808 (Series)

808 is a series of Superhero stories set in the Fireside Universe. They center around Logan Ryder, an average teenager and young man by day, and the superhero 808 by night. Each installment of the series introduces a new hero, up until The 808 Squad which has every hero team-up to fight a common threat. Because of this, each hero plays the role of protagonist at some point, with Logan being regulated to either a co-protagonist, secondary protagonist, or simply a major character.

808 is also structurally different from each other series in the Fireside Universe. Rather than following an over-arching plot, each story is self-contained.

808
Tells the story of Logan Ryder, a High School senior living in a suburb of Fireside City, Dewitt. Set at the same time as the Operation School series, the Government is investing millions into anti-terrorism and military forces while ignoring smaller scale policing. As a result, Dewitt is a near hellhole of crime and violence. Though Logan deals with it for the most part, he is angered when his younger sister nearly dies from a drug overdose sold to her by local drug dealers. He wears a black party mask and a large, red, sweatshirt in order too attack the drug dealers and steal back his sisters money. He uses a large lead pipe as his main weapon, and is driven to and from the scene by his best friend, Matt. After beating up the dealers and stealing the money, Logan quickly sprays "808" in red spray paint on the door and runs. After news reports come out asking who the "808 Vigilante" is, Logan and Matt begin working on new and upgraded equipment for Logan to use as 808. The equipment is all makeshift weaponry and armor built using everyday objects. At the end of the story, 808 stops a hostage situation on a train. Matt uses his car to assist the hostage situation. Afterwards, Matt calls 808 a superhero and Logan becomes suggests Matt become a hero himself. Matt considers it. In the epilogue, Logan is at home when he is approached by Jack Stark, Andrew's great-grandson and a billionaire business man about a possible "sponsorship".

707
Set about a month after the end of "808", Logan and Matt are riding high on the popularity of 808 as a real life superhero. Matt has been working on equipment to become a hero in his own right in order to support 808 more in battle. Matt declares himself 707, and wears a costume very similar to Logans, except the sweatshirt part is blue. He also uses Escrima Sticks instead of a staff. After 707's first active mission, there's confusion as to what difference exist between 808 and 707. To further differentiate 707 from 808, Matt and Logan call Jack Stark for a favor, asking for money to buy weapons and gadgets to equip Matt's car with. After getting the funds and attaching the weapons, 808 is defeated and kidnapped while trying to stop a store robbery, so 707 rides in to save in.

The Nighthawks
Set a couple months after "707", Logan and Matt are spending a summer day testing some experimental equipment in one of the town parks. While they are there, a group of about ten gunman attack the park, taking several people hostage including Logan and Matt. The two are split up, with Logan ending up in a group with three ten-year-old boys named Scott, Marty, and David while Matt ends up in a group with other civilians. The gunmen the begin goading 808 and 707 to show themselves, wanting to kill the two in order to let crime retake the streets of Dewitt. Logan and the kids are shuffled off into a large van in order to be transported elsewhere, but Logan beats up the two men transferring him, revealing his identity to the boys with him. He asks for their assistance in stopping the rest of the gunmen, and after some hesitation, the boys agree. Together, 808 coordinates a takedown of the other eight gunmen with the boy's assistance. Afterwards they part ways. Logan and Matt however realize that if they can expand their team, they can cover more ground. Possibly even other towns. Logan goes to meet with the boys while Matt goes to meet with Stark. Logan convinces the boys to go through rigorous training to be combat effective, while Matt obtains child size, prototype, flightsuits from Stark. After training, the boys take the collecitve name of "Nighthawks" and assist in taking down the leader of the Gunmen who attacked the park.

606
Logan heads off to College at The College of Dave Stark in Syracuse, New York. leaving Matt to go off to college at Fireside University in the City, and the Nighthawks to begin fifth grade back in Dewitt. 707 and the Nighthawks do not make physical appearances in the story, they're just mentioned. Logan initially intends to leave the 808 persona behind since he's in college. While there, he's quick to get in an altercation with Ray, a senior at the college who doesn't take kindly to Logan at first. After several murders take place just off the college campus, Logan re-assumes the 808 identity and prevents three more murders on the following three nights. His actions attract the attention of a man who calls himself "The Inflamer". Wanting to make himself Infamous, and deducing that 808 attends the College of Dave Stark, the Inflamer attackers the college. To be continued...

The 808 Squad
The Squad comes together to face a threat of epic proportions.

The 808 Squad: Zero
The squad comes together to face a new threat, the super-terrorist Zero.

Characters

 * 808/Logan Ryder - Team leader. Dresses in a Red sweatshirt with sleeves cut off, jeans, and a black mask over the upper part of his face. He uses a metal staff as his primary weapon, which gets upgraded over the course of the stories. He also eventually uses a "Chain Shot" that's attatched to his wrist and fires a miniature grappling hook for grappling enemies, the "Discus" which is basicall several small frisbee's with weight attached to them, and the "Bangarang" which are boomerangs and frisbees with Fireworks attached to them. He obtains and upgrades all his equipment over the course of the stories, and Stark eventually develops and pays for higher tech and more refined versions of the equipment


 * 707/Matt Crofton - Dresses in a blue sweatshirt with sleeves cut off, jeans, and a black mask over the upper part of his face. He uses Escrima Sticks as his primary weapon, and later in the series they become electrified. He also has his car, referred to as "The Tank" which is decked out with weaponry and 707 is eventually able to remote control it in battle.


