Zing is leaving Las Vegas... she made some money, now has over $2 million in the casino bank, and is moving on because she started falling for a guy there and discovered he was a private detective. She moved on from Bennington, Colorado, when she discovered that the guy she was falling for there was a rookie super hero. She's headed for San Francisco.

Zing is a super villain with super speed powers. I don't think she is evil. Now that she has lots of money and realizes that she can always easily get more, why should she be motivated to commit theft?

She has some trauma in her past, about 'losing' things that belong to her. When she was very young, her family fled China when it was invaded, to Viet Nam. A few years later, they fled Viet Nam ahead of the same invaders that drove them from China, and they moved to San Francisco. At the beginning of World War II, anti-Asian sentiment was high on the West Coast and the family moved to Chicago. Some time after that, her parents died, and some time after that, she was fired from her job because of her gender and ethnicity (as well as being exposed to radioactive rocket fuel). And then she was wrenched from her Earth to her new Earth. So she had trauma regarding losing her things... but I think she's finally over that.

I don't want to make her one of the good guys, but I can't figure out why she would continue to commit robberies. Any thoughts?

Also, she's a rich, young, single woman in San Francisco in 1962 - in her civilian identity, what does she do with her time? She's a mechanical engineer and versed in hydraulics. And she enjoys playing poker.

I want to have her come in conflict with Avant Guard (Palette and Crescendo) but I can't figure out why.

Thanks!

[johnreiter902]

She could just live the life of the idle rich. Maybe she works as a part-time consultant for engineering companies, just to relive the boredom?

As for why she returns to theft, maybe she is addicted to the thrill of defeating the law after enjoying the adrenaline rush for so long. Or maybe she will use her powers to steal something she wants, but can't buy, or to get revenge on somebody who crossed her?

[dave]

Two thoughts: One she gets involved in a mob connected game and somehow they are either able to cheat her and put her in their debt, or she wins, and they steal the money back. Two something very expensive is put on display in an exact duplicate art show of museum that was owned by her family on her earth and was very precious to her (or them). In any case she wants it because she somehow belongs to her.

Dave

[dans]

Dave, I like that second one. She finds some stuff that belonged to her family when she was young. She has already discovered that he family doesn't exist in her new time line - perhaps there is a story there. They were killed in the original invasion in the new time line. I will ponder this.

Also, per John, thinking of a way she could become an engineering consultant in her spare time.

[dans]

You guys who are history buffs can help me out here... Zing was born in China and was probably about 5 years old when the Japanese invaded in 1937. Her family fled - they were probably aristocracy.

Could they have owned a museum? I'm thinking maybe the museum was looted by the invaders, and somehow some of the museum pieces (their analogs, anyway) are now showing up in San Francisco museums, and maybe Zing is taking them and returning them to China?

(Actually, I just realized I need to straighten out my Zing history - in one story her parents escaped from red China and people think she's a commie spy, and in another story, her parents fled the Japanese invasion and came to America from Viet Nam, and therefore Zing never lived in Red China. Gotta fix that! It might be easy; the people in the story who think she's a spy are pretty ignorant, so maybe they know she was born in China and assume she came to the US from China... I could insert someone into the story who knows that is not true but the other idiots won't listen to him...

So, what do you think of the museum idea?

[dave]

G.I. also stole artifacts, maybe she's dealing with private collectors. suppose she goes o a high stakes poker game at the home a rich veteran who served in China and stole treasures from the country and was then and Now in the mob ala Michael Corleone.

In 1962 She couldn't send it to mainland China as the nation was all but closed until Nixon went there in the 1970's. If she was sending back to mainland main land China and the CCP the US Govenment would definitely consider her to be a spy.

From what you wrote earlier and thought she went to Viet Nam when her family fled the Japanese in WWII, and later fled to the States When the Communist took Northern Viet Nam.

[dans]

I was thinking about having the artifacts 'recovered' by returning GIs. I like the idea of her seeing some of them in a high stakes poker game at the home of some mobster...

[redsycorax]

Here's an idea. Say Zing is working for the Triad Chinese crime network and involved in an international gang war between them and the US Sicilian and Italian mafia? They might be able to provide her with resource backing for any heist she pulls off, especially if it would constitute an embarrassing 'sting' right under the noses of their rivals?

[dans]

I don't want Zing to be part of any group; she is a loner. I like the idea of her getting involved in maybe a 3 way situation - Zing vs. the bad guys who have control of artifacts that she believes belong to her family vs. the good guys who are legally obligated to stop her from stealing, even when she is stealing from the bad guys.

[redsycorax]

Okay, but that mightn't rule out the Triads liking the basic concept of getting one over on their Sicilian gangland rivals and providing Zing with logistical assistance and intel, even if she is a free agent. If she stole something from the Mafia right under their noses, it'd look bad for the Mafia regardless of whether she's a free agent or not. It might increase the credibility of the Triads to expose the bungling and incompetence of the Mob that way at the cost of their rivals reputation and ability to provide leverage and secure wayward international capital and other resources for their operations. She might be a loner, but that doesn't rule out the possibility that the Triads might see her as a highly valuable and professional free agent, whereas one of their own might be more obvious and too well known to rival gangs. And if Zing was originally from China or Taiwan, then I suspect she must have crossed the path of the Triads sooner or later.

[dans]

yeah, that could make it a 4 way free for all. Maybe she steals 2 or 3 artifacts and somebody in a Triad figures out the pattern and finds a way to slip her information about other artifacts that fit that pattern...

A lot to think about. I think I need an AI to write for me.

[dave]

You could even add agents of the CCP and Taiwan to the mix. In 1962 The world, except for the nations of the Communist Bloc recognized Taiwan as the legitimate Chinese government even though they lost the Chinese Civil War id 1947-48.