Unravelled - A Brief Introduction

The warm summer sun hovered over the sprawling metropolis of Piltstown, brightening the Sunday afternoon for the civilians below. The city was calm, the few people out that day either heading out to lunch or back to work, and the day generally had a very positive vibe to it.

While the day felt positive to most, with a essentially no crime and clear skies, to some it was rather boring. The police on patrol could do nothing but enjoy their lunch and nap while they weren't lazily driving about, and a large faint shadow made it clear that another particular person was disappointed in the day as well.

Hovering in the sky at about the same level as the tops of the skyscrapers was a humanoid figure, black to the observers below that happened to look up in the direction of it. Its feminine shape was near-lifeless as it slowly passed over the streets, the only motion being its head moving from side to side.

The owner of the figure, a young female superhero called "Unravelled", was scanning the area for any signs of trouble. It was definitely a slow day for her, but that didn't stop her patrol, drifting slowly across the sky to not only maintain a thorough search, but also to prevent wasting unnecessary energy. It was kind of a habit for her on these sorts of days, mindlessly shifting into this task while thinking about life and her plans.

On this day in particular, she was reflecting on how she became a superhero in the first place. Her mind wandered to the gift from her now-deceased grandfather – a brass armband from an unknown ancient civilisation – and how when trying it on she was given a strange mark by her shoulder that somehow gave her the ability to "Release the restraints of motion in the physical form", as research into it revealed. She recalled how upon learning and adjusting to the ability, she discovered its potential for combat, and after a bit of training in secret, she became a vigilante.

Her time as a vigilante led her to an illegal artefact operation, where she discovered another brass item – a rope said to "Hold against even the mightiest of pulls, yet bend and stretch like rubber" – as well as plans to uncover more of these items... including details about the full power of them. It was at that time, as she remembered, that she decided to spend some money on a costume and become the superhero that she was now.

A shrill scream pierced the air, distracting Unravelled from her thoughts. Looking down towards the ground below, she noticed a dot running through a crowd of people, away from the source of the scream. Taking this opportunity, the only one she knew she was going to have today, she practically dropped out of her drifting hover towards what she expected to be a common thief.

Approaching the ground at a near-terminal velocity, she knew that she wouldn't be able to grab the thief from her fall, so at twelve stories above the ground, she aimed her right hand towards the criminal and pushed her wrist forwards.

All one could see from the streets was a small dark brown blur, trailed only by what looked like a yellowish thread, rocketing from Unravelled's arm and impacting the thief square in the head. The thread, which turned out to be a malleable brass rope, fell limp as the bistre-suited superhero slowed her descent and landed gently on the thief's back, who held her handless arm in the air in triumph.

The pedestrians cheered as they got a closer look at Unravelled, noticing the familiar weaved brass-coloured trim on either side of her full-body costume, her wavy rich brown hair that hung around her shoulders, as well as the bronze cord loops between her joints that connected her detached parts.

Unravelled stood off of the thief and tied him up with the cord of her detached hand, before striding over and returning the purse that was stolen. It wasn't that big of a deal – she could have just taken him out stealthily and left – but on a quiet day like this it was her way of adding a bit of excitement to the people around her. A bit cliché, but still fun and uplifting.

It didn't take long until the police arrived to arrest the thief, at which time Unravelled quietly left and headed home, knowing that her day was finished and she could finally get out of her sweat-filled suit and get some rest out of the hot sun.

On her way home, flying over the city, the memories of how and why she became a superhero returned to her. She remembered learning of her capability of her ability to levitate her separated body parts from the plans she uncovered at the artifact operation – how she could practically fly if the soles of her feet were kept firmly on the ground. She also read in the plans that the rope, while virtually indestructible, could be taken apart and manipulated by compressing parts like one would with a Chinese finger trap. Combining these two items' abilities, it became clear to her that she could easily fly around and fight much like a fictional superhero, as well as ensuring that her parts would not go missing. All that she had to do was attach the rope to a custom superhero outfit, separate her body so that she left gaps in her body to store the rope, and remove the soles of her feet so that she could fly; then she could become the superhero known today as "Unravelled".

The memories drifted away once she returned to her house in the suburbs of Piltstown. Unravelled opened the door with a key hidden in her suit behind her left wrist, then calmly dragged herself to her bedroom, where she stripped out of her suit into her underwear. As the suit fell to her ankles, she glanced at her hovering hands and the gap between them and her arms, and shrugged her shoulders. Normally she'd retrieve the small bits of herself that she took off when getting in the costume, but today was just too hot for her. Instead, she just decided to collapse onto her bed, breaking into what would appear to observers to be a flesh-coloured dust, and rest.