 * Nighthawks/Scott Lewie, Marty Baker, David Hoffman - Three young boys who wear all black flight suits with Black Masks. They have very little equipment, using team-work, their gliding abilities, and hand to hand combat to fight effectively. They also hold small, last resort blades withing the palms of their gloves which they can use to disable enemies or block small weapons. The nighthawks eventually receive mini-jet boot type things from Stark, to up their combat effectiveness and give the impression that they are flying.


 * 606/Ray Vissas - Dresses in tight, all black armor whenever he's in battle. 606 is proficient with many kinds of Firearms, explosives, and melee weapons. He is much more prone to killing his opponents than sparing them, which sometimes puts him at odds with 808.


 * 505/Jason Hunter - 13 Year-Old boy genius. He's obsessed with robotics, and builds a robotic-drone companion he names "Un" do to the fact that Un is able to sustain near indefinite flight and lift heavy object while only using one, very powerful rotor to stay in the air. 505 mostly fights through Un, commanding him via a small wrist based computer. However, 505 has some combat abilities, using a knife and a handgun to defend himself. 505 eventually begins building more drones with different functions and commanding them, but Un always remains his "sidekick".


 * Un - Un is a small drone that uses anti-gravity technology as well as a single rotor to stay afloat. Un uses a small gun and a taser as his weapons, and can pick up and fly 505 or other characters to various locations.


 * 404/Caroline Stark - Starks niece who fancies herself an inventor. Though she doesn't invent it, she "borrows" research into anti-gravity technology from Stark's buisness and implements it into large metal gloves, boots, and a chest piece. Though Stark initially disagrees with his daughter wanting to be a superhero, he relents and streamlines her armor along with the rest of the 808 Squad. After Aliens are introduced in the Operation School saga, Stark obtains Energy based projectile tech and implements it into 404's armor, though this is the only upgrade to her equipment she ever receives. 404 is mostly an aerial fighter. She initially uses her fists to fight, but primarily switches to projectiles when she gets her energy gun


 * The Skyriders/Oscar Monty, Dylan Parker, Kweon Yung - Another three boys who are recruited when the 808 squad determines they need more help to cover their increasingly large territory. The Skyriders are the only heroes who don't build or have any say in their equipment, Stark designs and supplies it all. The Skyriders use a weapon which, just to give you an idea of what it looks like, is designed like the Skyhook from Bioshock infinite, "The Claw". The Claw uses similar Anti-Gravity technology that 404 uses and allows the Skyriders to ride along walls, ceilings, wires, roads, basically any surface at a high rate of speed. The Claw can also stop bullets, provide the Skyriders with massively high jumps, pick up and move objects using anti-gravity, and can be thrown at enemies and re-caught like Thor's hammer because the Skyriders wear magnetic gloves.


 * Lady Winter/Kate Ferebie - A girl living in upstate new york who is inspired by 808 to become a superhero herself. Being based in a rather cold climate, most of her abilities and equipment are winter related. This includes using a Snowmobile, Hunting Rifles, Agile Snowshoes, Ice Picks, and a Ski Pole as weapons and equipment. In warmer climates she's basically another ranged hero, though her ice picks and pole give her close ranged abiliteis. Especially after Stark Streamlines them


 * Bio-Soldier/Jack Stark - The Financial and Technological backer for The 808 Squad. Is introduced in 808 but doesn't become a superhero himself until his self-titled Bio-Soldier. As Bio-Soldier, he is able to perform limited flight, as well as attack enemies with a variety of elemental attacks, as well as some more out-there attacks.

Development
808 was first conceptualized in the summer of 2012 after Andrew McInerney saw The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers. The series was then worked on and refined, with several elements either being cut or re-tooled.

505's character went through a number of changes. Initially, 505 had the same abilities as 404 (When 404 didn't exist), but Andrew found the initial concept boring and scrapped it. 505 also once had access to whole armies worth of drones, but Andrew reasoned that this overpowered him, and reduced his drone army significantly. Un, was also a very late addition to 505's arsenal.

Lady Winter was originally called "The Winter Soldier" before Andrew knew of the existence of the Marvel Comics character of the same name. While her name was changed, her backstory and abilities were not.

In an act of laziness, all planned versions of Jack Stark's character originally used Tony Stark/Iron Man as a placeholder. Jack Stark was eventually developed as a means of having an original character and to reinforce connections with The Regulator, as Jack is Andrew Stark's great grandson.

The initial team of Nighthawks was between 8 and 12 members, but Andrew cut it down to three in order to better focus the characters and their development.

Andrew McInenrey also wanted to focus on characters who didn't have natural superpowers, but rather characters who were superheroes due to intense training or high-tech equipment. For this reason, all the heroes are simply wearing armor and using weapons, where as most of the villains have some kind of organic change to them.